She smiled and he had to hold himself back to keep from kissing her. “My cousin is trying so hard. It’s not his fault—he’s been trying to marry me off for years.”
“Why?”
“It’s his job. He arranges the marriages for the family: haggles over the dowry, makes preparations for the weddings, that sort of thing.” Cerise looked at the flowers in his hand. “Are those from Kaldar, too?”
“No. I picked those.”
Her eyes shone. “For me?”
“For you.” He offered her the flowers.
Cerise reached for them. He caught her hand in his. His whole body snapped to attention, as if he’d awoken from a deep sleep because someone had fired a gun by his head. Want.
She took the flowers and smelled them. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He watched her pull the stems apart on her lap. She took three flowers, added a fourth, and wrapped its stem around the first three. “Will you pour us some wine?”
Yeah, because wine was exactly what he needed right now. William opened the bottle and poured the shimmering green into the two glasses. It smelled nice enough. He sipped it. Nice, a bit sweet but nice. Not as nice as she would taste, but he had to settle for the wine for now. “Good.”
“It’s homemade.” Cerise kept weaving flowers together. “It’s a family tradition. Every fall we go to Fisherman’s Tree to pick the berries, and then we make wine.”
She sipped her wine, he drank his, and for a while they sat quietly next to each other. He wanted to reach over and touch her. She made him feel like a child made to sit on his hands. William drank more wine, feeling the warmth spread through him. Maybe he should just grab her. If he did, she’d try to cut off his head right there. His beautiful, violent girl.
“Why are you smiling?” she asked.
“Because I thought of something funny.”
Cerise wove the last flower into her tangle. It looked like a large circle now. She picked it up and put it on her head.
Oh, yeah. He would bring her more flowers and wine and anything else she wanted, until she liked him enough to stay with him.
“Is this your place?” William asked to say something.
“Yes. It’s where I hide when I have a fight with someone.”
He didn’t remember her fighting with anyone. She sat at the table for a while and then slipped out quietly.
“Who are you fighting with now?”
Cerise got up and walked over to the wall. He followed her. Pictures hung on the wall behind the glass. Cerise touched one of the frames. A man and a woman stood by the pond, both young, almost kids. The man was a Mar: lean, dark, tan. The woman was blond, soft, and slender. Fragile. If she was his, William thought, he’d be worried about breaking her every time they touched.
“My parents,” Cerise murmured. “Gustave and Genevieve.”
“Your mother looks like a blueblood.”
She glanced at him. “What makes you say that?”
“Her hair is curled, and her eyebrows are plucked down to nothing.”
Cerise laughed softly. “I pluck my eyebrows. Does that make me look like a blueblood?”
“Yours still look natural. Hers look odd.” He grimaced. “She looks very well taken care of. Like she never saw the sun.”
“It’s their wedding. My dad was eighteen, my mother was sixteen. She’d only been in the Mire for a year. Here look at this one. You’ll like this one better.”
He looked at the next picture. In it a young woman about Cerise’s age sat on top of a huge dead gator, leaning on its head with her elbow. Her grin cut through the mud caked on her face.
He nodded. “I do like this one better.”
“She caused my grandmother no end of misery. Grandma Vienna and Grandpa Vernard. Grandpa used to joke that together they made a W. He really wanted to name my mother something that started with W, but Grandma wouldn’t let him.”
Cerise reached to a fist-sized glass box with a small crystal at the bottom and pushed a button. A tiny spark ignited within the crystal and a three-dimensional portrait of a couple sprang into life above the box. One of the Weird’s keepsakes, and not a cheap one either, since it survived the trip to the Edge and lasted all these years.
William scrutinized the couple. The woman resembled Genevieve in her wedding picture. Same brittle quality, like she was made with fine crystal. A man sat in the chair next to her, leaning back and looking awkward. Long skinny legs, long skinny arms. Even sitting, he was very tall.
They were bluebloods, no question, and ones with long pedigrees. And money. The clothes looked expensive, and the emeralds on the woman’s neck had to have cost a small fortune.
“I told you before that my grandpa and I were very close. He was brilliant. So, so smart. He always made time for me. We used to garden together. And tomorrow we’ll have to go and drive the Sheeriles out of his house.”
Cerise’s shoulders went rigid. “My grandparents were from an old Weird family. My grandfather did medical research. He was famous actually. They had status and money. My mother used to tell me about their castle. It was somewhere north. They had dogwood trees and they would bloom white in the spring. She said they would host balls, and people would gather from all over and dance … Have you ever been to a ball, William?”
He’d been to too many of them. Casshorn, Declan’s uncle, had adopted him to get him out of jail in hopes that he and Declan would kill each other. The adoption came with etiquette lessons. “I have.”
Cerise glanced at him. “Is it fun?”
“I was bored. Too many people, too many colors. Everything is too bright and too vivid. Everyone is talking but nobody is listening, because they’re too concerned with being seen. After a while it all just blends.”
“I’d like to go to one,” she said. “It might not be my thing even, but I’d like to go at least once to say I’ve done it. Sometimes I feel cheated. I know it’s selfish, but sometimes I wonder what it would’ve been like if my grandfather didn’t get himself exiled. Who knows, I might have been a lady.”
He didn’t have much use for ladies. A lady was someone else’s wife or daughter or sister. They were not real, almost like trophies forever out of his reach. She was real. And strong.
She looked about to cry.
“Would you like to dance?”
Her eyes opened wide. “Are you serious?”
Once he learned something, he never forgot it. William took a step forward and executed a perfect deep bow, his left arm out. “Would you do me the honor of dancing with me, Lady Cerise?”
She cleared her throat and curtsied, holding imaginary skirts. “Certainly, Lord Bill. But we have no music.”
“That’s fine.” He stepped to her, sliding one arm around her waist. She put her hand on his shoulder. Her body touched his, and he spun with her around the attic, light on his feet, leading her. It took her a moment and then she caught his rhythm and followed him. She was flexible and quick, and he kept picturing her naked.
“You dance really well, Lord Bill.”
“Especially if I have a knife.”
She laughed. They circled the attic once, twice, and he brought them to the center of the room, shifting from a quick dance to a smooth swaying.
“Why are we slowing down?” she asked.
“It’s a slow song.”
“Ah.”
She leaned against him. They were almost hugging.
“What’s bothering you?” he asked.
“I’m scared to death.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “And mad. I’m so mad at the Hand for putting me through this hell, I can’t even breathe. I have to save my parents. I love them so much, William. I miss them so bad it hurts. I would have to rescue them, even if they were horrible people, because if I don’t, our reputation will plummet. People will think we’re weak, and they will peck us apart little by little. But to save my parents, I have to sacrifice some of my family. Tomorrow they will die, their seats at the table will be empty, and for what? So we can keep living in this mud and squabbling over it. Gods, there has to be something more to life than this …”