They crossed a series of Compass Roses, finally ending up in freezing darkness. Winded by the cold, Ophelia coughed clouds of mist. When she finally breathed in, her lungs seemed to solidify inside her chest. Her valet’s livery wasn’t designed for such temperatures. All she could now see of Thorn was a scrawny shadow groping its way forward. In some places, his black uniform merged so well into the darkness that Ophelia guessed his movements just from the creaking of a floorboard.
“Don’t move, I’m putting the light on.”
She waited, shivering. A flame crackled. Ophelia first saw Thorn’s profile, with its low forehead, its large, steep nose, and its combed-back fair hair. He turned on a wall gas lamp, extending the flame, and the light pushed back the shadows. Ophelia looked around her, flabbergasted. They were inside a waiting room where the benches were covered in frost. There were also ticket counters hung with icicles, rusted luggage trolleys, and a clock face that hadn’t told the time for ages. “A disused station?”
“Only in winter,” grumbled Thorn in a cloud of mist. “The snow covers the rails and stops the trains moving for half the year.”
Ophelia went over to a window, but the panes were streaked with frost. If there were a platform and tracks out in the dark, she couldn’t see them. “Have we left Citaceleste?” Articulating each word was a challenge. Ophelia had never been so cold in her life. As for Thorn, he didn’t seem at all bothered. The man had ice in his veins.
“I thought we wouldn’t be disturbed here.”
Ophelia glanced at the door they’d come through. It, too, was marked “Treasurer.” Thorn had closed it, but it was reassuring to know that it was nearby. “Can you travel everywhere with your bunch of keys?” she asked, her teeth chattering. In a recess in the waiting room, Thorn was busy in front of the cast-iron stove. He stuffed it with newspaper, struck a first match, waited to see if the chimney was drawing properly, added more newspaper, threw in a second match, fanned the flames. He hadn’t looked once at Ophelia since she’d given him his glass of champagne. Was it her masculine appearance that made him uncomfortable?
“Only to public facilities and administrative premises,” he finally replied.
Ophelia went over to the stove and offered her gloved hands to the warmth. The smell of old paper burning was so good. Thorn remained squatting, his eyes lost in the flames, his face all shadow and light. For once, Ophelia was the taller of the two, and she wasn’t about to complain.
“You wanted to speak to me,” he muttered. “I’m listening.”
“I had to leave my aunt alone at the Opera. She’s behaving strangely, this evening. She’s going over old memories and doesn’t seem to hear me when I speak to her.”
At that, Thorn threw her a steely look over his shoulder. His blond eyebrow, sliced in two by his scar, was arched in surprise. “That’s what you wanted to tell me?” he asked, incredulous.
Ophelia wrinkled her nose. “Her condition is really worrying. I assure you, she’s not herself.”
“Wine, opium, homesickness,” Thorn cited between his teeth. “She’ll get over it.”
Ophelia would have liked to retort that Aunt Rosaline was too strong a woman for such weaknesses, but the stove blew back some smoke and a violent sneeze tore at her ribs.
“I, too, needed to speak to you,” Thorn announced. Still squatting, he was staring again into the red glow of the stove’s panes. Ophelia was terribly disappointed. He hadn’t taken her fears seriously, dismissing them as if casually closing a file on his desk. She didn’t feel that inclined to listen to him in turn. She looked around at the frosty benches, stopped clock, shuttered ticket counter, snow-whitened windows. She felt as if she’d taken a step beyond time, as if she were all alone with this man in a pocket of eternity. And she wasn’t very sure she liked it.
“Stop my aunt from going on the hunt tomorrow.”
Ophelia had to admit, she hadn’t expected him to say that. “She seemed pretty determined to be there,” she countered.
“That’s madness,” Thorn spat out. “The whole tradition is madness. The starving Beasts are only just emerging from their hibernation. Every year, we lose hunters.” His profile, set in anger, was even sharper than usual. “And I didn’t appreciate Freya’s insinuation,” he continued. “The Dragons don’t look very favorably upon my aunt’s pregnancy. She’s becoming too independent for their liking.”
Ophelia’s whole body was shivering, and it was no longer just from the cold. “Believe me, I myself have no desire to go to this hunt,” she said, massaging her ribs. “Unfortunately, I don’t see how I could go against the will of a Berenilde.”
“It’s up to you to find the right arguments.”
Ophelia took some time to consider the matter. She could have been angry with Thorn for worrying more about his aunt than about her aunt, but what use would that have been? And also, she shared his foreboding. If they did nothing, this whole business would end badly.
She looked down at Thorn. He was squatting just a step away from her, totally engrossed in the station stove. She couldn’t resist tracing the long gash cutting across half of his face. A family that inflicts that on you is not a true family. “You’ve never spoken to me of your mother,” she murmured.
“Because I have no desire to speak of her,” Thorn immediately snapped.
Ophelia suspected that it was probably a taboo subject. Thorn’s father had committed adultery with a girl from another clan. If Berenilde had taken their child into her clutches, it was probably because the mother didn’t want it. “And yet it does concern me a little,” she said, gently. “I know nothing about this woman, I don’t even know if she’s still alive. Your aunt just told me that her family had fallen into disgrace. Don’t you miss her?” she added, in a small voice.
Thorn’s big forehead furrowed. “Neither you nor I will ever know her. There’s nothing else you need to know.”
Ophelia didn’t push it. Thorn must have taken her silence for offense, as he threw a nervous glance over his shoulder. “I’m not expressing myself well,” he muttered, gruffly. “It’s because of this hunt . . . The truth is, I’m less concerned for my aunt than I am for you.”
He had caught Ophelia unawares. Her mind blank, she didn’t know what to say to him, so foolishly just held her hands out to the stove. Thorn was watching her now with the intensity of a bird of prey. With his big body drawn in, he seemed to hesitate, but then awkwardly unfolded an arm towards Ophelia. He seized her wrist before she had time to react. “You have blood on your hand,” he said.
Stupefied, Ophelia looked at her reader’s glove. She had to blink several times before realizing what that blood was doing there. She took the glove off and felt her cheek. With her fingers she felt the outline of an open wound. Thorn hadn’t noticed it due to Mime’s livery; that illusion concealed everything—freckles, glasses, beauty spots—behind a perfectly blank skin. “It was your sister,” said Ophelia, putting her glove back on. “She didn’t hold back.”
Thorn unfolded his long wader’s legs and returned to being unreasonably tall. His features had all tightened into razor blades. “She attacked you?”
“Earlier on, at the reception. I didn’t get out of her way fast enough.”
Thorn had turned as pale as his scars. “I didn’t know. I didn’t realize . . . ” He had whispered these words in a barely audible, almost humiliated voice, as if he’d failed in his duty.
“It’s nothing,” Ophelia assured him.
“Show me.”
Ophelia felt all her limbs stiffen under her valet’s livery. Undressing in this freezing-cold waiting room, right under Thorn’s big nose, was the last thing she felt like doing. “I tell you it’s nothing.”
“Let me be the judge.”
“It’s not for you to judge!”
Thorn considered Ophelia with astonishment, but she was the more surprised of the
two. It was the first time in her life she’d raised her voice like that. “So who, then, if not me?” Thorn asked in a tense voice.
Ophelia knew she’d offended him. His question was justified: one day, this man would be her husband. She took a deep breath to stop her hands from shaking. She was cold, she was in pain, and, most of all, she was afraid. Afraid of what she was about to say. “Listen,” she muttered. “I’m grateful to you for wanting to watch over me, and I thank you for the support you’ve given me. But there is one thing that you need to know about me.” Ophelia forced herself not to look away from Thorn’s piercing eyes, two heads above her. “I don’t love you.”
Thorn just stood there, arms dangling, for several long seconds. His face was totally expressionless. When he did finally move, it was to tug on the chain of his watch, as if the time was suddenly of utmost importance. Ophelia derived no pleasure from seeing him like this, staring at the dial, lips pulled into an indefinable furrow. “Is it due to something I’ve said to you . . . or haven’t said to you?” Thorn had asked this stiffly, without taking his eyes off his watch.
Ophelia had rarely felt so profoundly uncomfortable. “It’s not your fault,” she whispered in a tiny voice. “I’m marrying you because I wasn’t given any other choice, but I feel nothing for you. I won’t share your bed, I won’t give you children. I’m very sorry,” she whispered even more quietly, “but your aunt hasn’t chosen the right person for you.”
She jumped when Thorn’s fingers closed the cover of his watch. He hunched his big body onto a bench, which the heat from the stove had started to defrost. His face, pale and gaunt, had never looked so devoid of emotion. “I now have the right to repudiate you. Are you aware of that?”
Slowly, Ophelia confirmed that she was. With her admission, she had called into question the official clauses of the conjugal contract. Thorn could denounce her and choose another wife for himself, totally legitimately. As for Ophelia, she would be dishonored for life.
“I wanted to speak to you in all honesty,” she stammered. “I wouldn’t be worthy of your trust if I lied to you on this issue.”
Thorn stared at his hands, pressed against each other, finger to finger. “In that case, I’ll carry on as if I’d heard nothing.”
“Thorn,” sighed Ophelia, “you’re not obliged . . . ”
“Of course I am,” he cut in, brusquely. “Do you have any idea of the fate reserved for betrayers here? Do you think you just have to present your excuses to me and my aunt, and then go back home? You’re not on Anima here.”
Frozen to the bone, Ophelia no longer dared to move, or to breathe. Thorn maintained a lengthy silence, back hunched, then straightened his endless spine to look at her straight on. Ophelia had never felt as daunted by these two hawk’s eyes as she did right now.
“What you’ve just said to me, repeat it to no one, if you value your life. We’ll marry, as agreed, and after that, well, it will be only our business.”
As Thorn got up, his joints all cracked in unison. “You don’t want me? Let’s not mention it again. You don’t want brats? Perfect, I detest them. There’ll be plenty of tongues wagging behind our backs, and so what.”
Ophelia was dumbfounded. Thorn had just accepted her conditions, as humiliating as they were, to save her life. She felt so guilty about not returning his feelings that she had a lump in her throat. “I’m so sorry . . . ” she repeated, pathetically.
Thorn then lowered a metallic look at her that made her feel as if nails were being hammered into her face. “Don’t apologize too quickly,” he said, his accent even harsher than usual. “You’ll be regretting having me for a husband soon enough.”
The Illusions
After returning Ophelia to the Opera cloakroom, Thorn left without a backward glance. They hadn’t exchanged another word.
Ophelia felt as though walking in a dream as, alone, she moved across the foyer’s shimmering parquet floor. The chandeliers, still burning bright, hurt her eyes. She found the grand staircase, now deserted, and the stage door, a flight of stairs further down. Apart from a few security lamps, all the lights were off. No one was around, neither stagehands nor performers. Ophelia stood quite still in the corridor, surrounded by bits of scenery, abandoned in the shadows—a pasteboard boat here, some fake marble columns there. She was listening to the painful wheeze of her own breath.
“I don’t love you.”
She’d said it. Never would she have thought that such simple words could trigger such a stomachache. Her rib seemed to be crushing her very insides.
Ophelia got a little lost in the badly lit corridors, ending up first at the workshops, then at the lavatories, before finding the singers’ dressing room. Aunt Rosaline had stayed there in the dark, sitting on her chair, staring into space, like a marionette whose strings have been cut.
Ophelia turned the light on and went over to her. “Aunt?” she whispered in her ear. Aunt Rosaline didn’t reply. Only her hands were moving, tearing a musical score, and then restoring it with a slide of the fingers; tearing it again, restoring it again. Maybe she believed she was back in her old restoration studio? No one must witness this.
Ophelia pushed her glasses back up her nose. She would have to do her best on her own to get Aunt Rosaline to a safe place. Gently, not wishing to distress her, she took away the score, and then took her by the arm. She was relieved when she got up willingly.
“I hope we’re not going to the public gardens,” muttered Aunt Rosaline between her long, horsey teeth. “I hate the public gardens.”
“We’re going to the Archives,” Ophelia lied. “Great-uncle is in need of your services.” Aunt Rosaline nodded her head, looking professional. Whenever a book needed saving from the ravages of time, she’d answer the call.
Still holding her arm, Ophelia got her out of the dressing room; it really felt like guiding a sleepwalker. They went along one corridor, turned into a second, turned back down a third. The basement of the Opera House was a veritable labyrinth, and the poor lighting didn’t help with finding one’s way.
Ophelia froze when she heard stifled laughter not far off. She let go of her aunt’s arm and had a quick look through any nearby doors left ajar. In the performers’ wardrobe room, where the costumes were lined up like strange sentinels, a man and a woman were languorously kissing. They were half-lying on a daybed, their position verging on indecent.
Ophelia would have continued on her way had she not recognized, by the light of the safety lamps, Archibald’s tattered top hat. She thought he’d returned to Clairdelune with his sisters. The way he was kissing his partner was so lacking in tenderness, so fast and furious, that she ended up pushing him away, and wiping her lips. She was an elegant woman, dripping in jewelry, who must have been at least twenty years older than him.
“You beast! You bit me!”
Her anger wasn’t very convincing—she was smiling, longingly. “I suspect you’re taking your nerves out on me, you rotter. Even my husband wouldn’t dare do that.”
Archibald looked at the woman with his relentlessly bright eyes, but with no passion. It never ceased to amaze Ophelia that he got so many ladies into his bed by showing them so little affection. Even though he did have the face of an angel, they were pretty weak to give in to him . . .
“You’re spot on,” he readily admitted. “I am indeed taking my nerves out on you.”
The woman burst into the shrillest laughter, and slid her ringed fingers along Archibald’s beardless chin. “You’re still angry from earlier on, my boy. Yet you should feel honored that Lord Farouk has designs on your sisters!”
“I hate him.” Archibald had said it just as he would have said, “Oh, it’s raining,” or, “This tea’s cold.”
“You’re blaspheming!” said the woman, laughing nervously. “Try, at least, not to say such things out loud. If it’s disgrace that tempts you, don’t drag me down with yo
u.” She lay down again on the velvet daybed, head thrown back, in a theatrical pose. “Our Lord has two obsessions, my dearest! His pleasure and his Book. If you don’t pander to the first, you’ll have to think about deciphering the second.”
“I fear that Berenilde may have already checkmated me on both counts,” Archibald sighed. Had he but glanced at the half-open door, he would have discovered Mime’s colorless face staring, wide-eyed, back at him.
So, Ophelia thought, clenching her gloved fists, I got it right. That rival he fears, it’s none other than me . . . me, and my little reader’s hands. Berenilde had certainly maneuvered skillfully.
“I’ll just accept it!” added Archibald, with a shrug of his shoulders. “As long as Farouk is interested in her, he’s not interested in my sisters.”
“For a man who enjoys the company of women so much, I find you adorably old-fashioned.”
“Women are one thing, Madam Cassandra. My sisters are quite another.”
“If only you could be as jealous about me as you are about them!”
Looking baffled, Archibald pushed his top hat back from his forehead. “You’re asking for the impossible. You mean nothing to me.”
Madam Cassandra, visibly chastened, leant her elbows on the padded edge of the daybed. “That’s your main failing, ambassador. You never lie. If you didn’t use and abuse your charm, it would be so easy to resist you!”
A smile broke across Archibald’s pure, smooth profile. “Would you care to experience it again?” he asked in a honeyed voice. Madam Cassandra immediately stopped simpering. Looking very pale in the subdued lighting of the safety lamps, and gripped by sudden emotion, she looked at him with adoration. “To my great regret, I would care to,” she wheedled. “Make me not feel alone in the world anymore. . .”
As Archibald, with eyes half-closed like a cat, leant over Madam Cassandra, Ophelia turned away. She had no desire to watch what would come next in that wardrobe room.
She found Aunt Rosaline exactly where she’d left her. She took her hand to lead her far away from this place.
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