Above, the oak branches groaned and leaned against the stone turret of the Otherworld, as if trying to gather us against its hard body. Indigo laughed and the silver ornaments hanging from the willow branches trilled and sang. If she had told me in that moment that all the world was a dream designed to delight us, I would not have doubted it.
“See?” she said, turning to me. “It knows.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Bridegroom
One must never look with the eyes alone. Things transform with ease and without warning. In one tale, a dead mother becomes an ash tree and, in lieu of flowers and leaves, puts forth gowns of silver and gold for her only daughter. In another, the mutilated bodies of little boys bend into doves who coo and mourn their murder. The material form might be anything, but each tale relies on the ability to perceive the fantastical from the false.
I would be lying if I said I’ve never looked for my brother. On the days where logic thinned and I allowed myself to consider his existence, I imagined him in the silhouettes of the trees, in the sharp tilt of a raven’s head. He would no longer look the same. I expected that his mortal body might have transformed into a slender deer, a bulging frog, a cold wind. But I would welcome him no matter what shape he took, for I knew the secret to such stories:
You must learn how to close your eyes and still look.
As I was looking now.
I could see nothing but the armoire, looming as huge as a planet in the middle of the parlor. With each insistent, deafening knock, I closed the distance between myself and an impossibility.In front of the armoire, the fan whirred. I thought of my secret, unspoken taunt to the House.
Well, what do you have to give me?
This, said the House.Look.
I reached for the knob; the thumping of the fan reminded me of a heartbeat. I drew a quick breath, my hands closing around the rough carved wood of the handle before pulling hard. The doors opened to a rush of air, a flat darkness, and then, unmistakably, a small childlike cry.
He came to me in a rush of wings and a flash of silver. He screamed once more, and in that shriek, I knew it was my brother. It made no sense. I knew I never had one. And yet I still lifted my hands to receive him.
At that moment, the door to the kitchen swung open and Mrs.Revand screamed. I turned my head for only a brief instant. In that second, the blades of the fan choked. The smell of iron hit the air and Mrs.Revand clutched the back of a settee, the tea tray trembling in her hand.
“Gods, not again,” she said, lunging to unplug the fan. “I am so very sorry, sir. I have no idea how that bird got in here. Please allow me to get this cleaned up.”
A black feather floated to my shoe. I caught sight of my pants. Blood spattered.
Before me, the blades of the fan clamped a starling’s body, the wings bent, the neck clearly snapped. I was shaken, not by the sight of the corpse but by the unmistakable certainty that my brother had disappeared again. I had never felt this before, this belief that I truly had a brother. Yet now the conviction was solid and as irrevocably a part of me as my own bones.
I remembered the fairy tales. Forms are not to be trusted.Bodies might be inhabited and deserted, slipped on like so much cloth. Some forms are made to please and others to deceive. Here, a wolf pants in bed, the nightgown of an old woman thrown over its fur. There, a being places marigolds in its mouth and petals in its hair, and through a handful of flowers makes itself a wife. Now a brother is revealed and taken away, and the House of Dreams smiles because it knows I have been ensnared.
Mrs.Revand touched my arm. “Please, sir, this way. The driver will be here shortly, and I’ve asked them to retrieve you from the dining hall.”
“What?”
Mrs.Revand blinked, and pity snuck into her eyes. “MissIndigo left a few minutes ago. She has another meeting with the solicitors. She sent word for you to meet her at the hotel. The car should be here shortly.”
“She left me here?” I repeated. “Didn’t Indigo want to see Hippolyta?”
Mrs.Revand fell quiet. I recalled the guilt on her face when she’d summoned me, the look of apology when she’d closed the doors.
“Hippolyta didn’t want to see her,” I guessed.
Indigo must know that I had seen her aunt. I wondered if she also heard the House whispering to me, if she could somehow feel our wedding vows slipping between my fingers.
A thread now stretched between my brother, my bride, and Azure. I thought of promises made and broken, of the dark circles beneath Indigo’s eyes and the engraved tooth.
What if my vow was another test?
Our first night together, Indigo and I played Eros and Psyche. It was only through the shattering of a promise that Psycheproved her love. Otherwise, Eros might have tired of her in the dark. Perhaps I had been given a chance to prove I would rescue my bride from whatever enchantment held her captive from me.
Mrs.Revand brought me to the dining room to wait while the staff cleaned the starling’s blood, and there I beheld a curious echo. A small golden plaque hung on the wall outside the entrance:Camera Secretum.The Room of Secrets.
The ceiling of the dining room was domed and open, like the observatory of a planetarium. Golden fretwork curved beneath the glass. A long, uneven slab of white-veined onyx served as the dining table, which was bare except for a dusty candelabra at the center.
