Cruel Beauty(17)

It was a bed that had been built for pleasure, just like my dress, and as I stared at it I felt hot and cold at once. Then I noticed that to the left of the bed was a great bay window that looked out toward my village. I had barely realized what I could see before I was at the window, my hands pressed against the glass. I could see all the buildings, very small and clear, like a perfect model that I could reach out and touch.

It should have been comforting to look toward home. But from outside, the Gentle Lord’s castle was a ruin. Standing here at the window beside my bridal bed, knowing I was invisible to the outside world, I felt like a ghost.

I leaned my head against the window, trying not to cry again. Maybe I should feel this way. Right now—no, always—I existed only to destroy the Gentle Lord. Astraia was the stupid one, to think that I was in the world to love her.

Something tickled my elbow. I whirled and saw Shade sliding back along the wall—it was his touch, I realized. He wavered on the wall by the dresser, and though his distorted form made it hard to tell, I thought that he was wringing his hands.

“I’m all right,” I said, stepping away from the window.

Of course I was all right. I had been raised for this mission. I couldn’t be anything but completely all right.

Then I realized I had been speaking to him as if he were someone who cared. I crossed my arms.

“Go tell your lord that you’ve done his will. Or did you want to stay and watch me change?”

Shade bobbed—he might be nodding his head—then flowed away and left me in private. I sat down on the bed with a thump. The room swam around me; suddenly I could not believe that it was real, that I was truly sitting in the Gentle Lord’s castle and I had a little porcelain shepherdess with a blue dress and pink cheeks sitting by the roses on my bedside table.

Astraia had a figurine like that, only with a pink dress.

My nails bit into my palms. There hadn’t been just pain on her face when I left her; there had been utter incomprehension. She couldn’t believe that her beloved sister, who had always smiled and kissed and comforted her, was trying to cause her pain. She couldn’t believe that Father and Aunt Telomache had lied to her, either.

She loved you, I thought savagely. You truly deceived her and she truly thought well of you. Until the very last minute, when you took all love away from her.

This time I didn’t cry, but the icy feeling that lashed through me was worse. I wanted to claw my skin open, I wanted to smash the shepherdess to pieces, I wanted to beat the wall and wail. But that would be losing my temper, and hadn’t I just seen where that led? So I sat still and tense, choking down the misery and fury and shame, until at last the numbness came back.

Then I gritted my teeth, went to the wardrobe, and found the most low-cut dress, a flowing thing of dark blue silk. I had broken my sister’s heart. I would never see her again, so I could never beg her forgiveness. I had let hatred fester in me so long, I didn’t think I could ever learn to love her properly, either. But I could make sure she lived free of the Gentle Lord, no longer afraid of his demons, with the true sun shining down upon her.






5


Dinner was in a great hall carved of deep blue stone. A colonnade ran down either side; on the left, the rock wall behind the pillars was rough and unfinished, but on the right was a vast wall of stained glass. There were no pictures in the glass, only an intricate swirl of many-colored diamond panes that cast a rainbow of glimmers over the white tablecloth. At the far end of the hall, a great empty arch looked out on the western sky, where the sun hung low. Though the horizon was far away, the sky looked strangely close: its mottling was larger and its surface more translucent, glowing bright red-gold veined with russet.

Amid the glory of that sky was a dark speck. It grew swiftly, until I saw that it was a great black bird, easily as big as a horse. It slowed as it approached the arch, its body melting and changing into a man.

No, not a man: the Gentle Lord. He landed with a whoosh and strode forward, boots clicking on the stone floor as his wings furled and melted into the lines of his long dark coat. For a heartbeat he looked human, and I found him beautiful. Then he came close enough that I could make out the cat-slit pupils in his crimson eyes, and my skin crawled with horror at this monstrous thing.

“Good evening.” He stopped at the opposite end of the table, one hand resting on the back of his chair. “Do you like your new home?”

I smiled and leaned forward, my elbows on the table and my arms pressed in to push up my breasts. “I love it.”

His smile crinkled, as if he were just barely holding back laughter. “How long have you been practicing that trick?”