Rosamund Hodge: Gilded Ashes

“My lord,” I say desperately, “you shouldn’t talk to me alone, I’m just a servant, she’s your betrothed, you kissed her—”

“Hush.” He grips my shoulders. “You can stop pretending.”

He’s still not angry. He still believes in me. My throat aches, but I’m far too skilled to cry.

“I’m not pretending,” I whisper.

“Maia,” he says, softly and urgently, “I don’t know what they’ve done to you, how they’ve threatened you, but it ends now. We don’t have to make them agree to anything. Just come with me, and they won’t have any more power to hurt you.”

“They haven’t hurt me,” I say reflexively.

“But they said they would, if you didn’t let your stepsister marry me.” His hand squeezes my shoulder. “Don’t you understand? I’m the duke’s heir. They can’t touch my betrothed. Walk out this door with me, and you’ll never have to be afraid again.”

I will always, always be afraid.

“I want you to marry her,” I say. “I told you and I told you, but you were so stupid that finally I had to lie and make you promise.”

He goes still. His hand stays on my shoulder, but I can feel it, the moment when he starts to wish he wasn’t touching me.

“No,” he says. “You asked me to promise I’d marry you .”

“The girl who holds this mask! No matter who she is in the morning!” I plunge ahead. If I must be cruel to him, I’ll be so horrible that he’ll never look at me or care about me again. “Can you really think I trudged down to that palace and listened to your whining day after day just so I could marry you? You see how I’m almost a slave here. Koré promised me money and freedom if I got you for her. So go back into that parlor, keep your promise, and make us all happy.”

His face is utterly blank. I summon up the smile I use for my mother. “Didn’t you decide you cared about whether the girls you kissed were happy or not?”

His hand drops from my shoulder. “I’m beginning to reconsider it.” There’s no anger in his voice and none of his polished, defensive boredom either; just dazed, hollow curiosity.

“Then don’t care,” I say. “Marry the one you promised to marry. She’s pretty and you won’t have to lie to her.”

He stares at me. “No,” he says finally.

Panic spikes in my chest. “You must—”

“I’m the duke’s son. I’m pretty sure I can do as I please.” Still he watches me.

“If you don’t,” I say desperately, “I’ll tell them about Lydia.”

He flinches. Then he says quietly, “Tell them what you like,” and turns away. The boredom is back in his voice, and I know that I have finally and completely killed what was between us. “I am going home. You and your lady can stay here and rot. Or have a tea party. I really don’t care.”

“You’ll keep your oath or Zeus and Hera will know you for an oath breaker,” I call after him.

“You forget, madam, you are not the only one with wit.” He doesn’t look back at me. “I swore I’d have you or none, and after this morning, I will gladly choose none.”

H e’s safe. It’s all that matters. I tell myself it is all that matters as Stepmother rages at me, as she rages at Koré, as she slaps us and shakes us and drags us down the stairs to lock us in the cellar.

Anax is safe, and I cannot stop thinking of his eyes and his voice as I betrayed him, but he is safe. He walked away from this house and he will never, never come back to it.

Invisible fingers stroke my hair. I lean back, and curve my lips upward, and whisper, “I’m so happy to stay here, Mother.”

“What?” Koré says, and I flinch, remembering she is here with me. I have never been locked in the cellar with anyone else before.

“I said, I’m so glad I can stay here,” I say. “I talk to my mother whenever I feel lonely. Don’t they say that the dead watch over us?”

Koré looks over my shoulder, and then her eyes meet mine. I can see she’s guessing, and recklessly, I go on, “That’s why I’m always cheerful. Because she’s watching over me. And I know she’d want me to be happy.”

The air trembles around me with affectionate, inaudible laughter.

Koré’s eyes widen slightly. I can see she’s putting together my smiles and the rumors of demons and coming up with the truth, and I feel a sudden twist of fear because if she panics—

But she just nods slightly and straightens her shoulders. Even crouched in the cellar with a bruise on her cheek, she looks like an artwork: a princess of Troy, perhaps, mourning and yet stately among the ashes of her people.

For the first time, I don’t think of her poise and her beauty as a lie. She’s lived for years among demons and the ashes of her mother’s love without weeping. Now she knows about my mother’s ghost, and she doesn’t even blink.

In truth, she is as brave as a princess. And she deserves better than this house.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “that it didn’t work.”

“I will find another way to save Thea,” says Koré, and I believe her.

The air around me is still, clammy, and cold. I realize suddenly that my mother is worried—that she thinks I have been thwarted, disappointed. Fear sets my heart thudding and my voice chattering.

“But it was so amusing,” I say brightly, “to see Stepmother angry over such a little, little thing. And then she locked us down here, as if she thought we wouldn’t enjoy it. It makes me love her more than ever.”

Koré meets my eyes. And then she smiles, the perfect image of a gentle girl with a happy secret. “She’s never understood how sweet and quiet it is down here,” she says, in the same elegant, modulated voice that she uses to practice making small talk with the guests who never come.

Nobody has ever conspired with me before, and it’s a thrill almost as drunkenly delightful as telling the truth.

I will never leave this house, and I will never be free, and Anax will hate me forever. But my eyes meet Koré’s, and for a moment our smiles are almost real, and a wisp of happiness curls in my throat.

Locked away belowground, our only light the steady, dim glow of a Hermetic lamp, it’s hard to mark the passage of time. But I’m sure it’s hours later that Thea knocks on the door and says waveringly, “Koré? Are you there?”

Koré, who had leaned drowsing against the wall, bolts upright. “Thea,” she says, and for the first time I hear the urgency under her expressionless calm.

“I’m— Mother’s locked in her room now, she’s talking to herself—I’m going to let you out.”

“No,” says Koré. “Let it be. We’re all right in here, and Mother will calm soon enough.”

She stands by the door, not touching it, but her head tilts an infinite, yearning fraction toward her sister, and I wonder how all these years I never saw the desperate care in every line of her movement. I saw that she loved Stepmother, foolishly and without hope, but not how much she loved her sister.

“I’ve never seen her like this,” says Thea.

“She’s always angry,” says Koré, “and she’s always all right.”

“She’s not angry anymore,” says Thea. “I don’t think she’s just talking to herself. She’s . . . talking to Stepfather.” I hear a little wavering gasp; she’s nearly crying. “I’m scared.”

“Then go to your room and lock the door,” says Koré. “But Mother won’t hurt you. Don’t you realize you’re the favorite right now?” There’s a wry slant to her voice.

“Please let me get you out,” says Thea.

“No,” says Koré. “I am having a tea party with Maia and I can’t be bothered. Come back tomorrow morning.”