I wasn’t certain how to answer. To me the unnameable flaw overwhelmed the drawing, made it unsightly. “It’s how you look, sir,” I settled on. “But it still needs a great deal of improvement. I’d like to work on it more before we’re done today.”
Rook touched his crown, almost self-consciously, as he sat back down. He hesitated, then put his arm back where it had been before. After a pause he adjusted its placement to make it exact.
The remainder of the session passed in silence. Not the rigid silence I usually felt in the presence of Rook’s kind, but a warmer and more tentative stillness. It reminded me of the time I’d gone to sit under my favorite tree in town to read in the shade, and found another girl already there doing the same thing. We’d passed hours together after saying only a brief hello. By the time we went home I felt we were friends even though we’d only exchanged a single shy word. Later, I found out she’d left with her parents for the World Beyond.
I realized how late it was when two curly-haired heads rose up behind the window. Rook remained oblivious to the twins peering inside until May stuck her face to the glass like a suction cup and puffed out her cheeks. Then he turned, but not in time to see them duck down, leaving only a shrinking fog on the windowpane. The sun had nearly set. I still hadn’t figured out what was wrong with Rook’s eyes.
A trace of disappointment moved his brow when I told him we were finished.
“Can I come back again tomorrow?” he asked.
I looked up from untying my apron. “Gadfly has a session scheduled. The next day?”
“Very well,” he said, annoyed—but not at me, I sensed.
I’m not sure what came over me next. When he opened the door he didn’t walk out straightaway, but rather lingered as if he wanted to say something else, just wasn’t certain what. The exact same feeling gripped me. Our eyes met, forging a connection across the room. I drew a breath and then said boldly, chastising myself all the while, “Are you going to return as a raven?”
“More likely than not, I think.”
“Before you leave, may I see you change?”
He hadn’t expected that question. Several emotions crossed his face at once: hope, caution, pleasure. None of them exactly human, but I still couldn’t help but feel they had more substance than the aloof facsimiles of sentiment other fair folk tried on like hats, pale imitations no more real than their glamour.
“It will not frighten you?” he asked.
I shook my head. Neither one of us looked away from the other. “I am not easily frightened.”
A spark flared in Rook’s eyes. Rustling filled the house, the sound of a faraway wind rushing through dry leaves. It rose and rose in volume until I felt the cool wind surrounding me, tugging at my clothes, wild with the intoxicating spice of nighttime forest, shocking me again with that unnameable thirst for change. The cast-off charcoal drawings fluttered where they lay, then blew across the room. As the sun tipped below the horizon, the birdcage flashed blinding gold for an instant before my parlor plunged into shadow.
Rook seemed to grow taller, and darker, and fiercer. His purple eyes blazed impetuously, untouched by his subtle half-smile. A whirlwind of black feathers rose from the floor to engulf him.
I must have blinked, because the next thing I knew the papers lay still against the wall and a raven watched me with half-spread wings from atop the birdcage. The last of the dying light shone on its glossy feathers and glittered in its eyes.
The wind had stolen the breath from my lungs. I knew no words to describe what I had just seen. “That was marvelous,” I whispered finally, and gave the raven a curtsy.
With a trace of humor, the bird dipped its head before it flew out the door.
Four
SEPTEMBER PASSED so quickly I felt I’d dreamed it. I finished Gadfly’s portrait and soon afterward gained another patroness, Vervain of the house of summer. But it seemed to me my days were spent with Rook and Rook alone.
Halfway through the month, I’d delayed bringing up the matter of payment as long as I could. Usually my clients made the first move, eager to ensnare me in their thorniest temptations, but I suspected the prince hadn’t dealt with mortals in so long he’d fallen out of practice. Having to broach the subject myself left me unaccountably nervous. I pretended it was due to the anxiety of facing a deviation from my normal routine. But the real reason was that I didn’t want to listen to Rook offering me roses whose perfume would make me forget all my childhood memories, or diamonds that would make me care for nothing but gems ever after, or goose down that would steal away my dreams. I knew that part of him existed, but I didn’t want to see it. And that sentiment was more dangerous than all the enchantments he could offer me combined.
Three times I set down my brush and opened my mouth before finally, on the fourth try, I found the courage to speak. He looked up from the cup of tea he’d been analyzing—rather suspiciously, I thought—and listened.
“Yes, of course,” he said when I was done. Then he astonished me by asking, “What type of enchantment would you like?”
I paused to reevaluate. Perhaps he preferred watching mortals orchestrate their own undoings. In that case, I’d have to be extra careful. I weighed each word on my tongue. “Something to warn me if I or a member of my family is in danger.” I took a moment to review the request’s weaknesses and went on, “For the purpose of this enchantment my family includes my aunt Emma and my adopted sisters, March and May. The sign must be subtle, so as not to draw unwanted attention, but also clear, so I won’t miss it when it happens.”
He deposited the teacup on the side table, folded his arms, and gave me a crooked smile. I steeled myself. “Ravens,” he suggested, disarming me yet again.
Ravens? I couldn’t decide whether the idea owed itself to vanity, a depressing lack of creativity, or both.
“Pardon my directness,” I replied, “but ravens can be quite noisy. If I were running from a”—I wavered and changed course—“a highwayman, for example, I don’t believe a flock of birds squabbling over my hiding place would be to my advantage.”
“Ah, I see. In that case, well-behaved ravens. They will mind their manners.”
“You are strangely persistent, sir. Is there anything about these ravens I might come to regret?” Frustration hardened my voice. I couldn’t figure him out. There had to be some catch. God help me, I needed there to be one, to remind me what he was. “They won’t torment me with foreknowledge of my own death, or keep me sleepless at night, or descend in droves whenever I’m about to stub a toe?”
“No!” Rook exclaimed, rising halfway from his seat. He caught himself, shoved his sword out of the way, and sank back down looking unsettled. I stared. “I am not up to any mischief,” he went on, sounding equally frustrated. “You do not seem as though you would allow it, in any case, if I tried.”