On the tenth day, Koré doesn’t give me a letter. She doesn’t come down for breakfast; when I slip into her room, she’s asleep beneath a tangle of blankets. I lay my hand against her forehead, but I don’t feel any fever. Clearly her all-night letter writing has finally caught up with her; I only hope that she’s started sleeping again in time, and I won’t have to spend a week nursing her.
I still go to the palace.
Even without a letter, I can talk to him, I tell myself as I walk briskly through the marketplace. Perhaps today he will promise to marry her.
I should worry about going to see him with no letter, no excuse, nothing to persuade him but my own wits. But all I feel is a curious, floating happiness. It rained during the night; the sun sparkles on the damp cobblestones. The air is cool and sweet, and I suck in greedy breaths as I wind between the vendors’ booths. For no other reasons than the mud between the puddles, the screaming children, and the strings of garlic hanging between the skinned rabbits in the nearest booth, I think that the marketplace is the most beautiful spot in the whole world.
For one delirious, sun-drenched moment, I do not even slightly remember Mother.
A hand closes on my arm. I wrench free and turn back to tell the merchant that I don’t want to buy anything—
An old woman stands behind me. No, not old—her hair is still jet-black, and the lines on her face are scars, not wrinkles.
“Little dove,” she says, her voice hoarse and breathy. “Little, my little dove.”
The rest of the world is suddenly far away, behind a haze. I can’t look at anything but this woman: her stained and wrinkled dress, the bandages tied over her fingers to keep her from gouging her skin open, her wide and staring eyes, pupils swelled impossibly huge.
“My little dove,” says my old nurse.
I was only eight when Mother took ill. Father tried to shield me; he told me again and again that she was just a little tired, and he wouldn’t let me see her until it was clear that she was dying. By then I barely recognized the skeletal creature with sunken eyes. But she clasped my hands and whispered, “Darling, my dearest, I will always be with you. I have found a way. Even after I die, I will always be with you.”
She told me how. She wasn’t ashamed, not when her only daughter’s happiness was at stake. She had called upon the Gentle Lord, the prince of demons, and she had made a bargain with him.
Everybody knows that the Gentle Lord’s bargains inevitably twist and turn to ill. The price is always higher than it seems. But Mother had made sure that she would pay all the price herself. Her wish was that her daughter would always be protected; her price was that she would be the one to accomplish it. Her ghost would be bound to the apple tree behind our house, and she would have the power and the duty to answer all my tears.
“Nothing will take me from you,” she promised. “There is nothing that I could want more.”
The morning after her funeral, when I sobbed beneath the apple tree, I felt her touch upon my shoulder and heard her humming a lullaby in my ear. The wind stroked my face and dried my tears.
“Stay with me, Mother,” I whispered, and she did. She would do anything I asked, I quickly found: she would bring me caramel apples or new frocks, toys or ribbons or sweets.
I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.
Until the day my nurse made me cry.
It was the first morning of sunshine after a week of rain. I wanted to play in the garden; my nurse wanted me to pick up my toys. I said no, I whined no, and finally I stamped my foot and shouted no, but she would not budge: if I didn’t pick up my things, I couldn’t go out.
“No,” I said one final time, tears starting in my eyes, because I felt sure that before I finished picking up my things, the rain would come back and I’d lose my chance to sit beneath the apple tree and feel Mother’s fingers in my hair.
My nurse shook her head. “Then you’re not going out at all today,” she said. “I’m very disappointed in you, and I’ll have to tell your father.”
“You’re horrible!” I cried at her as she walked away from me. “I hate you!” The door shut behind her, and I sobbed hot, noisy tears.
Until she started screaming.
It was like nothing I’d ever heard: a desperate animal wail that went on and on. The sound wrapped itself around my spine and clogged my throat. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
When it stopped, for a moment I tottered on my feet. Then I bolted for the door.
Everyone knows about demons, and everyone knows of a cousin’s sister’s friend who was driven mad by them. But nobody actually expects to see it happen.
My nurse huddled against the wainscoting, her left hand stuffed into her mouth. Blood and saliva dripped out between her teeth.
“Nurse?” I quavered.
She looked at me then. Her pupils were huge, and her left eye was stained red with burst veins.
“Make it stop,” she whispered. “Make it stop, little dove, I’m so sorry, please make it stop.”
She laid her right hand against her forehead as if she had a sudden headache. Slowly, she scraped her fingers down the side of her face, leaving behind four bloody trails.
Then she started screaming again.
My nurse was the first one. She was not the last. It wasn’t until the butler and the chambermaid had also been destroyed that I realized what was happening.
Mother had wanted the power to protect me, and she had bargained for it with the prince of demons. So her power was to command demons. She could force them to bring me trinkets and sweets. Or she could use them to destroy anyone who made me cry.
She used to weep over beggars and birds with broken wings. She had thought it would be a small price, to become a ghost so she could protect her little daughter. But she had forgotten that ghosts have no pity.
That’s how I learned to smile.
Father married again, and I smiled. Father died, and I smiled. Stepmother slapped me for the first time, and I smiled so hard I thought my face would crack.
“They’re always singing,” whispers my nurse. She clutches my arms, her bandaged fingers digging into my flesh. “They never stop. I’m so sorry, please make them stop, my little dove, please.”
I smile. What else can I ever, ever do?
Then I shove her aside and flee blindly down the street.
I skid around a corner and slam into someone. “Sorry, sir!” I gasp, and duck to the side.
“Maia?”
The voice catches me in place. It’s Lord Anax, and I turn to see him standing by me with a long black coat on his shoulders and a hat on his head.
“My lord,” I say blankly. My whole body feels numb. “I was—going to see you—”
“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Maia, what happened?”
“Nothing. Nothing happened, everything’s all right.”
Everything is exactly the same as it was fifteen minutes ago. The sun is shining, I’m going to spend the morning with the man I would die for, and my nurse is in agony every moment. Because of me.
The chambermaid died the day she met the demons, but the butler also survived. I wonder if he’s still alive and suffering too.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m—” I draw a breath and summon a smile. “A boy tried to rob me. I got away from him. I’m quite all right, just a little shaken up.”
“Do take note: when you smile like that, I can’t believe a word you say. But you seem to be in one piece, at least.” He crooks his arm and sets my hand on it as if I were a lady being led into a ballroom. “Come. I was on my way to the park; I know a quiet spot where you can sit down.”
“In public? With a servant?” I protest as he starts to draw me down the street.
“What is the point of being the duke’s heir if I can’t cause a scandal now and then?”
He marches us briskly to the nearby gated park and draws me to a little bench beneath a pair of willow trees, almost completely hidden by the curtain of their hanging branches. He sits me down on the bench and then stands over me with his hands in his pockets.
“Aren’t you going to sit down, my lord?” I ask him. I’m starting to feel a little less shaky. I’ve learned nothing new. I’ve just been reminded what I’ve done and why he needs to forget me. Why he must promise to marry Koré today.
His mouth flattens. “I wish you’d stop calling me that.”
“I’m sure it’s treason if I don’t.”
“No, just impudence, and I really don’t care. I do care, I mean, I care that—” He breaks off. “I was hoping you’d come today.”
“I come every morning,” I say.
“I know, but last night—I made up my mind to tell you something. And then, of course, I was terrified that I’d decided too late, and I’d never see you again.” He looks at me and then at the ground. “The ball’s in four days, you know.”
“I don’t hear about anything else these days,” I say. Every morning at the breakfast table, Stepmother describes an even more elaborate daydream of how Lord Anax will take one look at her darling Koré and fall in love. The dresses are finished; Thea practices her dance steps every moment, and Koré writes letters.
I get to my feet. “I don’t have a letter today,” I say. “But I came anyway, because I wanted—I was hoping you’d finally promise to marry my lady.”
He looks up at me in confusion. “Maia?”
My heart is pounding again. My body feels like a coiled spring. “You’ve read her letters,” I say. “You know—she’s a fine lady, she’ll make a fine duchess, she’ll never lie to you. She’s beautiful, too, have I mentioned that? Please, promise me that—”
“Maia, after all this time, can you possibly imagine that I would ever marry her?”
“You must,” I say. “You said you have to marry, and who else is there?”
“Zeus and Hera, you fool, I want to marry you.”
The words burst out of him, and they seem to startle him as much as me; he rocks back a step as if I’ve shoved him.
I stand like a statue. “That’s . . . not amusing, my lord.”
“I didn’t mean it as a joke!” He presses a fist to his mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it that way. But I do mean it. Maia, I had thought that there could never be any honesty between me and a woman, let alone love. And then I found you under my desk, and—I think I loved you since the moment you told me to respect the mistress who was cruel to you, because she was consistent. You’re mad and brave and beautiful, and you tell me the truth. There has never been anyone who did that for me but you. Maia, I don’t care who you are. I love you and I’ll fight the whole world to marry you. Will you grant me the honor of your hand and your heart?”
I feel dizzy. He can’t be asking me. This must be a dream, a fever-born delirium. But the world presses in on me, too real to deny: the sunlight glares through the willow branches, the birds clatter loudly in the trees. I feel the breath rasp in my throat and the skin on every inch of my body.
“You don’t love me,” I say.
He sighs ruefully. “Maybe not. I can’t help seeing you the way a starving man sees bread.”
“You don’t know what it is to be hungry, let alone starving,” I say. “And you don’t love me. You can’t.”
“I do,” he says quietly, stepping closer, and his dark eyes are looking straight into mine.
“You can’t,” I whisper, and that’s when he kisses me.
There’s a moment when I don’t feel anything. It’s been years since I felt any touch besides Stepmother’s slaps and Mother’s ghostly caresses, and now suddenly there are strong hands gripping my shoulders and a mouth crushed over my own. It’s too foreign; I can’t understand the sensation enough to feel it, can’t even breathe.
But he keeps kissing me, and though this is the first time, it feels like recovering a long-forgotten memory. My body seems to say, Yes, this, and then I’m kissing him back as if I were born to be in his arms. I never realized how tightly guilt and fear had been wound about me until this moment, when they unwind into the air and fly away, leaving me with nothing but this guileless delight.
Nothing.
My secrets, my lies. The fragile safety of my family. Everything I worked so hard to create, he’s going to tear it all away.
Suddenly his arms are a prison and I can’t bear the touch of his lips a moment longer. I wrench myself free.
He reaches after me. “Maia—”
I slap his hand away. “No,” I gasp. “Marry my mistress. Or don’t, if you like. But I—I never want to see you again.”
And then I run.
“He won’t take any more letters,” I tell Koré that evening. “He’s too busy. But he’ll look for you at the ball. I believe you have a chance.”
For the first time, lying to her feels like ashes in my mouth.