“Amina said once that you’d been studying the Maiden Thief,” Jakob remarks.
“And now my sisters are dead,” I murmur in shame. “It is my fault. I told you the night you came back.”
Jakob tilts my head back, but he does not reward me this time. Instead, he tells me, “I’m sure it is. They suffered because of you.”
My heart seems to die. I want absolution, not this. The love that I’ve been kindling for him flickers.
“You have much yet to atone for,” Jakob whispers. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I do.” I try to look down, but he won’t let me. I think about my family, broken, dead, and lost because of me. I think of Jakob, who lost my sister because of me. There is no way I can set things right in this world.
“You should be grateful I forgive you,” Jakob says then.
“I am.”
He kisses me finally, but all I taste is bitterness. I will work harder to atone. I will show him that I have choked down ashes and brine.
* * *
By the summer, I am ready to ask Jakob if he will have me. It is not a woman’s role to ask, but I’ve decided that I am ready to prove that I can love him, to prove that I can give him the happiness I’ve ruined.
“I can never replace Amina, but”—my voice breaks as I try to find the courage to make my offer—“I could try to make you happy.”
My embarrassment makes it hard to meet his eyes, but I do. I want him to understand that I know what I’m offering. I will be eighteen this autumn, old enough to be a wife.
“I’m yours if you want me,” I manage to say.
“Did you think about what you saw that night, Verena?” His voice is rough, and I startle thinking that he’s angry. “You watched us.”
“I thought she was in danger,” I try to explain. “I heard her cry out. I didn’t know she was … with you when I came outside.”
“I’ve thought about it,” he continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “You watching me.”
“Oh.” I remember the smile that had seemed so cold in the moonlight.
“Are you pure?” he asks.
“I am,” I assure him.
He holds tight to me, his hands clutching both of my arms, and says, “Never lie to me, Verena.”
“I’m not. I swear it, Jakob. I am pure. I’ve never even been kissed by anyone else.”
He says nothing, but that night, when I slip out of doors to meet him, he takes me into the darkest part of the orchard. I hold his hand, following him silently. We stop in a small clearing between trees. When I was small, I played here with my brother. Father had chopped down several sick trees, leaving behind tiny stumps that barely showed after all these years. Now I come here with my … Jakob.
Cautiously, I ask, “What are we?”
“You are my wife, Verena.”
“After we see the minister,” I start to correct him.
“No. You are my wife now.” He releases my hand and stares at me. “Will you be good and faithful?”
“I will.”
“And I will keep you with me always. I will never ask you to work as your father has done.”
Then he kisses me. It is not the soft kisses he has brushed over my lips before. I can’t breathe for fear, and when he pulls away, I am shaking.
There is something about him that is strange and hard. I have done no new wrong, but I am afraid. The glimpses I’ve had of the darkness in Jakob are nothing compared to what I see now.
He grips my hips bruise-hard. “You must be faithful, Wife. You must be truthful.”
“I am!”
“You told me you were pure.” He unfastens his trousers.
As I understand what he is about, fear makes me bold, and I try to pull away. “Jakob, wait!”
“We are married,” he tells me. “Our vows were said.”
I’ve never heard of such a wedding. There was no minister, no guests, no family, but I’m not sure such a thing is still an option for me. The townspeople do not look my way. My family, save Father, is dead.
“You said you would try to replace her,” Jakob reminds me. “You are my wife now.”
I lift my worn cotton nightdress, baring my body to him. Jakob watches my face as he presses his body into mine. I bite my lip to keep my screams silent, but my eyes fill with tears.
Jakob smiles as he did the night I saw him with my sister. I realize now that it is a cruel smile. I let my cries of pain free, and his smile grows wider.
After he is done with my body and refastens his trousers, he tells me, “You are a good girl, Verena. You did not lie to me.”
And then he touches my body gently, kissing and licking my tears away. His mouth moves to my throat and my chest, even though the flesh is still covered with my nightgown.
“There are no tears there,” I tell him, afraid that more pain will follow.
He laughs, and then he kisses the place where he just hurt me. After several moments, I almost forget the pain as other feelings consume me. Again I am shivering, but this time for reasons I didn’t know possible.
Afterwards, he straightens my clothes and walks me to the edge of the orchard. I know that he will watch until I am in my door, but he will not come near the house. He never has.
Before I walk away, he tells me, “If you are good, there will be joy like that.” Then he squeezes my hand tightly and adds, “But if you are not, there will be worse pain than our first moment. We choose our lot in this world. Do you understand me, Wife?”
“Yes, Jakob.”
“I will come for you.”
“Yes, Jakob.”
* * *
It is only a week later that Jakob leads me into the castle. We are far from any other house, far enough that should I scream, no one would hear me. I want to run, but there is nothing for me outside these thick walls.
He cups my face in his hands like I am a child. “You will be faithful and good, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
He kisses me in a way that makes quite clear that he does not think me a child. At first, I was ashamed of the things I let him do to my body, but over the past week, he has twice demonstrated that he does not like it when I refuse to accept his wishes. It is not what a Good Wife does.
“I like to please you,” he reminds me. “But you must be good.”
“Yes, Jakob.”
“Would you like to see your bedroom?”
“Yes, Jakob.”
There are clothes of my size, but there are also other dresses hanging in the closet, ones that would not fit me. I ask, “Whose are these?”
“Those are my wife’s clothes.”
I retract my hand, not wanting to touch either the larger or smaller dresses. I want to find an explanation that does not frighten me, but nothing comes to me. I look at my feet, unsure of what to do.
He walks over to stand beside me, and almost idly, he strokes my hair. “You are my wife.”
“I am.”
“Then those are yours now,” he explains.
I nod, and he orders me to bathe and unbind my hair. “Like the night you saw me with Amina.”
* * *
After several weeks, I can no longer stand the silence and boredom. Jakob is often gentle, but he is not always kind.
He insists that I dress only in long white dresses, and he slips soft white shoes on my feet every time I leave the bedroom. Within the bedroom, I am not given any clothing, but in the rest of the house, I must wear this peculiar uniform that makes me unsure if I am wearing mourning or bridal clothes.
I ask to go out, to do something to keep the castle up, or even to plant a small garden. Jakob refuses every request. I am given books to study, guides on what a wife should do.
After the first full month, Jakob tells me, “I need to go away for a week.”
I’m thrilled. I’ve not traveled since Bastian’s death. The only place I’ve gone is from my Father’s house to school or the town, and then last month, from my Father’s hou
se to Jakob’s castle. “When do we leave?”
Jakob shakes his head and smiles at me. “Not you, Wife. You are mine. No one else can look upon you.”
“Ever?” I ask weakly.
For the first time since our vows, I see the whole of the darkness in the man I married. He strikes me and hurts me as he did that night. Afterward, I am bleeding in our bed, and Jakob is brushing my hair back.
“They would try to destroy what we have,” he says. “They would look at you and think impure thoughts. They would ruin you.”
“I’m sorry,” I say because it is what he expects.
“I spent years looking for you, watching, waiting. You don’t know how hard it was.” He sits up and stares at me. “Can I trust you?”
I nod and gingerly push myself to sit beside him.
“It was you I wanted all along,” he tells me. “I stopped at the orchard that first day because I’d seen you in town.” He gently kisses my forehead. “You were always meant to be mine. I need you to be worthy of my love.”
I swallow hard and tell him, “I don’t want anyone else to look at me. I just asked to go because I will miss you.”
Jakob is himself again at my words. He slides to the floor and puts uncomfortable white shoes on my feet. Before he slips each shoe on, he kisses my foot. Then he stands, and I hold out my hand to him as he’s taught me to do.
Once I’m standing, he washes away the blood he’s drawn from my body. There’s nothing to do for the bruises or swelling, but the blood is soon gone. I submit to his ministrations; not even a whimper crosses my lips.
Jakob dresses me, and then he takes my hand and leads me to his study.
“I need you to hold something while I’m gone.” He barely opens a cabinet and reaches into it.
I cannot see inside the cabinet, but from it, Jakob has withdrawn a delicate white egg. It’s perfect. No spots mark the surface, and the only imperfections are two small holes where the contents were removed.
Dutifully, I hold out my hand. “It’s beautiful.”
Jakob smiles. “And fragile.” He places the egg in the palm of my hand. “You must carry it with you while I’m away. Anywhere you go, it must be with you.”
I frown.
“I’ll know if you don’t obey me,” he warns. “You said you would be good. You said you would be faithful.”
“I am.”
For a moment, Jakob seems devastated. “You need to stay that way. I don’t want to have to hurt you. I want to be right this time. No one else was faithful, Verena, but you know me. You’re the only one who’s ever understood me.”
A truth I’ve refused to consider starts pressing against my lips.
“This key is to the only locked room in the castle,” he says, holding out an old-fashioned key on a length of red velvet as he motions me toward him.
I lean forward, and he puts the ribbon over my head so the key hangs over my heart. The velvet reminds me of a trail of blood as I am forced to think of the facts that mean my husband might be the Maiden Thief.
If Jakob is the killer, I am one of the stolen girls.
“How long have you been waiting for me?” I ask quietly.
My husband smiles and tells me, “For years, I didn’t know it was you, just that there was a Good Wife I needed to find. I thought it could be you. Your birthday was the right time, but then I saw what you’d written, and I knew you understood me.”
“When I was sixteen,” I whisper.
Jakob kisses me as he does when I give him the right answers. I stay perfectly still as he does so. Then he walks to the door and waits for me to follow.
Mutely, I do so.
“Karis and Amina were replacing you, not the other way around,” he tells me as he pulls the door to the study closed behind us.
“The only locked door besides this one”—he lifts the key from between my breasts and then drops it so it thunks against my body—“is the door to the outside world.”
I nod.
“There are traps on the grounds.” He strokes my face and throat. “There are beasts that I set free to roam when I am away. To protect you. To protect us. You understand, don’t you?”
I nod again.
“You were my quest, Verena.” He touches my swollen eye roughly, drawing fresh pain. “I have to keep you safe.”
This time, I force myself to say, “Thank you, Jakob.” I meet his eyes and add, “I’ll be good and faithful.”
And then he’s gone. My husband, the Maiden Thief, the killer of my sisters, has left me alone in my beautiful prison. I cannot move for several hours. I sit in the silence and think. I had been right that the killer took Amina—and that she had gone with Jakob. I had been right that there was something terrible in his smile the night I had seen him with my sister. Worst of all, I had found a pattern to the Maiden Thief’s crimes. I had figured out why. There was so much that I had known, and the knowing still hadn’t saved me or my sisters.
Whatever is in that room is what I need to find. Maybe it’s proof of his sins. Maybe there is something there that will let me reach help.
Maybe it’s Amina. The others surely must be long dead, but she has only been gone a year. I have hopes that she might still live—or at the least, that I might be able to give her a proper burial.
The egg is the easiest part. I wrap it in cloth and hide it in an urn. There is no way for Jakob to discover my disobedience, and even if he does, I would rather risk my death than do as he orders.
He has killed my sisters. I will not stay here. I will not allow him the perverse happiness he has found in me for a moment longer than necessary.
First, I need to see what’s in the forbidden room. I pull off the slippers that Jakob insists I wear, and I debate what to do about my dress. He’s so insistent that I only wear white slippers and white dresses that brush the tops of my feet. I can have bare arms or low-cut fronts or even dresses with no backs, but my skirts must always touch my feet.
Whatever reason he has to keep my legs and feet cloaked in white, I refuse it now. If he wants me to do it, it cannot be good. I steal a sash from the curtains and use it as a belt of sorts. Once my skirts are tied up around my hips, I begin to try every door in the castle.
* * *
But when I finally find the door the key fits, I am afraid. The proof is within this room, the answer to my sisters’ fate, the details about the Maiden Thief that I thought I had wanted to know.
I turn the key and open the door. A soft whooshing sound fills the dim room, as if many hearts are beating in time, as if many breaths are slipping away at once. The floor is wet with pink-tinged water, and glass caskets with gilt edges rise up like islands in a red sea.
Most of the caskets are closed, but others are lined up against the far wall with lids open still. They are waiting to be filled. One of those caskets would be mine if Jakob found me here.
I stare at them, the taken girls. They are arranged in boxes, alive but not moving, eyes closed, lips parted as if in silent screams. In each glass coffin, one of the missing girls is preserved with tubes running into her casket, keeping her alive and silent.
The blood-tinged water would stain my dress if I hadn’t held the skirts up, stain my shoes if I’d worn them, stain the beautiful egg if I hadn’t hidden it inside an urn to keep it safe.
I back out of the room and sit on the threshold. I unroll my long hair and wipe the blood from my feet. Then I twist my hair up again, stained with the blood of my sisters. I am grateful that Jakob likes my hair bound and my strengths hidden. I am grateful that my father chose to deny me comfort. Their callousness made me strong enough to survive this day.
I glance back at the rows of glass-coffined women. I don’t know what he’s done to the girls, how he keeps them like this, but I swear to them, “I won’t leave you like this.”
And then I pull the door closed and return to the library to think.
* * *
By the time Jakob returns, I have a plan. I spent y
ears waiting for men to figure out how to stop the Maiden Thief, for my father to realize that he needed to try to save his family. I am done waiting on someone else to save me or the people I love.
I greet my husband dutifully when he enters the castle.
Jakob is restrained. He doesn’t kiss me, and for that I am grateful. There is a hatred within me that he has been nurturing for years. I didn’t realize it was a hatred for him for a long time, but today I know.
We walk into his study, and I see the cabinet behind Jakob. The doors are open, and in it, I see the twelve beautiful decorative eggs. Several are broken. All are bloodstained. The taken all failed this test. I’m hoping I can succeed where they did not—for them and for myself.
Jakob watches me with such raw hope in his eyes as he asks, “Where is the egg I gave you? I want to put it with the others.”
“Here.” I hold it out. The egg is as unblemished as it was when I accepted it from his hand.
He takes the egg and stares at it for several heartbeats. When he looks at me, there is such joy and pride in his expression that I feel a touch less afraid. I force myself to smile. My blood will join my sisters’ if I disappoint him.
“You’re truly her,” he says in a voice filled with wonder. “I knew I’d find you if I looked long enough.”
I nod.
“There were others…”
“Other wives,” I supply, and then quickly add, “I’ve seen their clothes.”
Jakob smiles at me, proud of my mind as he has been so often. “But they weren’t faithful and good.” He strokes the egg. “You were the one I was waiting to find. I was impatient before, hoping to find you before you were ready.”
“How many?” I ask.
Jakob glances at the eggs. “None that matter now.”
My heart twists in pain, thinking of the twelve women trapped in glass coffins. They bled. Maybe not all of them, or maybe just not the first one, but I can imagine my own terror if Jakob took me into that room. I’ve seen what waits there. I’ve seen the glass prisons. I would fight.
I will fight. I ball my hands into fists to keep from striking him. I want to hurt him, but he is stronger than me. I must wait. I force myself to swallow my rage a little longer.
Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2016 Page 27