“Supposedly?”
Her mouth twisted, shrewd. “Severine wasn’t the first Sabourin to make a secret of her legacy. I don’t know whether they hid their powers to disguise strength or conceal weakness. Either way, we mere mortals have never been deemed worthy to glimpse the god-given glory of Meridian’s perfect children.”
Her words made sense. I remembered my first day at court—I’d dared ask Severine what her legacy was. Lullaby had chided me for it, and I’d barely thought of it again until I’d faced off against my sister. Then she’d used several powers in a row before trying tostealmine. And Sylvain—what had Dowser said, the other day?If I had to make a guess at his legacy—
“I know what Gavin’s legacy is.” I tamped down the fizz of uncertainty his denial had churned up. “He alters perceptions, emotions. He can make you laugh when you’re not amused. He can seem to shine like a god when he is just a man. He can make you adore him when you barely like him.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Oleander stepped out of her dress and stood before me in her elegant silken underthings.
“I—I thought it might make you feel better.”
“To know my love for him was not just seduced, but coerced?” Oleander’s face barely changed. “Falling for a weak man’s weak legacy just makes me weak too.”
“You are not weak, Oleander.”
“Losing control makes everyone weak.” She hung the midnight luster gown, then sat at her vanity and began removing her cosmetics. “The source of that loss makes no difference.”
I heard the dismissal in her tone. I moved toward the door.
“Mirage?”
I turned, and caught her eye in the mirror. Without her rouge and kohl, her face looked vulnerable, almost wistful. “Yes?”
“Be gentle with him.”
“Gavin?”
“You know who.” She turned fully, her loose hair falling like snow around her shoulders. “You will never be able to punish him as much as he punishes himself. So forgive him instead.”
A shadow unfurled from my heart and climbed into my throat. “I want to.”
Oleander’s alpine eyes went flat as dusk-lit ice. “I kissed a boy, once. Or he kissed me. It’s hard to remember now. His lips—they shriveled up and away, so he could never kiss anyone again. His teeth blackened and crumbled out of his mouth. He’ll never eat anything but broth for the rest of his life. And yet, when I went to his house and stared into that ruin of a face and asked his family how much money their son’s mouth was worth, he didn’t scream or weep. He just pressed a note into my hand, a note he’d written. It read,This wasn’t your fault.”
My throat burned with all the tears she should have been crying. “Oleander—”
“Shut up,” she breathed. “Our power is pain. Our only constant is consequence. Our vigil is unending. And yet—for the first time in forever, my brother has hope. For a world we believed to be impossible—a world where we can be loved by anyone other than each other. A world more radiant than our own—a world where even if we’re monsters, we can still deserve love.Yougave him that hope. Don’t you dare take it away from him.”
She turned back to her mirror without another word. And I turned back to the door, mourning for the hundredth—thousandth—time, that spectacular, impossible world I’d dreamed up.
What if that world had always been out of reach? What if monsters couldn’t ever be loved?
Not even by each other?
I didn’t sleep that Nocturne. All my feelings felt too raw, too confusing. Pierre’s death. Challenging Gavin; his misplaced proposal. Sunder’s legacy, slicing through me like a blade.
I imagined him—there, on the other side of the wall—his pillow near my pillow, his head near my head. When I closed my eyes, I could see him—sharp cheekbones and soft mouth, snow-drift hair and sooty eyelashes. His scent, like the winds off the mountains, bracing and fierce.
His touch, like icicles and frozen knives and brittle mirror glass.
His hurt, singing true as an arrow to sink into my heart.
His love, monstrous and imperfect and beautiful.
His love.
I wasn’t ready to talk to him yet.
Ibattered on Lullaby’s door, the sound louder than necessary in the hush of Lys Wing.
