“I’m the one who’s cursed,” I shouted, “for I am denied a choice that was promised to me!”
He stopped walking and spun toward me. “You never had the choice to love the man who belongs to your sister.”
“You’re wrong! I’m a woman and I can love where I will, even where love will never find me!” I bit my lip. Even if it hurt others. Even if I was foolish. I’m sorry, Elfriede. But I can’t help but hurt you. Just like you can’t help but hurt me.
The lord started convulsing, his right fist struggling to find a place between pointing at me, resting on his waist, and being raised upward to the sky. “And I am a man! And I am forced, against my will, to love just the same!”
His fist unclenched, and he grabbed my left arm with a force I hadn’t felt since his struggle against the violet glow’s pull.
“Do not speak!” He echoed my words from the carriage. “Do not move against me, or I shall do more than wound your lover and safeguard your mother. I should have let you drown!”
I tried to tear my arm from him as he dragged me forward into the darkness, choosing the pain of struggling against his tight grasp over letting him have hold over me so easily.
“I should have ordered you to drown!”
He stopped. His grip tensed on my arm, and his weight shifted from one foot to another. I thought he might run past me and jump back into the water. Instead, he grabbed my other arm tightly with his free hand.
“I do not want to hear another word from you!” he said. “Every word that passes through those twisted lips is poison enough to break me.”
“Good,” I replied. He said nothing for a moment, and I stared right into where I guessed his eyes might be, a hungry smile curling the corners of my mouth.
“Is your heart so cold and closed to me?” he said at last. His grip slackened.
I clenched my jaw and gazed straight into the void that his veil created in the violet glow. I hoped my eyes, flameless though they may be, would burn straight through him. “I do not need my words in order to answer that.”
He picked me up, slung me over his shoulder, and carried me into the shadows.
I could see by the leather-gloved hands just below the billowing black gauze of the curtain between us that the lord had little appetite. He picked at a piece of meat with his fork and had barely lifted any of the potatoes. My own appetite was surprisingly strong. I devoured every last crumb on my plate nearly as soon as a specter laid it in front of me.
A specter came to retrieve my plate the moment I put down the fork, and the black-gloved hands lifted slightly to call another specter to his side. The servant removed his plate and exited the room, but no one swooped in to place the veil and hat on their master. The lord remained seated, his palms resting atop the table.
He lifted the tips of his fingers again, and the specters filed out of the room, every last one.
The dining hall door closed. A gust of wind suddenly seized upon us through the open window, causing the curtain to flutter as if a giant hand had run itself across the gossamer surface.
“Speak now,” spoke the lord. “They will not hear. They will not strike.”
My tongue was struck dumb. It was impossible. I couldn’t trust him. He was always two moves ahead of me.
Fine, I would play along. But he would be surprised to see that I could play by his rules and still come out victorious in the end. I’m going back to the pond. I have to stop him before it comes to this. I have to stop all the men.
“Tell me where Jurij is,” I said, my tongue suddenly snapping back into action.
“On the top floor,” he replied. “In the room next to your mother’s.”
“What have you done to him?”
“I staunched and treated his wounds.”
My lower jaw was grinding. “To the best of your ability?”
He didn’t hesitate to answer. “No.”
“What are you going to do with him now?”
“Nothing.”
I sighed and rapped my fingers on the table impatiently. “Why did you bring him here?”
“To heal him.”
I snorted. Really, he had been so eager to follow my orders for once that I had forgotten to actually form the words correctly. “Tell me why you brought him here.”
“To heal him and to punish you.”
There it was. I laughed and breathed a sigh of relief. “Release Jurij.”
The black hands waved upward. So the specters were still able to follow his orders even when not within sight of their master. Is this how he is always watching? I wondered if somehow my wedding escorts had seen the kiss and had alerted their master from a great distance, or if it was the goddess curse that wreaked the pain of the kiss straight to his heart. I hoped it was the latter.
“Release my mother as well,” I said.
Another wave of the black hand.
How simple. How dubious.
“Prove to me that they’re going home.”