by Rosalyn Eves
“Follow me.” The archduchess led me through a series of rooms to what appeared to be a private suite: instead of the expected portraits and fine sculptures, the walls were covered with quick sketches of landscapes, laughing faces of young men and women. The bookshelves along the walls contained books that appeared to be well read and not merely for show; there was a top hat set carelessly on a corner desk and a sheaf of papers scattered along a table.
Before a closed door, the archduchess stopped and turned. “The archduke is very weak. Please do not try to speak with him. And if he appears to be in any distress, I will ask you to stop at once.”
“Yes, Highness.” I gripped my hands together, my fingers cold despite the stuffy warmth of the apartments in the early-afternoon sun.
I followed Archduchess Sophie into the room, and only just refrained from gasping. The young man on the bed bore scant resemblance to the archduke I had danced with only a few months before. The rosy-cheeked boy with the laughing blue eyes was wan and pale, his cheeks sunken. His eyes were shut, and I could see the tracing of thin purple veins along the lids. Someone had shaved him, so his cheeks and lip were smooth.
As I approached the bed, his eyes flickered open. “Anna?” His voice was thready, an echo of its former robustness. “I thought you were lost.”
At once it struck me how vulnerable I was here—it was easy to be lulled into complacency by the pretty exterior and polished manners of this place, but the archduchess could order my death at any moment and I could not stop her.
Perhaps I was still lost.
“Hush, Franzi,” Archduchess Sophie said, moving to smooth the hair away from his forehead. “Miss Arden is come to make you better.”
The weak smile he directed at me twisted my heart, because the smile still held affection—still, when I was not at all the woman he had thought me. Still, when I might have been the bearer of the curse that held him bedridden.
“I mean to try, in any case,” I said, because I would not lie to him.
The archduchess nodded at me, and I drew nearer, putting my hand over the thin one that lay listless on the bedcovering. Franz Joseph’s fingers twitched beneath mine.
I took a deep breath, then closed my eyes. I had broken the samodiva’s spells in the cave, but that had been mostly instinctive, and the breakings had been rough. This called for more delicate work.
Finding the skeins of magic wrapped around the archduke was not difficult, but the strands did not seem to follow any sort of regular pattern. They wove about one another, knotting, then doubling back. The core of the spell seemed nestled in his heart.
I was not sure where I should begin, which strand would unravel the others. With my inner chimera sense, I plucked at one of the strands of magic branching from Franz Joseph’s heart. The thread, thick and resilient, did not snap, but the archduke gasped, and his fingers tightened around mine.
I opened my eyes to find him staring at me, pain etched into the lines of his face. Archduchess Sophie glared a warning at me.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, releasing the archduke’s hand. I closed my eyes again and reached for the spell, but new unease made me tentative and slow. My fingers trembled, and I curled them into fists.
I hope you break his heart, Vasilisa had said. What would happen when I unraveled the spell from his heart?
I started instead at the outward fringes of the spell, searching for threads that were looser than others. The weave was not brittle, as so many human-cast spells were. I could not simply snap them. Nor, as I had just discovered, could I pull them loose from the source.
After some trial and experimentation, I found that I could unravel the threads from one another, but this was slow, painstaking work—much like trying to detangle a ball of yarn after a kitten has been through it. I was not sure I was accomplishing anything, but the archduke seemed to breathe easier as I worked.
The afternoon passed into night. A servant came in to light the tapers, and the archduchess asked that two meals be brought to the room.
She instructed me to pause and eat when the food arrived, a simple meal of sliced meat and fruit. The archduchess herself fed Franz Joseph some broth, dabbing at his face with a fine handkerchief when the liquid spilled onto his chin. She did not eat until he had been fed, until I was once more working on the spell.
My head had begun aching earlier; by the time I resumed the spell-breaking after supper, pain throbbed along my temples.
But I could not—would not—stop. Not simply because my pardon hung in the balance, or because the archduchess might be able to halt the impending war. But because as I worked, I could see the lines of pain in Franz Joseph’s forehead ease. He had been my friend once, and if I could bring him some comfort, I would.
The spell hung loosely about him now, a collection of threads tied to his heart but no longer woven so densely. If I could uproot them, the spell would fall apart.
I reached for one of the heart strands again, took a deep breath, and tugged gently, as though I were a gardener easing a plant from the soil with the roots intact.
Franz Joseph cried out, a hoarse, broken noise.
I released the strand.
What unholy spell was this? I did not know if I could pull the spell-roots free from his heart without killing him.
I opened my eyes again. Franz Joseph was sleeping, albeit restlessly. The archduchess’s eyes were fixed on me, unblinking. Beside her, the light from a brace of candles wavered in the dim room. Beyond, I could see only the reflection of the room in the window—nothing of the stars or the city lights.
“Is something wrong?” Archduchess Sophie asked. She did not seem angry, only concerned.
“The spell is trickier than I had supposed. It is rooted somehow in his heart, and I must figure out how to disentangle it without harming him.”
“You will do it,” she said. “His life—and yours—depends upon it.”
I nodded, nowhere near as sanguine, and took a sip of water from my glass on the bedside table. My doubled soul felt along the lines of the spell again, but this time, instead of trying to force the threads, I simply observed them. I let myself sink into their lines and rhythms. Please, I prayed, let me find something.
I was no expert, but it seemed that the spell, however it had been powered initially, was fueled by the archduke’s heart, his own life force subsumed into the spell that was slowly killing him. As a child, I had watched our gardener attack a mistletoe infestation in some of the trees on our property; I had been shocked to find that a plant I had always associated with Christmas festivities could kill a grown tree if it grew large enough. The gardener had removed the mistletoe by cutting off the entire branch of the tree where the parasite was attached. Even if the spell had a physical presence, I could not cut out Franz Joseph’s heart to heal him.
There had to be another way.
If I had Noémi’s gifts, I might stop his heart, wrench the spell free, and then start it again—though even Noémi might find that magic too risky.
Wait.
If the spell was fueled by the archduke’s heart, there must be two parts to it: the first, which attached to his heart, much as the mistletoe grew to employ the tree’s own root system for nourishment; and the second, the body of the spell itself, which I could see wrapped around him.
I had been so focused on undoing the body of the spell that I had not seen the possibility of another spell. Once I knew what to look for, I was able to find the first spell: tiny, almost invisible filaments branching off the main fibers to nestle in his heart. I pinched one, and it disintegrated beneath my touch. I pinched another, then another, my spirits lifting a fraction with each one. There were hundreds of the tiny filaments, and I might be at this all night, but I could do this.
“Miss Arden!”
I blinked. The archduchess was standing by the bed, lean
ing close to Franz Joseph.
“Whatever you’re doing is hurting him. He keeps flinching.”
I pinched another of the filaments, my eyes open this time and fixed on Franz Joseph. His head jerked.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “The only way to get the spell out of his heart is to detach it, tiny root by root. I do not mean to hurt him; that’s the spell. But the spell will kill him if I don’t detach it—surely a little pain is worth sparing him a greater one.”
“Very well.” She reseated herself, and I closed my eyes again. Franz Joseph’s pain was not the only cost of this spell—each pinch of the filament added another grain to the weight pressing down on my temples.
I lost track of time for a while—the minute pinching of threads occupied my whole focus. When the last of the threads was severed, I opened my eyes to find it was morning: the candle had guttered out, the room was filled with a grey light, and the archduchess was asleep, leaning forward in her chair so her arms rested on the cover of the bed, her cheek pillowed on her crossed arms.
One last mission.
Though I could hardly see for the pain buzzing through my head, I focused on the strands of spell still surrounding the archduke. I’d destroyed the spell that rooted the curse in his heart; the only task remaining was to remove the curse itself. It hung loose around him, a knotted tangle. But the pinching of filaments had shown me where the thread started. One last time, I reached and yanked at the thread of spell. It unraveled around me in a dizzying spin of color: the released energy from the spell set the pages of a book fluttering beside the archduke’s bed.
After the spell on Franz Joseph broke, everything seemed to happen at once. I shook the archduchess awake, saying only “It’s done” before collapsing into a chair, pain tromping through my head as though it intended to take up permanent residence. The archduchess sprang up at once to check on Franz Joseph. A small, perfect circle imprinted her cheek, from the button at her cuff. Seeing that he was resting peacefully, she bustled me out of the room. She rang for a maid, who led me to a bedchamber, and I fell into bed as though I might sleep the hundred-year sleep of a fairy-tale princess.
When I woke again, it was already nightfall, with a soft, enfolding darkness spreading through the room. Someone had left a Lumen light suspended in the air beside the bed, and its blue glow cast a globe of warmth into the dark.
I sat up, then slid out of the bed. I slipped on a dressing robe (I was wearing only a nightdress, though I did not remember putting it on) and padded barefoot to the door. It opened into a lit hallway, and an imperial guard turned as it opened.
The guard, a middle-aged man with a drooping mustache and paunch, nodded at me. “I’ll send word you’re awake.”
A short time later, a maid brought a tray with a light repast—bread and jam and cheese—and a few minutes after that Archduke Franz Joseph walked into the room.
He came alone, his steps slow but sure. Already, his thin cheeks had regained some color.
He smiled at me and I blushed, tugging the dressing robe tighter around me. Our fraught past had not seemed to matter when he was ill and his mother sat with us, but now I could not help remembering the last time we talked, how we had danced at the ball and he had kissed me. Even if Vasilisa had compelled that kiss through a spell woven into the fairy glamour she dressed me in, the kiss had sealed our sham betrothal. It had promised a future between us.
But that ensorcelled future was gone, obliterated when I fled Vienna and Gábor returned.
What did he mean by coming to my bedroom at nightfall? He might have waited till morning—or given me fair warning. What did he imagine was still between us?
“I’ve come to thank you,” he said, “for saving my life.”
“You are welcome,” I said formally, stepping back and trying to put distance between us with my words as well as actions. “I am only sorry my breaking the spell caused you pain.”
“What is a little pain?” He grinned, moving further into the room. “I feel more myself than I have in months. But you—how are you?”
“I am well,” I said, though prickles of discomfort still lingered around my forehead, and I was beginning to sweat at his proximity. “I should be going. Emilija, my hostess, will be worrying.”
“I believe my mother sent word to her.” He nodded at a small bag in a chair near the bed. “See? Emilija has already brought a few of your things. Please, stay the night. My mother wishes to thank you and offer a formal pardon before the court.”
“I thank your mother for her kindness. The pardon I’ll accept gladly, but I should rather not do so before the court.”
Franz Joseph nodded gravely. “I understand.” He reached his hand toward my cheek, as though he might touch me, and I danced out of reach. He sighed and let his hand drop. “I do not mean to offend you. My mother tells me it was the spell that made me imagine I wished to marry you. Perhaps so, but I owe you my life. If you still wish…”
He trailed off, and I swallowed a frantic bubble of laughter. He could not truly wish to marry me against his mother’s wishes, and I had no wish to marry him. In fairy tales, the cowherd always wed the princess after saving her from the spell, but I did not mean to play the cowherd in this story.
“You are very kind,” I said firmly, “but no, thank you.” I pretended not to see how relief softened his face at my answer.
He stood there for a moment, awkwardly tugging at his collar. “Well, then, good night. Sweet dreams, and we shall see you in the morning.”
When he had gone, I went at once to the chair with my bag. Gábor’s papers were still within, and the tension knotted inside me eased. I pulled the first paper out, trailing my fingers across the familiar script. A new letter, a short one this time. It began, “Muri dràgo Anna,” and this one I guessed at: in Hungarian, drága meant something dear or precious, so perhaps the languages shared this root. (Though it is just possible he was calling me his dragon. Upon reflection, I decided this also pleased me.)
Gábor wrote that Kossuth had recalled him and some of the other Romani soldiers and sent them to march with General Perczel against Austrian soldiers coming in from the west. They had engaged in a mild skirmish, but no one was injured. Gábor ended by relating a humorous account of a new soldier standing guard who had roused half the camp to face an enemy that turned out to be nothing more than a family of foxes. I smiled as I read, though I wished I could hear the story from Gábor and not the thin substitute of his written words.
I reread the letter, lingering over the postscript: “I miss you.” Then I penned my own, describing the archduke’s curse and my breaking of it: I hope I have done the right thing. Perhaps now the archduke will hear me and help bring an end to this war before the praetheria can use our own pride against us. Perhaps I might yet redeem myself for all the havoc I caused after the Binding.
I hesitated, pen poised to strike through that last line. I had spoken to no one of the uncertainty that roiled inside me at the thought of all my past mistakes, of my secret fear that my chimera magic made me monstrous beyond all hope of redemption.
Would Gábor think less of me if he knew? I took a slow breath. He already knew I was chimera, that I had killed Mátyás once to break the Binding spell. If those had not turned him away, neither would this.
I let the line stand. Tonight I shall sleep on clean sheets and a soft mattress—a divine luxury after weeks of hard ground or cheap, harder beds. Tomorrow I shall have tea in a porcelain cup with an archduchess before setting off again to find Noémi and Mátyás. But I would trade all the fine beds and all the fine company to be with you in person. This world wears on me like a fine dress after a long illness—it no longer fits properly and makes me grumpy. I echoed his closing, “I miss you,” wishing I were brave enough to write “I love you.” But I was not yet ready to commit those words to paper and ink.
I tucked
the papers back into the bag and curled up in bed, still tired for all that I had slept most of the day. For weeks I had rested uneasily, half expecting to be captured while I slept. But here—I did not think even Vasilisa would dare storm the palace for me, and the promise of a pardon meant I no longer needed to fear the Hapsburgs. I meant to enjoy this safety, even if I could not do so for long.
I woke to a maid pulling back the curtains and a second maid setting a cup of steaming tea and a plate of toast beside the bed. The second maid helped me dress in the green gown, which someone had cleaned and pressed during the night. I wished I knew who had done it so I could thank them. After caring for my own clothing these past weeks, I would never again be so cavalier about the work done by servants.
A knock sounded at the door just as I finished my tea.
“Come in,” I called, standing and brushing a few crumbs of toast from my skirt.
The archduchess entered—followed by two men I had never thought to see again: Count Medem, who had been the tsar’s ambassador to Vienna, and my uncle Pál.
I clutched unseeing at the table, knocking my teacup to the floor.
No.
No.
No.
The archduchess marched crisply across the room and handed me a sealed sheet of paper. I took it with numb fingers. “Here is your pardon,” she said, “signed and official.”
I found my voice at last. “What is going on?”
“You asked me to end the war. I am doing so. In exchange for you, the tsar has promised the aid of his army. Confronted by the combined power of Austria and Russia, I do not think Hungary will long resist.” She brushed her hands together briskly. “The war will be over before Christmas.”
I struggled against the dazed feeling of a nightmare, where I tried to run from a shadowy monster but could only move with glacial slowness. “You cannot give me to them,” I said. “You promised me freedom.”
“Did I? I promised you a pardon and my aid to end the war, and I have done both.”