One hand on the doorknob, she glared at him. He looked away, and she was gone. When the door slammed behind her, Casper finally inhaled. Verusha was already fetching another vial for him. He took the teacup and drank it down in several gulps, desperately and without testing or savoring it this time.
“She’ll be back,” he said quietly. “She always is.”
Verusha and I nodded, but I wasn’t so sure. That last look she’d given us had burned like a slap across the face. Somewhere deep inside me, the old version of Ahnastasia snarled and envisioned a slender head on a pike in the snow, the short brown hair dark against the hills and dripping blood. But the new version of me ached painfully and wished there had been some way to make her see the truth of it.
I picked the brass sphere off the couch and turned it over in my hands.
“She wanted a pet,” Casper said. “I always said I would buy her a clockwork, but I just never got around to it. She’d be hanged for stealing that. I guess I didn’t realize how much she needed . . .”
“A friend,” I whispered.
When I looked down, I found Casper’s hand in mine, but I couldn’t recall when it had happened or who had reached for whom. I squeezed back anyway. I couldn’t explain it, but I had lost something, too, and I already missed the little urchin. I could only hope that we all survived long enough for me to find her and fix the mess I’d made of a fellow victim’s life.
I’d never had friends before, either.
We sat in silence for some time. Verusha finally broke the dark pall of the room by standing up and exclaiming, “This. This is why we don’t allow Pinkies to think for themselves. Poor little fool!” She hurried out the door as if anxious to be away from us, calling, “There are beds made upstairs, the open doors. My darleenk, it is not silk and gold, but it is better than a valise. Sleep well. Tomorrow morning, we begin.”
“What does that mean?” Casper’s hand left mine, and he settled back to watch me. He looked haggard but handsome, the lines of his face sharper than they had been, as if an artist had gone over a sketch with a firmer hand, perfecting it.
“The Sugar Snow Ball is tomorrow night. Tomorrow morning, we’ll prepare and dress. We’ll board the carriage at dusk and ride through the forest to the Ice Palace. We’ll dance to bring down the snow, and then I’ll kill Ravenna.”
“And after that?”
I chuckled, sinister and sweet. “After that, I make the rules.”
“And what will you do?”
“So many things, darling. So many things.”
I breathed in deeply, dreamily. I would fix things. I would clean up Ravenna’s mess. I would send some very precious valises to the Svedish king with the heads of his ambassadors and spies tied up like holiday gifts inside. I would send dangerous men to visit Mr. Sweeting on Ruby Lane and fetch my sister’s remains home. I would even put Keen’s picture in the papers and see if we could find her with a reward large enough that she would come claim it herself.
“I’m talking about me, Ahna. What will you do about me?’
“You’ll be the court composer for all of Muscovy. I keep my promises.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
The turn of his head, the way his throat moved—he was all Bludman now. And I might have been able to wiggle out of his clutches before, but I could already feel the sharpened force of him. Before, I could have run. Now he could catch me. He was stronger, and it didn’t matter that I was royal, a princess. I couldn’t escape the reality of his physical presence, and especially not its pull on me. Especially not when he demanded it.
He waited, quiet but alert, as the emotions roiled in me. He was bigger, stronger, and the beast in me wanted to submit, to roll belly up and lick his throat as wolves did in the wild. I liked him. I cared about him. But I didn’t know if we would survive tomorrow night and, if we did, if he would survive a single day in the Snow Court. He wasn’t the only one who would wish to stand by my side, although the others would do it for political power. Was it kinder to tell him now or later that the only way we could ever be together during my reign was with me as the stoic, married royal and him as the court composer who warmed my bed in secret?
“Ahna. Ahnastasia.”
He tried to touch my face, but I pulled back with a hiss and a blush. He smiled, lazy and slow. Leaning back with his arm across the sofa behind my head, he said, “I’ve never seen you running scared before, darlin’.”
He could sense it, the bastard! I had been so eager to turn him into an ally I could use, someone like me, that I had forgotten the powers of an alpha-male Bludman in his prime.
“I’m not scared.” I stood, smoothing down my dress and hunting for something more useful to do. I couldn’t sit on the sofa beside him just then, with him so attuned to my feelings. I couldn’t find the words for how I felt, and the longer and closer I lingered, the faster he would decide for himself. What I wanted to say to him would be my choice, and I wouldn’t let his blud take that away from me. “But Verusha is right. We need sleep. Tomorrow will be long. Sleep well.”
I didn’t look back as I slipped into the hall and scurried up the stairs. The first open room was done up in burgundy, but the second room was appointed in sky blue and antiqued gold, as if Verusha had kept it waiting for me all these years. Once inside behind the locked door, I undressed quickly to slip into a bed firmly rooted to the floor, neither rolling nor floating over the ground.
His eyes in that last moment had been warm and sure and filled with dancing shadows. He had seen me, seen right through me. And he had let me go, although we both knew he could have kept me there. Whether with his body or his words, I would have been helpless if he had truly wanted me to stay. I had taken him, bribed him, turned him, kept him for my own uses. It had all been for one purpose: to save Freesia and be queen, powerful over all.
I couldn’t admit to myself that one man now had power over me.
Tomorrow would be bad enough without admitting how much I had to lose.
33
I woke up to the sound of Verusha humming. Always the same song, since I had first left my mother’s bed to sleep, cold and alone, in the nursery. I smiled and muttered, “You’re off key, old woman.”
“And you’re an ungrateful little creature who deserves to be drowned in the river,” she said in turn. “Sleeping past noon. Lazy beast!”
The warm familiarity of the ritual was soothing, but only until I realized that today was the day that would determine everything. Life or death, queen or pawn. Casper or . . . the emptiness where he should have been by my side.
I sat up as Verusha plumped the pillows behind my back and put a teacup of warm blood and bludmare’s milk in my hands. As I sipped it, I was flooded with memories. The first time I’d been beaten for showing weakness. All the times Olgha had locked me in a trunk or smeared my face in the snow, telling me I would never be anything but a pretty brood mare. The time I had stolen into the Pinky kitchens and played with the children there, trying their food and spitting it out to our mutual amusement, and later, when I’d been punished. My mother had forced me to drink from one of the children, a little boy. She had held him rigid, his black hair in one hand and his shoulder pinched in the other.
“Never forget what they are to us,” she had said as I paused, conflicted, clumsy teeth scraping his neck. “They are food. Servants. Chattel. To be used and bred and thrown away as we will it. Once they have laughed at you, they will always wait for their next chance.”
The tears had slid down my cheeks and blurred with the boy’s blood to smear across my lips. I had never returned to the kitchens, and that boy had avoided me for the rest of my time at the palace.
I hadn’t thought about him for years, but now I wondered where he was and how my future would run. Would I change everything or nothing? Would I drive the Pinkies from their stolen district in the city proper or allow them to flourish? Did I really want to continue treating people the way Keen and Casper had been treated, as
less than bludmares and hunting dogs? And if I chose not to do that, how would my people react? I’d seen evidence in print and in real life that Ravenna was letting the humans run wild. Before, I had hated her for it. But now, with my feelings changing, I couldn’t help wondering how it would look when I deposed her and showed further sympathy to the Pinkies.
“I see you fussing, my darleenk,” Verusha said. “Perhaps this will soothe you.” She opened the closet and brought out a magnificent dress that was more than familiar to me, although its color was changed from the original cream to a cool aquamarine. I could imagine Verusha stealing it from the summer palace and dyeing it in secret, looking at it wistfully from time to time, as if she had known that I would one day return to claim it.
“Do you think that will still fit? I’m taller.”
“But thinner. We’ll make it work.”
The beaded peacock feathers cascaded to the floor, shimmering iridescent against the heavy silk like the diamonds they were. Aquamarines and sapphires winked in the eyes of the feathers, and I was already anxious to feel the rich fabric slide over my skin. Wearing that dress to sit for the painting had made me feel queenly at seventeen; what would it do for me now?
“The bath is ready.” She tipped her head to the door in the corner. “Soak a while, and Verusha will make you as beautiful as ever.”
I’d always loved relaxing in big copper tubs full of perfumed water and rose-tinged mare’s milk. But I’d never had cares before, never had problems weighing me down. I wanted to leap out onto the tile floor, dripping pinkish liquid, and rush out into the streets to fight or conquer something or at least get into an argument with someone of lesser wit. But I could hear Verusha in the outer room, humming lullabies to herself as she prepared to dress me as she had always wished, as the crowning beauty of the Feodor family, the future Tsarina. Even had I wanted to run away, she could have stopped me with one harsh word and a reminder of my destiny.
I slid down into the dark, warm silence of the tub, and brown swirled into the milky water. I closed my eyes and scrubbed soap into my scalp, wishing to wash out the dye along with the dirt of the last week’s journey. I wasn’t the same girl who had burst from the suitcase—that much was true. In some ways, I’d become harder. But in others, I was already too soft. First Casper and Keen and now even Verusha—they had all gotten to me. I would have to find my backbone as the carriage bumped through the forest toward the palace, or I’d end up pledging my allegiance to Ravenna and being married off or murdered within a fortnight.
“Dry off now, leetle fish,” Verusha called, and I obeyed, my mind too busy planning rebellion to actually rebel.
She was fussing with me before I was out of my towel, rubbing rich creams into my skin. I let her bend me and move me as necessary, just as she always had. I was nearly hairless, and much of my youth had been spent holding back screams as she spread me with wax and ripped the bits of paper off in cruel jerks. She must have been thinking about the same thing, as she nodded with great authority and said, “You see? I told you it would be worth it. Smooth as glass, you are.”
I just sighed. The fire that had kept me running for so long was burning low, buffeted by too many other emotions to flare brightly. Casper had been right last night; I was scared. Scared to tell him how I felt and scared to feel that way at all. And yet I couldn’t wait to see him, kept looking at the closed door as if he might swagger in and grin at me with his new fangs.
Verusha helped me into an embroidered chemise and sat me gently on a stool before the vanity mirror, picking up a brush and running it through my wet curls. My hair was drying lighter than it had been, much of the dye having swirled out of the tub along with the bludmilk and water. It wasn’t back to ice-white yet, more of a warm gold. But it was enough. I smiled as she arranged my curls, stabbing silver pins in to hold it tightly in place.
“You are bothered, little lemming. Verusha can tell. Do you worry that you will not best Ravenna?”
“Of course not.” I looked up into the mirror, pulling back my lips to show sharp teeth.
“What is it, then? Your parents? Or Alex?”
I snorted. “My parents are gone. I can handle Alex. And I have plans for the king of Sveden as well.”
She threw her head back and laughed, bosom heaving. “You are my same little princess, all teeth and pride. And yet something is changed. Have you recovered fully from your draining? Do you feel weak or muddled?”
“Muddled perhaps.” I paused meaningfully, meeting her dark eyes in the mirror. She had always known whatever troubled me, even the things I didn’t know myself. I had to hope that she could offer guidance now, when I needed it most and could speak it least.
“Did you know they had planned to marry you off to a Svedish prince?” she said blandly, and I flinched. “It’s true, darleenk. The papers were almost drawn up when you disappeared. At first, they thought you had run away, but a Pinky in the stables swore a blood oath that he saw you snatched by terrifying figures in bear cloaks, stolen away into the woods behind the castle. That little one from the kitchen, with the black hair, you recall.” I shuddered. In the back of my throat, I could still taste his blood and my own childish terror and shame. “In any case, when they realized Olgha had also been taken, the betrothal papers were lost. Your parents were executed. And then the rumors began that you had killed your own sister. But I knew they were false.”
“Why Sveden?” I asked, once I had found my voice. “They’ve always been peaceful.”
“King Charles wanted to cement an alliance, and he has so many bastards littering the palace that it made sense. That man—he is insatiable, they say. After you disappeared, once he couldn’t use you for his own ends, he swore you an enemy. Assassins waiting everywhere.”
I grinned. “There’s one fewer now.”
She patted my head. “And your mother was hot for the union, of course. It has been many years since the Feodors had outside blud. Some have said your father . . . is not the hot-bludded sort. He always preferred the hunt to the throne.”
“So they say.”
“You have more of your mother in you, of course. You may not take after her in looks, but your heart, many have said, beats with the glacier’s heart of Freesia. An ice princess, a throwback to better times. The winters have been uneasy these past few years. Many of the people say the dance and the music have not been up to expectation, a proper offering to Aztarte and Hades. There are shrines to you in secret places, snowdrops and white roses and little cups of blud mixed with milk and pomegranate seeds and, of course, the tears. Some are calling you Proserpina, saying you’re waiting in the darkness to lead us back into a proper winter.”
“The rabble are fools.”
“The rabble are your reason for existing, darleenk. They are the earth that supports your feet.”
My hair was twisted back in braids and pin curls in a way that led the eye down my cheekbones to my lips, which she’d painted the traditional bright red. With dark kohl and glittering silver around my eyes, my face was foreign to me. In bright light, clean and fresh and no longer framed by dirt-colored waves, I saw a living doll, a creature of lines and curves fashioned of frozen milk, with eyes the color of aquamarines. I blinked, and the face blinked back.
“It’s a shame you must hide.”
Before I could ask her what she meant, what she knew, she held a porcelain mask over my face, hiding everything but eyes and lips. It was white and silver, a stylized peacock’s face, the nose a dainty beak. White plumes erupted from the top. I couldn’t help thinking of the peacocks at the Ice Palace, calling to one another with the sound of dying children. Although the wild peacocks were rarely seen without unicorns, the birds of the palace were proud things fed blood from dishes of hammered silver. The ruling family of birds were all white, and their more colorful brethren bowed to them or hung limply from sharp beaks. It was fitting, this mask, and I wondered how she would dress Casper to walk beside me.
Verusha held
out a hand, and I stood, waiting. First, she brought layers of petticoats, filmy with lace. Then dancing slippers. Then the corset from Kitty’s shop, and I took a few last deep breaths before my old maid worked her magic with the laces. The dress wasn’t as heavy as I remembered, or maybe I was stronger. I stepped into it, and Verusha helped lift it onto my shoulders. The thick silk skimmed my curves and clung in all the right places, the deeply cut neck perfectly accenting flesh that had bloomed in four years of maturity and a week of good feeding.
Standing before the full-length mirror beside a very smug groomer, I did indeed look like some magical, mythical bird goddess. When I cocked my head to the side, the illusion was complete. My only sadness was that the matching necklace was destroyed, a plain twist of metal with a few lone stones still winking from tarnished silver.
My painted nails brushed my collarbone, and Verusha nodded sadly in understanding. “You couldn’t take it, anyway, my sweet. Too recognizable.”
“And the dress isn’t?”
She smiled. “The peacock has changed its spots, darleenk. They will think it a clever forgery. They will laugh before you destroy them.”
I dropped my hand and wished for some occupation, something to do besides be beautiful and wait and worry. The carriage ride was starting to feel more terrifying than the ascent to the Maybuck had been, but there was no hope of throwing myself onto the ground and begging someone to sit on me. From here on out, my chin was up, my eyes were open, and my claws were clenched to fight.
“I’m ready,” I said, more to myself than anyone else.
Verusha nodded, her eyes narrowing to slits. “Good girl. If anyone can triumph, my darleenk, my princess, it is you. And if you go to Hades, take that gypsy cur with you, yes? For me.”
“I’m going to rip her throat out.”
“Good. Blud in the first snow is a happy omen. Aztarte will be pleased.”
I turned back, stalling. “Do you actually believe in her, Verusha?”
Wicked as She Wants Page 28
