by Sarina Dorie
“I don’t care if you don’t think he isn’t much to look at,” Vega said. “I think he’s beautiful.”
“He is,” I agreed.
I took in Vega’s visage again. I could see why pink was so horrible on her now. It dulled the color in her cheeks—if there were any to begin with.
“You should wear black like you normally do.” It would make her look pale rather than colorless.
“I can’t. It’s considered a color of mourning. Elric bought me pastel day dresses because he thought they would be more appropriate. He insisted they would distract the eye from my ashen complexion.”
“That dress you wore last night was certainly distracting.”
“Don’t you start.”
“If you can’t wear black, you could wear dark blue or dark green. That will bring out your eyes.”
“Don’t give me fashion advice.”
“Better me than Elric.”
A wistful smile played across her face. “True. It isn’t like he obeys the Fae rules of attire or etiquette. I shouldn’t have to just because I was unfortunate enough to have decided to marry him.”
I nodded in agreement. “That’s my point.”
Vega stood up abruptly, eyes scanning the sky. Flickers and flashes of blue and green defined a dome shape around the estate and the grounds. Her brow furrowed. She shoved the baby into my arms.
Sebastian murmured gibberish at me. He was beautiful. The moment I held him in my arms, a void I hadn’t known inside me felt filled and simultaneously vacant. Cuddling with Sebastian was better than Elric’s puppy cape. Tears filled my eyes, but I didn’t know why. A chasm of yearning opened in my heart. A black hole that hadn’t been there the moment before threatened to consume all joy and hope. I wanted this. A baby. I never had thought I wanted children so much.
But it was more than pining. Sorrow had taken up residency in me like an unwanted tenant. It felt like my affinity, a void that had once been happy and full, was now empty and dead. Touch hadn’t cured it like the last time I’d been drained.
I saw myself holding a baby once before, only that baby had been covered in blood. She had been grotesque and monstrous like books described newborn Witchkin. At the same time, she’d been the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen. I’d fallen in love with her and wanted to keep her forever.
I didn’t remember whose baby that was. Could it have been Maddy Jennings’ baby? It would make sense. She’d been wanting to become pregnant so she could choose the father before the King of the Pacific chose for her. She had asked me to help ensure she conceived. In that time when my memory was blurred and obscured, it was possible I had helped her using the solution of the Fae Fertility Paradox. I might have delivered her baby in secret.
It might even have been a genetic memory, my biological mother’s own memory holding me before she’d had to give me up.
As I closed my eyes and sank into the fog of memories, I had the sense something had happened to that baby. I hadn’t kept this baby, nor had anyone caring and good. This baby had been a firstborn promised to the Fae.
Vega shook my shoulder. “Get up. We need to return to the cottage.” She held out her wand, her stance defensive. Her eyes scanned the sky.
In my distraction with the baby, I had failed to notice the flickers of light in the dome above us increase. The black silhouettes of birds dove toward an invisible ceiling, light crackling where they met the surface.
Vega hauled me to my feet. “Carry Sebastian. Walk ahead of me. We’re going inside where it’s safe.”
“Is that the Raven Court?”
She shoved me forward. I hurried along the path, Vega right behind me. I knew this feeling from before, holding a baby and fearing for my life, terrified the Raven Court would get us. Whose baby had I been carrying?
A well of grief opened inside me. A sob bubbled up out of me.
“Hold it together. We’re almost there,” Vega said.
The moment we made it inside, Vega shouted for the nurse and a maid. I was crying too hard to understand her, only that she said something about going out for the other children. She left me alone with the nurse, who tried to take the baby from me, but I wouldn’t let her.
I needed to keep this baby safe. I crawled under a table and held him protectively.
A few minutes later, Vega found me. “Why are you hiding under a table? I told you the threat is over.”
I hadn’t heard her say anything to me. I had been off in my own little world. Even still, panic rattled through me, making me shake.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Vega snapped.
“Nothing.”
“Stop crying. You’re getting the baby wet with your tears.”
I held Sebastian tighter to my chest, never wanting to let him go. He started to cry too now.
“Give him to me.”
“I can’t.” I wanted to run from her, to run from the Raven Queen before she could get this innocent baby. I tried to crawl away, but Vega stood on the hem of my dress.
“Give me my baby, or I’ll hex you.”
She pried her baby from my arms, swearing at me all the while. I curled up on the floor and cried.
That was how Thatch found us: Vega shouting, the baby screaming, and me sobbing. It didn’t make for the start of a very good day.
Elric visited me a short while after my episode in the garden. I had a feeling it was going to be one of those visits. I was already in a glum mood, and I didn’t even know why. I couldn’t explain my earlier panic and tears. I had behaved irrationally, and I didn’t like it.
The Raven Queen had done something to me. Probably she’d made me torture babies, and Thatch didn’t want me to know about it. Even if he had suppressed my memories, he hadn’t erased them. The feeling of regret and loneliness still lived in my body. My misery dwelled deep in my core, almost hidden by the void of my broken affinity, but not quite.
Seeing Elric and knowing I had no choice about having sex with him only made me feel worse.
Elric sat down at the table across from me. “I heard about your upset in the garden. How are you feeling now?”
I shrugged noncommittally.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I crossed my arms. “No. I want you to tell me about what happened. I want answers.”
“I don’t blame you.” He smoothed my hair out of my eyes. “Is that what you think you need to make you feel better?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Are you offering to tell me the truth about what happened?”
He left his chair and came around the table, surveying the half-finished sketches I’d made. “I’m not supposed to reveal Thatch’s secrets to you. They’re his to tell you when he’s ready.”
That was an interesting way to put it. I thought he was hiding my memories to protect me from my own deeds. Now I wondered how Thatch had played a role in what had happened.
Elric stooped to kiss my forehead. “In any case, I suspect I don’t know enough information about the situation to be useful, but I can help you reveal the truth of your feelings to yourself.”
I waited for him to explain.
Elric lifted a watercolor I’d abandoned after a single wash. “It looks like you aren’t inspired to create right now. Have you considered channeling your feelings into your artwork? You paint skilled portraits of others that always tells some truth about their soul. It might be cathartic to work on a self-portrait. It might be … revealing.”
I understood what he meant now. I had painted Josie as a spider woman, not knowing she was part jorogumo. I had painted Thatch’s Red affinity and the burdens haunting his soul in his portrait. The paintings of Elric had revealed his true character of goodness. I hadn’t known how to interpret what I’d created, but the truth had been there.
I nodded, thinking this was a good idea.
“Let me inspire you.” Elric lifted the framed mirror from its home on the wall and set i
t before me so that I could see myself at the table. He placed his hands on my shoulders and rubbed my muscles as I drew.
His muse magic was subtle, nothing I would have known came from outside myself. I sketched my portrait and the hint of interest blossomed into a fervor. My hand moved more quickly across the page. I drew a caricature of myself, my eyes and lips too large and my hair too long to be accurate. Strands of hair wrapped around me and blew in a wind, reminding me of snakes.
I transferred the drawing to watercolor paper and painted the first transparent wash before setting it aside and starting another. In the next drawing, I drew myself as the witch I wished I were. I stood in the same gown I’d seen in Alouette Loraline’s portrait, snakes coiled around my arms to create green and black stripes. My heart was torn open, missing. From that void emerged a raven halfway out, one wing extended.
I touched my chest, reassured by the beat of my heart that I hadn’t been a victim of the Raven Queen removing any organs. I had no scars nor the ticking of clockwork mechanisms inside me. I was still myself, uncursed as far as I knew. I wasn’t like Derrick.
Perhaps I still mourned his death. That gave me pause. Derrick had died? I vaguely remembered him falling from an airship. I placed my pencil on the paper and stared at it, wondering if this was my way of mourning Derrick’s death. It would make sense that was why I felt so troubled and empty. No, the heartache of Derrick was there, but that was farther away.
“Are you done with your drawing?” Elric asked, probably because I’d set down my pencil.
“No. I’m just trying to figure out what to change.”
Something wasn’t right about the drawing. The exaggerated proportions and the anguished expression were fine, but the feelings weren’t right. I erased the raven emerging from my chest.
“Dig deeper.” Elric inhaled as if the air tasted of creativity that he could drink in to nourish himself. Perhaps it did for a muse.
I closed my eyes and let my subconscious guide me. I didn’t know if this was magic or just a kind of awareness anyone might have and develop. I sank into myself, trying to know who I was inside, my secret self that I was kept from knowing for my own good.
I elongated the crack extending from the chasm in my chest so that it expanded into my abdomen. I drew the raven again. This time I could fit more of its body emerging from my own. A snake the size of a boa constrictor circled my waist, the long neck draped down my side. The snake’s head peeked under the hem of my long dress. I laughed at the pervey snake and added shading and detail to the figure that was supposed to be me.
Elric studied the drawing a long time before speaking. “Does this represent how you feel in the present or what you think will happen in the future?”
In the future. I hadn’t considered that.
“I’m not sure.” I had created drawings of Derrick using remote-viewing skills, without even realizing I had used magic. I was certain I’d used that technique with others, I just wasn’t clear on who that had been. I hadn’t used magic, and this drawing didn’t come to life. I suspected this was some kind of soul portrait. A reflection of my fears.
“Who is that?” Elric pointed to the female figure.
“Me.”
“And who else is featured in this piece?”
It was a curious question to ask. As a teacher, I would have asked what the snake and the raven represented, but he asked who. I was certain his choice of words meant something, even if he couldn’t tell me directly. He was helping me in his way.
“The raven must be the Raven Queen.” She flew out of my wound as though she had caused it. She lived in my heart and soul, haunting me.
The snake was more difficult to fathom.
It felt right to thank him. I forgot myself and started, “Tha—”
He kissed me, sealing the words into my mouth before I could complete them. His tongue brushed mine, sweet and salty like rich caramel. He tasted like music and poetry and art. More than ever I wanted to paint.
He lifted me into his arms, drinking me in with passion. Watercolors flowed through my veins. It was surreal and dizzying as the muse magic sank deeper inside me. Elric carried me to the bed, our lovemaking more passionate than it had been the day before. A small, rebellious part of me said I wouldn’t like it, that I would mentally resist, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I sank under his spell of muse magic and touch.
He fell asleep in my bed when we were done. The moment he dozed off, I dressed and returned to my art, a fever in my blood to create and express myself. I burned to paint, to reveal the truth about myself.
I didn’t want to stop for dinner. Thatch had seen me under the influence of muse magic before. He knew the only way to make me eat was to take my paintbrush away.
He snatched one out my hand before I could ready another glaze. “I’m not giving this back until after dinner.”
“You beast!” I said, laughing at him.
He laughed uneasily, perhaps uncertain if I actually thought that.
I stood and hugged him. I had thrown off my glum mood like one threw off a cloak. Art was therapeutic, especially with a Fae muse to help inspire.
His gaze flickered from my eyes to one of the unfinished masterpieces behind me. “You need to dress for dinner. Our host is waiting.”
“I’ll just come down in this,” I said, waving a hand at the gray dress Thatch had packed for me from my wardrobe at Womby’s.
“Elric will have a fit if he sees you in that. Fae can be so temperamental about dinner attire. They’re quite formal.” This coming from a man who always wore a suit for every occasion.
Today his suit was an indigo so dark it almost appeared black.
I hurriedly changed into a pink beaded gown behind the dressing screen. All the buttons for this one were in the front, so I didn’t need a maid for this at least. When I peeked out, I found Thatch studying my art at the table. He quickly turned away when he caught me watching him.
“What do you think of my paintings?” I strode out from behind the screen and grabbed the hairbrush. I ran it through my hair.
“Your skill is exceptional,” Thatch said.
“But what do you think of the imagery? The subject matter?”
His voice was carefully neutral. “You have a vivid imagination.”
I wondered if I’d caught something more in the paintings than he wanted to reveal—or was allowed to reveal due to his oath with Elric. It was so difficult to read his lack of reaction.
“I’ve decided you must be the serpent in the piece.” I’d worked on it during the day and changed the snake to give it legs and wings.
“Is that so?”
“Don’t act so surprised. You must recognize yourself.”
He shook his head.
“When we make love and you come inside me, don’t you see me as a dragon?”
His forehead crinkled up in confusion. “No. Why would I?”
“It’s happened twice. Once was in the Raven Queen’s castle when she made us have sex. The second time was when Quenylda cursed me. You don’t remember?”
He didn’t answer. He had moved on to another one of my paintings. In this one I wore all black like I worn today.
His voice enunciated his words in a perfect monotone. “Is this you holding Vega’s baby?”
“I think it’s my feelings about holding a baby.” I shuffled that one away under the others. I didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.
Vega’s baby boy was beautiful. In this self-portrait, I held a monstrous creature. It was spindly and reptilian. I didn’t feel longing or joy as I had when I’d gazed at Vega’s baby. Just looking at the picture left me with a sick feeling inside.
Dinner wasn’t any less uncomfortable than it had been the night before. I thought a good sign that Vega was done being annoyed with me was that she’d taken my fashion advice and selected a glittering green gown, so dark that it paled the gray of her skin and showed off her emerald
eyes. But Vega glowered at me. It was hard to say whether this was her usual crabbiness or she was angry with me for becoming a complete moron when I’d held her baby.
I kept thinking back on what had happened during the day. I had almost remembered something, and I had freaked out. It was no wonder everyone walked on eggshells around me. I had to show them I was normal, healthy, and recovering perfectly fine.
Elric made cheerful conversation. Thatch spoke politely when asked a question, but he didn’t go out of his way to engage with anyone. I studied his somber expression, wondering about his reaction to my art. He’d been hiding something. I understood he wanted to protect me from regressing, but he didn’t understand how hard it was not knowing the truth. I’d drawn him as a dragon, and I’d drawn my portrait holding a beastly little creature. My body reacted as though I’d experienced loss. Could I have birthed a child when I’d been sleeping?
Thatch caught me staring at him. He smiled and patted my hand.
The food was delicious, but my mind kept wandering back to what had happened earlier in the garden. Vega had revealed so much about herself. Even if she claimed I was the only person she could tolerate, it didn’t mean my medical situation didn’t make her resentful.
I needed to ask someone for advice. Someone I could trust. It would be logical to write to Josie and Khaba. But there was one other person I trusted even more.
During the lull in conversation, I said, “I was thinking I might like to see my mom.”
Thatch’s fork hovered almost to his mouth. Elric set his cutlery down. He gave Thatch a pointed look.
“What?” I asked.
Thatch resumed eating.
“What do you mean you would ‘like to see’ your mom?” Vega asked slowly.