Roses and Rot (26 page)

“And you can call, too, if he doesn’t work out.” Thomas nodded in the direction of Evan, who was laughing as he and Gavin cut through the crowd.

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” But I smiled when I said it.

Thomas grinned. “Good luck with whatever I’ll be hearing
about from you in seven years.” He intercepted Gavin. I walked to the bar for a glass of water, and Evan met me there.

“Enjoying the evening?” I asked.

“I really am. A lot of decisions to make,” he said. “I’m going to stay an extra day to deal with them, but Gavin said he’d take you back to Melete tomorrow. He’s got a car, so you won’t have to fuss with the train.”

Gavin was deep in conversation with Thomas, and I idly wondered if the ban on speaking about the tithe outside of Melete applied when it was the King of Faerie you were talking to.

As the evening went on, more people—polished, elegant, subtle—came to pay court to Evan, to exclaim over his art, to promise calls from one agent to the next to discuss future projects, interviews, drinks. I stood at his side, smiling and silent, a forgotten accessory, and then, when the ache of keeping up the politely interested façade began to feel false and feral, like I might bite the next hand that reached past me to grab a piece of him, I excused myself.

I splashed cold water on my face and over my wrists in the fluorescent quiet of the bathroom, the door locked against the hard flash of want, of ego, outside. Head aching from the constant hum of voices, arches screaming in my heels, I went back into the gallery, looking for Evan, to see if he’d mind if I went back to the hotel early.

The heart foreshadows things very well. Even before you find the mostly closed door with the slice of light at the bottom, even before you hear the gasps and the wet slick of flesh meeting flesh, you know. You know that you have been looking too long, you know that the side-eyed glances from the people you pass are no longer envy, but pity. Your heart stutters with the knowledge of what will be on the other side, but like Bluebeard’s wife, you open the door anyway.

The woman’s head was tossed back, her artful hair disheveled, her coral-pink lips gasping out her orgasm. I closed my eyes and pulled the door shut before I could see Evan’s face.

Everything he ever wanted.

I leaned against the wall, pulling myself together, biting the inside of my cheek until I was certain no tear would fall. Checked my makeup and repainted my mouth blood red, because there was no way I was walking back into the crowd looking less than perfectly composed.

The purposeful click of heels. “Ah. I’d hoped this wouldn’t happen.”

The assistant from before, in her beautifully folded dress. Of course she knew. She was, I was certain, very good at her job.

“I’d like to go back to the hotel,” I said. “Can you call ahead and book me into a new room, though? I’ll pay for it, obviously.” I winced at the probable cost, but whatever it was, it would be worth it to not have to see Evan.

“Certainly.” Her voice was kind, competent. “I’ll have your things transferred.”

She began keying things in on her touchpad. “The car is waiting downstairs. I’ll walk you out the back. Is there any message you’d like me to leave?”

It would be easier for Evan if I just disappeared, I knew. “There’s no message. But I’m not a secret. I’ll leave by the front.”

She nodded. “I’ve sent you my information, if there’s anything else you need. And you were here as the gallery’s guest. Everything has been taken care of.”

I heard the door open behind me as I walked away, heard him call my name. I didn’t turn around.

Everything had already been taken care of.

I wasn’t sleeping, but I still jolted when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number. I answered anyway, sure it was some small hours of the morning disaster.

“Imogen. She was nothing. I’m so sorry.”

“Evan. It’s four o’clock in the morning. I’ve been back for almost three hours. If you were sorry, you would have called sooner.” Or not fucked her.

Silence on the other end of the phone. Then: “But—”

“No,” I said, and disconnected.

When the phone rang again, I turned off the ringer and shut it in a drawer, so I couldn’t see the display light up.

The car, a sleek, smoke-colored thing, slid to a stop in front of the hotel. I met the driver at the trunk, handed him my bag, and climbed into the backseat on my own.

“I hope you had a good time last night,” Gavin said.

I stared. Burst out laughing. “Look, I know you guys don’t really understand human emotions or whatever, but are you fucking kidding me?”

“Forgive me, Imogen, I was preoccupied at the event, and obviously missed something. What happened?”

“Well, Evan was preoccupied, too. With another woman. I was the one who found them. So no. I did not have a particularly good time.”

Silence, but for the quiet hum of the car.

“We do, you know.”

I looked away, out of the window. “Do what?”

“Understand human emotions. Feel them, even. Things would be easier if that weren’t so.”

“What would be easier, Gavin? It’s been an exceedingly long twenty-four hours, and I really can’t do cryptic right now.”

“Very well then—I’ll endeavor to be clear. I am in love with your sister, and I believe that if she goes to Faerie as the tithe, the effects of being there will kill her.”

I turned away from the window and looked at him full-on. For
the first time since I’d met him, he seemed mortal. Not like he was wearing his human glamour, but fully mortal—fine lines feathered his eyes, and dark circles ringed them. He looked colorless, exhausted.

“So forbid her. Tell her she can’t do it. You’re the king, right? Or lie—tell her you were wrong about the time. Seven years is too long in dance. She knows that.” My words tumbled over each other in a rush.

“I wish I could.”

“What, because you can’t lie? Fine. I’ll lie to her. You just keep her from going over there to die.”

“I
can
not—as in, am prohibited by the magic that governs it, Imogen—interfere with the tithe. I cannot say something to your sister to directly influence her choice, nor can I prohibit her from going, if she is chosen.”

“You aren’t even allowed to tell her that you think she might die?”

“Magic manifests differently in all of us. Mine uses words as a channel. Sometimes saying a thing makes it true.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, and a muscle fluttered along his jaw.

“Then don’t choose her.” Knowing as I said the words that it wasn’t that simple. “Or, fine. Let her go. Just give her the same deal that Evan got. Parole her so you can dance together here. That would make more sense anyway.”

“Evan is allowed to leave Faerie for temporary periods because it is to our benefit that he spend time elsewhere. That would not be the case with Marin.”

“But—”

“Marin sickened when she rode into Faerie because of the strength of its effect on her, not because of an overindulgence in grief. And do not think that we, that
I
cannot tell the difference. Even though
I didn’t know precisely what caused it, do you think I didn’t know how you felt, that you were betrayed, raging, the second that you got into this car? I can taste it. The intensity of Marin’s emotions would be like wine to us, and we would drink her dry.”

The air in the car crackled across my skin. I pressed myself against the door.

“We are already spread too thin because of the leniency Evan has forced on us. Faerie is weakened, and I am weak because of it. I have no options.” He breathed out, and I took in the fact that my cheating ex might be the reason that my sister died.

“I have no options,” he said again, “other than you.”

“Me.” So tired my bones ached, I stared at him. “You are the fucking King of Faerie, Gavin. Even if you are weakened, what exactly do you think that I can do that you can’t?”

“You can talk your sister out of this.”

“I really don’t think I can. Not unless I tell her you think she might die, and honestly, Gavin, maybe not even then. You didn’t grow up in our house. You didn’t live with our mother. You can’t know what escaping that—knowing that finally, we could be sure that we could keep her away from us, out of our lives—means.”

He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “As you said, you can lie to Marin. And if that is not enough, you might work to ensure that she isn’t chosen.”

“Not to spoil your big secret plan, but I am already throwing my hat in the ring for this—I’m writing the best book I can, because I want your deal. The success, and the safety it means, I want that. So maybe lay off all of this bullshit, and things will work out.”

“Your being chosen in her place would work, but the odds of that are unpredictable. What I meant was that you could make certain that she does not believe that she will be chosen. Your sister is many
things, but confident in her talent is not one of them.” Like it was nothing, what he was saying.

“You want me to mentally sabotage Marin. To make her think she isn’t good enough, that she doesn’t deserve to win this thing. You want me to lie to her, and to do it well enough that saying the thing makes it true.” My words tasted like poison in my mouth, bitter acid.

“Don’t look at me like that, Imogen. Do I need to remind you that the alternative could be her death?”

“I loved her before you did,” I said. “So no. You don’t.”

“And you cannot tell her.”

“What, that her lover and her sister conspired to take her choice and her dream away from her? That we talked ourselves into believing that betraying her trust and breaking her heart was the right thing? Believe me, I’d already figured that out.”

“Imogen, I—”

“Look, Gavin, unless it’s something really important, can we not? As you already know, I had a shitty night, and this morning has been even worse. And I’m really tired, and I’m going to take a nap, so if you could please just shut up, that would really help.” I curled into the corner, closed my eyes.

I didn’t open them again until we were back at Melete.

Once upon a time.

Once upon a time, there were two sisters—one dark as the night, and one bright as the sun. People who knew them said it was as if one heart lived in two skins, that was how close the two girls were.

Still, as close as they were, they were not the same. The older sister was quiet and cautious, mistrustful of everyone, like a cat who has been kicked. The younger was bold and exuberant, as if the world were a safety net made to catch her.

A safety net can break if you fling yourself at it too hard.

In the course of her adventures the younger sister was changed. Her desire for everything became a desire solely for one thing, and she was never certain she truly held it. Her desire consumed her, wasted her away until she was no longer bright, but instead, a shadow. A pale form, ghosting through her life.

The older sister saw this, and saw the want that ate away at her sister like a cancer. Such a thing was unbearable to her, that her sister might want, and have only the emptiness of a desire unfulfilled, and so she left, and she went on a quest, and she vowed to find the thing that would be the balm to her sister’s wound.

The older sister walked, east of the sun and west of the moon, in shoes of iron. She brought back the egg of the phoenix, the flame of the firebird, and a deathless heart trapped in an emerald. If there were a sign or wonder under the sun or hidden in its shadow, she gathered it and brought it to her sister.

And still, the younger sister faded.

One of the wonders the older sister had returned with from her travels was a wizard, sworn to her service for a year and a day. He examined the younger sister, using all the tools of his dire art.

“The only cure for her is time,” he said.

“She is dying,” the older sister said. “Even I can see that. How can you say time will cure her?”

She looked around at the rooms full of glittering treasure, the staggering wonders she had collected and brought back, each more rare than the next. It seemed they were useless, nothing. “Time is the one thing she does not have.”

“She is not dying. Her condition will correct itself. But you must hold her close and hold her here until it does. You must be the thing that gives her time.”