“What happened?” I ask.
“Father died,” says Koré, and for a moment she lets the words sit between us as if they’re all the explanation I need. (Maybe they are. In the end, Mother died is the only thing that will ever need to be said of me.)
“He was rich,” Koré goes on, “but the way his estate was entailed—everything went to his cousin. We would have been reduced to living off his charity, except Mother had quarreled with him, so we had not even that. She married your father because it was the only way to keep a roof over our heads. But she couldn’t forget our father. The one she loved. It was driving her mad, grieving for him while pretending to love her new husband. She told me so and then she told me that she had a plan.” Koré’s fists clench. “She would call upon the Gentle Lord, and when he came, she would offer to pay him with all her best memories of her first husband, if in exchange he could make her love her second husband and his house. And he granted her wish. She loved her husband and his house. She loved them so much she had no room to love anything else, and when he died, it drove her mad.”
I think of the desperate way that Stepmother says the honor of our house. She’s as helplessly relentless as my own mother; I should have known that she, too, had made a bargain.
“And you think,” I say, “if you marry Lord Anax, it will make her happy? That’s why you’re striving so hard?”
A harsh laugh rips out of Koré and frays into coughing. “Oh, she’d be delighted at such an honor to our house,” she says when she has her voice again. “But it won’t make her happy. There’s nothing left in this world that can do that.” She looks up at me, and her face is no longer posed or scornful in the slightest. “But if I can marry well, I can get Thea out of this house. She won’t have to lie awake half the night, afraid the demons are finally going to crawl out of the corners and come for her. She won’t have to spend her days afraid that she’ll finally offend Mother too much. She won’t have to waste her time worrying about you. She’ll be safe and well fed and people won’t laugh at her—she’ll be able to marry somebody kind and be happy.”
I can’t seem to move. I’m not sure I can breathe. I knew my stepsisters must have heard the servants’ reports of something strange in the hallways, but it had never occurred to me that they might believe them, let alone realize that there were demons in the house. That they might be almost as frightened of their mother as I was. That they, too, might long for escape.
“I don’t care whom I have to marry,” says Koré. “I don’t care what he makes me suffer. I will get Thea out of this house.”
Her voice is a rough thread, thin and desperate and utterly unyielding. It feels as familiar as my own heartbeat.
We are exactly the same. Almost exactly, because I deserve my doom and can’t escape it. But maybe I can save her.
“You’re too sick to dance,” I say. “I will go for you. And this time, I will make him promise to marry you.”
So for the first time in nine years, I admit to my mother that there’s something I want.
“Mother,” I say, kneeling beneath the tree and trying not to shiver in the chill evening breeze, “dearest, dearest mother, will you grant me a wish?”
Boneless fingers slide against my cheek. My heart slams against my ribs; I feel fragile and terrified and sure as stone.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I say. “I want to go to the ball—in a beautiful dress and a beautiful mask, just like you used to wear when you were young. I want to drive there in a lovely carriage. Can you do that, Mother?”
The tree leaves rustle, and I hear a faint laugh. My throat closes up, because it’s the same laugh I remember from my childhood, when my mother was alive and danced with me in the garden and I never had to fear her.
Then the air comes alive around me. Ghostly fingers pull off my cap and comb my hair free of its pins. They draw me to my feet and peel my dress away from me piece by piece, thread and bits of cloth pattering to the ground about me until I am standing naked in the twilight with my servant’s uniform in shreds around my feet.
Shadows vein the air like phantom tree branches. My body shudders instinctively, but I am beyond fear. I watch them and I do not go mad as linen and thread, lace and boning swim out of the air and wrap themselves around me into a shift and petticoats and corset. As the corset strings draw themselves taut, the shadows seem to catch on fire, glittering with light; then I realize it is golden thread, great lengths of it corkscrewing through the air. It’s followed by waves of gold satin, honey-colored gauze, and pale, white-gold lace like moonlight. The dress weaves itself around me in great shimmering ripples, and when it’s done, I can barely breathe for wonder.
“Thank you, Mother,” I whisper, and for once I am not lying.
The laughter rustles in the leaves; I feel a touch against my cheek, and then she tilts my head up to look at one of the lowest branches, where a golden mask hangs by a red silk ribbon.
Carefully, I reach up and take the mask, then tie it over my face. It fits as perfectly as the corset, and like the corset it seems to mold me into another person. A lady. It is the most natural thing in the world to curtsy to the tree, just as I did when I was a little girl and we played court together.
From the other side of the house, I hear the clatter of wheels and horse hooves against the cobblestones.
“Thank you,” I say again, and then I go to meet my carriage.