A Throne of Blood and Ice, page 7
I can think of a certain stepmother who might be in need of a curse.
“What do you want?” I ask, ready to accept my Fate at this point.
Elegance strides over to my chaise and sits down. Well, she doesn’t as much sit as she perches. Elegance has a way of making everyday movements seem like a stage production.
“Whatsoever do you mean, little sister?” she says in that sickly sweet tone that she only ever uses with me and her mother. I know that’s not her preferred voice, because I’ve heard her talk to men twice her age in that deep, sultry growl that makes her sound a decade older and wiser.
I place my hands on my hips. “I know you cursed me for a reason. What do you want in exchange for the antidote?”
“Oh!” She makes an exaggerated gesture with her hands, her tacky rings sparkling in the sunlight coming through my window. Elegance glances around my room, taking it in.
My heart deflates.
My bed is lovely, bloodstained sheets notwithstanding. It’s made of glazed oak and has four posts, each of which has a carving of merpeople at the top. The walls of my room are a pleasant lavender, and my mother purchased the pastel, multicolored rug from a Naenden merchant when she was expecting me.
It’s the largest room in the house, next to my father’s.
Elegance claps her hands together gently enough that they make no sound. I wonder if she spends her free time practicing making every motion, every gesture appear as delicate as possible.
I know what she wants before she asks for it.
In the end, I bargain away my room in exchange for the antidote, though Elegance informs me after the fact that it will take Madame LeFleur up to six months to brew.
I don’t feel good about brokering the deal, but what else am I to do? My father is too ill to bother him with it—I’m just grateful he’s lived as long as he has—and Clarissa will probably find the situation to be an amusing prank, “the sort of thing young girls are apt to do and must figure out between themselves.”
That was three mooncycles ago, and though Elegance hasn’t provided me with an antidote yet, and I’m stuck up in the attic (because Clarissa refused to move me into Elegance’s old bed, claiming Chrys needed a room to herself), when I wake two months in a row without blood staining my sheets, I can’t help but be grateful the curse has worn off on its own.
The next time I attempt cooking breakfast for my father, the noxious scent of eggs has me vomiting all over the kitchen floor.
I’m mortified, and once I clean it up, I inform the cook that the eggs must have gone rotten.
It happens again the next day.
By the third day, I’ve determined that our chickens must have contracted a disease.
It’s then that the cook pulls me aside and begins asking me strange questions. Like if the way of women has yet come upon me or if any of the servant men have asked me to do things for them I didn’t want to do.
I don’t know what the way of a woman is, but since I’m a burgeoning woman, I’m too embarrassed to admit to such ignorance, so I give her a vague answer about how all is normal. I’m not sure how to feel about the second question, but I don’t want to talk to her about that either.
It’s not entirely true that Derek has asked me to do things I didn’t want to do.
I just didn’t know I didn’t want to do them until they were happening.
Besides, Derek has tried to pull me into pantries and closets since that one night, but he always lets me go when I make up an excuse for why I have to meet Bruno or the head maid in a few minutes. And his anger with me always subsides by the next day.
So I lie to the cook and say no servant boy has asked me to do anything, and that I don’t know what she’s talking about.
From what I can tell, the cook got with the maid who cleans my bedsheets, and they both went to Clarissa, because now Clarissa is screaming at me and calling me a whore, and I don’t entirely understand why.
I have a feeling it has something to do with Derek, but she keeps mentioning that the maid says my cycle hasn’t come this month, and I don’t know what that is, why the maid would know about it, or what it has to do with Derek.
“You bring shame upon this family,” she says as she paces about my attic room, and I think it’s the first time she’s ever claimed me as family, at least in private.
The rotten floorboards creak underneath her weight, which isn’t very much and likely speaks poorly of the flooring.
I’m too embarrassed to admit that I’m not sure exactly what I’ve done. Rather, I’m not sure how they figured out what I’d done by the vomiting and my bedsheets.
“When we tell your father, it will kill him,” she says, and panic rises in my chest. “His poor heart can’t take it.”
I launch myself from my knobby mattress to my feet. A splinter from the floorboards punctures my bare heel, but I hardly feel it. Not when Clarissa’s voice is reverberating against my skull.
It will kill him it will kill him it will kill him.
“No, please, Clarissa. Don’t tell him. You don’t have to tell him. I’ll fix it,” I say, grasping at her tulle sleeves with such force that they tear. I stand there holding them, my mouth agape, the strands of fabric dangling from my hands like pieces of evidence to convict me.
Clarissa shrieks, grabbing the tulle from my hands. “You’ll fix it, will you? And how do you expect you’ll do that?”
It’s a troublesome question to answer, given that I don’t know exactly what the problem is.
In the moment it takes me to collect my thoughts, she answers for me. “Do you know how expensive of a procedure it is? Even the brew would cost one of my precious daughter’s dowries, and you expect me to spend it on you?”
I don’t expect that at all, actually. I don’t know why she supposes I would.
She almost runs her fingers through her perfectly shaped bun, but she stops herself, as if she realizes what’s she doing. “Well, that’s it. You’ll just have to marry him, then. If it’s done immediately, no one will suspect when the child comes. Well, everyone will suspect, but there will be no proof. Not when babes are born early all the time. And being so young, it’ll be reasonable to assume you’re quite fertile, that he succeeded in his attempts immediately after marriage…”
Clarissa is still muttering, but her words start to slur. Or maybe it’s my ears muffling them, my mind too hung up on a single word to process the rest.
Child.
When the child comes.
My hands creep toward my abdomen and cradle it.
Suddenly, a thousand eccentricities seem to click into place, sorting truths from lies in a way I’ve never found possible. Like there’s a key to determining which is which, and it’s been hidden from me my entire life.
Babies only come to married folk. Lie.
That one I’d known to be false. I’d seen the unmarried women who walked about with bulging stomachs, begging for scraps. I’d heard the whispered murmurs of passersby, that word Clarissa had just used. Whore.
I’d assumed they’d used some sort of dark witchcraft to give themselves a baby. That’s why everyone whispers and treats them like pariahs.
The blood on my sheets was due to a curse. Lie. What had Elegance said when she’d first seen the blood? That my mother hadn’t bothered to teach me anything?
Women must be diligent not to go alone with young men, lest they ruin their reputations.
That is a lie, too.
Because Derek is going to marry me, and there will be a wedding and celebration, and perhaps even my father can attend.
I haven’t let myself expect that. For my father to live long enough to see me wed.
Suddenly, hope wells in my chest.
Hope in my chest and a baby in my belly.
I’m carrying Derek’s child.
Clarissa is still screaming, but I’m not listening.
I run down the attic stairs and on the way, imagine the grin that will overtake Derek’s handsome face when I tell him the news.
Derek’s face doesn’t look like that of a man who’s just learned the girl he loves is carrying his firstborn. It makes my chest sting, the way he blows out a steadying breath and runs his fingers through his brown hair.
“This isn’t happening. How could this be happening?” he mutters to himself. Like he’s forgotten I’m in the room. He paces about the abandoned barn on the back of the property. Light cuts through the slits in the boards, slicing across his strong features. Last time we were here, he’d been whispering into my ear, telling me how much he loved me.
When his fingers had found the button securing my dress in the back, I’d panicked and exclaimed I was late for my weaving lessons.
It still smells just the same in here, of rot and animal manure.
Fates, he’s handsome. So much more than I am.
Maybe that’s why he’s upset.
I’m plain, and he’s worried our baby will be plain, too.
I don’t think that’s possible, not when our baby’s father looks like Derek.
I wonder if I should tell him that, but then I remember I was confused too, when I first learned I was carrying a child. I hadn’t understood how it worked, and it dawns on me that Derek could be just as confused.
I’m talking before I can stop myself, the words spilling from my mouth like water soaking into the ground, and it’s seeping into the earth, and I can’t get a hold of it. “I think it might have something to do with the time in the pantry.” Derek stops his pacing. His body goes still, rigid, his fingers still lingering in his tousled hair, like they’ve forgotten they’re supposed to be messing his hair up. “I didn’t know that was how it worked either. I thought one had to be married to have a baby, but I think perhaps—”
“Fates, Blaise. Please don’t say another word.”
I don’t. It’s hard to find words when someone who is usually so gentle, so loving, sounds so very angry. Even though I grope for them, they don’t come, those traitorous words. So fickle. They were pouring out of my mouth only a moment ago, and now they refuse to budge.
Sometimes people cry when they’re happy. I’ve yet to see it until now, but perhaps sometimes people yell when they’re happy, too.
“Does anyone else know?” he asks. Shame floods me, and it’s so potent, I wonder if the baby can feel it. If it feels like it’s drowning. Of course Derek is upset. He’s going to be a father, and he wasn’t even the first person to find out. Fates, Clarissa knows. And the cook and the maid.
I tell him as much. “But they realized it before I did. I would never have told them before you. I would have wanted you to know first.”
Derek swallows, taking his hand and rubbing it across the front of his neck. The pressure of his fingers leaves red splotches on his skin. “And you’re sure I’m the father?”
Something sharp guts me. “Of course you’re the father, Derek. Who else would it be?”
“I have a hard time believing that, given how available you make yourself.”
I suck in a sharp breath. Why would anyone want to do that with someone they didn’t love with all their heart? “Of course not. I love you.”
I’m not sure why I expect him to say it back. He’s only said it the one time. I hadn’t noticed that until now.
“I mean it, Blaise. You can’t pin this on me just because you fancy me. If there’s a sliver of a chance this child could be anyone else’s, you have to tell me.”
It’s the first time the thought occurs to me that perhaps I’m not the only girl Derek has led into a pantry.
“It’s just you,” I whisper, my heart aching.
He advances on me, and typically I find it thrilling when he’s this close, close enough for me to feel his hot breath on my face, but now I suddenly have the urge to shrink myself, to scurry through the slats in the wood paneling.
“Does anyone else know?”
“I told you—Clarissa and the cook and the maid…”
“That I’m the father? Does anyone know that I’m the father?”
I blink then, and when I do, it’s like I’ve had a layer of filth over my eyes that’s just been wiped away, and I start to notice the ugly parts of Derek. The parts my eyes usually overlook. Like how his lip curls up in a sneer when something doesn’t go his way, or the way his nose flares when he’s angry, giving him the look of a flustered child.
But Derek is not a child.
“No, of course not,” I say.
Something like relief washes over his face, and when it sloshes off of him and onto me, I feel as though I might drown in it.
But there’s something worse than the drowning. There’s something lurking below the surface, a monster hiding in the shadows.
“Derek, we have to…you have to marry me. You must.” It comes out like a plea, and I hate that it has to come out of my mouth at all. The man is the one who is supposed to propose marriage, not the other way around. My lips feel smeared with grime just for speaking the words.
A shadow passes over his face, and that thing lurking in the corners of my gut stills for a moment, waiting.
“Okay. Of course, Blaise. Of course we’ll marry,” he says, taking my small hands in his calloused ones as he presses his lips to my fingers.
The monster under the surface is still there.
I realize when he leaves to return to his chores that I was expecting him to touch my belly before he left, to feel for his baby growing inside of me.
He doesn’t, and when I ask around for him an hour later, the head maid informs me that Derek is gone, and that if she knows men at all, she doesn’t expect he’ll be back.
CHAPTER 9
BLAISE
Nox continues to bring me hot food—steamed dumplings filled with shredded lamb, broccoli dripping with garlic butter, chilled lemon pies lined with a flaky crust that seems to dissolve as soon as it hits my tongue.
Pecan tarts have even started to make an appearance.
The hot food he brings, but each day my plate is suspiciously lacking any utensils sharper than a spoon.
I suppose that’s only fair.
The strength returns to my body drop by drop, and the layer of fat that usually coats my thighs and belly forms like a puddle underneath a leaky faucet. I’m healthier than I was when I first awoke, though the lack of sunlight leaves my already pale skin looking almost translucent.
I’m still not as pale as Nox, whose milk-white skin looks as though it’s never been struck by a ray of sunlight.
Though I am growing healthier, it’s clear Nox is not. The shadows underneath his eyes that I noted upon our first encounter have seeped toward his cheekbones, gaining ground every day. He’s constantly pinching his forehead, and when he looks at me, it’s as though he has to strain to get my image to come into focus.
If he were human, I would assume he’d fallen ill, but he’s fae, and the fae aren’t supposed to succumb to sickness.
And if they do, something has gone horribly wrong.
I shouldn’t be worrying about Nox. I’ve heard stories of girls who develop unhealthy attachments to their captors, and I’m fairly sure fretting over their wellbeing is like telling myself I can balance on the edge of a cliff on only my big toe.
But the male brings me pastries—often of the pecan variety now that he suggested as much to his cook after I gave him the idea—so what else am I to do but fret over his wellbeing?
He stands across the dimly lit room, his back turned to me as it so often is. It’s been days since he’s forced me back into my restraints, and the raw flesh that marks my wrists is just beginning to heal. I perch on the ledge of my table-bed, watching him slice a grayish root before pulverizing it with a pestle and mixing it into a brownish liquid.
The result is less than pleasant to look at, and even worse to smell.
A foul, sour odor leaks into the air, causing my nose to turn upward and my stomach to turn over.
“Please tell me that’s meant to be topical,” I say, swinging my feet and relishing how the backs of them scrape against the stone altar. It’s been days, but I still can’t get enough of moving freely.
He glances behind his shoulder at me and winks. “It’s meant to be topical.”
Something about the way he says it doesn’t at all sound convincing, but he’s fae, and fae aren’t supposed to be able to lie. Though perhaps he’s found a way to get around the curse so long as his lips drip with enough sarcasm to imply the truth in his statements?
Nox turns back toward his foul concoction, and I’m not as surprised as I should be when I feel the absence of his gaze. A hole where him looking at me had just been.
Just like the day I tried to escape, when he’d grabbed my wrists and pushed me back into my cell with the force of his body.
His touch has been lingering like an unwanted phantom ever since.
Not good. Very, very not good.
He’s the deadly sort of handsome. The type I know shouldn’t attract me as much as it does.
But I’m not exactly known for making the best decisions, either. For being drawn to the people who would actually suit me.
Evander’s laugh rings in my ears, and for a moment, I let the guilt seep through the cracks in the shell I’ve tried to construct around my heart. The guilt is a silly emotion, altogether misplaced. It’s as if I think sitting here appreciating Nox’s ghostly allure somehow betrays Evander, though I have no right to that sort of loyalty—I never have. And it’s not as if Evander would care if my attentions flitted elsewhere, except that I’m fairly sure the male who’s always seen me as a sister would find it displeasing that the object of such attentions has a tendency to torture me for long stretches of time.
Yeah, definitely shouldn’t be ogling my captor-torturer. Gross, Blaise.
“I’ve decided to take you up on your offer,” I say before my traitorous mind can run too far with my apparently very-sick fantasies.
Nox turns again, this time with the mortar of putrid paste in tow, and quirks a dark brow. “What offer?”
