Juniper & Thorn(11)
I was not nearly as enthralling to watch as Sevastyan, done up in his feathers and painted lambent gold, but my clients came to me, rather than my beautiful sisters, because I offered what Undine and Rose could not—or rather, what they did not have to. Proximity. Intimacy. Palms spanning bare chests, fingers pressed against throats. I found jawbones and earlobes particularly fruitful, of all the places I allowed myself to touch.
Face unbearably hot, I considered what sorts of secrets I could leach from the cleft of Sevastyan’s chin.
With a steely breath, I approached him. Last night he had appeared as lovely as an oil painting of an angel, or one of the Patrifaith’s many saints. Now, in the butter-yellow morning, I found he had a bit of a craggy look to him. If he’d been carved from marble, I could see the places where the sculptor’s chisel had slipped. The dip of his nose canted sharply to the right, and his chin thrust out at an angle that made him look always on the verge of smirking. His eyes were deep-set, but in daylight they seemed an even more brilliant hue of blue, jeweled and nearly translucent.
My heart raced at those thoughts even as Sevastyan inched forward in his chair, until he was perched on the very edge of it. His legs opened, leaving room for me to stand between his spread knees.
“Go on,” Sevastyan said. His throat bobbed in the green-washed sunlight.
Where his shirt had slid open I saw a flash of his collarbone, the beginnings of a bare shoulder. Dark ink was scrawled into his skin—a tattoo? It must have been covered up by gold paint or brushed over with powder last night.
Behind me, my father cleared his throat. Once again I was painfully aware that my skin was misted with the grease of the kitchen, with the odor of burnt butter and sour pickled cabbage, and that my hair was tumbling over my shoulders in disheveled ringlets. One of my curls skimmed Sevastyan’s cheek.
Perhaps what I’d seen earlier hadn’t been fear but disgust; maybe he would have preferred my beautiful sisters. But they were both asleep, and the truth was, if anyone in this house was something close to a real witch, it was me.
I was still standing above him hesitantly when, with a sudden feckless impatience, Sevastyan took my right hand and pressed it against his throat.
The vision blistered over me, like oil splashed in a pan.
Sevastyan stood in a velvet-curtained dressing room, wearing peasant-Ivan’s shabby clothes. There was a bottle of clear liquid on his boudoir, mostly empty. I could taste the acrid sting of it on my own tongue and feel my vision tilt and blur. Undine once told me that she watched her visions unfold from afar the way she watched storm clouds roll across the sky, and after hearing it I’d been sour with envy for weeks. My visions poured into my eyes and ears and nose like warm bathwater.
Through the dewy brightness of Sevastyan’s gaze, I saw the velvet curtains part. One of the snow-maidens slipped inside, her blond hair pulled into a tight chignon, her cheeks dusted with silver. She flurried toward Sevastyan, their lips meeting, and he stumbled back against the boudoir. Her fingers knotted in his hair. My stomach lurched, but I could not tease apart whether it was my own discomfort or Sevastyan’s, until the snow-maiden’s hand slid between his thighs.
All at once, everything turned bitter and dark, as if I’d bitten into a fruit curdling with rot. Oddly, Derkach’s face rose in my mind, shimmering like heat above the stovetop. It vanished in an instant, and Sevastyan thrust the snow-maiden away from him, both of our twinned bellies roiling.
He reached for the bottle again and then the vision winnowed away, leaving me shaking and sweat-chilled back in the sitting room, hand still pressed to Sevastyan’s throat.
His blue eyes were narrowed, his bottom lip chewed nearly to bleeding. I tore my hand away and stepped back. I could hear Derkach murmuring behind me, and my father shifting on the couch. Sevastyan met my gaze, and in it I saw the same bridled fear, more comprehensible now. It was never me he had been afraid of.
Very slowly, I turned toward my father and Derkach. My skin felt damp, cold.
“He’s having trouble adjusting to Oblya’s sea air,” I said. “It’s not an uncommon affliction for newcomers to the city, especially ones who have never spent much time by the ocean.” I was fairly certain Askoldir was landlocked, but I hoped my gamble didn’t doom us both. “My sister Rosenrot has a draught that will help ease the symptoms until Sevastyan begins to feel more at home.”
Derkach rose from his seat and shook my hand vigorously. “Oh, that’s excellent work, my dear, thank you. The whole of Oblya’s ballet theater is in your debt.”
From over Derkach’s shoulder, I watched dark smoke clouds bloom over Papa’s face. I wondered who would pay for this later, and how. There was always someone who had to answer for my father’s rage.
“Fine, then,” Papa said briskly. “Marlinchen, take him to your sister’s storeroom. Mr. Derkach and I must discuss compensation.”
Still reeling, I gestured vaguely to Sevastyan. He stood, buttoning up the collar of his shirt, and followed me into the foyer. My hands were still trembling; I didn’t dare look back. I breached the threshold of Rose’s storeroom, musty-smelling and cobweb-wreathed, and didn’t pause until I heard Sevastyan say, “That was one of the most practiced lies I’ve ever heard leave a witch’s lips.”
I paused while perusing a drawer of dried motherwort and turned slowly to face him. A heat had spread over my cheeks. “How many other witches have you known?”