“I bet he thinks you’re a challenge,” said Paula.
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“Yes, like wild boar to be hunted,” I said. “If I married him, he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d crushed the last spark of spirit in me. I can’t think how he ever believed I’d say yes.” But, I thought, perhaps underneath the man who seemed hungry for power and dominance—the one who feared the Other Kingdom so much he felt bound to destroy it—a little boy still existed: the solemn child who had idolized his big brother, and had felt responsible for an even smaller cousin since the day tragedy struck the three of them. Perhaps he had always believed that one day he and I would be together. If so, it was sad. I would never marry him—his touch disgusted me, and his anger frightened me.
I snuffed out the last candle and got into bed beside Tati. I could not even begin to talk to her. Curiously, as the image of my sister and her lover wrapped in each other’s arms came to my mind, what I felt most strongly seemed to be envy. To love like that, to be so lost in it that you forgot everything else in the world, must be a wonderful feeling—powerful and joyous.
I wished the green-eyed man in the mirror could be what he had seemed at first. I wanted him to be real, and to love me, and not to be a monster from the Other Kingdom. Why did things have to keep twisting around and going dark when all I was trying to do was keep my family safe and live my life the way Father would expect? Tears began to trickle down my cheeks.
A little later, Gogu hopped across and settled damply on the pillow.
“Jena?”
I had not expected Tati to say anything. “Mmm?”
“Thank you.”
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“For what?”
“You saved Sorrow tonight. If you hadn’t warned us, Cezar would have seen him. Caught him. I didn’t think you would do that.”
“You can’t have thought I’d stand by and let Cezar run him through with whatever was handy.”
“No, of course not,” Tati said in a murmur. “But you still want the problem to be gone, don’t you? You’re still hoping Ileana will send them away and that I’ll never see him again.
You were angry with us.”
“Of course I was angry,” I said. “He must never come here again, Tati. Did you plan this? How?”
“I see him sometimes in the woods.” Her whisper was barely audible. “I told him about the party. I didn’t think he would come, Jena, truly.”
“He shouldn’t have. It’s not just Cezar he has to fear, or the other men of the valley. Coming here to see you might get him in trouble with Tadeusz as well.” I thought of the terrible things I had seen at Dark of the Moon—the imaginative ways the Night People had devised for tormenting those human folk unlucky enough to become their slaves. I remembered Anastasia telling me that Tadeusz wanted Sorrow to see him with Tati.
That would be a very particular kind of torture. “Sorrow must love you very much,” I said, “to take such a risk for you. Please don’t do this again, and please don’t go out into the forest looking for him. Promise me.”
“All right. As long as we go across at next Full Moon.”
“I think,” I said grimly, “that’s going to depend on Cezar.
Good night, Tati. Sweet dreams, Gogu.” I did not tell my sister 250
how much Sorrow’s leap from the wall had troubled me; how it seemed to me that if he could do that, he was no longer so different from the folk who had captured him as a child. I wondered what they ate in the realm of the Night People, he and his poor sister. I fell asleep with dark images in my mind. My dreams were a chaotic jumble of angry voices and violent hands.
Cezar didn’t say a word about what had happened. In fact, he seemed to be on his best behavior with all of us. Still, I was suspicious. It wasn’t like Cezar to forgive and forget.
The conduct of the business had been taken right out of my hands. Cezar claimed Father’s desk and told me, politely enough, that for the rest of winter there would be no figures for me to reconcile since his own people at Varful cu Negur?a would deal with everything. In short, there was nothing for me to do, and no reason for me to be in the workroom. He didn’t actually say this last part, perhaps knowing the explosion it would generate, but he made the message clear.
I protested, but not for long. To tell the truth, after the night of our party, I could hardly bear to talk to my cousin. I was finding it hard to sleep. When I did, my dreams were tangled and distressing. I’d be dancing with a young man: not Cezar, or the odious Vlad of the frog experiments, or any of the folk from Ileana’s glade, but a man with green eyes and unkempt dark hair, who held me firmly but gently and smiled his funny smile as he looked at me. I’d feel radiant with happiness, full of a contentment I had never known before, not even on the most thrilling of all our nights of Full Moon dancing. Then the man would bend his head to say something—perhaps
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and his face would change to the grotesquely ugly thing I had seen in Dr?agu?ta’s mirror. Around me, the bright chamber would fade away. The light would become livid, green and purple, and sounds of screaming would fill my ears. My partner’s sweet smile would become a grimace—all long, sharp teeth and pale, flicking tongue. I would wake up covered in cold sweat, my heart racing in terror. Sometimes I shouted and woke my sisters. Sometimes my dream was different: in this one, I was chasing Tati through the forest as someone led her away. Whether it was Sorrow or Tadeusz I could not see. I ran and ran, and the harder I tried the farther ahead they moved, until they reached a cliff top looking out over a great ravine filled with mist.
I kept these dreams to myself, but the memory of them was with me even in waking hours. To keep the nightmares at bay, I tried to make plans. I must get a letter to Father somehow, without Cezar knowing. A truthful letter, perhaps addressed to Gabriel, in which I set out what I could about our problems and let them know how badly we needed help. Who would take it? The snow still lay in heavy drifts, piled up against walls, blanketing roofs, burdening trees. Winters were long in the Carpathians. A possible solution presented itself—but I did not write the letter, not yet. Cezar had a habit of reading anything left lying around.
The days passed. The young men helped Petru with the farm chores, which was a good thing. They also accompanied us girls anywhere we went outside the castle, which was not 252
so good.
