Winterspell (27 page)

Stunned, Clara did not respond immediately. “I've thought about it.”

“Really?” He sounded surprised.

“Dr. Victor.”

“Ah. Yes, I suppose you would think of that, wouldn't you?”

They were quiet for a moment, and then Nicholas said, “I've done it. Cut things open. Living things. And not just animals, which would be bad enough. But
beings
. Of course, I was raised to think they were as good as beasts, lower even than that. . . .”

“The faeries?” Clara said after a pause.

“Yes. Drosselmeyer did too. We were cruel men, Clara. We did cruel things. You would not have liked us then.”

An image came into Clara's mind of Godfather bent over a faery bound on a table, a scalpel glinting in his hands. Then Godfather was Dr. Victor, and the faery was an orphan girl with a blank stare, and back again. Clara shuddered.

“Why did you do it?” she managed.

“We'd never liked each other, humans and faeries. Faeries were wild, mysterious. Mischievous and brazen. Disorderly. We didn't understand them.” He laughed bitterly. “The old stories say they were born of the southern seas. That, like the sea, they're always changing, never the same one minute to the next, always crafting.”

“Building something up and then tearing it down,” said Clara, thinking of Anise.

“I think the old stories, at least those, are damn well on point. The faeries were always hiding, playing tricks on travelers. More than anything they loved their tinkering. Building things, taking them apart and putting them back together. They say the faery hollows back then were deep in the forest, always humming with machines.”

He turned to her, eyes bright with the flickering candle. “You see, we didn't understand them. They were always hiding themselves away. Why couldn't they cooperate with their rightful sovereigns like the mages did? They must have had something to hide. We desperately feared their magic. We didn't understand how it worked, what it could do. The mages had always been open about their own magic—their charm, their kinship with animals, their tremendous intellect. Arrogant but open. Why couldn't the faeries do the same?”

Clara was mesmerized, despite herself. “So you hurt them because you couldn't understand them.”

“I was raised to do it.” He threw himself back down onto the cot. “And Drosselmeyer was bound to do it, as were the rest of the Seven. You could say that neither of us had a choice in the matter. You
could
say that, and I used to believe it, but I don't now. We knew exactly what we were doing, and we did it gladly.”

“Bound? Do you mean it was part of his service?”

“Quite literally. The Seven were bound to the royal family in power. It was a blood ritual, an old magic.” He paused, as if picking only the best words to say. “They served us, protected us, and in turn were able to protect mage interests at court.”

Clara was not sure how to respond to this. The idea of bonding in a blood ritual seemed rather barbaric. To be in Nicholas's presence now felt . . . different somehow. In the grip of a dangerous intimacy. She was appalled by him, and yet she understood what he was
feeling. Or she thought she did. The impulse toward violence, the longing to control something,
anything
, even if it meant cruelty.

A tiny part of her even admired him, she was ashamed to say, for having the temerity to hurt his enemies, to commit atrocities she'd only ever entertained in daydreams.

A tiny part.

“They hurt us, Clara,” he went on, softly. “The tricks they would play were anything but harmless. For every faery we abducted and dissected, they would string up five humans on the side of the road, their bones extracted, their faces . . .
carved
. We engineered weapons especially for use against them, and in combat they would turn them—our own weapons!—against us. Imagine it, screaming soldiers devoured by their own crossbows.”

Clara did not want to imagine it. “So there was war.”

“There was war.” He sighed. “A decades-long war. I was raised by it, in fact. A mother, a father, and a war.” He turned to her, the candle now a mere stub. They were children, facing each other from their beds, gossiping in the dark—except it wasn't gossip, and Clara was not sure Nicholas had ever been a child, not truly.

“It took me a long time to see the wrongness of it, to let go of my hate,” he continued. “But now, after seeing my people in this state, seeing what the faeries have done, what
she
has done . . . I feel myself regressing, Clara. I feel the hate returning, and the violence. I want to be better, to believe the things I tell myself—that I can somehow reclaim my kingdom bloodlessly, that we can live happily after that, as equals. But it seems impossible. If even
I
find it hard to look at the faeries without wanting . . .” He laughed sadly into the dark. “I would wager this is not what you might have imagined your dear statue would turn out to be.”

She ignored the remark. “I know what it is to hate,” she said instead. “How did you let go of it, that first time? Let go of the hate?”

“I had a good teacher.” Her own words, returned to her, and just as sadly.

“Who?”

The candle, at last, went out.

A pause. “A dear friend.” After a longer silence, Nicholas cleared his throat. “Do you hate me now?”

“No,” Clara said, “but I confess . . .”

“Tell me. I deserve whatever it is.”

She took a deep breath. “What you did was wrong. I understand hate, but I hope you remember that.” She tried to find his face in the dark. “Those faeries you cut open did not deserve that, no matter what their kind had done to you. No one does.”

“You're right, of course,” he said after a moment, and they fell into an uneasy silence.

Clara had trouble finding sleep. She wondered if Nicholas would still smile at her in the morning. And what if he didn't? One less prince with a dark past to fixate on. Besides, she might have done the same thing in his position. She didn't know if she would have had the courage to reject a culture of hate, to shed the skin of the violence that had raised her.

But when she awoke later, to another nightmare—this one more violent: ice splintering her bones, bursting out of her, quartering her into frozen slabs—Nicholas was there to smooth back her damp hair. He urged her to recount her dream in detail, and his voice was so soft, so soothing, that it almost lulled her to do so, but the frigid brutality done to her nightmare's body was too disturbing to think of. He fell silent then, and held her. As his touch calmed her, thoughts of war—and his part in it—retreated further and further from Clara's mind. For the rest of the night, she could not stop shivering, and she was glad simply to have a friend sit beside her.

T
he next evening Afa barreled into the common room through the beaded curtain, her veil and jewels askew, her face raw with fright.

“Afa,” Nicholas said, rising, “what is it?”

“Bo, to your room.”

Bo frowned. “But,
Afa
—”

“Do not argue with me!”

Such terror, such naked terror in Afa's voice. Bo's eyes widened, and she ran. Afa turned to Clara, grabbed her hands.

“You must be brave now,” she said, and though her voice was steady, Clara could tell it was an effort. “I'm so, so sorry.”

The expression on Nicholas's face was dangerous. “Afa, tell us what's happened.”

“Glyn. It was Glyn.” Afa closed her eyes, shaking her head. “She did not mean to. She is a flighty, foolish girl. She mentioned new doxies in the sweetrooms, and word got to Pascha, and . . . the Mason give me strength—”

A claw of dread snagged Clara in her gut. She wavered where she stood. “He wants to meet us.”

Afa nodded, miserable. “And if he suspects our ruse, he will kill every one of us and make the killing last as long as possible.”

Clara felt suddenly wild. “We should run.”

Nicholas caught her arm. “And then what? Raise Pascha's suspicions, bring his anger down on Afa and Bo?”

“Better that than have him discover they've been harboring the queen's fugitives.”

“They're coming,” Afa whispered at the door.

A beat later, and a pair of smartly dressed, languorously arrogant male faeries appeared in the doorway. Pascha's attendants, Clara assumed. They wore sleeker gloves than their soldier compatriots, but the blue energy still sizzled there, waiting. Their eyes roved first over Nicholas's body and then Clara's.

“Come,” one of them said, grinning as if delighted by some unheard joke. “Pascha is waiting.”

They had no choice. One attendant in front and one behind, they left the familiarity of the doxy quarters to walk up the stairs, through corridors heavy with incense, past curtained rooms. Music and laughter drifted out from behind the curtains, along with other, indecent sounds that made Clara's skin crawl with fear. She and Nicholas had come so close to escaping Kafflock without encountering Pascha. One night remained before they would leave for the tunnels. She wished they had had more time for Afa to explain what would be expected of them. Would they be forced to
perform
, as the others were, and what did that mean? She longed to reach for Nicholas's hand to steady herself; she longed to turn and run, and never stop.

The attendants led them through a series of lavishly decorated rooms—silken cushions piled on the floor, low tables laden with sumptuous dishes, settees draped with brocaded cloth—and onto a terrace bordered with violet curtains. Storm clouds roiled above Kafflock's crooked roofscape.

A faery lounged there. Pascha, undoubtedly. His eyes danced with delight and uncontested power. He wore fine trousers and boots and a silk shirt that revealed his chest. Extravagant powders decorated his
face, and his braided white hair, wrapped in gossamer golden threads, fell to the small of his back.

For a moment no one moved, though Pascha's eyes slid over them, inspecting them. By necessity Clara had become somewhat accustomed to her new clothes, but under Pascha's lazy, mercenary gaze, she felt stripped clean to the bone.

“So,” he said, his voice light, “these are the new recruits?”

Afa stepped forward, bowing. “Yes, Pascha. I found them several days ago, scrounging for food in the market. I have been training them, grooming them. I wanted to surprise you. They are a gift, Pascha.”

Pascha nodded, pursing his lips. Then he waved to one of his attendants, who promptly struck Afa in the face.

“I appreciate the sentiment, Afa,” Pascha said, impassive, “but the next time you have a gift for me, don't wait several days to tell me about it.”

“Yes, Pascha.” Afa nodded, holding her cheek with bright-eyed dignity. “It was a mistake. It will not happen again.”

A few terrible moments passed in silence, save for a faint rumbling in the skies and an echoing one from the ground. It shook the lanterns hanging around the terrace, and Pascha glared at them irritably, popping a piece of bright pink fruit into his mouth.

“Well?” he snapped, dribbling juice. “Let's see it, then.”

Clara looked to Afa for guidance, at a loss, but Afa revealed nothing.

“Pardon me, sir,” Nicholas said, bowing as Afa had done, softening his voice in deference, “but what would you like us to do?”

“Kiss!” Pascha threw up his hands. “Put on a show! Do
something
.” He snapped his fingers, and an attendant pressed a mechanical switch in the wall. Music began, sultry, rhythmic, drifting down from dark funnels affixed to the terrace columns.

“It would be best,” Pascha added, “that you not hold back. I am easily bored.”

Nicholas flashed a smile so convincing that even Clara was taken in by it.

“Of course, Pascha,” he said, and turned to Clara. She could not read his expression, and that terrified her. Surely he was wound just as tight with fear? He moved closer, brought his hands to her neck, caressing lightly; Clara felt the attention of everyone on the terrace tighten. He brushed his lips across her forehead, at the corners of her eyes, her mouth, the curves of her cheeks.

Heat surged through her to meet his touch, surprising and insistent. She staggered, and Nicholas must have mistaken it for fear. His hands caught her waist, steadying her against the hard lines of his body.

So little space between them now, and all of it searing. It didn't make sense, and part of Clara protested in horror—this was not how it should happen!—but it was a small part, and quickly overpowered. The sudden delicious realization that Nicholas was so close, so breathlessly
there
. His fingers, tracing her features, toying with her bottom lip. The
pull
of him. For an instant she thought of her near-nakedness and flinched, but then his hands settled at her hips, weaving through the jeweled strands draped around her belly.

She couldn't help it; she moved into him.

She had fantasized about this for years, half in shame, half in giddy defiance—her statue-suitor coming to life, wrapping his arms about her, gathering her against his body. It was happening now, Nicholas's hot gaze fixed on her mouth. Soon he would lean in and whisper against her skin, tickling her neck. He would kiss her there, on the soft skin behind her ear.

He
did
lean in, and Clara let her eyes flutter closed. She allowed it to happen; she
willed
it to, fogged with her own swift euphoria. When he kissed her, it was lightning, a jolt that left her aching. When his tongue parted her lips, she went limp against him.

One of Nicholas's hands cupped the back of her head; the other slid down to stroke her thigh.

She gasped, made a small sound of surprise, and his grip on her tightened. A low groan escaped his lips, and it was that sound—the
deep rumble of it, the masculinity—that made her stiffen.