Heart (Cruelly Made Book 3)

by K. M. Hade

  “Give us the grand tour, Pebbles,” Blood says. “Then we can come back here and eat whatever food we can find.”

  Someone’s stomach growls, but it’s not mine. Mine is in knots.

  Atrament’s shadows drift with us, sliding over the windows as we move through the large kitchen into the main house. Everything is draped in cloth. Two years’ worth of dust covers everything.

  There’s everything you’d expect to find in a high-bred’s country estate, except it’s like stepping into the past. Most of it is at least a century old, from the rugs to the furniture to the paint on the walls. Credit to the staff for keeping the rats and squirrels at bay.

  “I can’t believe none of it has been stolen over the years,” I say.

  ScatheFire picks up a candlestick made of the carved branched horns of some immense buck. “You can’t fence shit like this. Can’t melt it down either. Guess the silverware is all locked up.”

  Blood brushes his hands along a set of heavy curtains. “This is the kind of find you’d get very excited about, and you and your gang would pour in through a broken window, and realize quick there’s nothing in here worth having.”

  “Then we’d smash it up.” Rot chortles. “If we can’t sell it, we can break it.”

  “And piss on it.”

  “Set it on fire.”

  I sense Smoke rolling his eyes. Atrament is bemused.

  We head up the grand stairway to the second floor and come up to the central gallery. The hall stretches in either direction. My mouth parches. The large double doors to the master suite glare at me from the end of the very long hallway to my right.

  Let’s just go on up to the third floor. “This way.”

  The third floor is considerably less grand than the second. It’s where all the children and their governesses and nannies would stay, or the lesser guests, or ladies-in-waiting and valets who weren’t sleeping at the foot of a bed on the second floor. There was a single bathing room at the end of the left-handed hall.

  My room was at the far end of the hall, on the other side from the bathroom. I’d chosen it because it overlooked the stables and gardens. It was one of the few choices my parents had permitted me to make.

  Compared to the rooms below us, my room is spartan, but compared to the Pit? It’s pure luxury. A bed, some furniture, but no rugs, because those would have been dusty. There’s a mirror, assorted small items I’d left here, but not much else.

  A strange emptiness expands within me, pushing everything away, out of reach.

  The Fells pour into the space in the room, yanking cloths off things and joking about where Little Pebbles had done this or that, and making faces at themselves in the mirror, and commenting how shitty they all looked.

  I haven’t looked in a mirror since the morning of my trials. The servants at the Academy dorms covered all the mirrors with black cloth, as is tradition.

  ScatheFire slips a hand into mine and pulls me gently towards the mirror, nudging the others out of the way.

  I turn my head.

  Atrament gently pulls my head straight. “You are very beautiful, even now.”

  As if I give a shit about being beautiful.

  The woman who stares back at me is a stranger.

  It is my face. But the face is so thin, the skin filthy and caked with grime. The sparkle that remains is like a dusting of ground mica. My hair is gray and filthy. Even my eyes don’t seem the same.

  My tunic hangs off me. I pull it off. I’m filthy and worn down to muscle and skin. My Aether still glows, but I’m so filthy even its regular blue is obscured, but it remains incongruously beautiful against my filthy frame, except for the snake-knot of Fell thread blotting out strands like clouds before stars.

  I trace the pattern of darkness.

  Rot runs his fingertips down the channel of my spine. My back arches. I turn away from my reflection and drop my hand. “There are linens in one of the closets, and there should be water and soap down the hall. Take whatever rooms you like.”

  “Even the Lord’s suite?” ScatheFire asks with a grin.

  I shiver and almost tell him no, then reconsider. “Sure, go ahead.”

  “But you don’t want us to,” Atrament says.

  I shrug. “Just a reaction. It really doesn’t matter. You know how to make your own beds, right?”

  “What, we’re not all going to cuddle in bed with you?” ScatheFire asks mischievously.

  “Let her bathe,” Smoke says unexpectantly. “We’ll go find linens and beds.”

  “I do not want a cold bath,” ScatheFire says. “Are we going to have to haul water?”

  “No, there’s a spigot that pulls up from the cisterns that the spring fills. There’s another cistern that can be heated in the lower levels for hot water, but it hasn’t been fired up for years. And no, you don’t get to touch the cistern, because we’re not risking burning down the house.”

  “Show me the bathtub,” he demands.

  The single bathing room at the other end of the long hall is actually fairly large, since it was built (I presume) with the idea that the nannies and governesses would wash all the children in groups instead of one by one. The floor is somewhat cracked and very faded tile, the walls are peeling, but the important part: the pump and large metal bathtub are still very much intact. Rot immediately starts to pump water up from the cisterns four stories below us. Bitterly cold water gushes out.

  ScatheFire shoves his hand into the water. “Now tell me how much you all like me, and perhaps I will provide the rest of you with hot baths.”

  “How about I not strangle you in your sleep?” Blood flicks a long, filthy strand of his white hair around his finger and smiles sweetly at ScatheFire.

  Rot keeps pumping the cold water while the others yap at each other, and Smoke again drifts close while Atrament watches.

  “You don’t like being here,” Smoke whispers.

  “I do like being here,” I say.

  “But?” Smoke presses gently.

  I look at him out of the corner of my eye. Why is he being nice? Do we suddenly understand each other? Sometimes I think he and I are like cats that have agreed to share a space, but no more. “This is where my family dumps things they don’t want.”

  He curls his arm around my waist, somewhat tentatively. Atrament’s shadows curl around my wrists like soft satin ribbons.

  Smoke kisses me on the cheek, grime and all, and our bond pulls taunt enough that the others turn to look.

  “This tub is big enough for two.” ScatheFire swirls his hand in the water and gives us a saucy grin.

  “I would prefer to watch,” Smoke says.

  “You just like having your own flesh-circus,” ScatheFire retorts.

  My laughter takes me by surprise. “The next person to get between me and that bath is going to bathe in a horse trough.”

  Blood bows gallantly and sweeps one arm out towards the tub. “Your bath, my lady.”

  “Get out and go find some linens for some beds.” I wink at them playfully.

  25

  CRYSTAL

  Sinking into the warm bath brings tears to my eyes. And not just because it’s been months since I’ve had a hot bath and it feels like being human again.

  Because apparently I’ve got a million little cuts and scrapes that burn and sting like fuck.

  I submerge myself in the water anyway. It turns dark brown almost instantly. Don’t care. Still gloriously hot. Dunk myself under the water and scrub my hair with my fingers, digging into my scalp.

  Water is now almost black.

  Apply soap.

  Water gets grosser.

  I soak in the water for a few minutes, then resign myself to cold rinses. I sigh, pull out the plug, watch the disgusting water drain away, and pump myself half a tub of clear water. It’d be frigid cold from here.

  It takes four more wash-rinse-repeat before I am actually clean. And it feels so amazing I just sit in the finally drained tub and enjoy the night chil
l on my wet flesh.

  “Comfortable?” Blood inquires from the doorway.

  I open my eyes. “I’ll get out.”

  “You don’t have to. Plenty of room for both of us.” He shrugs off his surcoat. His uniform is as filthy as his body. Out of the corner of his eye, he’s looking at me, cataloging the subtle changes.

  My Aether does look different. The green-gold tinge wasn’t just grime. “Except it took five rinses before I was this clean. Where’s ScatheFire?”

  “He’s just sulking he’s going next and not now.” Blood grins. “He hates drawing straws. The straw gods do not favor him.”

  I pull myself up on the edges of the tub and wince as pain goes through my lower body. Blood catches me. His dark eyes search mine. I say, “I’m okay.”

  “What did that woman do to you…” he says grimly.

  “Am I still scabbed over inside?”

  He unfocuses a second. “No, that seems to have healed. Thankfully. I was very worried you were going to start bleeding badly again.”

  I’d had trickles of blood for about two weeks, but they hadn’t been bad, and they’d eventually stopped. “It had to get done, Blood. I… I tell myself that.”

  He steadies me as I step out of the tub. “It’s worse than you’ve been showing. We’ve known you’re hurting, but you went gray just now.”

  “It always kind of aches at the end of the day, and sometimes it’s just a sharp pain. I promise I won’t let it interfere with—”

  “Please shut up, Pebbles. You know damn well that’s not why any of us are worried about what that woman did to you.”

  “I did ask her to make sure,” I say softly. Tears sting my eyes. I don’t know why. The chances of me living long enough to even think about having a baby are somewhere around zero. I can’t contemplate it right now.

  Blood wraps one of the towels around me. “You good to walk?”

  “Sure, I’m fine now.”

  Blood grabs the pump handle and pushes down. Wiry, tough muscle shifts and flows under his skin. The Fell threads draw my eye, and with them, the awareness of how I’m entangled with them now.

  “Sure you don’t want to stay?” he inquires, sly.

  I pull backwards against the tension and leave the bathroom with an imperious flick of one wrist. He laughs and a devious grip slides over my soul. “I do love when you pull that high-bred act on me.”

  “Why, because you’re impressed I give you the time of day?”

  He laughs again.

  I go back to my room and rummage around in the drawers. The last time I’d been here, I’d never thought I’d be back to TasselWood—at least not for many years—but I had left a couple of things. They’re still undisturbed in the bottom of the wardrobe. I pull on a light linen shift so I’m not prancing around utterly naked, weigh if perhaps a light linen shift is worse than being naked, and head downstairs to find the Fells.

  I can hear them on the second floor.

  “What are you lot doing?” Even though it’s obvious what they’re doing: they’re rummaging through every drawer and box and nook and cranny in the master suite. Atrament merely sits cross-legged on the floor at the foot of the massive bed.

  “Ransacking.” ScatheFire adjusts a moth-eaten hat on his head. “Does it suit me?”

  I manage a light laugh. “You just had to choose the master suite, didn’t you?”

  “Only the best for us.” Rot manages a sweeping courtly bow.

  “Six out of ten.” Smoke claps politely.

  I side-step over to Atrament, reluctant to get too far into the room or close to the bed. The bed’s huge, of course, up to my breasts in height and big enough for all of us if we’re of a mind to sleep crossways. Someone’s found linens but hasn’t tucked them in.

  “You don’t think we should be in here?” Atrament’s shadows twine up my legs and wrists.

  “Of course we shouldn’t.” ScatheFire sniffs a bottle of ancient, ruined perfume.

  “Did something bad happen in here?” Atrament inquires as his hand reaches for mine.

  His touch is so gentle I almost flinch away, then force myself to accept it. Pain moves up the back of my arm and my Aether trembles like quivering skin. “It’s silly and hard to explain.”

  “It doesn’t feel silly.”

  This Heart thing… not great. Having privacy was nice from time to time. “This room was off-limits to me as a kid. I always had a governess on the third floor. I’d sneak in to be with my family and I always got thrown out. It was before I understood.”

  ScatheFire sets down the perfume bottle and comes over to me. He sorts through our commingled feelings, and touches my left arm.

  I shift away from his touch.

  He touches me again, seeking out the painful memory. “Understood what?”

  “It’s not important. I’m the Heart. I’m fine. That’s my job.” My job is to be fine. The strong one. The one that holds everyone else above the Blight.

  “Oh, you stubborn little princess,” ScatheFire says. “You’re the Heart, but,” he taps his breastbone, “I’m not sure, but I think all our hearts are protected by our ribcages?”

  “It’s not your job to protect me,” I snap. “My job is to protect you.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Rot says eloquently.

  “Time to trade secrets, princess,” ScatheFire murmurs to me. “You’re our Heart. We will be your Ribs.”

  “But I don’t want you to!” I break away from him, panic making my voice crack. “I’m supposed to protect you! I’m supposed to keep my team safe!”

  “We’re perfectly safe. Look how safe we are. You’re not even dressed. Well, barely.” ScatheFire ogles me again.

  “You know what I mean!” My heart beats hard, thrashing against the ties, as my Aether pours through all of it, drawn by the strain like blood into a working muscle.

  Smoke suddenly is leaning close to me, his lips by my ear, and whispering, “Don’t trust us with your secret?”

  I push him away. “You haven’t given me yours. I only know Rot’s secret.”

  ScatheFire chuckles. “You know mine. You’ve always known mine. That I learned to hear the Blight.”

  I try to jerk back out of my feelings. “Well, my secret isn’t a secret. Everyone at court knows about it.”

  “But we don’t,” Rot points out.

  ScatheFire says, “This Heart thing is strange. On one hand, she knows what I’m feeling. On the other, I know what Rot’s feeling. On the other, I know what she’s feeling.”

  “That’s three hands,” I say.

  “She’s so good at math,” Rot quips.

  “Secrets,” Atrament commands, tugging me with shadows.

  I try to back up, but I just bump into ScatheFire. My physical heart tries to break out of my ribs. “Fine. I used to sneak in here. It was before I understood what it was to be Aether. I didn’t understand when my family would throw me out of here and tell me I was an Aether, I had to learn to be alone. I hated it. I thought it was unfair. They spanked and punished me, but I was an Aether, so I decided to be tough and not let them bully me. When I was seven, and we were here for the summer, my mother was in here with my older brother. They were having tea and playing cards. My baby brother was in that crib over there. She’d just had him a month earlier. I snuck in like always, and this time she lost her temper. She grabbed me by the arm and threw me out. I don’t know how it happened, but my arm broke.”

  I touched the line of the scar hidden under my Aether on my upper left arm. “Broke it clean through. Bone poking out and all.”

  Rot gasps.

  “A doctor came to do surgery to put my arm together. Then a Verdance came to make sure I could still feel my fingers.”

  Rot, slowly, says, “Then I can see why you don’t like being in here.”

  No, that’s not why. I barely remembered my arm breaking, or the pain, or the horror of my own bloody bone staring back at me over my shoulder. None of that compared to what my par
ents did after that.

  I’ve studied the ceiling of this room so long it’s like an old friend. I used to pretend I saw faces in the cracks and swirls of paint. “My parents said since I wanted to be in here so badly, I could stay while I recovered. They took my brothers and went to another estate. They told the staff to not let me out of this room. Boarded over the windows. It took a few weeks before I convinced the staff to un-board the windows. I promised not to try to escape. My parents would have put them all in the stocks for disobeying them.”

  “Holy shit,” ScatheFire says. “How long did they leave you here?”

  How long did they leave me, or how long until I’d learned my lesson? Two different questions. “When the doctors and Verdances came, the staff nailed up the windows again. Eventually, in the fall, the Verdances told my parents I had to be able to leave the room. My parents permitted it, but I stayed at TasselWood until the next summer.”

  “They just abandoned you here?” Smoke asks. An echo of a memory moves between us.

  “My arm needed to heal. I couldn’t travel anyway,” I say.

  “But they left you here.”

  I try to shrug. “My parents hadn’t been lying when they’d said one day, we won’t be your parents and this won’t be your family. I just hadn’t been listening.”

  “You were a kid,” Smoke snaps.

  “What did you do? They just left you here?” Rot asks.

  “Back then, there was a swordsmaster who had retired up here after serving the family. He’d been my father’s teacher. So he’d written my parents and pointed out letting an Aether child skip a year of horsemanship and weapons training was bad stewardship. My parents’ response was that he and the horsemaster could train me as my arm recovered, and they’d expect to see excellent progress given zero distractions and individual attention.” I manage a grim smile. “I spent a year riding horses and playing with weapons and being feral. And after that, my parents shipped me here for every school break and vacation that I wasn’t with my Aether team. I have not, however, sent foot in this room since the day I got let out.”