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Ordinary people, Michaela knew, marked the moment they came into the world as the beginning of their life.
She’d decided that this must be one of the foolish habits of the outside world that Alexis so often criticized. Being born, from what she could tell, was a disgusting business, full of blood and stickiness and pain, much better forgotten than remembered.
Even her own birth, extraordinary as it been, was nothing worth lauding. She still shuddered at the memory of it--her lungs burning, hammering her palms against slick glass until it gave way to a shock of cold air as she fell, and to even colder stone as she landed. She had sprawled, shivering, coughing out the thickness in her lungs onto the floor, and when gloved hands attempted to lift her up her she'd tried to slap them away with arms that had no strength in them. "Don't," she'd wanted to say, "don't, don't," but only a wet rasp came from her throat.
Then there’d been sharpness at her neck, and her vision had shrunk into blackness.
When she came back to herself, she was clean and mostly dry, flat on her back on a padded table and bandaged from shoulder to fingertip and hip to toe. Too weak to do anything but lie still and stare upwards, she’d spent hours--or minutes? or days?--watching the patch of ceiling illuminated by candlelight.
Masked and white-robed figures floated in and out of her field of vision, occasionally stepping close enough to address her, to ask her to blink her eyes and open her mouth and then turn her head this way and that, yes, very good. Could she wiggle her fingers and toes? Could she count from one to ten? Could she say the alphabet forwards and then backwards? Stupid questions, on and on and on.
At one point a pair of women, sharp-faced above their masks, had held a mirror before her. "What color is your hair?" the rightmost one asked.
She’d started to clench her hand--it would have been so /nice/ to yank the mirror from their grasp and crack it over their heads--but when she tried to lift her arm it only fluttered up an inch before dropping. So she had stared at her reflection, the locks draped over her shoulders still damp but beginning to curl. "Red."
"And your eyes?"
"Blue." Ice-blue, too bright, and a mouth like a bow, and ghost-pale skin. She knew red and blue, and hair and eyes, and letters and numbers and words, but as for who and where and what she was--
One of the women had taken the mirror away; the other was writing notes.
This was--it was--it wouldn’t do. She’d opened her mouth, tried to push out a word.
All she managed was a bare hint above a whisper, a soft little vowel sound that stretched out and died. The woman kept on with her scribbling.
She had dug her nails into her palms, drawn a breath in as deep as she could take it, and then dragged it up through her throat.
What came out was a shriek, a shrill cacaphony that almost startled her into snapping her mouth shut again. The woman had dropped her papers, and across the room she had seen little flurries of activity as the others came rushing towards her. They had been shouting too, at her, at each other, but hers had been so high and so loud she could barely hear them. When she ran out of breath she pulled another one in and kept on screaming, and then another; by then her throat was starting to hurt but she felt good, her head--her whole body feeling lighter like whatever she’d been afraid of had been melting away--
Then a hand had come down over her mouth, and she’d felt another sharp pain at her neck, and she’d dropped down into darkness again.
When she’d next awakened, slipping out of a dream of damp earth and black wings, she’d been in a proper bed, and Alexis had been standing at her bedside.
He had been the first one she’d seen with an unmasked face. When she’d lifted her hand a little and reached out to see if he was real or a phantom, he had taken her hand in his own, warm against the cold air, and in a low voice had told her her name.
"Michaela," he’d said, "who is like God."
He had smiled, and his smile was warm too. He’d kept her hand in his own while he’d told her his name, and begged her forgiveness for not having been there sooner. "I'm sure it's been difficult."
She had nodded, and opened her mouth to speak.
“But you’ve borne up wonderfully,” he’d said, before she could utter a word. "Now what you need is rest, so you can recover. If you want for anything, simply ask for it. You must have only the very best."
And he’d stayed beside her until she’d fallen asleep again.
There were no more bothersome tests after Alexis visited that first time, and when she told him how boring it was to do nothing for hours, he had brought a round-faced woman with thin spectacles above her half-mask to sit by her bedside and read fantastic, dreamlike stories. She had lain quietly as tales of Cendrillon and Vasilisa and the little mer-girl and the dappled maiden filled her ears, clinging to the sound of those words and to her name as she drifted.
Michaela, she would think. Once there was a girl named Michaela, who was myself.
But better than the revelation of her name had been when they moved to her real bedroom--the first time she had been allowed to sit up on her own, propped up with a flock’s-worth of down pillows and coverlets--and Alexis had brought her the photograph.
A little later she would wonder how he'd come to have it, and later still she realized what a foolish thing that was to wonder--when Alexis wanted a thing, he got it. Then, she was only curiosity and attentiveness as her put it into her hands.
It was a pretty picture of a well-matched boy and girl, both nearly grown-up, sitting at a table in a leafy garden. The girl was slightly blurred--fidgeting at having to sit still so long?--but her face was clear enough for Michaela to see that her features and the curl of her hair mirrored Michaela's own. The young man’s face, though, was crisp and sharp, his gaze resting on something just outside the frame. He was--no, handsome wasn't right. Beautiful was the only word that would suit him--his fine features, his raven-dark hair, his eyes gleaming bright even through the monochrome.
The sight of him sent an odd pang through her--an ache not at all like the blunted one that lurked in her joints and her bones. This was sweet sort of pain, pulsing along her limbs and into her heart.
"Who is he?" she’d said, half-breathless.
"He," Alexis had said, looking grave, "is the reason you were born."
"I--" Her grip on the photograph had tightened; she'd had to make her fingers loosen to keep from bending the edges. "You mean--I’m meant for him?"
"Yes," he’d said. "You're going to be his bride."
That was the moment her life began, and as he told her about Cain, and Suzette, and what was to happen, the story--her own story-- spread out before her in her mind.
It all made a wonderful kind of sense. She wasn’t an ordinary girl at all! That was why she knew things and remembered things even though she’d only just been born. And of course Cain’s bride should be a princess raised in darkness; the ideal partner for a young man so drawn to death would be someone who had come back from death itself. A boy who'd been marked by God wouldn't be disgusted by the marks that lurked under her bandages. He must be lonely with no family and only servants for company, his childhood sweetheart cold and in the ground. How overjoyed he would be to see that girl reborn, and his unrequited love finally returned.
She kept the photograph tucked among the books by her bedside. It was Cain’s face she kept in her mind's eye and her story she kept in her thoughts when she slept, and woke, and waited.
Since then it might have been ten days, or twenty, or a hundred. There were clocks scattered here and there throughout the maze of hallways, and presumably calendars for those who needed them, but she’d stopped paying them any mind early on. Why bother, when a day was only an arbitrary amount of hours measured by the movements of a sun she hadn't ever seen? She rose when she awoke, went to bed and closed her eyes when she felt tired, and the hands of the clock or the state of the sky meant nothing to her.
Yet she knew that it had been too long. The first time she’d been strong enough to walk she’d wobbled her way through the maze of hallway until she found the tall oak door that barred this world from the world outside, and ordered the gatekeeper to let her out.
He’d only crossed his arms and shaken his head.
She’d told him again, and then shouted it, stomped her foot let out that piercing scream again. She’d pulled the shoes off her feet and thrown at him, and beaten at him with her fists until she had no energy left.
None of it had done any good. She had the best of everything, as Alexis had promised--ordered her wardrobe remade three times over, had hats and gloves and jewelry brought to her by the armful. But no matter how she raged or wept or threatened, she couldn't sway anyone into opening the door for her. She must wait, they all said, for Alexis’s permission.
Each time she awoke thinking: will it be this time? And always the answer: no, not today.
At first the thought of Cain was a glow she kept to warm herself while she’d waited, and lingering on him brought that almost-pleasant pain, like the gentle tug of a hook in her heart. But more and more often the thought of him overwhelmed her mind. Knowing that he was out there in the world, real and breathing but entirely unaware of her existence, was too much to be borne. He might even then be passing by in the street outside, and she was trapped in here with no way to call to him. Her stomach would knot, her nerves wound themselves tight until they were ready to snap, and she could do nothing to relieve the agony but scream and rip or break whatever was closest to hand, or pace up and down her room sobbing until her eyes grew red and sore.
Alexis would always come to her sooner or later, always calm in the face of her distress, and talked to her soothingly until the whirlwind of her emotions had spun itself out. "A princess makes her entrance when the moment is right," he’d say, smoothing a hand over her hair as she leaned against his shoulder.
She read the books the round-faced woman had left behind, and waited.
And then came the moment when she jolted out of sleep, bolting half upright, heart thundering, as though she had just missed a door crashing open with a loud bang.
What was it? she thought, and pressed a hand to over her heart, trying to soften the pounding of her heart. What did that do to me? Nothing looked out of place--of course, no one would have the nerve to enter her room without permission--and though she sat quite still and listened keenly she could hear only faint and far-away sounds people talking and moving about. It had the feel of early evening, but whether that was true or not mattered very little; this place was never entirely asleep, and its workings went on in the small hours of the night just as it did at the height of day.
She tugged on the bell-pull to tell her attendants she was awake, and cast an eye over them as they fluttered in and out of the room, fetching hot and cold water and laying out her clothes. If one of them had dared to come in her while she had been sleeping--but they all looked the same as always, eyes downwards, moving quickly and quietly as she liked them to.
"Not those!" she snapped as one of them began to set out her shoes. "I want the newest ones." If something important was happening, she must dress her best to meet it...though it might be what she felt--unease? excitement?--was only the result of an unremembered dream, which would fade once she'd cleared the sleep from her head.
But it remained, bubbling through her like a dose of tonic water, even after she'd gently washed her face and set her hair to rights and slipped into a clean chemise. Perhaps something had happened, or was about to happen. Something had shifted, given one of the thousand threads running through this place a quiver that carried its way back to her, and kept her fidgeting as she perched on the edge of the bed, waiting.
"What’s happened?" She pinned Jezebel with the question the moment he stepped through the door.
"Nothing, to my knowledge," he said, eyebrows lifted, all innocence.
"Don't tell tales," she said as he knelt and began to unwrap her bandages. "There’s something--"
“Is there?” The bandages on her left leg slithered off; she kept her gaze focused on the ceiling, with only a quick slide of her eyes to Jezebel's face. His expression stayed smooth as glass.
She clicked her teeth together in irritation. The very worst thing about Jezebel was that bullying him was simply too dull. Most people crumbled and capitulated when faced with the storm of her anger or the threat of Alexis's wrath, but with Jezebel it was like pushing at a wall or curtain--he either refused to be budged as if he feared nothing, or quietly and mildly gave way, as though were of no consequence at all. This looked to be a wall-like instance.
If she didn’t soothe this restlessness, though, she would burst. "Tell me something about Cain." Perhaps some intimate detail, some new fact for her mind to tumble around, would settle her a bit.
"Why?"
"Because I've told you to," she said, and drew herself up a little. "You've met him. Tell me what he's like." She swung her feet, the fresh wrappings on her legs pristine and bone-white. If he wouldn't tell her anything, she could kick him and pretend it was an accident.
He was silent so long that she’d already drawn her right foot back for the kick when he said, "His worst poison is within him." He deftly clipped a fastener onto the last bandage.
"What is that supposed to mean?" She turned the statement over in her head. "It's nonsense."
"It's what you requested," he said, gathering up the used dressings and rising. "Never say you weren't given what you asked for."
Anger flared up. Dull or not, that was beyond his place. She reached to her bedside table, curled her hand around the neck of a bud vase, and drew back her arm.
"It will be wasted effort," he said, matter-of-factly. "I doubt you're strong enough to hit me from there."
She hurled it anyway as he shut the door behind him.
He was right, but the smash as it struck the floor was enough to satisfy her.
When she finally left her room, dress and petticoats perfectly arranged, buckles of her new shoes gleaming, she had a vague plan to work her way through the tower until she ran the cause of this feeling to ground.
She whisked through the hallways and up and down staircases, making her steps light, pausing to bend an ear whenever she heard murmurs of the cards and servants in the anterooms. If anything out of the ordinary had occurred, someone would be gossiping about it--though it was no good her asking them if something had happened, oh no; there’d be bows and ‘how can we assist you, my lady?’, but behind their masks they were all spiteful and envious of her, and would keep news from her just for the pleasure of it.
But her intent weakened as she looped around the ritual chambers and doubled back . They were all talking of boring things: some building that had burnt down; whether a vote would go this way and that; what Lord Someone and Lady Whatever had done at a party two evenings ago. Her feet faltered, and stopped, and after a moment's hesitation turned to carry her towards the library instead.
To call it a library was to elevate it; Delilah seemed to have sent out people to buy, borrow, and steal as many books as they could and then pile them willy-nilly onto bookshelves. There was no sense to their contents that Michaela could see, though Alexis had said that the hooded and robed figure who watched over the books knew the content and placement of every one.
Most of them were full of pentagrams and hexagrams and snakes chasing their tails and strange sets of squiggly letters that she couldn't read at all, but if one was willing to wander, there was more interesting fare: books taller than she was full of plates colored so brightly they hurt the eyes (a cross-section of amaranth blossoms; a jaguar with a bird pinned under its paw); looped circles like labyrinths that showed when the stars and planets would be where; cracked volumes with all sorts of gruesome illustrations of what people looked like when you cut them open.
Another time, when she was less agitated, she might have spent her allotment of wakefulness here, flipping page after page, the leather and morocco bindings leaving smudges of red and brown on her fingers and skirt.
At the moment she only wanted to see one book, the one she came to see whenever she woke.
In the center of the library was a book-stand carved of oak and ebony, and on it was the book Alexis had told her was the most important in the world. None of the minor cards were allowed to touch its pages, but Alexis had brought her here on the first day she could walk, and let her turn the pages her until she reached the lines that told of Cain's namesake, how he had been cast out and wandered until he found a wife who bore him a child, and they built a grand city together.
It was a good story--not as good as her own of course, but what could be?--and she had come back to read it several times. What she came to see every time she awoke, though, was not in the text of the book but at the very front, where a list of names and lines had been written in a clear, strong hand on the endpaper.
Somewhere in the world outside there must be a record of births and deaths with the false, respectable lineage of the Hargreaves, but this one was the truth, with the pen-stroke connecting Alexis and Augusta, and a single bold line down to Cain. She let her eyes follow the ink, the curve of the C, the loop of the a, the speck dotting the i, the final flourish of the n.
Suzette’s name floated off to the right, alone, with no link to Cain's. But there was still an empty space beside his name.
Her shoulders dropped a little. She had half-thought that she might see her own name written there this time--but surely it would be there soon. She pressed her fingertip against the blank spot, and traced out the letters. M-I-C-H-A-E-L-A.
For me, she thought, and grew pleasantly dizzy at the power of it.
Thoughtful and subdued, she made her way back to her room.
This she had decided to do on her own. She'd been able to picture the dance perfectly in her head--his hand on her waist, whirling gracefully across the floor of a ballroom--but her first attempt made her glad she'd tried it in the privacy of her own chamber, for she'd only ended up spinning in uneven circles of tiptoeing steps, her stockinged feet hesitant over the carpet.
There must always be a dance before a marriage. Even spiders knew that.
So she had sifted through the twisting shelves in the very back of the library, where Delilah's far-reaching confiscation of the contents of noble libraries had caught up what must have been the contents of a young girl's bookshelf, and amongst the collections of fashion plates and three-volume romances had been a battered book with A Complete Practical Guide to the Art of Dancing printed on its cover.
She had carried it back to room and read through the waltz-steps, first sitting, then standing. Her arms upraised, the book upright in her left hand, she’d walked slowly through the movements until they began to embed themselves in her mind.
Alexis knew about it, as he knew about everything, but he had only given a gentle admonishment not to overtax herself and said nothing about her claiming the little book for her own, nor about her bullying one of the minor cards to bring her one of those funny-looking devices from outside that played a melody when you wound it up. She really ought to have made someone fetch her a group of musicians--surely at a ball one danced to real music, not tunes out of a machine--but the thought of dancing imperfectly in front of people was intolerable, even if they would just be disposed of after she had finished with them.
Now it was only putting the dance together with the music that tangled her up. She nearly had the steps learned perfectly, but too often she allowed herself to get caught up in the sweep of the notes and she would fall out of beat, lose the pattern, and find that the music had spun on ahead without her. Her body itself was an equal hindrance; often only two or three times through the steps would leave her wilting, her limbs longing to go limp and drop herself to the floor so she could rest. After that she'd be too tired to rise from her bed at all for time, and had to settle for closing her eyes and pacing through the steps in her mind: right foot forward, turning to the right; then left foot as she pivots; right foot steps in; left foot out, right foot sweeps back....
But when she felt good, as she did now, it all seemed easy, her legs and feet flowing exactly where they ought to go. Suzette and Cain must have danced together like this; some echo of Suzette's memory still lingered in her reborn flesh, carrying Michaela along effortlessly.
The energy fizzing under her skin buoyed her up enough that she added a few extra flourishes, finishing with a grand twirl, around and around until the pinpoints of candlelight began to blur into glowing lines--
A flash of black caught her eye, and she stumbled to a stop.
Cassian was leaning against the doorframe, arms folded. "You come off your back foot too quick for the turns," he said. "And you're letting your left elbow drop."
“Why are you here?” she snapped, as the last few notes piped out and the machine clicked to a stop. "And what would you know about it, anyway?"
"More than you." His smile turned sharp. “Don’t know why you’re bothering. You’re too short to dance with anyone unless you stand on a box.”
"I might say the same of you." She sniffed. "What do you want?"
The smile dropped off his face. "Alexis wants you."
“Oh?” She stood a little straighter. "Why?"
"Dinner."
So it was evening after all. "I'm not dressed for it. I ought to change."
Cassian shook his head. “Now, he said. And he meant it.”
She thought of saying no, to be spiteful. What would he do--sling her over his shoulder and drag her to the table?
But he stood there waiting, and after a moment she smoothed her already-perfect skirt, and went.
The occurrence of dinner was irregular--Michaela had never been able to discern a reason for it other than Alexis's whim--but in all other respects it was as ordered as ritual. Always they ate in the same grand room of pale marble, so large that candlelight couldn't reach the corners and the ceiling arched far overhead into darkness. The room held no furnishings other than chairs and the long white linen expanse of the table, with Alexis at the foot, Michaela on his left, Jezebel two seats down on the right, and the empty place set at the far end.
She was too delicate for common food, so she took no fish, her soup was a light consommé, and her plate held only a scoop of sorbet and several artfully arranged slices of melon. Therefore she spent less time eating and more time watching, but the formality itself made it worth sitting through. It was pleasant to perch primly with her hands folded over the spread napkin in her lap, to take ladylike sips from her gold-rimmed glass of chilled water, to watch Jezebel stone-facedly eat the greens and leave rest of the meal cooling on its plate.
When she and Cain were finally together, they would eat like this every evening--though perhaps not at such a large table. Yes, something smaller and intimate, side by side as though they were the only two people in the world. And every night when they had finished the meal, Cain would look at her, and smile, and say--
"--in readiness for tomorrow," Alexis was saying.
“What?” She perked up, startled out of her reverie. “What happens tomorrow?”
He favored her with a smile. “After dinner.”
Jezebel was staring at her, his eyes unreadable. She glared back and stabbed her fork into a piece of melon, wishing it were veal or lamb so that she could see the corners of his mouth turn down in displeasure.
The melon was sweet and cool on her tongue.
Afterwards Jezebel faded out of the room like a ghost, and she and Alexis climbed the stairs--thirty-six tall steps--to take a turn about the garden.
It wasn't a real garden, of course, only a long indoor gallery with tall windows on either side to let in sunlight--or the light of the moon now, waxing and lacking only a day or two until fullness. Pale light rippled across raised beds full of aconite and touch-me-not and other, plainer plants and herbs, and purple yards of trellised clematis climbed the walls between the windows.
She and Alexis made one slow circle around the room, and half of another, before she broke the silence. She was just tall enough to walk with her hand tucked into the bend of Alexis's arm, like a lady would with her gentleman--and she smiled at the thought that sooner or later she’d be taller, and Cassian wouldn’t be. That circus trash didn’t know what he was talking about.
"I wish you wouldn't make that horrible boy come to fetch me," she said. "Next time, won't you send someone better?"
"Of course." Alexis's tone was warm and a little amused.
"I don't see why you keep him around." Her shoes clicked lightly against the flagstones. "He's nothing but a nuisance."
"He has his uses. And Jezebel is in need of a companion for his work these days." He pressed his hand over hers. "Much like you and your little friends."
"Tch!" She tilted up her chin, affecting offense. "Mine are much more well-behaved."
"Certainly they are." They made a turn past the far flowerbed, where the evening primrose had begun to open their blooms. "Jezebel said you were agitated today."
Of course, he’d gone and told tales. She’d have to find a way to pay him back later. "I was only a little restless. I had a strange dream, and a feeling--"
"Yes?" There was no amusement in his face, only consideration.
"A feeling that something was about to happen,” she admitted. “And it's been so awfully long." She looked up at him, keeping her eyes as wide and winsome as she could make them. "I won't have to wait very much longer, will I?"
"No," he said. “No longer at all.”
He reached into his jacket and drew out something that glittered.
"Tomorrow you shall go out," Alexis said, holding the object up to a moonbeam. The light leached the color from it, but Michaela knew what it was--a gold ring set with a square-cut emerald, sized for a lady’s hand. "The time is right for the two of you to meet."
"Tomorrow?" Her voice pitched up--higher and more shrill than she meant it. "Tomorrow? On my own? Do you mean it?"
"You’ve been a good girl." His back was to the moonlight, his face in darkness, but he must be smiling. "Hold out your hand."
He cupped his hand under her outstretched one, and from the other he let the ring, Suzette’s ring, fall into her waiting palm.
She curled fingers around it, let it slide onto her ring finger, over the bandages, over the thin white loop of a scar that marked her Suzette ended and Michaela began. Now she was perfect, every piece joined together and complete.
Good, she thought, good, and joy leapt up in her heart like fire.
That fire turned to white-hot agony in her blood not long after she'd put her head down for sleep. The restlessness had fooled her into pushing herself too far; she had done too much, and was now paying for it.
It’s all right, she told herself, clenching the bedsheet between her teeth to keep from crying out as pain throbbed along her limbs. There never was a princess who didn't have to suffer.
When the ache ebbed enough for her to move she let the sheet loose, and sat up as slowly and carefully as she could. Sleep would be beyond her for a while, so she piled up the pillows behind her turned up the lamp.
The light flared off a hundred sets of eight eyes, scattered across the walls and ceiling.
If anyone asked, and if Michaela were a good and truthful girl, she would admit that the first time she woke from a reddish haze of nightmares and found the floor covered in a shifting mass of spiders, she had behaved a too-unladylike manner at the sight of all those eyes and wriggling legs--scrabbled backwards on the bed to press herself into the wall, too terrified to even draw a breath to scream, her mind only a mass of alarm and dismay. She had wanted them dead, she had wanted them gone--
--and all at once they had retreated like a shadow from advancing candlelight.
That had caught her panic up short, and they had all stayed motionless as her breath and heartbeat slowed, and her mind had, bit by bit, absorbed the implications.
When after few minutes she had steeled her nerve and thought come here? they had skittered forward, all obedience.
Now, as she lowered a hand to let a tarantula take delicate steps into the dip of her palm, twitching a little under the tickling weight of its legs, they seemed a fine match for a girl who had only seen the world by darkness and moonlight.
Besides, it was only proper that the princess who married the Earl of Poisons should have a little venom of her own.
The evening must be spinning on to midnight by now. Cain would be asleep, and though Michaela loathed the loss of the chance to sleep in distant tandem with him, this would be the very last time they were apart. Perhaps even now he dreamed of Suzette, not knowing how close he was to their reunion.
"Soon," she said, nestling back into her bed, the spider cradled in her hand, and let the story unfold itself in her head once more. Once there was a raven-haired princess who was born, and died, and born again in great pain for a greater purpose, and that pain turned her hair as red as blood....
She sat, counting the throb in her blood and the beats of her heart, and each beat was another page of the story turned.