by Sara Wolf
“And?”
“To stop a war.”
“Is that all?” He smiles, and I can tell he knows. He knows my words are half truth, and only saying them just now do I realize that, too. I want my heart, my friends’ hearts, and freedom. I want all those things. But none of them will be enough. None of them will fill the emptiness, the gaping chasm, the cold void of the girl I used to be. A happy girl, an innocent girl. A girl with family. A girl who believed in the goodness of the world, once.
A girl with love.
Reginall moves to leave, bowing at the threshold of the room. “I do hope you find what you’re looking for, miss.”
6
The Serpent’s
Nest
Three days isn’t enough.
But Y’shennria tries her hardest to ensure it is.
We train throughout the night—Y’shennria sacrificing sleep to stay up with me. As I practice with the razor orb, I injure myself less and less. One day I come away without any cuts at all, giving a fist pump she calls “unladylike” even as she smiles. Y’shennria keeps my hunger fed, so it’s a bare murmur as she teaches me dancing—too nervous to touch me, instead having Reginall be my partner. She sits at the key harp, playing beautiful melodies I have to learn every twist and turn to. I’d be lying if I said I’m graceful, but I am fairly good at moving my body in a rhythm—one upside of doing nothing in the forest but practicing swordplay with Crav—which means I can string the moves together, but they have no charm or fluidity to them. Like watching an oak tree flail in a storm, Y’shennria snorts.
She’s infinitely more refined at art, and music, and dancing. She invites several nobles to have dinner with us, including Baron d’Goliev, as a chance for me to learn how to conduct myself properly without the pressure of the entire court’s eyes. They ask me questions I clumsily respond to, my fingers slipping over the four spoons laid out for soups alone. After dinner, they linger over chocolate and tea in the sitting room, taking turns at the key harp or showing off their latest sketches of nature. Compared to Y’shennria’s sketches, though, they’re like children’s scrawls. Even her conversation skills are more refined, quicker, sharper, keeping everyone entertained. She’s the pinnacle of what a noble should be, what a noble was in my mind before coming here.
I start to realize just how much she’s lost when the others tell fond stories of Ravenshaunt’s beauty and grandeur, of Lord Y’shennria, stories of how the two of them fit together so well, how gallant and good he was. Y’shennria listens to them all patiently, her eyes in those moments softer than I’ve ever seen them. I can only stare at my hands with shame. Shame that what I am—things like me—took so much from her.
It makes me want to learn. To make her proud, no matter how impossible that might be.
Slowly, with her excellence as my teacher, the dinners get less and less awkward. I speak clearer, and some people even laugh at the things I say. I start to correctly pick the small spoons for cold soups, the big spoons for hot ones. Instead of waiting for Nightsinger to heal me, impatient and suffering loudly, I now understand my pain threshold with perfect clarity, a silent knife’s edge I dance on just before the tears are about to spill from my eyes. I time my excuses to the bathroom—between courses being set out but before dessert. I can’t play an instrument or draw, but Y’shennria has me sing after dinner. She asked me if I had any talents, and I told her I sometimes sing. I showed her, and she must’ve considered it passable enough. I get scattered applause, and Baron d’Goliev insists I have the sweetest voice he’s heard since Queen Kolissa was my age, but no one takes it seriously, considering he likes his Avellish brandy after dinner far too much.
I drown my doubts, my fears, my confusion in the lake of learning. In the strange, vast lake of becoming Zera Y’shennria, niece of Lady Y’shennria.
The morning of the Spring Welcoming comes too fast. Dawn breaks through the window, crimson and ice-blue bleeding together, but even the beauty can’t distract me from the truth—I’m not ready. None of that matters now. Time has a way of disappearing on me, and then reappearing with horrifying punctuality. The time is now. I have to be ready. At the very least, I have to fake it, if not for the court, then for the witches whose lives hang in the balance, and for my heart.
I’ve died dozens of times. I know—I’m getting sick of hearing myself even think it. But in the end, that’s the only advantage I have in this quiet war between the court and myself. They can’t kill me. They can belittle me, they can mock me, they can tear me apart. But they can’t kill me. Only my own mistakes can do that.
Only I can do that.
It’s a small comfort, to have a bit of control in the dizzying madness of this dance.
I watch my reflection in the window, my straw gold hair freshly cut to my shoulders, and lift my chin. Everything comes down to this day, these next few hours. If I don’t successfully debut, it’s over.
My one chance at freedom—gone.
Maeve draws me a bath, sprinkling whole black roses and sticks of cinnamon in the tub. I ease myself into the water, the smell soothing my frayed nerves. It’s a familiar smell—Y’shennria’s hair and clothes smell the same, and I feel a little honored that I’m allowed to carry the scent, too. When I’m dry, Maeve dresses me in an effervescent, cherry-blossom pink dress, and it’s so beautiful my nerves part for a brief moment as I stroke the silken ruffles. Next she fixes my hair, her slow, gnarled fingers catching on tangles. She’s been doing this for longer than I’ve lived, and it shows; she forms dozens of plaits into a rose, elegantly nestled halfway into a bun. She tries to fasten the whole thing with a lattice of quartz pins, but she must get tired, because the pins keep falling out loosely.
“That’s quite enough effort on your part, Maeve,” Y’shennria says as she sweeps into the room. “I’ll handle it from here.”
Maeve makes a little bow and closes the door behind her. It’s just me and Y’shennria and the glint of the sun off the quartz pins.
“You don’t have to,” I say. Her hands aren’t shaking, but her lips are tight.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s simple enough.” She arranges the pins, sliding them in tight against my skull. Touching me out of necessity, of course—she’d never do it otherwise. Y’shennria pulls the last few strands of hair free from behind my ears and looks at me in the mirror. “Have you eaten?”
“Those perfectly uncooked livers downstairs? Yes.”
She jumps right in to a refresher course. “Never take the hand of a man if offered to you—”
“—in the evening,” I finish. “When sitting at tables, it’s women first.”
“In what order?” she interjects quickly.
“Noble rank, modified by age. Highest in both categories sits first, but only if she’s married. The unmarried sit last.”
“Which means an unmarried lady of sixteen such as yourself will always sit last.”
She hands me a waxy tube of pink lip tint and watches me put it on. Not too much, always in the very center of the lips.
“Much better than your first try,” Y’shennria claims. Her lips are tinted purple, her scarce few wrinkles disguised by powder. She may look cool and composed, but her knuckles are white on the back of my chair. Lives hang in the balance. I know it. She knows it better than I. We both know it in the silence of the mirror and the brightness of our war paint.
“I still remember my Spring Welcoming,” Y’shennria says softly.
“I’m not ready,” I confess. She smiles grimly.
“I’ll let you in on a secret; no one is ever really ready.”
“Milady!” Reginall announces from behind my bedroom door. “The carriage has arrived!”
My face tinges a ghastly green in the mirror. Y’shennria sees it, and I brace myself for an order to apply more rouge or to get ahold of myself, but instead I feel a soft, strong hand on my shoulder. Hers.
“They will ignore you. They will try to tell you that you aren’t good enough. This is
a lie. You are an Y’shennria. You have always been good enough.”
The words are strong and true—so strong they don’t feel as if they belong to me. Perhaps she meant to say it to her own children, once upon a time. Her own daughter, at her own Spring Welcoming.
I take one final look in the mirror. A girl with paper skin and blond hair looks back at me. She wears a heart-shaped locket of gold. Her too-thin lips are pink in the center. Her blue eyes are bolded with dark kohl, two lines tracing down her cheekbones as is the current Vetrisian style. She has a blemish beneath her bangs she’s worried about, but she’s worried more about her teeth, the sharp ones that come out when she’s hungry.
She is young. She is terrified. She is playing dress-up. She is playing a very dangerous game.
She is Heartless.
Y’shennria helps me up, her hands strong beneath my elbow. I faintly realize how much effort it must take her to swallow her own fear and touch me not once, not twice, but three times. She leads me through the house, down the stairs, past the painting of handsome Lord Y’shennria, and out to the carriage. This one’s much fancier than the travel carriage that brought me to Vetris—black velvet tassels hanging from the horses and copper accenting the wheels. Fisher’s in the driver’s seat, looking much older in a black suit and feathered cap. The dignity of his clothes can’t disguise his shy grin, though.
“You’re looking sharp, miss.”
“With any luck I’ll gouge someone’s eye out,” I agree through my locked-up throat. Y’shennria opens the door of the carriage, and I get in. I poke my head out the window, my voice tingeing desperate.
“I was under the impression you weren’t going to abandon me to the wolves.”
“The Spring Brides and Grooms arrive on their own.” Y’shennria holds my gaze. “Remember what I taught you. Follow what the Headkeeper says. Do your best to stand out in a polite way. I’ll try to visit you after it’s over.”
Her words are so clipped, so final-sounding. An unsaid condition lingers after her every sentence: If you don’t fail horribly.
If you aren’t discovered and promptly killed for what you are.
I force a smile, but it hangs crooked on my lips. “If I’m shattered, will you at least come to the memorial service? I can’t promise any drinks, or good food, or even other people, really. But I’d appreciate it.”
“You’ll be fine,” Y’shennria says sternly.
Fisher nicks the horses into a trot, the carriage wheels crackling over the gravel path. I watch Y’shennria and Maeve and Reginall grow smaller behind me. Soon I’m left with only the serene cries of the sunbirds in the trees that line the road and the constant high-pitched scream of my anxious mind. The nobles striding about with their lovers and pets stop and stare at my carriage, pointing and whispering. I remember the nobles gossiping over the hedge the first day I came and fight the urge to slink down in my seat. My Y’shennria lineage might be only a cover, but I won’t let her family name go sour in my hands.
It’s a relief when the royal palace finally comes into view. Like the rest of the city, it’s made of whitestone, but the elegant, barely clothed women carrying spears carved into every buttress and tower make it much more intimidating. The watertells of the palace are made of silver, not copper, and it seems each one is nigh constantly in use—expulsing water accompanied by loud popping noises as lawguards and servants fetch and send the little tubes with messages in them. Watertells are a luxury, clearly—I’ve never seen a single commoner use one. The man-made rivers dug into the palace’s landscape weave fluid, mesmerizing patterns, and we pass over them on a dozen bridges. At the head of every river is a fountain shaped like a coiled viper spewing water from its mouth, much like the one I chased Whisper through the other day.
Whisper. Will I recognize him? The thought of him waiting at the Welcoming—tall and lithe and dark-eyed—has my body in mysterious, slightly irritating jitters. I force myself still; a lady doesn’t jitter.
A Heartless doesn’t listen to a Whisper, the hunger sneers. We eat him.
A pale-blue carriage passes me, then another of green. Curious nobles gather on the sides of the road, watching the carriages come in one by one. The pale-blue carriage is getting a lot of attention, a pretty girl smiling and waving out the window. Another girl in an ostentatious gold carriage waves, too. The nobles applaud, throwing flowers they’d picked from the lawn—red carnations and stalks of shellflowers.
“Don’t they look lovely?” a noble’s voice leaks into my window.
“Quite pretty indeed, but nowhere as beautiful as last year’s batch. If the prince didn’t take to last year’s, these stand no chance.”
“These.” “Last year’s batch.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say these idiots thought of us as sacks of marriageable meat rather than actual people. It’s brutal to hear, but I’m just a passerby, a fake. I can’t imagine how much worse it is for the real children of these nobles who treat them like commodities. Like race dogs to be gossiped over, betted upon, bred to the proper dame and sire.
Fisher slows the carriage to a crawl, stopping it just before the massive pool and the front steps of the palace. Nobles flood the stairs, standing on either side in ritual tandem. The palace guards—differentiated from city lawguards by the four jade-green feathers in their helmets—stand sternly before the crowd, not so much holding them back as marking the appropriate area for them to be. Fisher opens the carriage door, letting in light and the sounds of commotion: cheers, whistles, shouting. Among the well-dressed nobles are polymaths in their plain brown robes and tool belts. Everyone in court is here to see the spectacle. Fisher doesn’t offer me his hand—that’s only for suitors—but he does hover in case I need help descending.
My copper-toed boots hit the ground. Everyone’s watching; even the cold, blank eyes of the statues stare down at me and add an extra layer of pressure to my chest.
“You’ll be all right, won’t you, miss?” Fisher asks, but I can barely hear him over the crowd’s din. Miss. He’s one of the few who calls me that, instead of milady. Milady is sharp, full of expectations, but miss is much softer. I somehow feel comforted, knowing at least one person in the world doesn’t expect much from me.
“No,” I admit. “But as Y’shennria would say, that hardly matters, does it?”
A red carnation catches in my hair, swinging on loose strands and batting my face. I pick it out, bewildered. I should be happy to be here, happy to be picked as a potential bride for the prince, but with every cheer of the nobles I feel more and more like a cow lined up for slaughter. All I can think of is how quickly they’d turn on me if they knew what I really was. I force my lips into a grin. The other girls getting out of their carriages smile so easily, like they were born to it, and flit through the crowd and up the stairs. Shakily, I follow.
“Head high,” I mutter Y’shennria’s words. “Square chest. Always look up and forward, and never down or back. And don’t forget: if you’re found out, you’re dead.”
I catch up to a girl in a gold dress on the stairs, and she shoots me a look from under her long eyelashes. Her face is made up as much as mine—lip tint, dark symmetrical lines drawn in wax from her eyes, though hers are laced with curlicues.
“Your necklace is very nice,” she says. I look down at my glittering locket. My first urge is to say thank you, but Y’shennria taught me better than that. Accepting compliments in court is seen as a weakness to flattery.
“As is yours,” I say.
“Oh, this old thing?” The girl laughs and picks at her garnet necklace. “It’s nothing much. Papa sent me in hand-me-downs, really. My sister’s old jewels, her old dress, her old carriage—ugly things.”
Her carriage was the golden one, velvet-lined and diced with tassels, the fanciest one for miles around. She’s definitely part of a Firstblood family. She shoots me a pitying smile.
“Is your dress hand-me-down, too? What a shame—you should’ve asked me for one! I’d be more than
happy to buy you something that doesn’t make you look as if you’re a Snowsum Eve’s duck!”
Snowsum Eve ducks are always packed to bursting with fruits before roasting. She’s calling me fat, and she isn’t being subtle about it. She may as well have slapped me in the face with how overt she’s being, yet she can easily pawn the insult off as politeness. So that’s how they play it here in the royal court, hm? Fine by me.
“You flatter me, milady.” I smile. “I can see the prince being very happy with your kindness and consideration for others.”
It’s a two-faced insult, and we both know it. The girl goes five shades of angry red and loses her concentration, tripping on a stair. The crowd watches her with a bevy of hushed whispers.
“Is she all right? Poor thing had so many fevers as a child, it’s a wonder she’s strong enough to be at the Spring Welcoming—”
“The Steelrun are sickly children, after all, runs on the father’s side—”
“—can’t have a royal generation of bedridden princes, now can we?”
Steelrun—a Firstblood family. I was right. But Whisper is more right—these nobles really are gossip-stuffed morons. Their willingness to tear someone down in front of them chills me to the marrow. I extend my hand to her. She glares at it, hoisting herself to her feet and brushing past me with a disgruntled mutter.
“As if I’d let you look good at my expense.”
I watch her go for a moment, sighing. “Right, how could I forget? Basic decency is illegal here.”
Finally, I make it to the top step—out of the sun and into the cool shade of the entrance. Two celeon guards in silver armor engraved with snakes bow and open the massive gilded doors for me. The main hall is a feast for the senses—marble banisters polished so well they shine like full moonlight. The intoxicating, lush perfume of plant life wafts from every basket and ceramic vase, the hall overflowing with bouquets of orchids and lime flowers. White ivy drips from the railings of the second and third and fourth floors like natural streamers, heavy and ripe with pale star-shaped flowers. The sound of water beneath my feet makes me look down; the floor of the main hall isn’t a floor at all—it’s an iron grate woven in a delicate pattern and overlaid with glass, a shallow lake of turquoise water below. It scatters sunlight into diamond shards around the vaulted hall, making it look as if the room glows from within.
