Misrule, page 14
She lifts a shoulder. “There was a bright red blossom on one side of her face. Mother said that the humans likely supposed that the infant was a changeling or touched by a Demon. They were giving it back so that the real child would be returned to them.”
“All because of a scar? That’s awful.”
“We thought so,” she agrees. “Mother raised the child as her own—as my sister. We named her Pansy, for the shape of the mark on her face, and taught her that she was beautiful and loved.”
“So your sister wasn’t Vila?” I say, surprised.
“No. Pansy was fully mortal, but that didn’t matter to us. We lived together as happily as we could, ears always pricked for danger, and faces always hidden. Pansy grew to be quite pretty. Not a changeling. Not magical at all, except for the spell she cast over our hearts.”
Wind sighs through the gap in the wall, stirring the mess I made.
“And then Mother went hunting one day and did not come back.” Her fists clench, the skin covering her bone spikes stretching pale. “I searched for her, leaving Pansy to guard our camp. There was a town a few miles away. I could hear the celebration before I reached the gates. Apparently, there’d been an illness or a plague of some kind, with villagers dying right and left.” Dread festers in my stomach, guessing how this will end. “But it would soon be over for they’d found the cause.”
“They didn’t—”
Her grief is palpable. “I climbed a tree high enough to see over their walls. They strung my mother up by her neck and cut her open, letting her green Vila blood spill over their square. She was still alive. It took her a long, long time to die.”
The Imp food I’d eaten earlier threatens to resurface. “Regan, I—”
“Just…wait.” Her throat works. “I went back to Pansy and told her what had happened. She was so young—only thirteen—and I didn’t want to frighten her. So I kept most of the details to myself. But we departed immediately. Roamed to place after place, with only each other for family. I thought it would be enough.”
I can tell by the hollow ring in her tone that she was wrong.
“Some years later, Pansy went gathering. The next day, it was time for us to move on, but she insisted on staying. She was tired of roaming, and I didn’t have the heart to refuse her. One week stretched into two. And then a month. And then I followed Pansy into the woods and saw what had captured her interest. She had taken a lover. A man from a nearby village, whom she’d met in the woods.”
“Oh, Regan.”
A gentle rain begins to fall.
“I wasn’t angry,” she says. “I wanted my sister to be happy. And she swore she was with him. I carved out my secret home in the forest while she married. She couldn’t tell her husband about her Vila sister, but she made me promise not to venture too far. She would come and visit me and bring me warm bread and fresh milk. Pansy baked the best bread, flecked with herbs and so light it melted on my tongue.”
Regan inhales, as though she can still smell it.
“And then she began to thicken.” She laughs, but it’s tinged with emotion. “I teased her. Called her a spoiled housecat. But it wasn’t that. Pansy was with child, and I was going to be an aunt. It seems silly, but I was overjoyed. I wanted to help raise the baby more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
“It’s not silly,” I whisper.
“It was.” A tear rolls down her cheek, and she swipes it roughly away. “I should have left when she married. Let her have her life.”
“What happened?”
Thunder growls, closer this time, and the rain picks up.
“Pansy didn’t visit me for so long that I grew concerned. I debated going to the village and checking on her myself, though I knew such an errand was insanity. In the end, I didn’t have to. Pansy finally returned—with the baby.” She pauses as if the memory might disintegrate if she speaks it aloud. “A girl. Beautiful and chubby and perfect. She lay nestled in my arms for hours, my heart fuller than I ever conceived possible.”
Regan pauses, savoring the images that must be painfully vivid. Book pages rustle over the floor.
“Shortly after seeing me, the child took ill. Pansy came to me, frantic and desperate, but there was nothing my power could do. And then—” She pauses. “The little thing died. Babies do sometimes. They just go. It could have been a chill in the woods, or anything else.”
“Yes,” I agree. “It happens.”
“But my sister blamed me. Like the villagers blamed my mother for their sickness. She told the men in the village that she’d seen a Vila skulking about in the forest. That my dark magic had seeped into the town and infected her baby.”
The roots of my hair tingle. “No.”
“And they believed her. Why wouldn’t they?” She laughs again, a haunting, mirthless sound. “I woke to the crunch of their boots and the blaze of their torches. I made it out alive.” Regan unlaces her jacket and peels it off. There’s only a thin chemise beneath. She angles her body so that her back is to me.
I gasp at the garish, puckered scar, visible even through the fabric.
“But not before they gave me this.”
“Regan.” My fingertips brush against the groove of a scar that almost grazes her spine. She shudders at my touch. “Your own sister. How could she?”
Leather snaps back over Regan’s shoulders. “I was convinced that there’d been a misunderstanding. They’d tricked Pansy or coerced her. And so I went back. Waited until I found her gathering outside the village.”
“And did she—”
“She spit in my face. Threatened to call for her husband, flush me out of the woods, and finish what they started. There was no misunderstanding that day. In her mind, my touch contaminated her baby’s blood. I was not her sister anymore. I was a monster.”
The purpose of her story hammers home. Thunder claps. “You mean like what Aurora said. Her story. But she wouldn’t—”
Regan grasps my arm. I can feel her pulse against my skin. “I understand that you care for her. That she was kind to you before. But sometimes, Nimara, people are not who we believe they are.”
The room blurs, my own tears sticking in my throat. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about this?”
“Because I wanted to forget it myself,” she says softly. “Pansy was my sister, or so I thought. But she betrayed me. Sacrificed me, after I’d given her a lifetime of love and loyalty.”
My heart pounds out an iron-clad cadence. Mortania slithers between the beats.
Listen well, pet.
“Aurora isn’t…” But I cannot finish.
“I hate you,” she’d said.
“Tragedy teaches us things about ourselves and about others,” Regan goes on gently. “Sometimes we do not like what we see. But we have to look anyway. We have to know.”
A chill shivers through me, laced with the whisper of Mortania’s presence. “Are you saying you want me to turn my back on Aurora?”
“I cannot tell you what to do when it comes to the princess,” Regan replies. “And I genuinely hope that I’m wrong about her. That she is still adjusting to the Dark Court and will warm to us in time. But, Nimara, you must at least begin to consider the possibility that too much has changed between you. That she is different, like you feared.”
“It was not real.” Aelfdene’s musical voice twines with the wind.
But I don’t want to believe it. Not even after today.
“Please.” Regan tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear, a bone spike on her knuckle grazing my temple. “For your own sake—and ours—be careful.”
Lightning forks outside, glazing the room in white.
“All right.” I nod, though the promise tastes bitter. “I will be.”
“And, Nimara.” She nudges my chin so that our eyes meet. Hers carry a silver sheen in the night. “You are not a monster.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Pansy’s story haunts me for the next few days. What happened between Regan and her sister is not the same as that between me and Aurora, I tell myself repeatedly. But even I am not convinced. If Pansy was willing to reject her own sister because of the accidental death of her child, isn’t Aurora capable of abandoning me? When we fell in love, she was a princess—a future queen—and I was a Vila, the only known member of a race her realm worked to stamp into extinction. Maybe Aurora only cared for me because it was easy to do so. Because she held all the power. And now that the situation is reversed, she is no longer interested.
My fear is a visceral thing. It congeals in my blood and hinders even the simplest of tasks. And I do not know how to banish it.
* * *
—
When not with the council or the court, I’ve taken to visiting Chaos. The magnificent steed has come to expect me, and the warmth of his strong body beneath my palms soothes the tempest in my mind. I choose times when I know that Derek is occupied elsewhere, as I have no wish to endure the boy’s presence any more than absolutely necessary, and bring the steed sugar cubes and apples and comb his sparkling mane with my fingers. I’ve not ridden him. It feels silly to do so when I can conjure wings of my own. But perhaps I’ll let him fly beside me. Give him a tour of former Briar, with Callow for company. My kestrel is also fond of the Fae steed. Half the time, she’s already perched on the door of his stall when I arrive, conversing with him in her chirrups and warbles.
But such is not the case when I slip away from the throne room one afternoon, having escaped the particularly restless court. Aurora is back to barricading herself in her rooms, and I can only tolerate so much of the Imps’ mock charges and battles, in which they use tarnished serving plates as shields and broken spears for lances. The sound of wood thumping into rusted helmets echoes through the corridors.
Chaos’s large head lifts over his pen when I enter, and I smile.
“You might be the only good thing that bothersome boy brought to these lands,” I tell him, fishing a sugar cube from my pocket. Chaos lips it from my palm, whiskers tickling and tail swishing in pleasure. The enormous muscles beneath his quicksilver hide tremble, sending rivers of sapphire and indigo racing from his shoulders to his belly.
A whicker carries from outside. Then voices, one of which I’d know anywhere. Dragon’s teeth, what is she doing here? I’d told the boy to stay away from her. But then, I suppose if Aurora sought Derek out, he wouldn’t be violating my command. The idea that she might prefer his company raises my hackles. I let myself inside Chaos’s stall, who chuffs in what is probably annoyance.
“Don’t give me away,” I whisper to him, Shifting to invisibility for good measure. Hopefully the steed doesn’t decide to squash me with his hooves, which are almost as wide as my face. His tail flicks in what I sorely hope is assurance.
“Have you always been fond of horses?” Aurora asks. The chattering of the Imps floats down the row of stalls. Hooves clop—the mount Derek must have been training.
The Imps begin challenging one another to races. Cries and curses bounce off the walls, coupled with the sounds of sharp thwacks and falling bodies.
“I wouldn’t call these horses.” A gate squeals open on the other side of the stable. “But yes. I loved training them back home.”
“You’re very good,” she remarks. “You must miss your country. I’m sorry you can’t go back.”
The gate closes and the bolt whines back into place. “I’m sorry you can’t. At least I made the decision to come here, reckless though it was. You woke to find everything…changed.”
He must worry about what his mark will do if he says anything negative about the state of Briar. Good. Straw rustles. Aurora doesn’t reply.
Derek clears his throat. “I’m glad you visited me, though. I’ve been meaning to speak to you—to apologize for the way we met. You were right to be upset with me. After all, you woke to find some oaf leaning over you. I count myself lucky to have escaped the encounter unscathed.”
An Imp howls about some slight, and I wish they would be quiet.
“As my limbs felt like boiled nettles at the time, I doubt I could have attacked.”
“You seemed strong enough to me. And, so you know, I don’t make a habit of kissing sleeping women. At least, not those who don’t already know they’re in bed with me.”
There’s a wink in his tone. She should slap him for that. Banish him. Instead, her surprised laughter punches through the stall and into my own heart.
“I’ve been cold to you,” Aurora says. “And now it’s my turn to apologize.”
“Please.” Chain jangles and something thumps to the ground. “There’s no need.”
“I suppose I should thank you for making the exception about kissing.” I peer through the slats in the door, but glimpse only shadows and outlines. “But I am curious, do you have any idea why your kiss broke my curse?”
Every muscle in my body stills. She’s still investigating this?
“Don’t kisses break curses?” Derek asks.
“Certain kinds,” she replies. “True love broke my first curse. I don’t think it broke my second.”
I hope that crushes his stupid heart.
But he doesn’t sound even mildly offended. “Your first curse—Oh, yes. All Briarian princesses carried it, right?”
“So you do know something about my history.”
Straw crunches and metal clangs as he moves from one pen to the other. “A little. I thought most of it was made up, to be honest. Princesses dying unless they found their ‘true loves.’ It was too extreme to be real.”
“It was very real,” she says. “I lost my two older sisters because their curses were never lifted. Not that my parents didn’t try. Cordelia and Seraphina—and all Briar princesses along with them—were kissed by as many men as possible in the hopes that one of them would prove to be that love.”
“But that must have been…”
“Quite a lot of men, yes,” she finishes wryly. “You understand now why I was so angry to find yet another with his lips on mine.”
As she should have been.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. There’s a scuffing sound, like boots kicking at the dirt-packed floor. “I wish I knew what to tell you about that kiss. I honestly don’t know what compelled me. I just…acted. And I’m sorry to hear about your sisters. I wasn’t aware.”
“You couldn’t have been,” she says. “And I am grateful to you—for whatever reason, your kiss did wake me.”
A reason she will never discover if I have anything to do with it.
Another steed chuffs.
“That one likes you,” Derek says, mercifully changing the subject. “Here, feed him a carrot.”
“His nose is like velvet.” The beast chomps. Aurora laughs, then goes quiet. “Is what…Did Alyce hurt them at all when she bound them?”
“I don’t think so,” Derek answers. Bristles brush in a rhythmic tempo. “They seem well enough—hardy and strong. She’s taken a shine to one, too.”
“Alyce has? Which one?”
He dumps out a bucket of something and I curse under my breath as their footsteps approach. “Calls him Chaos,” he says, directly outside the stall. “And she visits him often, though she doesn’t think I know. I don’t get the impression that she likes me very much.”
My fists clench, wracking my brain for the evidence I must have left behind. Bits of apple? A tousled mane? Chaos thumps his back foot and huffs. His shimmery tail swishes against the side of my face.
“Don’t take it personally. Alyce has always been…thorny.”
“I noticed you call her Alyce. But I thought she’s Nimara.”
“Yes.” The word is brittle. “Much has changed in the last century. She thinks she can simply slip on a new name like a fresh gown, as if it could shield her from the responsibility of what she’s done. But she’ll always be Alyce to me.”
I glare at the back of Chaos’s forelegs. I didn’t just slip on another name for the fun of it. And I’m not trying to escape responsibility for anything. I huddle deeper into my cloak. The door to a neighboring stall rattles as an Imp barrels into it. Through the cracks in the wood, I watch him rub at the back of his head, brandish his fist, and charge his fellows. And I make a mental note to have a stern discussion with them later. They’re supposed to be guarding Aurora. Keeping her away from the likes of the filthy steed trainer—whom I do not like at all.
Derek chuckles at the Imps’ antics. “Quite the bunch of keepers you have.”
“Never a dull moment,” Aurora replies. “Rose detests them, though. Which is too bad. They seem quite taken with her, for some reason.”
“And with you. I’ve seen the treats they conjure for you. Far better than the stringy scraps of meat they toss to me. And the additions to your wardrobe.”
Where the Imps are endlessly amused by making Derek look as ridiculous as possible, they take nearly as much pride in Aurora’s gowns as they do my own. The other day I saw her in what was clearly an Imp creation. Layers of garnet so dark it was almost black. The puffed sleeves had been altered to fall so that they exposed the sculpted angles of her shoulders. Cobweb lace accented the skirt and bodice, as well as onyx beads stitched in scrolling patterns. But the boy has no right to be noticing things like that.
“It must be unnerving,” he says. “Being followed in your own home.”
“I was raised as a princess, Derek,” she answers. And the two finally begin to move away. “I was almost always followed or surveyed in my own home.”
Except when she was sneaking out to meet me, which apparently isn’t worth mentioning.
“And that’s actually what I’ve come to talk to you about.”
Chaos shakes out his wide silver-dusted wings, knocking the walls of his stall. A feather floats down and sticks to my skirt.
“Do you think you could help me with something?”
