But she’s not wearing the pearls anymore, so they can’t make me feel sorry.
I clear my throat and slip my arms out of the servant-dress sleeves, turning my back to her. “Hurry up. Ragne and Emeric will be here soon.”
Gisele’s breath hitches. “Is that the curse?”
Damn it all. I forgot about the rubies on my spine. The thin shift’s neckline is low enough on my back to let at least two or three peep over. “Yes.”
“How long do you have?”
I suck in a breath, looking through the window at the half-moon staring back. “One week. Unless I make up for what I stole.” I shimmy free of the servant uniform. “Turns out that’s not as easy as it sounds.”
Another quiet falls, and all I hear are the soft pops as Gisele undoes the buttons on her gown. Then she breaks the silence. “I spoke with Joniza about what you said before. I didn’t understand—I didn’tseehow bad it was with my parents.”
Liar, I want to scream, hands shaking even as I fold the uniform. She was there when they whipped me for the von Hirschings. But it’s been a year since we left Sovabin. She’s not the same. Neither of us is.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I should have stopped them.”
I set the servant uniform on the bed, beside the pearls. Maybe she’s learned. Maybe—maybe we can start to close these wounds. “We were young—”
“But you shouldn’t have stolen this from me,” Gisele continues over me, and my stomach drops. “You took everything, my name, my future, mylife. You—”
I whirl around, practically spitting with fury. “None of this was yours. You talk like you were owed this butnone of it belongs to you. You didn’t earn your name, you didn’t earn this life, there is nothing here except for what you were born into or loaned, and whatIearned.”
“What you stole!” she shouts back, wincing as she pulls the fake ruby off her face. “Do you think any of this belongs to you either?”
“You didn’t even want it!”
“I didn’t want to marry Adalbrecht! Don’t you dare pretend that’s the same!”
I can’t believe how gullible I was, thinking she might have changed. “So you wanted all this, the jewelry, the dresses, the castle, the servants, as long as I was the one who paid for it, not you. Because that’s what theWeysserpfenniis worth—”
“My own mother didn’t think I was good enough for him,” Gisele interrupts, climbing out of the heavy skirts. “She was ashamed of me, because she wanted a daughter like Irmgard.”
“And I needed someone to protect me from Irmgard!” I storm over to collect the gown,mygown, and even in my rage I’m still taking care to fold it so it doesn’t crease, because one year of living like Gisele cannot override ten years of serving her. “I needed someone to protect me from AdaAAAAAAA.”
Something is wriggling in the skirts.
I drop them and leap back. A little fist-sized gray-white creature scrabbles from under the heap of red velvet. It’s a tiny, horrible man, crawling like a crab, blue eyes blazing.
Gisele lets out a shriek.
Ragne bursts through the door, and it’s my turn to let out a startled shriek.
Then Emeric tumbles in after Ragne, and Gisele and I both make panicked squawks and dive for the nearest dressing gown at the same time since we’re both in nothing but our thin linen shifts, only to find ourselves both trying to yank it on. (A painfully apt metaphor.)
“Sorry—sorry—I’m not looking—” Emeric starts to back out of the room, spots thenachtmahr, and proceeds to visibly cycle through both fight and flight instincts at a speed heretofore unobserved in the common man. Meanwhile, there’s a sound of tearing fabric, and then Ragne lands on the floor as a black lynx, the shreds of her uniform still clinging to her like a caul. One massive paw knocks the littlenachtmahrfrom where it was darting toward the bed, then crashes down to keep it in place.
I give up on the dressing gown and grab a blanket, wrapping it around my shoulders. “I don’t suppose any of us have bells. Junior, close the door.” He does. I shoot him and Ragne a narrow look. “How long were you in the hall?”
“The Emeric said it sounded like an important conversation,” Ragne yowls, batting themahrback and forth as it whines, “and we should give you privacy, and we did, but then you screamed.”
Emeric looks everywhere but at us.
No.I am not coming out of this night grudgingly liking the smug bastard. I refuse on yet another principle (which is: There’s only room in this town for one smug bastard. That smug bastard is me).
Gisele gasps, and I discover I have a new problem.
Thenachtmahris swelling, almost bubbling, from a tiny man into some awful hybrid of human and horse. The skull warps ghoulishly, its limbs stretching like horse legs that still end in gray, gnarled hands. As it grows it screams, showing clusters of fangs long and thin as needles.
