She did not reply, but took off her own gloves. Her hands were as exquisite as the rest of her, with long fingers and perfectly polished nails.
“Stand still,” she said, “and do not move your hands.”
She rested her own hands on top of mine again and resumed reading.
My hands trembled, and, oddly, my nails seemed to start quivering in their beds.
I swallowed.
“Milady, please …”
I made as if to lift my hands, but I was frozen in place. No part of me could move, save my face. I started to panic, thrashing my head about—and I noticed then that my Hair was similarly frozen and lifeless, heavy against my spine.
“What did you do to me?” I shouted.
“Please lower your voice,” she said calmly. I opened my mouth to retort—but no, I did not, because now my mouth was paralyzed as well. Only my darting eyes were alive. The rest of me might as well have been a statue.
Milady continued to read from her spellbook. My hands quivered, then burned.
It was an odd sensation, the loosening of my nail beds. The skin at the base turned warm and liquid, then cooled. When Milady reached out to grasp the nail’s protruding edge, I took a deep breath and held it.
I closed my eyes, but I saw every second of the process asif it were imprinted on the inside of my eyelids. The slow slide of the nail out of my finger, surprisingly long under the skin. The smarting of the raw, red flesh below. The initial slow drag, and then the throb, and then the burning. I bit the inside of my cheek and tasted blood.
“And again,” said Milady. The whole hideous process repeated itself. My eyes would have filled with tears if they could, but my tears seemed frozen as well.
When Milady had finished, I opened my eyes and saw that one of her nails—the one on her index finger—had turned gray. As I watched, it fell, leaving clean new skin beneath, and Milady caught it in her other hand and placed it in a painted ginger jar on the dressing table. I did my best to breathe slowly through the bright haze of pain as spots danced before my eyes, not wanting to show her how much it hurt.
“I didn’t want to have to do that, Netta,” said Milady. Her voice sounded muffled through the ringing in my ears. She started to read again, starting the equally excruciating process of growing them back, millimeter by millimeter, my very bones seeming to creak in protest as the hard nail pushed itself back out of the wound. When the terrible motion finally stopped, I let myself breathe again.
“That will be all,” said Milady. She poured a little water from a pitcher into her basin and washed her hands, drying them thoroughly on a cloth before lovingly replacing her gloves. She stepped back, gesturing to me to do the same.
“And Netta,” she said. “As you can see, I will always correct your mistakes. Your errors of judgement.”
I was panting, still half frozen.
“Not marrying Ban Morin,” she continued, “would be a grave error of judgement.”
Back in my room, Mieka held me while I cried, brushing the Hair gently back from my face.
“Nails,” she said. “Nasty.”
I splayed out my hand, making sure the nails really had grown back. They looked just the same, save a slight bluish tinge around the cuticles. There was nothing to show the terrible pain. And the fear.
“I didn’t think she would really do that,” I whispered. I looked into Mieka’s face. “Mieka. In the Book Man’s shop—remember I said I found fingernails on the floor? A lot of them. Do you suppose she …”
Mieka pressed her lips together. “Don’t think of it,” she said.
“We have to get out of here. She will make me marry Ban Morin. I don’t know why, but she won’t take no for an answer. What she did today—that was a threat.”
“I know. Patrick …”
I pulled away. “I know you trust him, but I do not.”
“Netta. He sent me here to take care of you. He has done nothing but watch over you. What has he ever done that makes you think he means you harm?”
“He hates my family.”
“Well, maybe. But to be fair, I hate your family, too. At least, the only one of them I’ve met. She’s hardly a paragon of virtue, is she? If it’s something Milady told you …” She shrugged. “I’d take that with several barrels of salt.”
