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“She didn’t want just any child,” I tell him in a hoarse voice. “She wanted me. She told me when she saw me besting the village elders at chess, she saw something in me that reminded her of herself. So, she offered me a treat as a reward and waited until my parents were distracted in the crowded square to take me.”
Einar curses. “She poisoned you?”
“Of course, she did.” I sigh, wanting to shift the tone back to something hopeful. “But in spite of her best efforts, even though she herself was a monster, she did manage to give me a new family.”
“Your sisters?” he asks tentatively.
His hesitation is understandable, since I told him once never to mention them again. But if we truly are to have a future together, he needs to understand what I had that was worth fighting for, worth dying for, before he came along. He needs to know about the most important people in my life, aside from him.
“The first sibling I have a strong memory of is Melodi -- Mel. She loves music and dancing, and brings food and supplies to the villagers when she thinks Madame won’t notice. She’s Madame’s only child by blood, that I know of, but she can’t speak. That doesn’t stop her from expressing herself,” I smile, but it fades quickly. “Though I suspect Madame wrote her off for that reason, leading her to take me. While I was relentlessly trained and punished, Mel was more...neglected than anything else. She has lived her entire life in the chateau.”
“That sounds lonely,” he says.
“I imagine it is,” I answer quietly, my mind returning to the letter she had sent over a month ago now, the sadness that was soaked into every word. Maybe she is less okay than she lets on, and I have been too wrapped up in treachery and bloodshed and all the things I try to shield her from to notice. Tucking that thought away until I can act on it, I move on to the hardest part.
“Next came Rose.” I still say her name with a reverential air. “She was ethereally beautiful, with golden hair and sapphire eyes and the kind of goodness that even Madame’s cruelty couldn’t rid her of. But in some ways...” It’s hard to admit this part. “It wasn’t necessarily a positive thing, in our lives. She never could quite manage the walls the rest of us put up. She just suffered, day in and day out. That’s why I would sing to her. Even years after Madame took her, she would still cry herself to sleep if I wasn’t there. So I knew that it would break her, even more deeply than it broke me, if Madame...sold her.”
“That’s why you risked everything to help her.” He squeezes his arms around me, and I nod.
“But it wasn’t enough. Damian had come shortly after Rose. He betrayed us, and Madame chose my life over Rose’s, because ultimately, I was more useful to her, even more so if I was entirely cowed by the loyalty I couldn’t quite shake. She had killed Rose, but there was still little Melodi to think about.”
“You think she would have killed her own daughter?”
“I think there is nothing and no one more important to her than her twisted plans,” I answer honestly.
He is quiet for a moment, digesting that before he speaks again. “And what about the one who signs her name with a flame?”
I shake my head wryly.
“Aika was the last to join us. She’s, well, she’s fire incarnate. Passionate and unexpected and destructive without regard for the things in her path. Madame trusts her more than anyone, I think, even Damian, because Aika gets the job done without Damian’s baser distractions.” It’s the mildest way I can say, ‘without Damian’s wanton murder and torture.’ “Even I don’t always know how she actually feels about that, but she seems to believe that if we’re stuck in this life, we may as well make the best of it. Maybe it’s admirable. I don’t know. Aika is...her own person.”
“It sounds like you two don’t always get along.” His tone is neutral, like he’s worried the observation might offend me.
“I would die for her. And she would...probably at least get seriously injured for me.” I shake my head wryly. “We all did what we had to do to survive Madame’s demented brand of motherhood. At the end of the day, I can’t really fault Aika for that.”Even if sometimes, I want to shake some sense into her.
“Do you think she’s in as much danger as Mel, then, if she’s so important to Ulla’s plans?”
I’ve thought about this so much over the past few years, and my answer is unchanged.
“The most important plan Madame had was this one, Jokith, and she has made it clear over the years that she values my service above anything she can get from the other two.” I clear my throat before expounding. “I know it isn’t empty threats, either, because she poisoned Aika before when I took too long on a mission. And even if she wasn’t willing to kill either of them...there are worse things she can do.”
The hestrinns pick up their pace again after that, and we ride in silence. I wait for the desolation to sink in, the hopelessness. I am entirely unprepared when instead I feel lighter, as though I have been hauling boulders up a mountain for as long as I can remember and Einar has just come along to share the burden with me.
The weight of our troubles is still there, but for the first time in a long time, it feels like maybe I won’t crumble underneath it. Like maybe I’ll be free of it one day.
Chapter Fifty-One
Einar
By the time we make it back to the castle, it is well after midnight. Gunnar stables the hestrinns while Zaina, Khijhana, and I take the secret way in through the passageways.
We waste no time before we’re in my study with our gloves back on as we carefully dissect the flowers.
First, we remove the petals so they can’t poison themselves when we take the thorns, then place them in a large barrel with a preserving agent. I want them intact so I can test them for other properties later.
Then, we make quick work of cutting the thorns from the stem and putting them in a separate barrel with every last drop of the oozing black liquid that spills from the stem.
Zaina yawns but works tirelessly to help while I run to the cellar for a large barrel of the wine we had used before. Gunnar is there, just as we discussed, and helps me carry it up several flights of stairs until we reach my study.
