But now an icy tide of fear starts to rise in me. Fifteen minutes ago, Stepmother told me again that a stupid, ugly, ungrateful brat such as myself would never go to the ball. I had smiled afterward and whispered, Stepmother tries so hard to protect me, but what if it wasn’t enough? What if my mother listened to Stepmother instead of me, or what if she heard the dull resentment locked inside my head?
I am never sure just how much she hears, or how much I must suffer before she gets angry. All I know is: if I cry, she will avenge my tears. All I know is: I cannot ever let her avenge me again. No matter what Stepmother does to me, she does not deserve what my mother would do to her.
“I’m glad Thea and Koré will be there to represent the family at the ball,” I say. “Otherwise, I’d have to go, and I really don’t want to.”
My heart is pounding. Butter, I think, trying to keep my voice easy. Silk.
“I love dancing, but in front of other people? That would be torture. And the dresses, they’re so pretty to look at, but having to wear one? I would hate to be laced up in a corset and squeezed into tight little shoes.”
The pressure eases slightly. She agrees, I think dizzily. I am almost sure she isn’t angry. My body wants to shake, but I must hold myself trustingly still; it’s only my tongue that rattles faster and faster: “Altogether it’s more fun to get someone else ready for the ball, and isn’t it lucky we don’t keep a maid anymore, so I get to do it all and I don’t have to share and I can’t wait to start working on the dress and perhaps Stepmother will buy some new silk—”
I snap a hand to my mouth, sure that she can hear the panic in my voice. But the air is soft and happy as her presence unspools from my shoulders, winding back into the breeze.
“Talking to yourself like a lunatic again?”
I flinch and look up. Koré stares down at me, her dark eyes narrowed, her arms crossed. She looks warlike and severe as Athena, and if she starts scolding me now, right here with my mother’s spirit watchful and rustling the leaves overhead—
I bolt to my feet and babble, “The garden’s so pretty, I can’t help myself.” I seize her hand and start dragging her down the moss-choked path, back toward the house. “But you must be tired; you had your lamp on all night.” We are three steps from the tree, then four. Five. Six. “Won’t you come inside and have some tea? You can tell me all about how you want to be dressed.” If I can just get her back to the house, maybe it will be all right. “Weren’t you and Thea planning your dresses?”
Koré plants her feet and tears her hand free. “Thea asked if you could come with us to the ball, and now she’s not allowed out of her room until tomorrow.”
Our eyes meet. Trying to stop Thea from befriending me is the one thing on which we have ever agreed.
“That is not my fault,” I say quietly.
Koré shakes her head. “No,” she says, because when Stepmother isn’t watching, she can afford to be fair to me. “But she is being punished because of you, so you will help me. You’re going to take my letters to Lord Anax.”
I stare at her. “Your letters?”
Koré has always been the perfect young lady, every day that I have known her. And it is deeply inappropriate for any lady to write a man who is not related to her. Unless—
“Are you secretly engaged?” I demand.
“Of course not,” says Koré. “But I will be engaged. Publicly. When he chooses me at the ball. And he will choose me over all the richer, more beautiful girls from better families. Because when I dance with him, I will reveal that I am the one who sent him the anonymous letters and courted him while discussing history and literature and Hermeticism. Lord Anax is a scholar. He is always turning down invitations to society functions because he would rather study. Everybody knows that. I will show him that I am the only woman who can match his learning, and he will marry me. He must.” She draws a shaking breath. I have never seen her so passionate. “And you will deliver my letters to him. Anonymously. Today.”
She thrusts the letter at me: thick, creamy paper, folded and sealed with red wax. I take it and feel the hard ridges of the wax; the paper flexes between my fingers.
“Stepmother won’t approve,” I say.
“She’ll approve when I marry him.”
Koré would make her heart beat backward to get Stepmother’s approval. It’s what makes her a fool: Stepmother has never seen her as anything more than an asset to the honor of our house. Is this scandalous plan at last her rebellion? Or just a final, desperate attempt to win the love that Stepmother isn’t capable of giving?
It doesn’t matter. If Koré can convince Lord Anax to marry her, then she will leave this house. Probably she will take Thea with her. Maybe they’ll even convince Stepmother to live at the palace with them, and then I won’t have to protect anyone.
Nobody to protect. I can hardly imagine such freedom.
“I’ll do it,” I say, my heart beating a swift, dizzy song of maybe, maybe, maybe. “I’ll do it.”
Leaving the house is easy. Nobody raises an eyebrow; I already do the shopping, as I do everything else for the household. Stepmother hasn’t bothered even trying to hire servants for nearly a year. She complains about the fickleness of the common folk, but I think it’s a mark of good sense that none of them will stay more than a month. They may not know about my mother’s ghost—they certainly don’t know our house is haunted by demons, or a mob would have burned it down long ago—but they can tell something is wrong.