I watch Blessing from afar, speaking with the fey folk. Supplicating them, by all appearances. My belly lurches in rebellion as I watch the folk smile at her, their faces aglow. The woman nearest Blessing gives a subtle nod and slides a white hand within the folds of her cloak. From it she pulls a small satchel.
At the sight of the satchel, I freeze. My fingers dig into the bark of the tree I am leaning against. I think perhaps I am clawing too hard and should feel pain, but I cannot tell. My only thought is of that satchel, which Blessing takes from the fey woman’s hands.
The folk are disappearing, their job apparently done. Blessing has had her wish from them and they have no reason to stay. By the time Blessing is left standing alone in the clearing, I am sinking to my knees. By the time she has opened the satchel to pull a single glass slipper from it, tears are freezing on my face.
But surely I am being foolish.
Blessing loves me as I love her, I know it. She would never get the slippers for herself. She would never take this wish from me, this one last thing I have shared with her from my heart. Perhaps, after all, she only wished for them so that she may give them to me.
Yet, even now, Blessing places the lone slipper upon the ground. She pulls her foot from the dainty boot she wears and slips it into the smooth glass. It fits as if it was meant for her. It fits as if she is beloved of the fey, and I am not.
I shudder with the knowledge that she has betrayed me. If nothing else convinces me, the smile on her face does so.
I watch her a moment longer as she pushes the slipper back into the bag and makes her way from the clearing toward home. Her smile may just as well be a knife thrown straight at my heart, for it gives me as much pain or more. I turn from the sight of her and from the anguish that twists through me like poison.
I wait for fury to burn its trail in me, but all I can feel is mourning.
* * *
My dreams that night are like churning, maddened waves during a storm. They are a disjointed tangle of grief. Hatred surfaces, that black thing I had thought vanquished, and this time it is different. Impure. It is diluted by love.
It should be a simple thing, hating Blessing after what she has done, yet I find it is not simple in the least. Love and hate are so tightly interlaced within me, it is impossible to separate them. I am no longer a blind child. I will no longer hate with such purity as I once did. It is different now, a muddled tug of war.
Part of me screams trust. And I long to obey it. But another part rises, as dark as a creature from the deepest part of the sea. And it whispers revenge. It is this voice, this dark voice, which seduces me. With a sense of doom and even satisfaction, I realize it is this voice I will obey.
When I wake I know I cannot have been sleeping long. My covers are tangled around me, mimicking the twist of the dreams I have just left behind. The night is frozen, as if time has come to a halt. The only thing moving is this dark thing in me. It whispers its poison in my ears, and I am too weak to fight it. I creep from my bed to answer its call.
My sister’s door opens without a sound. I would not care if it screeched a warning and brought the whole household down upon us. Either way, I am bent on this plan.
My heart gives a painful lurch when I see Blessing lying there. She sleeps as soundly as if she has not just been wandering the forest like a gypsy, as if she has not just recovered from a grave injury. Her lovely face shows no trace of the guilt she should feel. I myself feel her betrayal so sharply I think it must be written in every move I make. How has she managed to escape it?
Seeing her thus makes me fear I will lose my resolve, so I quickly begin searching her room. It does not take long to find the slippers. She has not bothered to hide them. They are propped on the floor beneath her mirror. A wisp of translucent fabric barely covers them from view.
I squat beside them and reach out. My hand stops partway. After aching for these slippers so long, I am now reluctant to touch them. Fear sends stinging barbs across my skin. I shake my head angrily, denying it power over me, and thrust my hands out to seize the slippers.
My first thought is that they cannot possibly be made of glass. They are softer and smoother than glass, almost warm to my touch. When I told Blessing they were spun from moonlight, I was near the truth.
For a moment all else fades but their beauty. Even my anger and pain are gone as I contemplate what these slippers mean. What they are. They fairly pulse with life beneath my fingers. Rising, I dangle them before my face and gaze at them for several long moments. Do they hold my dreams, as I believed they might? My very heart? But perhaps these only hold Blessing’s dreams, since they were given to her. I will never know.
Neither will she.
Before I can change my mind, I drag back my arm to throw the slippers across the room. I stifle a cry of astonishment as someone steps from the shadows near the window. My hand falls to my side, the slippers still clutched in them. It is the fey man. Gone is the playful youth that walked with me in the wood. His dark eyes are thunder and lightning. I remember how he heard my thoughts once before. There can be no doubt he has heard them now.
“Don’t do this,” he says without moving.
I whimper. It is pathetic, the sound a wounded animal might make. My glance shifts to Blessing. She is beautiful and serene in her slumber. The fey man need only look upon her face, as I am doing now, and I will become nothing to him. Indeed, all I have ever had are her leavings.
Grief has me by the throat. With a strangled cry, I throw the slippers as hard as I can. The noise they make when they shatter on the wall is as beautiful as music and as horrible as the breaking of a heart.
I feel the horror of what I have done even before I see the fey man’s face. His anger is gone and a wretched pain floods his eyes, as if it is his heart I have just broken and not my own. Impulsively, I step forward, reaching for him. But moonlight and shadow swallow him up and he is gone. The place he stood is empty, but it is nothing compared to the emptiness that is within me.
“Izzy, what have you done?”
Blessing is sitting up in her bed, eyes wide. It takes her a moment to understand what has happened. She turns her head and catches sight of the glittering remains of the slippers, scattered across the floor, and puts a hand to her mouth. Before I know what is happening she has leapt from her bed and is across the room in front of me. Her hand flies out and she strikes me across the face. It does not hurt much, but I am brimful of fury all the same.
“How dare you?” I hiss. “How could you do such a thing to me?”
She gives a guttural laugh. “Funny. That’s what I was going to ask you.”
My anger is nearly choking me now. “Oh, yes,” I say. “How could I destroy something of yours? How could I take something from you, do you mean?” I nearly spit in her face. Has she no shame, to stand here and blame me for the very thing she has done time and again?
“You knew I wanted them,” I continue, horrified to hear the tremble in my voice. “You knew they were meant to be mine. How could you …” I sound like a child crying for a toy. For all I know, that is exactly what I am. This wound I thought healed was only festering beneath the surface all these years. Now it is split open and spilling poison everywhere.
Blessing has always possessed what I want. Beauty, grace, the love of my father. And now she has stolen the last thing, the sole thing I wished for.
Or thought I wished for.
The glass slippers are broken and gone, and I will never wear them. But the moment they shattered on the floor, they dissipated from my mind and from my heart. In this moment all I can think of is the fey man’s face as he disappeared into shadow, and that I may never see him again.
I see now the fatal flaw in revenge. It turns sour the moment it is exacted. I am sick with it, right down to my bones. I may have hated Blessing when she took Father from me, but since then something has changed. I can never hate her again. Not even after this. Perhaps the fey man knew that. Perhaps that is what
makes this sin of mine worse than any other I have yet committed. For I have not turned my back on love, as I did once before, but betrayed it while yet holding it close.
“You little fool,” Blessing says, and there is something close to helpless laughter in her voice. “Oh, Iz, you don’t know what you’ve done, do you? You can’t think I got the slippers for myself.”
“I saw you try one on.” My accusation is quick as lightning.
Blessing is unfazed by it. “Of course I did. They were utterly beautiful, just as you told me they would be. Who could resist it? But trying them on and keeping them are two wholly different things.”
As Blessing squats on the floor, her gown billows around her like a cloud. With careful fingers she picks up one piece of the broken glass. And it is glass, I can see that now. Nothing more. Those slippers could never have held a heart, least of all mine. Why then, I wonder, does it feel as if the pieces of my fractured heart are lying on the floor with them?
“They were yours,” she whispers. “I got them for you.” She rises and her next words flare with anger. “You’ve always seen the worst in things. Well, are you happy now? You’ve broken the slippers like a spoiled child, and they were yours all along. You were too selfish to see what would have been obvious to any simpleton—that I would never have taken them for myself. But you preferred to destroy them rather than to see anyone else so much as touch them.”
Her words are so bright and harsh that I have to blink. The truth of them shatters inside of me, sending shards of light and pain straight into my heart. For she is right. I have broken everything which has ever been given to me, simply because it was not perfectly to my taste. It is a horrible truth to swallow. I fear it will poison me if I try.
“Isidore.” When I hear the tenderness in Blessing’s voice I realize I am crying. But when she approaches I back away.
“No.” This one last wound is too fresh, even if it is of my own doing. If I speak of it now I will surely bleed to death.
“But—”
“No.” I shake my head, putting all the resolve I can muster into my voice. Blessing’s mouth shuts like flower petals closing, and she gives me a look I cannot fathom.
In my own bed I curl into a ball. I cannot even gather the strength to crawl beneath the covers. I think of the handful of words the fey folk have spoken to me here in the North. They sounded like comfort when they were first spoken. Now I fight the urge to see them as accusations.
Though if I am honest, I must admit them for simply the truth.
I remember the fey woman’s whisper to me the night she wove Dewdrops into my hair.
Do not lose your heart.
The memory of broken glass thrusts its sharp corners deeper into my heart and I curl tighter, cowering. Do not lose your heart, she said. What she did not tell me was that the surest way to lose it was to hold it tight.
Softer still come the fey man’s words.
This is not your home.
No, I want to answer him, it is not and never has been. I am wandering here, and lost. This world fits me like an ill-made garment, and I cannot help but dream of a time I might cast it aside to don one made to measure for me.
When I remember the anguish in the fey man’s face, I know the slippers are not the only things that I have broken this night. The slippers would only have been a balm to cool the fire of this sickness I carry. They could never have healed it.
Only one thing can do that.
So it is now, in my coldest and loneliest of moments, that I fathom the emptiness that has been in me for so long. More so, I know at last the one way to fill it.
In the same moment that I learn what I truly desire, I understand that it is too late. For I have already destroyed it.
CHAPTER TEN
I cannot imagine a heavier silence than the one hovering between my sister and me as we rumble down the road to the ball. Within the walls of the coach, the atmosphere is so thick it is difficult to draw breath. We sit pressed against opposite corners of the coach like two hostile cats, prepared at any moment to bring out claws. Blessing’s eyes flash blue fury at me from behind her pearl-encrusted mask, and I do the best I can to stave off the roil of emotions washing over me. Guilt and shame are high among them.
Lord Auren’s abode is more palace than house. We can see it shining, brimful of candlelight, from a mile away, as if the sun is preparing to rise in the west. Its tall stone towers and sweeping verandas are too grand for my taste. I would take a cottage in the heart of the wood before I would think of living in such a place as this. But from the corner of my eye I see Blessing grow still, and from the way her slender shoulders rise and fall I know she is breathless with awe.
The wide front doors are thrown open and light spills from them and from the windows. It stretches its golden fingers down the stone steps and onto the frost-covered lawn. We enter the doors together and I melt into the crowd as soon as I can, with only a slight stab of guilt at leaving Blessing alone. Even with her mask in place, she is far and away the loveliest woman here tonight, and soon she is surrounded by men petitioning her to dance.
Giving an inward scoff, I turn my attention to my surroundings. The ballroom is stunning on the merit of its size alone. Thick columns of marble rise so high that the light from the multitude of candles cannot find the top of them. Evergreen boughs and holly branches, bright with berries, are hung everywhere, giving the hall a festive, intimate quality I would not have thought possible in a room so vast.
And everywhere, everywhere, are masked people. Couples hop and twirl past me in a galliard while the scent of perfume accosts my nose. Their masks are a wonder to see. I marvel at the intricacy of some and cringe at the ferocity of others. There is an owl with feathers poking out from every side and the slash of a sharp beak down the center. There is a man with a face of green leaves fanning out from his eyes. There are gilded masks and jeweled masks and masks of lace and ribbons and animal hide.
As I stand among the crush of guests, wishing already for this night to be over, a strange feeling comes over me. Like the whisper of a breeze, it touches the base of my neck and the tips of my ears. A shiver creeps under my skin as I turn slowly around.
It takes me a moment to pick him out. When I do, there is no doubt his gaze is fixed on me. A man is standing across the room. It is a wonder I can see him, for the crowd swarms thick between us. Beneath his mask I can see the angle of a pale, strong jaw. The mask itself is made of burnished metal, thin as parchment, and it angles gracefully around the sides of his face. The eye holes are filled with darkness, and only a glint of dancing light convinces me there are eyes behind them at all. Extending upward from the mask is a pronged diadem. It is a crown fit for a king, and I wonder at the boldness of any man who would wear such a thing in the house of a great lord. Unless …
I tap the person next to me and the face of a wolf, fangs bared, looms above me. “Excuse me,” I say. “Where is Lord Auren?”
“Young Auren? Hm, let’s see.” Though the mask is fierce, its wearer is nothing but a portly old man, his round belly poking out like a drum before him. He gives me a kind smile before he scans the crowd. “I saw him not long ago, but there’s little doubt he is skulking in the shadows somewhere. Auren hates balls, poor lad.”
“Do you know what mask he is wearing tonight?” I cast another glance to where the man with the crown had been standing. He is gone. I give a small huff of frustration. “Was he masked as a king?” I venture.
“Who, Auren?” The man gives a bellowing laugh. “Not he! A king! Oh, what a thought. It’s a wonder he’s even wearing a mask. He doesn’t like drawing attention to himself, you see. I saw him not a few minutes since. Hmm, what was he wearing?” He turns to the lady at his side, whose face is masked in black starched lace. “Belle, my dear, what mask was the young lord wearing? A crimson dragon, was it not?”
“A crimson dragon?” The lady frowns and gives him a sharp rap on the shoulder with her fan. “Nothing like. It wa
s gilded blue, encrusted with diamonds.”
They begin to bicker and I quickly thank them and duck away through the crowd. It seems I must find Auren myself. I am eager to reassure myself that the young lord and the man in the crowned mask are not the same person, though I cannot say why.
In the end, it is Blessing who leads me to him. If I had given half a moment’s thought to it, I could have guessed as much, for fully half the men in the room are buzzing about her like hummingbirds around a flower. Why should Auren not be there, too?
But if she is a flower, she is surely a wilting flower. Her mask cannot hide the look of a trapped animal I see in her eyes. I wonder how the men speaking with her do not see it. I fight the urge to push through them and whisk her away to a place where we can both gossip and laugh over the people in this fanciful, foolish place.
There is a rustling sound to my left, and I twist around in time to see a man making his way through the crowd of others. His steps are slow, like a man who has stumbled into a dream. His mask is a simple white and covers one side of his face. The other side shows skin that is soft and youthful. His eyes and hair are brown as a doe’s. He is hardly more than a boy, yet when the others fall silent and make way for him, I realize I have found the young lord at last.
Auren offers Blessing a polite bow and extends his arm for her to take. Without a word, he leads her from her group of admirers and across the room. I follow in their wake at a distance, using the bright banner of Blessing’s golden hair to guide me through the throng.
They disappear behind the thick curtains of a window alcove and I want to stomp with annoyance, for I had hoped to spy a while longer. Instead, I tuck myself as close to the wall as I can get and put my ear against the curtain. It is shameless, I suppose, but I am beyond caring.
“Thank you.” Blessing’s voice is a wisp of sound. She is breathless with some emotion. It sounds half fear and half elation.
“It’s no trouble.” There is a smile in Auren’s voice. “I will admit, I was perhaps being more selfish than gallant by rescuing you. I’ve watched you the night through and knew I couldn’t let you leave until I met you.”
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