‘Watchers sweep your chambers every night – what if one of them had found it?’ Elvi’s bottom lip quivers. ‘I’ll be whipped again if you’re caught with a tainted artefact. Do I really mean so little to you?’
She wrenches the bestiary from my hands and throws the book on the desk, where it lands with a heavy thud, its ancient spine splitting like an overripe stone fruit.
‘My father’s dead because of those Oralian rats!’ Elvi’s voice is tremulous with rage. ‘The air they poisoned destroyed his lungs. Your own mother’s not long for this world, and it’s because of them, what they set in motion. How can you possibly want to read about their disgusting familiars?’
I hang my head, feeling dirty and small. Everything Elvi said is true. I should have burnt the bestiary along with my remaining cache of other forbidden books, the ones my father’s Watchers didn’t find. But something about it called to me, the lure of its illustrations almost as impossible to ignore as the whisperings of my brandsong.
For what am I, if not a forbidden thing myself? Every bit as monstrous as the beasts within those pages.
‘I’ll burn it now,’ I croak.
Elvi is at the door, her hand poised on the handle. She hesitates, her shoulders wilt.
‘Forgive me, I shouldn’t have spoken like that. I forgot my place.’
The air is weighted with the unspoken truth. No matter how close we’ve grown, I am Elvi’s mistress; she, my servant. There’s no possibility of real intimacy, real understanding between us.
The door whispers shut and I’m more alone than ever.
Will Elvi tell the Watchers about the bestiary? Betray me?
Best destroy it in any case.
I take up the book and move towards the candle clock. With shaking fingers, I tear out the first page and hold it over the flickering flame. My throat thickens as it catches, chars, disintegrates to ash.
All my hopes for the future up in smoke along with it.
Keeping this last forbidden book was the only means of rebellion left to me after my escape failed. As long as I had the bestiary, my father may have won, but he hadn’t crushed me. But he has. He has crushed me.
I can’t fight him anymore. Just as I can’t fight myself and what I’m turning into.
Like it or not, it’s time to embrace my fate.
SHE ABOVE, ME BELOW
ASTROPHEL
‘I’LLSEESHEgets your gifts, my lord.’ The liegemaid bobs a limp curtsy, a signal I should leave.
I straighten my cuffs, taking my time about it, ensuring all seven silver buttons line up, lance-straight. I will not leave. Not on the orders of a peakscrub. My gaze sweeps over Elvi’s shoulder. There’s not a taper lit in the antechamber; within all is silent as a sepulchre. I’m surprised Leilani didn’t hang mourning weeds over her door and have done with it.
‘Abed, you say? At this hour?’
Elvi nods, eyes fixed on the casket grasped too tight in her hands.
I’d hoped for a glimpse of the Princess. Ours might not be a love match, but I’m still expected to consummate it, and the last time I saw my betrothed unveiled, she’d not yet seen her ninth sunring.
Elvi toes the door shut, a flush blooming fast in her cheeks, so desperate is she to shoo me from Leilani’s chambers, to pretend her mistress hasn’t just refused to receive her binding gifts, to receiveme, as tradition dictates.
Leilani always did fancy herself so high above me.
It was a fool’s hope she’d admit me tonight, a fool’s hope I’d get to watch her open the casket. What was I expecting? Wonder at the splendour of the diadem? Gratitude for the fretful hours I spent perfecting the design to ensure it didn’t clash with her ill-favoured colouring? I was right to worry. Leilani received my second gift as a woman grown, with as little grace as she did the first, as a chit.
I turn with the click of the door. Duty discharged. Gift bestowed. It matters not if she likes it, only that it makes the right impression. By the Throne, I’ve thrown enough sickles at it.
I pause as Elvi’s sharp vowels rise through the door, stirring memories long buried of the mother I scarcely remember. It was a condition of my being elevated ward-of-the-court that she relinquish any claim on me. Too oft in that liegemaid’s company and those peakish vowels, their familiar jagged rhythms, might prove catching. I’ve worked too hard to fall at this final fence. The maid’s voice comes again, sharper still. Answered this time by Leilani’s soft, plaintive murmurs. Strangled sobs soon seep through the door. Their wretchedness drags me back to my earliest memories of the palace.
My boyhood chamber was directly beneath Leilani’s. It felt deliberate; she above, me below – lest I forget, for one second, my place here, the precariousness of it. For though the Princess was Branded, still she was pure-blooded. She woke often in the night, assaulted by nightmares or visions – I never knew which. Though muffled by the ceiling, it was impossible to sleep through her keening wails. The terror that trembled within her cries haunts me even now. Many were the nights I too sobbed myself to sleep in those first moons. I missed my mother, the home I’d known. But I was careful to smother my cries. I knew better than to draw further shame upon myself.
