I drew away from her, unsteady. An ache began building in my center, growing outward, until it sank through my skin and bowed my skeleton down toward the earth.
“Really?” I whispered. “After everything you just told me, everything you’ve already gotten to have that I didn’t—you won’t even let me make this one choice? After all that fighting I did, all the struggling, all the barbed-wire shit that meant nothing while you hid in plain sight? Now you won’t even let me be the one to sacrifice, if that’s what I want? I don’t want to be the one to stay behind.”
She shook her head, her eyes pooling, pale and clear as spring water. “You’re not taking the hit for the both of us, not again. Not ever. I’m the prepped one, anyway. I’m the one they groomed just in case, you know?”
Resignation thudded over me, heavy as soil dropped on a casket. “Then I suppose we’ll see what sort of contest happens when sisters can’t decide.”
“ONE DAY TO prepare,” Sorai said through her teeth. This time she stood as we knelt before her on the cushions, the roses wheeling around us. Her eyes glittered with tamped-down fury, and the skin beneath them was dusky with fatigue. “That is all the time I can give you foolish, self-indulgent fledglings—my hold frays already, the curse bucks beneath my will. Faisali has tried to wake four times since I saw you last. Four times in two hours.”
Guilt poured over me, prickly with panic, and beside me Malina made a low sound of distress. We were putting so much at risk because we couldn’t come together the one time it truly mattered. But there was no splitting the difference here. I wouldn’t let her go willingly any more than she would let me.
“Death will be your judge, and you will agree to abide by the decision. There can be no dissent once that is done, do you understand? Not even an inkling of it.”
“I do,” I said softly, my throat tight. Beside me, Malina nodded silently. We weren’t holding hands this time.
“Then go to bed, rise early, and begin. I will send someone for each of you. If you truly wish to fight each other for this, you will do it tomorrow night.”
“What . . .” I cleared my throat. “What will it be like?”
“After your lessons, you will be readied for the ritual banquet, where you will then perform. Everything done to you—and everything you do—shall be in the service of beauty. That is your work now; make yourselves lovely. Azareen has the advantage here, Lisarah. She has been learning from Naisha since she was a child, where you have been given far too much free rein. So, you will do everything in your power tomorrow to smooth all those jagged edges—in which you seem to take such pride—into something fit to be beheld and beloved by Death.”
Even though I’d decided to do this, committed myself fully to fighting to win, everything in me bucked in protest at that imperative. In my lap, I curled my hands into tight fists. I could do it, if that was what it took to save her. I could force myself soft.
“What about me?” Malina asked quietly.
“As I said, you are already primed to win. But your sister has been fierce like you never have. Where she should learn softness, your challenge will be to grow truly bold; now is the time to shed that meek veneer, show us what truly lies beneath.”
“Can I . . .” Malina’s voice cracked. “I’d like another bedroom, please. If you have one to spare, I mean?”
I could feel my insides splitting, cleaving in two. So this was heartbreak. At least now I knew what that felt like.
TWENTY-FIVE
EVEN WITH THE BONE-DEEP EXHAUSTION OF THE PAST FIVE days turning my marrow into lead, I hadn’t thought I’d sleep at all without Malina breathing beside me. But Shimora had kindly scented me into some semblance of peace, stroking my hair while waves of her perfume lapped me into sleep like some gentle tide. In the early morning, my heart still throbbed like a rotting tooth, but otherwise I felt more awake than I had in days.
We had breakfast in a massive, sunlit dining room, at a polished table so long it could easily have seated fifty people. A row of iron chandeliers swung above, square cages nestled within cages all the way down to the minuscule, metallic birds trapped within each. Shimora sat between me and Malina, like a buffer; there were about thirty others of our family there. I wasn’t even sure what to call them, all these grandmothers so many “greats” removed. Relatives? Kinswomen? “Grandmother” felt jarringly strange when they were all so youthful, that ripe, full bloom of Mama’s age. So many pairs of mothers and daughters, indistinguishable from each other without the telltale indicia of years.
I recognized falling-star Ylessia from the night before, smiling at me as she forked burstingly sweet heirloom tomatoes, brined feta cheese in olive oil, and curls of salty Njegu?i prosciutto onto her plate. All the food was so perfect and simple it tasted lavish, an elegance that made me ache for Mama. Oriell was there too, the teal-haired ballerina, and the Valkyrian bell-ringer named Xenia.
Despite a nearly tangible undercurrent of tension—they all clearly knew that everything depended on us, and that we couldn’t align; it was obvious in the sidelong traded glances, the hushed whispers down the table from us—they all flocked gracefully to us between bites, eager to greet us and skim our cheeks with affectionate hands, as if we belonged naturally to them even after years apart. After so much time with just Lina and Mama, it felt impossibly surreal to be surrounded by these gorgeous, ageless women, so hemmed in and awash in family. I could feel the kinship of their gleam, twining and curling fondly against mine. It was beyond wonderful, a warm web of joy and belonging. It made me wonder again how Mama could have ever snipped herself loose from it.
“Where’s Natalija?” Malina asked. “Naisha, I mean. Shouldn’t she be here?”
Shimora glanced around, brow furrowed. “She wasn’t feeling well earlier this morning, I believe. But yes, she is here. I’m sure she’ll find you later.”
“And where is everyone else?” I asked Shimora as I washed down a bite of oil-soaked, divinely crusty bread with a tangy sip of yogurt. “Four thousand years of us, and never dying—there should be more, shouldn’t there?”
“There are,” she confirmed. “With a new pair of daughters every twenty years or so, we’re over two hundred by now, scattered all over the world. We have other strongholds like this one, though we began here, built this one first for ourselves. There’s also a lovely little palazzo in Venice, and a castle in Spain belongs to us. Quite a few others, too. With so many years to ourselves, why not roam as we please—especially if we can do it together? We have companions, too, of course, for as long as we choose. We live however we like, and we always have each other to return to in our little enclaves.”