And yet I felt myself shrinking as I neared the house, as if I could will myself small and disappear into the overgrown weeds. The thought was so ludicrously appealing that I got lost in it and didn’t notice the small woman glaring at me from the terrace until I’d nearly run into her.
I stepped back, the musky smell of wine suddenly flooding my nose. The woman wore her gray hair in an untidy knot, and the shadows under her eyes spoke of too many unhappy nights. She wore a pristine Upper Army uniform, and something about the shape of her nose, the lines of her mouth, looked familiar.
My mouth went dry. This was Gareth’s mother.
“Gareth told me a whole passel of you creatures would be joining us,” she said, her words slightly slurred. The smell of drink on her breath was rancid. She looked me up and down with quick gray eyes. “But I see only you.”
I nodded once in greeting, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in the barb of every feather. “Lady Fontaine. I’m honored to meet you.”
“Why? Who am I to you?” Then the hard mask of her face shifted into disbelief. “You’re Mara, aren’t you?Youare the one my son has chosen.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, but I didn’t need to. She barreled on, her voice clipped and harsh.
“Why do you look like this?” she demanded. “I thought Roses turned into beasts only during battle.”
Her words bludgeoned me, shattering my calm, my resolve, and the remaining shreds of my courage with one fell blow. The stone I’d used to pave over my heart crumbled into dust, leaving me raw and bleeding all over again.
A beast.
Amonster.
This woman had never seen me before, and the first thing that had come to her mind upon meeting me wasmonster.
“I can no longer transform like the others,” I replied, screaming at myself to shut my mouth even as the words tumbled out of me. “I…” I gestured helplessly at my body. “This is me now.”
It was like I’d fallen victim to some awful spellwork. I knew I shouldn’t care about Lady Fontaine’s opinion. She was a drunk, she was unkind, and Gareth hated her. And yet my body burned with shame under her incredulous gaze. I felt clumsy, stupid, absurd.
“Really?” she asked. She sounded almostgleeful. “Why? Is this a punishment?”
Suddenly I was back there in the entrance hall of Rosewarren, screaming my throat raw as the Warden’s will ripped through my body, the binding magic that tethered me to her obeying her commands without mercy. The memory made my skin crawl. Soon I would need to apply Nanette’s balm.
“Yes,” I whispered. “A punishment.”
“Does Gareth know?” She peered closely at me. “I think not. Not evenmyson would willingly fuck you when you look like this. How would that even happen? Is your cunt the same as it was? Or does it now have teeth?”
I could hardly breathe. My eyes burned with tears, but I couldn’t let them fall, Icouldn’t, or I felt sure that I would die.
“Well?” She stepped a bit closer, her mouth twitching with a smile. “Does he know?”
The look on my face must have given her the answer. She burst out laughing.
“Everyone!” she crowed, calling to the soldiers setting up their tents. “Come and listen to this! Come see! My son, the vaunted professor, has been bedding abirdwoman. Abeast.” She looked at me impatiently. “What do you even call yourself?”
The soldiers nearest us had fallen utterly silent. Some of them looked so distressed that I thought they might come forward at any moment and help me get away from Lady Fontaine. I even thought I glimpsed a shape that looked very much like General Haldrin striding angrily toward us from one of the officers’ tents, but my tears made everything blurry, and I could no longer feel my arms and legs. This was all happening so quickly, and yet it seemed it would never end.
Then, before anyone could say another word, rapid footsteps approached from inside the house, and Gareth burst out into the sunshine. The sight of him left my knees weak. He wore a plain shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and there were ink smudges on his fingers, and his glasses needed a good cleaning, and I’d never been so happy to see someone and simultaneously so full of dread in my entire life.
He stormed over to his mother, stopping right in front of her with such a dark look on his face that she staggered back in astonishment.
“Walk away from her,” he said, very low, his voice tight with anger.“Right now. And if you say even one more hateful word to her or about her, if you don’t treat her with the respect she deserves, if you even for amomentconsider cruelty again, I will have you removed from this house and make sure that you cannevercome back to it. Do you understand me?”
Lady Fontaine nodded slowly, apparently shocked into silence.
I didn’t wait there for another second. I hurried past Gareth and made straight for the kitchen stairs. I knew this house; I knew Gareth’s map and the gentle hands that had drawn it. I fled to the silence of the attic.
***
It was a huge room and just as empty as Gareth had said it would be. Sunlight streamed through four dirty windows; the floor’s wide wooden planks were coated with dust. Here my sisters and I would destroy three anchors of theytheliadcurse and eliminate one of Kilraith’s greatest advantages.
