Page 20

V

Andrés is waiting in the hall.

The floor is made of stone, and yet María imagines she can see the line he’s trod with pacing.

“There you are, my wife,” he says curtly.

His gaze goes straight to her hair, and María realizes that in her haste, she left the shop without her scarf. Or her tonic. She swears softly to herself, even as she paints a breezy smile on her face and says there must be a storm coming through. The wind came up so strong it tore the scarf away.

His eyes go past María then, to the maid who has appeared behind her, the one who was assigned to chaperone, and she resists the urge to turn and glare in silent warning at the girl.

She resists—and so is left to guess at what Andrés sees there, before he takes María’s arm and leads her into the house.

At supper, the loudest sound is the cutlery as it scrapes against the plates.

María picks at the charred corpse of a small quail. The food is to her in-laws’ taste, which is to say it is both bland and overcooked, proof that money does not buy a palate.

The count and countess tend to eat in silence, but her husband usually prefers the sound of his own voice.

María knows her contributions are not needed, and so her mind makes its way back to the apothecary.

Because of that, she doesn’t notice how little Andrés has been speaking until they are on their way upstairs, and his voice cuts through her thoughts.

“You spend too much time with her.”

María blinks. “With whom?” she asks blandly.

He lets out an impatient huff. She has clearly not been listening. “With the woman in that shop.” It’s not the first time he’s made mention of Sabine—there have been offhand remarks—but there is a stiffness to his shoulders, a shadow in his look.

María feigns indifference. “She is a widow, Andrés. A pious one at that,” she says, though her husband turns his eye to godly things only when it suits him. “Besides,” she adds, “I do not do it for myself. It is for us. ”

Us —a word that makes her wither, almost as much as the weight of his meaty hand on her too-flat stomach.

His expression darkens, and she feels the stairs beneath her turn to glass.

One step, the difference between shattering and safe.

His hand is hot, and horrible, and María wonders when the road she chose veered so badly off its course.

Two kinds of women have leave to walk through this world alone and unmolested.

María’s other hand goes up, and comes to rest upon his cheek, the coarse hair scratching at her palm as she turns his face to meet hers.

And I am not close enough with God to be a nun.

Andrés looks at her, through her, as if she is a common thing. As if he did not worship at her feet the day they met. As if she did not make him bow with want.

I was meant for more than this, she wants to say. Instead, she smooths her own features, tamps down her disgust, summons a wife’s obedience.

“If you disapprove,” she says, “then it is done. I won’t see her anymore.”

He nods, expression softening. Good. Let him think she is a horse that has finally been broken.

“Come,” she says with a placid smile. “Let’s go to bed.”

He snores beside her like a beast.

María lies awake and marvels at how easily sleep takes him.

How heavy. He has jokingly said, more than once, that he slumbers like the dead.

Now she imagines tipping a vial of milky poison between his sleeping lips, listening to him quiet, the measure of his heart winding down, the steady knock slowing to a crawl and then at last, a stop.

Imagines the silence that would fill the room.

She rises up onto one elbow, fingers the ruby at her throat as she studies her husband’s sleeping face, tries to conjure fondness.

And waits.

Waits, until she’s sure he will not wake.

Then rises in the dark, pulls a robe around her gown, and opens the window.

She steps out in slippered feet, edging along the sloping roof the way she has a dozen times in daylight.

María eyes the drop, and perhaps it looks shorter in the dark, or perhaps she simply doesn’t care.

She jumps.

Jumps, and falls, weightless for a single, exhilarating breath before the world catches up. Before the ground catches her. She lands in a crouch on the street below, bones shaking, but unbroken from the force of the fall.

María stands, and looks up at the roof again, in wonder.

It was not such a long way after all.

How strange it is to walk alone at night.

During the day, the streets are cluttered with bodies and carts, and she struggles to navigate the crowded market, cocooned within layers of dress and veil.

But now, by dark, the air is crisp and cool, the city emptied, and quiet, having long drawn in its limbs and gone to sleep. María savors the breeze as it slides through her loose hair, finds the seams of her robe, grazes the gown beneath, and wonders if this is what it tastes like—freedom.

When María reaches the apothecary, no candlelight seeps beneath the door or around the shuttered window’s edge. She knocks, certain that the widow is asleep.

No answer comes.

María clenches her teeth as her mind turns over what to do.

Now that she has made her choice, she cannot turn around, cannot climb back into her husband’s bed, cannot stand another day inside that gilded cell.

She knocks again, presses her ear against the wood, listens for sounds of life within, and hears nothing. Nothing. Until—

“María.”

The widow’s voice, not coming from within the shop, but on the street behind her.

She turns, and finds Sabine standing, fully dressed, an empty basket on one arm.

Her widow’s veil is gone, and the moonlight glances off her pale hair, turning the blonde to silver. It is an ungodly hour for either woman to be out, and yet, while María’s whole body is humming, tight as strings, Sabine looks perfectly at home in the dark.

The widow steps past her and opens the door.

The darkness is deeper in the shop. Thick as smoke without the help of moon or lantern.

María waits for Sabine to light a candle, but the other woman moves around the space as if she can see every line and shape.

María’s own eyes refuse to adjust. She blinks, and blinks, but all she sees are shadows. Shadows—and Sabine.

“I’ve changed my mind,” declares María.

Sabine comes close, reaches up and winds a lock of copper hair around her finger. “I guessed as much,” she murmurs. Then, “What do you want?”

María frowns. “You already know.”

“I want to hear you say it.” There is a velvet lining to her voice that makes María flush. “Tell me.”

And it is not so hard to shape the words, she has been thinking them all night.

“I want to be free,” she says. “By any means.”

It is like laces being loosened. At last, she feels like she can breathe.

Sabine leans in, then, so close María thinks she means to press her lips to hers. But at the last second the widow stops, their mouths a breath apart, her words a whisper in the space between. “Do you trust me?”

It turns out, it is an easy thing to tell the truth.

“Yes.”

In the heady dark, the widow’s smile shines. And then she’s gone, stepping past as if to fetch a bottle from the shelf. By memory, María finds her way to the table, grasps at the back of the chair and waits, wishes there were light, so she could see how the poison’s made.

But too soon, Sabine is back, and close enough to whisper in her ear.

“Do not be afraid.”

María doesn’t understand, not until she feels the bright and sudden stab of pain.

Her hand flies to her neck, thinking she’s been cut. But instead of a blade, or ragged wound, her fingers find soft hair, the widow’s head bent against her throat.

And yet, beneath that softness.

Something violent, sharp.

A searing heat spreads across María’s skin, up like branches, down like roots, and her pulse starts thudding in her ears.

She panics, and tries to free herself, driven by a sudden, primal need, a certainty, old and animal, that she’s in danger.

But before she can force Sabine away, the widow’s arms have closed around her, soft but firm. A cage.

María struggles, but Sabine might as well be made of stone. Her teeth—that is what it is, her teeth —sink deeper still into María’s throat, and she feels something crack inside her from the force. Her head begins to spin, the air around her filling with the metal scent of blood.

Now the pain subsides, becomes a heavy ache, and as it does, María feels the strength leech out of her.

She fights against the spreading weakness, a losing battle as her head begins to spin, her heart a dying animal, kicking useless at her ribs.

Her pulse falters, seems to lose its rhythm in her chest.

Do not be afraid, the widow said. But for the first time in her memory, María is.

Because she does not want to die.

She cannot die.

She—

Her heart skips, and stumbles, the world receding with its tripping steps. A flat black darkness is sweeping in, and in that dark, María sees her short life unspool.

She is a skinny girl on a stable roof, spitting cherry pits over the side.

She is watching caravan after caravan go by.

She is sitting by the hearth while her mother twists bridal knots into her hair.

She is stretched in an alcove, and sitting silent at a wedding feast.

She is a small flame, smothered before it has a chance to burn.

María sees it all unravel, and her anger rises at the meager sum of it, and at its sudden ending.

By now the pain is gone, and María can feel the moment Sabine’s mouth finally lets go, when teeth slide free of skin.

It is like the last string of a puppet being cut. The last ounce of strength goes out of her. Her legs buckle. She would fall, but Sabine is there to hold her up. As if she weighs nothing.

Sabine, who turns María in her arms.

Sabine, whose lips are dark now, blood trailing in ribbons down her throat.

Sabine, who smiles, teeth stained red, as if she has not just killed María.

Sabine, who now touches her own neck, drags a nail over the skin, which parts, blackish blood welling as she holds María close, and tells her, “Drink.”

Drink, she says, as if it is a cup of chocolate.

Drink, she says, and María does.

The widow’s blood spills across her tongue, sweet, and strange, and slightly rotten, turned with loam, and leaf soil, honey, and ash.

And as it rolls down her throat, her pulse recovers in her chest, reclaims a slow but steady beat.

Her legs grow strong enough to hold her up. Her mind begins to clear.

“Enough,” Sabine says gently, stroking María’s hair.

But it is not enough. She bites into the widow’s throat, and the blood, which had begun to slow, now courses faster. One cold hand presses against María’s chest.

“Enough,” says Sabine again, and this time there is an edge of warning. The word rolls through María with surprising force. But it does not hold a candle to her thirst. She feels hollowed out with hunger. And so she drinks, and the blood fills her mouth, blooms inside her as it spreads.

“ Stop, ” hisses the widow, but María doesn’t want to.

Her teeth stay locked against the other woman’s throat, and now Sabine is the one struggling against her, locked inside the cage of her embrace, and she is strong, much stronger than María was, but with every passing beat, María steals a little more, until she can taste it in the widow’s blood, the fear she felt moments before.

María doesn’t stop.

She drinks, until the widow weakens, sags.

Drinks, until the blood stops rising to her lips.

Drinks, until Sabine goes stiff, then still.

Drinks, and does not realize the body in her arms is dead until it breaks. Crumbles between her fingers, crashes soundless to the floor.

She startles, then, as if from sleep. Stares down at what’s left of Sabine Boucher.

The shop is not as dark as she first thought, and moonlight finds small fissures, glances off the ash that was the widow’s skin, the silver strands that were her hair, the gray cloth of her dress, which has fallen in a formless heap, mingled with the rest.

She reaches up to touch the torn skin of her throat, ruined by the widow’s teeth, only to find the gash is gone, the skin already closed. She marvels, does not understand what’s happened, or what’s happening. Only knows that death was close enough to touch, and then cast off.

And yet, she doesn’t feel truly rid of it.

María sits on the floor beside the widow’s remains, and feels a moment of—not of regret, but disappointment. At being left, even though she knows it was her doing.

She knows, as well, something is wrong. No, not wrong, just—strange. Out of place. As if a piece of her has been ripped away, but something new has grown up just as quickly in its wake, so that she doesn’t feel the absence.

Something new, and yet familiar, some version of her that has been buried for a long, long time, and has at last been watered, tended, given leave to bloom.

She reaches out and runs her fingers through the ash.

Knows she should feel horrified.

But as she rises to her feet, all she feels is hungry.