It was Aster.
“Good afternoon, Aster.” I scraped up the last of my reserves addressing her as though nothing was wrong—as though merely looking at her didn’t make my skin crawl. “Do you have anything in mind, or would you like me to choose an emotion for you?”
“Oh, you choose, please. I’m certain you can choose better than I.” She gave me a wan smile. But her eyes . . . her eyes were ravenous. Twisted in swaths of muslin, her hands trembled. I knew what she wanted, and I wasn’t sure I could give it to her. Or, more importantly, whether I should.
She wanted to see herself mortal again.
I dipped Rook’s quill. A bitter smell of crushed acorns rose from the bowl as I made my first line in dark ocher. I felt as though I were pouring a glass of water that I was about to show, from the other side of prison bars, to a person dying of thirst. In that moment, I hated the Green Well more than I ever had before. I hated that it existed, and that people wanted it. I hated that I had sat on the edge of it and not felt the vileness radiating from its mossy stones. How dare it look the way it did, an evil thing, a hollow thing, surrounded by ferns and bluebells and singing birds. Had Aster had any way of knowing the eternal horror to which she was agreeing? The tip of the feather quivered with the force of my anger.
I outlined her features in bold, violent strokes. The ink spattered as I worked, giving the sense that her portrait was coalescing onto the page from particles of darkness. Her sharp chin, hollow cheeks, and overlarge eyes took shape beneath my hand, raw in form, but true. I changed the angle of her face so that it was slightly lifted; her eyes gazed directly at the viewer. How dare you? they blazed. Her mouth was shut, but her upper lip curled. How dare you do this to me? Where are your consequences? She looked as though she were about to spring forth from the page to enact vengeance—to wrap her fingers around someone’s throat. I shall deliver them to you!
Thus I gave Aster my rage. Ugly rage, human rage, the rage she deserved to feel but could not, because it had been taken from her forever.
When I finished, I was breathing heavily and a strange energy buzzed through my veins, as though my blood had been replaced with a howling wind. As I met the eyes of Aster’s portrait, a thrill sparked through me. She was alive on the page in a way even my Craft rarely achieved. She was real again.
I needed to stand. The gale force within me demanded movement. I rose painfully from the chair, unable to feel my thighs or buttocks, my knees creaking. I brought the portrait to Aster, who watched me approach with polite confusion. The bark shook in my hand. At the last moment, I remembered to curtsy. Across the court, dozens of elegant forms bobbed obligingly back.
“I needed to get up,” I explained in a harsh voice. I cleared my throat. “Mortals’ bodies aren’t designed to sit in one place for long periods of time.”
Murmurs of understanding rippled through the line. Everyone had been observing me, trying to make sense of my actions. Yes, of course; mortals were so fragile . . .
I handed Aster her portrait.
She studied it. A curtain of long, dark hair fell over the side of her face, so I couldn’t see her expression. Finally she raised a finger and traced the still-wet ink, smudging it. She dragged the smudge all the way across the bark, to the edge of the canvas, pressing hard enough that I thought she might crack my work in two. When she reached the edge and released it, the bark flipped up to its original position. She turned her stained fingertip over to look at it.
“I remember,” she whispered. And she angled her head just slightly toward me, enough for me to catch a glint of her eyes through her hair.
A bell might as well have tolled through the clearing—a bell only I could hear. In Aster’s eyes rage, true human rage, struggled like a fire guttering wildly in the night. Gooseflesh rose all over my body.
So quietly I almost didn’t hear her, she said, “Thank you.”
The spell broke. She stood up, her expression blank, so blank I almost wondered if I had imagined that angry spark, but I knew I couldn’t have made it up or mistaken it. She wandered onto the lawn with her portrait dangling limply from her fingers, apparently without a care in the world. But when she sat she kept the portrait angled downward against her lap, like a secret she was determined to keep.
I steeled myself and turned around.
“Sir,” I said to Gadfly, “my Craft has wearied me, and I’m running low on pigment. May I take a break?”
He clapped his hands together. “Of course, Isobel. You needn’t even ask, you know. You’re the guest in our court, and deserve every courtesy I can offer.” The fair folk waiting in line sighed as one, whispering their disappointment. “Now, now,” Gadfly chastised them before his attention sprang back to me. “Would you like someone to escort you through the forest? Rook, perhaps?” He suggested this without a hint of guile.
I glanced toward the game of shuttlecocks and found Rook standing there watching me, chest heaving with exertion, his game forgotten. A birdie whizzed past his head, ruffling his hair.
“No, I’ll do quite well on my own.” I spoke evenly, hearing my own voice as though it came from someone else speaking around a corner. “I plan to remain close by, and I wouldn’t wish to trouble the prince over something so small.”
I had no way of knowing whether Gadfly’s question truly was innocent. If he were to suggest anyone to accompany me, Rook was the natural choice. But I couldn’t shake the scrambling paranoia that he knew. Perhaps that he had even seen something—something in the future—
I smiled at Gadfly and curtsied my leave. Then slowly, deliberately, I gathered up the teacups and walked away toward the glen, where the top of Rook’s autumn tree spread its scarlet leaves in the distance. I felt Rook’s gaze searching me, but I didn’t once turn to look.
I had to accustom myself, after all, to leaving him behind.
Fifteen
AS I SLOGGED through the undergrowth, I assured myself Rook would be all right. He was probably already languishing insufferably after having beaten everyone at shuttlecocks for the dozenth time over. But why did he have to be so utterly, stupidly transparent? He might as well have I’M IN LOVE WITH ISOBEL! written across his face for everyone to see.