And so I uncorked the bottle and drank.
As revenge, I wore one of my mother’s dresses to the dining room that evening. It was light blue and fell straight to my feet, its bodice embroidered with a small geometric pattern that reminded me of feathers layered over each other. I knew it would hurt my brother to see me in it—to see me in anything she had ever worn—but he wouldn’t be able to say anything about it. I was, after all, dressed nicely. As instructed.
It had taken me ten minutes to fasten it closed, my fingertips were so numb from the painkiller. And as I walked the halls, I kept one hand on the wall to steady myself. Everything tipped and swayed and spun. I carried my shoes in my other hand—I would put them on right before I entered the room, so I wouldn’t slip on the polished wood floors.
The shadows spread down my bare arms from shoulder to wrist, then wrapped around my fingers, pooling beneath my fingernails. Pain seared me wherever they went, dulled by drugs but not eliminated. I shook my head at the guard outside the dining room doors to stop him from opening them, and stepped into my shoes.
“Okay, go ahead,” I said, and he pulled the handles apart.
The dining room was grand but warm, lit by lanterns that glowed on the long table and the fire along the back wall. Ryzek stood, bathed in light, with a drink in his hand and Yma Zetsyvis at his right. Yma was married to a close friend of my mother’s, Uzul Zetsyvis. Though she was relatively young—younger than Uzul, at least—her hair was bright white, her eyes a shocking blue. She was always smiling.
I knew the names of everyone else gathered around them: Vas, of course, at my brother’s left. His cousin, Suzao Kuzar, eagerly laughing at something Ryzek had said a moment before; our cousin Vakrez, who trained the soldiers, and his husband, Malan, swallowing the rest of his drink in one gulp; Uzul, and his and Yma’s grown daughter, Lety, with the long bright braid; and last, Zeg Radix, who I had last seen at his brother Kalmev’s funeral. The funeral of the man Akos Kereseth had killed.
“Ah, there she is,” Ryzek said, gesturing toward me. “You all remember my sister, Cyra.”
“Wearing her mother’s clothes,” Yma remarked. “How lovely.”
“My brother told me to dress nicely,” I said, working to enunciate though my lips were numb. “And no one knew the art of dressing nicely like our mother.”
Ryzek’s eyes glittered with malice. He lifted his glass. “To Ylira Noavek,” he said. “The current will carry her on a path of wonder.”
Everyone else raised their glasses and drank. I refused the glass offered to me by a silent servant—my throat was too tight for me to swallow. Ryzek’s toast was a repetition of what the priest had said at my mother’s funeral. Ryzek wanted to remind me of it.
“Come here, little Cyra, and let me have a look at you,” Yma Zetsyvis said. “Not so little anymore, I suppose. How old are you?”
“I’ve sojourned ten times,” I said, using the traditional time reference—marking what I had survived rather than how long I had existed. Then I clarified, “I began early, though—I’ll be sixteen seasons in a few days.”
“Oh, to be young and think in days!” Yma laughed. “So, still a child, then, tall as you are.”
Yma had a gift for elegant insults. Calling me a child was one of her mildest ones, I was sure. I stepped into the firelight with a small smile.
“Lety, you’ve met Cyra, haven’t you?” Yma said to her daughter. Lety Zetsyvis was a head smaller than I was, though several seasons older, and a charm hung in the hollow of her throat, a fenzu trapped in glass. It still glowed, though dead.
“No, I haven’t,” Lety said. “I would shake your hand, Cyra, but . . .”
She shrugged. My shadows, as if responding to her call, darted across my chest and throat. I stifled a groan.
“Let’s hope you never earn the privilege,” I said coolly. Lety’s eyes widened, and everyone went quiet. Too late, I realized that I was only playing into Ryzek’s hands; he wanted them to fear me, even though they followed him devoutly, and I was making it so.
“Your sister has sharp teeth,” Yma said to Ryzek. “Bad for those who would oppose you.”
“But no better for my friends, it seems,” Ryzek said. “I haven’t yet taught her when not to bite.”
I scowled at him. But before I could bite again—so to speak—the conversation moved on.
“How is our recent batch of recruits?” Vas asked my cousin Vakrez. He was tall, handsome, but old enough that there were creases at the corners of his eyes even when he wasn’t smiling. A deep scar, shaped like a half circle, was etched in the center of his cheek.
“Fair,” Vakrez said. “Better, now they’re through the first round.”