It vanished as a cold chill shot through his spine. Mira. She could tug on their bond and draw him to her like a hummingbird to nectar, but this was not a command. She wanted him to come to her himself. A warning. She was irritated.
Inching away from the flowers, he watched the moth flutter away. Behind it, one of Mira’s servants approached. An escort.
She wasveryirritated.
Another, unrelated chill ran through him. He had grown accustomed to the others’ ghastly appearances. But the constant reminder of what could be made of him – of what had been done to them, of how he could not, ever, help them – was enough to freeze his undying blood.
Some were human enough, though pale as the white walls, frozen in time, mouths sealed with lichen and crystallized honey. Many were less fortunate. One night in bed, while washing the blood from his already healed back, Mira had proudly recounted how she had collected them. A maiden caught trying to steal one of her beautiful flowers. A sundry deliveryman skimming off the top. A handsome merchant she had found on the brink of death in the wood, and after saving his life, offered a position as her bookkeeper. He claimed he would rather return to his family. So Mira changed his mind.
The footman – the unfortunate soul with the giant snail for a head – stopped on the path. Their still-human hands, dripping with mucus, beckoned to Sy, leading him inside.
A second footman, whose entire body had been transformed into the fiddleheads of ferns, met them at the door. One of the footman’s tentacle-like arms unfurled in greeting, accompanied by the faint smell of rotting vegetation.
The pair of them led Sy to his room, where Mira waited. How long had he been in the garden? He regretted that he had kept her waiting at all – he hated not to be of use. Since his transformation, tracing the passing of time proved a maddening exercise. Knowing each day would look like the last, eternally, a minute might as well be a month, each day a decade.
No matter that he counted the sunrises and sunsets with a longing he could not quite pinpoint.
The servants marched silently through the austere gardens into a skeletal gallery, then along endless empty hallways, Sy trailing behind. Their footsteps echoed on the bare marble floor. There were no carpets, no paintings on the walls, hardly any furniture. The only decorations were enormous gray polished vases, clear cut glass flowers on stone tables, silver-lined mirrors upon white walls. Everything spotless, orderly, gleaming, silent. Including the servants.
He imagined how a more ambitious despot might use his magic: desiccating farmlands, draining reservoirs, flooding cities. Entire populations as subjugated as the land, made as devoted to their sovereign nation as Mira’s thralls were to her.
He was right to keep this magic away from the king. He was not entirely certain he was right to bring it here.
But there was another reason he’d done it, and he tried very hard indeed not to think about that.
Despite the way it drew his eye beyond the gate. Despite the way it made him count the sunrises.
No, he could not regret his choice, nor could he regret what he had lost. What had he lost, after all? But his imprisonment – no, his choice – might be easier to forget – if, somehow, he could snap that last, lingering cord. Could bring himself to want to.
If he could stop himself from seeing her face in every flower, every cloud, every tree. From wondering where she was. If he would ever glimpse her outside the gate. If she was safe. If she was smiling. A thousand years would pass, and he would never stop wondering if she was smiling.
The hideous footmen left Sy in the doorway to his bedchamber, where he forgot all else, taking a breath to admire his mistress’s great beauty before interrupting her. He wondered for what purpose she had summoned him. Except at night, she largely left him to his duties. Today, she dressed in a glowing burnt orange suit. A short, mink-lined ivory cape draped off her shoulders. He noted the earring she wore: gold-plated and carnelian leaves of laurel wrapping up her ear. It did nothing for the blue of her eyes; but that was not why she wore it.
Seeing her, now, he was filled with delight. Delight – and, inexplicable, choking grief.
“There you are,” Mira said, not looking up. “What took you?”
The grief dissipated. “Apologies, my lady – I should have expected you. To what do I owe the honor?”
She flicked her fingers lazily, indicating he should come closer. “Scribbling again?”
Beside her, he watched her sift through his papers, alert and attentive. He at last had time and energy again to draw. The result: pages and pages of endless pines.
Trees were all he could seem to conjure.
Listlessly, she dropped the page she was holding. “You know, when you arrived here, I thought having a human familiar – well,” she smiled, “somewhathuman – would make for better company. But I do believe the fox was chattier than you.”
He opened his mouth to apologize, but before he could she placed a finger over his lips, stopping him. She reached out and lightly stroked his pale pinned hair with the tips of her fingernails, careful not to muss it.
“Fortunately for you,” she said, voice softening, “I didn’t come to chat.”
Grazing her fingernails against his jaw, she tilted his chin lower; closed her soft lips over his. Instantly, automatically, he returned her kiss, placing his hands on her waist. Hers was hungry; his carried all the passion of the cold cut stone under their feet. She placed her other hand on his chest, then slid it lower, over the crotch of his trousers.
His body reacted – not to his desire, but to hers. It was not that he did not desire her – it was that he had no desires, except hers. He felt the urge to please her, but only the urge of a tool. Mechanical, mercenary.
Somewhere in the swallowing murk of his mind, he knew, with burning clarity, this thought was his: it gave him some small relief to know himself, if at all.
She knew it, too.
