Page 33

THE MORTIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE

T hanks to Nissa, Gisele managed to avoid encountering Mal until lunch.

It would be too much to say she had forgotten about the dream by this point—no one could forget such a thing; the nipple piercing would be engraved in her mind’s eye in vivid colour until the day she died, most likely—but the morning’s distraction had given her time to bury the memory under layers of determination.

Mal mustn’t suspect her of feeling anything but indifference towards him.

She would make herself feel nothing but indifference towards him.

It was nothing but a stupid dream; don’t let yourself dwell on it.

Even so, she could feel the heat rising to her cheeks when she met him in the kitchen. He gave a start at her entrance, spilling water from the glass he’d been about to drink from. Skymallow promptly swallowed the liquid.

“Sorry—I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said with forced lightness.

“Oh—that’s… It’s fine. You’re fine. How was your morning?” he asked, turning slightly away from her to refill his glass.

“I’ve been talking to Nissa.” She told him about her proposal, finishing with, “So I need you to agree to keep away from the business.”

There was a flicker of something bitter through the bond, but he nodded and said easily, “Of course. Excuse me; I want to get back to the library, unless you wish my company for your luncheon?”

She frowned. He had made the offer with perfect civility, and yet that very civility was somehow distancing. Well, good. “Thank you, but that’s unnecessary,” she said with equal politeness.

He bowed and left. She stared after him long after he’d gone, trying to tell herself that the encounter had gone exactly how she’d hoped.

The days leading up to the ball slipped past like water, sunshine punctuated by rainstorms, with her buried alternately in books or in the garden.

She tried not to let herself get too involved in the latter.

Mal’s poor gardening management was none of her business, after all, and it was best to keep the lines between them clear.

Thank goodness for the meadow folk, who provided a welcome escape from the excruciating civility that had somehow crystallised between her and the master of Skymallow.

She visited Apfela’s tree-house and gave her a basket of preserved peaches, which Apfela repaid by regaling her with colourful stories.

She managed to bully Nissa into accepting more peaches and a number of other bits and pieces, under the guise of payment for her ‘opinions’.

She hadn’t realised quite how brilliant a tactic she’d chosen until she first presented the nixe girl with a gown and inadvertently triggered an impassioned ten-minute speech about the evils of pairing violet with kingsley-shell buttons, which were not the same shade.

Afterwards, Nissa had seemed to realise she was in danger of appearing to care. “But wear it if you want,” she’d added.

Gisele had assured her she had no such intention and was eager to rectify this oversight, if Nissa could help?

Mal continued in his mixed reactions to the whole enterprise.

He willingly turned over the house’s haberdashery supplies to her and kept his distance as promised.

Even more distance than she’d expected—almost as if he were glad of a reason to avoid her.

And yet little flickers of bitterness came through the bond when he forgot to block it from his end.

When she coaxed Nissa into expanding their circle of ‘opinions’ to include Apfela and the small brownie woman, he sulked his way around the library making dark comments about not encouraging people, while also fishing for every detail of their conversations.

The reason she kept forgetting Rosenna was explained as something called glamour, which most fae had but brownies were particularly apt at.

“Why don’t you go down and talk to them yourself?

” Gisele asked Mal after he’d roundabout inquired whether Apfela had said anything else for the third time.

He had a weakness for gossip, despite his refusal to engage with the world.

Not for the first time, she wondered how he had managed to live here alone for so long.

Wistfulness entered his expression, but he shook his head. “It’s better if I don’t.” He retreated to his workshop, as he’d been doing more and more lately.

The erdhenne became a permanent fixture in the kitchen garden, and it did seem to be eating a number of caterpillars, so was its presence so very terrible? Gisele pointed this out when Mal came back from unsuccessfully shooing it outside the wards yet again.

All the while, the bond between them grew stronger, even with the dampening effect of the dismae. At least Dagomir’s Mixture continued to keep her from dreaming of him, which she told herself she was glad for.

If he’d shown the least bit of interest, it might have been different.

She might have thrown good sense to the wind and suggested some mutually beneficial arrangement.

Would it have been a good idea to indulge in physical desire with a man whom she was probably only drawn to because of an unwanted psychic bond?

Undoubtedly, no. Would she still have done it if the option had been given? Also, undoubtedly, yes.

But since Mal appeared to only be getting more guarded towards her over time, she firmly folded the desire away.

When she untangled this bond, she could go and indulge that urge elsewhere as much as she liked.

She just needed to keep it contained until then.

Hadn’t she managed celibacy well enough for years?

Spinsters were not supposed to long for such things anyway.

They certainly weren’t supposed to ache whenever he came near, or to feverishly imagine humiliating prompts for how to trip and ‘accidentally’ fall into his arms. Ugh.

On the night of the ball, she was thoroughly satisfied with the results of her team’s efforts. She’d made rose-tint for her lips and cheeks, and Apfela had helped to arrange her hair before she’d come up to dress. The dismae were disguised beneath intricate wooden bracelets.

“I was about to send a search party,” Mal began, hearing her foot on the entrance stairs. He stilled mid-motion as he caught sight of her, his ears perked to their fullest extent.

For a moment he was the Malediction of her dreams, eyes dark with raw want, but the expression folded away so swiftly that she couldn’t be sure she hadn’t imagined it.

She hadn’t had any more disturbingly erotic dreams in the nights leading up to the ball, but it was increasingly difficult not to dwell on the one she had had, the bond between them hummed so strongly now.

Tonight’s choice of costume had been, she had to admit, somewhat driven by the desire to affect him.

His indifference had been driving her mad.

He didn’t look indifferent now, exactly, but whatever that flash of expression had been was now cleanly locked away, leaving only a polite appreciation in its wake, civilly infuriating.

“How do I look?” she prompted, giving a little twirl, skirts rustling around her ankles.

“Beautiful,” he said firmly.

She beamed at him, flattered despite herself. People had so rarely considered her appearance in purely aesthetic terms, the curse all they could see when they looked at her. “Did Skymallow choose that for you, or do we match by coincidence?”

Mal wore a long purple vest over gathered sleeves, bound by a golden sash with embroidery that matched the design of her dress.

He’d indulged in gold jewellery tonight rather than the silver he’d worn for the past few weeks.

An amethyst dangled from the hoop in his ear.

She had a terrible flash of memory wondering if it also matched the dream-version of him’s other piercings tonight and blushed.

Mal held up one of his draping sleeves and watched it sway.

His fingernails were painted in the same purple-and-gold.

“It seemed churlish to refuse Skymallow the opportunity to indulge, since I normally insist on some consideration for practicality.” He took a deep breath, as if to steady himself.

“About tonight: don’t trust anyone, don’t tell anyone about our bond, and definitely don’t reveal that my name is missing until we talk to the diviner. ”

“Such a spoilsport. I was planning to do all three of those in the first five minutes, with whatever stranger looked most likely to gossip. Now however shall I entertain myself?”

He scowled at her, calling attention to the gold-flecked eyeshadow he’d donned. “We are engaging in a very dangerous bluff, where the appearance of being mysterious and powerful may hopefully lead people to think we actually have any power at all. I can’t protect you if people know the truth.”

“Don’t worry; I can always take off the dismae and explode something impressively.” Though she was oddly touched at the idea of him protecting her.

He didn’t smile, too tense to be defused by humour. “That is not reassuring. At best, it will be taken as an insult to our host. At worst, you’ll start a blood feud.”

“Not dissimilar to human balls, then. Shall we go?” She lifted her skirts and headed for the front door.

He didn’t move. “Ah—not that way. This way.”

She followed him further into the interior of the house with growing confusion. “How are we getting there? Magic? You’re going to change into a gryphon and fly us there?”

“Yes, I—” He broke off, coming to a complete halt. He turned and stared at her. There was a peculiar expression on his face, one she’d never seen before. “How did you know that?”

She hadn’t, despite the dream; she’d meant it in jest. Her cheeks heated. “You mean you actually can change into a gryphon? I thought that was…”

“A dream?” he asked. His expression was more guarded than she’d ever seen it, but his colour was high.

Could you die of embarrassment? If she blushed much harder, she was going to go up in a case of spontaneous combustion. Which might actually be fantastic. Perhaps she could burn a hole right through the floorboards and into the ground where she could then curl up and hide forever.

The furniture unfortunately remained entirely not on fire, so after the longest silence in the world, there was nothing else to do but tell the truth.

“Yes,” she said.

He looked like a man who’d unexpectedly found himself in a thorn thicket with no clear path out. “Ah. Did you dream about anything… else?”

Instinct urged her to lie, to minimise, to forcibly drag the pair of them out of this pit of awkwardness by whatever means necessary.

She could tell him that all she’d dreamed was a platonic conversation and gryphon ride and they could both pretend nothing else had happened.

She was good at pretending things were fine on the surface even when absolutely nothing was fine beneath that.

But instead, a less-familiar emotion wormed its way through the horrible, churning embarrassment, because he was apparently good at pretending, too. A far better actor than she’d given him credit for. Despite everything, she felt betrayed by that.

So she set her chin and refused to drop her gaze. “What fantasy did you dream of, my Malediction?”

The memory crackled between them, the bond vibrating. Say you’re mine, my Malediction.

His dark-lined eyes slid from hers. “We were at the Arkrose Nest. You touched my tail. I kissed you and…other things. Does that match your memory?” His tone was cool, and his tail didn’t so much as flicker.

Gisele felt strongly that if he was going to find it all so distasteful to think about, then he ought not to have participated in it so enthusiastically. She crossed her arms. “More or less. There was another dream, earlier. My sixteenth birthday party.”

His ears went flat. “I remember. Was that… all?”

“That seems like plenty! We’ve been sharing dreams. How is that possible?”

“The bond between us. Being in the same house. I should have realised it could happen,” he said detachedly, as if it were a mildly interesting but wholly academic piece of information. “I wonder why it happened those nights and not others?”

Gisele felt anything but detached. She felt like a hermit crab taken out of its shell, innards exposed. “It didn’t happen other nights because I’ve been using a herbal mixture to prevent dreaming ever since that first time. Zingiber broke it on the night of the second one, and I had to replace it.”

He looked as if she’d slapped him. “Ah. Of course. I apologise for my behaviour, princess. Obviously I would not have taken such… liberties in the dream if I had realised what was happening. I will take whatever measures necessary to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

The current of hurt, betrayal, and unreasonable, overwhelming anger spiked even higher.

“As you say,” she said slowly. “Dreams are a place where we behave in ways contrary to our real-life selves. They don’t necessarily mean anything.

We’re both adults; we don’t have to make it into anything more than what it was.

I certainly don’t want— I don’t think of you like that in real life.

” She had to swallow, her throat was so dry.

“I might have dreamed about kissing anyone in those dreams. It was only you because of this damned bond.”

His ears were pressed flat against his hair. “Of course,” he said. “You are not responsible for your behaviour in a dream.”

As if he hadn’t done anything at all! “Neither were you, my Malediction,” she told him, with slightly vicious emphasis.

He flinched. She put on her mask, gave him a bland smile to show how entirely unbothered she was by it all.

“Now that that little revelation is out of the way, shall we go? It seems more important than ever to sever this bond between us.”