Page 13

He turns his head away the way a person does when they’re embarrassed. He writes on the paper again and passes it to me.

Through the back door, you will find the bathing chamber. It’s yours. I don’t need it.

I look at the door in the back wall. If he doesn’t need a bathing chamber, why does he have one? Did he build it? Was it here before he was? I’m still holding the paper, trying to make sense of the room and the answer, when he steps back out and closes the door, leaving me alone.

I wait and count my own breaths. When I get to twenty, I go to the door and lay my palm against it. I feel nothing through the wood. I try the handle, and it turns, the door opening a crack. He hasn’t locked me in. I let my breath out and close it again.

I look at the room properly, because I have to know where I am.

The boudoir table has drawers, and in the drawers, there are pots of color, brushes, and powder, the kind we used at the Lyric House, along with combs set with stones, necklaces laid out on cloth, and wigs on stands in shades that don’t match my hair.

The closet is full of dresses in silks and velvets, nightgowns folded on the shelves, and slippers and shoes in rows along the bottom. None of them is cut in a fashion I’ve seen anyone wear. Every piece has been brushed, mended, and kept. These aren’t things gathered in a hurry for a woman who arrived tonight. This room was made for a woman before I ever came here and made with care.

I stand in the middle of the rug with a nightgown in my hands that isn’t mine, and I ask myself the one question that matters.

Am I the first woman Mordred has kept in this house? Someone wore these dresses, sat at that table, and looked in the mirror I have no intention to use. Maybe Callum sent me down here to take her place. If he did, where did she go? What did Mordred do with her? What is he going to do with me?

I can’t stop the thoughts once they’ve started. My chest pulls tight until it hurts to breathe, my breath comes fast and shallow, and I can’t slow it. I’m dizzy again. I try to look at one thing and hold it – the bedpost, the closet door, the slippers. I can’t keep my eyes on any of them. I put the nightgown down on the bed. I can’t feel my hands properly.

In the end, it’s tiredness that stops it and nothing else. I sit on the edge of the bed because my legs won’t hold me. Then I become too tired even for that. I pull back the covers and crawl under them in the wedding dress, with the lace rough against my neck. I fall into a sleep that keeps breaking and starting again.

Chapter Seven

Mordred

I close her door and keep my hand on it until I’m sure she isn’t coming back through it. Then I turn around, look at the living room, and see what she saw. I start picking up Prima’s things.

They’re everywhere. Because I put them everywhere. A woman who lives in a house leaves traces of herself in it, so I learned to scatter them. I did it so well that I have to search now.

I find a pair of her shoes under the low table by the hearth, the heels set together. I find a hairpin on the arm of her chair, and two more on the rug. There’s a velvet bow on the writing desk, and another one under the edge of the dining table. I crouch, gather them into my palm, and carry them to a cupboard without a sound. She can’t hear me at all, and I know that, but I stay quiet anyway.

Aveline asked whether all of it was for her. I turned my head away because I had no answer that would’ve made sense. Now I keep seeing her face when she stood in the bedroom doorway and looked at the nightgown on the bed, the combs, and the perfume bottles in front of the mirror.

I can guess what a woman thinks when a monster keeps a bedroom full of a woman’s belongings. She thinks he invented someone to sit across from him because no one real would. She thinks he’s pathetic. Or she thinks he’s mad and talks to a woman who isn’t there and believes she answers.

I’ve never believed that, not once. Prima has no face I’ve ever seen, and no voice I’ve heard. I speak to her out loud because at some point, the silence down here became more than I could bear. I fill her pauses myself, I answer for her, but I’ve always known that I’m the only one in the room. That was the arrangement. It was never a mistake I was making. It was a way to feel less alone.

I go back for a comb I missed on the mantel. I turn it over in my fingers before I put it away with the rest.

I found her name on a door. Soon after I came to these ruins, when there was no town above me and no one for miles in any direction, I was salvaging the dressing rooms behind the old stage, and I found a brass plaque on one of the doors that read PRIMA DONNA. I stood in front of it and imagined the woman who’d used that room. Then I went inside and took what I thought she would’ve wanted kept, which was her mirror, her costumes, her paints and powders, and the jewelry left in the drawers. I chose every piece by asking myself whether she’d treasure it, and when I built this house, I built her a bedroom in it. Then I started talking to her. I set a second place at my table and put a second chair by the fire. I’ve lived with her for nearly a century, and I’ve never once lost sight of what she was – imaginary.

Now there’s a living woman in Prima’s bed, and because of the room I made, she has one more reason to be afraid of me. She already has every reason she needs. I’m a monster, and she’s been handed to me in a cage. If she also thinks I’m unpredictable, if she thinks I might forget what’s real, then nothing I do can make her feel safe under my roof.

I close the cupboard and make myself a promise. I’ll do better. I’ll make her feel safe and welcome for as long as she’s here. Which will be for a day or two, no more. It’s long enough to learn why Callum sent her down and what the people above me believe they’ve done, and to be sure she’s unharmed, fed, and rested. In that time, I’ll find a safe way to put her back on the surface, somewhere she can look after herself.

I don’t let myself think about what it will be like to watch her go. I think about the note in my pocket instead, about Callum’s handwriting, and about a line of a song I’ve never been able to interpret.

I don’t go to my room. Instead, I sit in my chair, with the fire in front of me, and keep my eyes on her door. I don’t sleep. Every so often, I hear her turn over and the bed creak. I stay where I am. I’m afraid that if I close my eyes and open them again at dawn, no one will come out of that room. I’m afraid I’ll go in and find the bed empty and the nightdress laid out where I left it. So, I keep the fire alive, and I watch. I wait for her.

***

I hear her moving before the door handle turns – her feet padding over the floor, her hand on the wood. The door opens, and I’m on my feet.

She’s still in the wedding dress. The lace is creased from sleeping in it, and her hair is slightly disheveled. That tells me she hasn’t touched the nightdress or used the bathing chamber.

I built the bathing chamber for Prima, because I always thought of her as human, and a human would need somewhere to wash. I use the spring sometimes, when I want the pleasure of the warm water, never because I need it. My body doesn’t sweat, doesn’t take on the smells a human body does. I keep it clean and whole the same way I keep it young – with song.

Aveline walks across the room and stops in front of me. She pulls at her long sleeves and looks at my chest instead of my face. That’s when I see her wrists. There are bruises on both of them, dark and going all the way around. The marks of fingers.