“Water under the bridge, monsieur.” I fluttered my eyes behind my fan. “But today, I am yours.”
Rare and bright, his smile startled me. “And I couldn’t be more pleased.”
I followed him upstairs, mentally comparing his body with Vale’s as the cats twined around my ankles. The two men were built differently, and Lenoir was much older, but I had no complaints. In a way, I felt a little sorry for the men of Sang. With so many petticoats and hoops and bustles, they had no way to judge a woman’s true shape until they got her undressed, which didn’t happen often. In Sangland, from what I understood, the Pinky women were so terrified to reveal their skin to the noses of bludrats that they rarely removed all their clothes, even for lovemaking. Sometimes I regretted being bludded, but when it came to personal freedoms and safety and how good it felt to take off thirty pounds of fabric and breathe at night, I was definitely on the right team.
Upstairs, I changed quickly and relaxed into my chair with a tranquil sigh. Although it had been gray and oppressive outside, the sun danced in prettily through the window, the motes of dust falling like magic snow upon my arms, where the tiny hairs stood up in ripples. A narrow crystal flute appeared in my hand, pink bubbles fizzing.
“This is not the usual drink,” I murmured, taking a sip and then a deeper one.
“Blood and champagne, my dear. They call it the Tsarina’s kiss. It’s too early for absinthe.” He smiled again. “For now.”
I nodded, enjoying the sweet fizz tickling my nose. In moments, I’d downed the blood-tinted liquor and wiped a rogue bit of foam off my nose. I had forgotten since landing in Sang how satisfying and refreshing carbonated drinks could be. As a little girl, I had often awoken in the middle of the night so parched I thought I would die, and nothing felt as marvelous as gulping down soda straight from the bottle in the fridge. Before I could mention it, Lenoir had exchanged my flute for another, which I sipped more slowly, as the first one was already bubbling straight up to my head.
I sank deeper into the chair, slowly unfurling in the sunbeam the way a flower greeted the morning. The champagne glittered in my goblet like laughter made liquid, like the lighter, sweeter, more forgiving sister of the dark red wine laced with blood and absinthe he usually gave me for our meetings. With every sip, I told myself it was only a prelude to the bliss yet to come. I let my eyes go soft, trading focus for the fuzzy, dreamy world of Lenoir’s studio. I didn’t realize I was sighing until Lenoir looked around the canvas at me, his eyes the opaque dark blue of blackberries and threatening to seep in and fill me completely.
“Close your mouth.”
I smirked and licked my lips, missing the bright pink gloss I would have worn in my own world.
“I’m not your plaything,” I said. “For all that I’m merely an object in your still life, I still have free will. And I’ll sigh if I goddamn want to.”
“You’re harder to paint than a horse. At least they express their annoyance through twitching tails and ears.”
The champagne had to be getting to me, for the answer fell from my lips like ripe fruit from a tree. “Horses, monsieur, are best kept for riding.”
One eyebrow shot up, and I knew my little barb had found the target. Finally, the stark, austere man showed some sign of passion outside of his paint. “I have no time for leisurely riding, mademoiselle. And my interests lie outside the acceptable.” His words were clipped as he disappeared behind the canvas, his twitching brush belying the break in his usual coolness.
I took another sip, rolling the champagne and blood over my tongue. There was something else there, something sweet and cloying and syrupy. Not absinthe, not even a hint of wormwood and anise, and I didn’t know if that was disappointing or comforting. But whatever the unknown addition was, it made my spine go loose, my arms limp, my lips numb. Might as well have been absinthe, for still it made the dust motes dance like fairies, just out of the edges of my vision. But what had he said about his interests?
“Do you know, my dear, that I have traveled?”
My mouth quirked up, and the empty glass spun lazily in my fingers, which seemed altogether too long and as if they had grown another joint. “I would assume so, monsieur. A man of your age and tastes would wish to experience the world.”
His night-blue eyes peeked around the canvas like a child cheating at hide-and-seek. “I’ve been to every corner of the globe. Which has no corners, as I suspect you are aware. I’ve sampled the . . .” He paused daintily, and I could imagine his spade beard twitching as he chose between the word women and the word blood. “Wares of every bazaar, every bodega, every grand hotel.”
“And?”
I was surprised to hear footsteps and looked up to find Lenoir staring down at me, his eyes gone the indigo of caverns cleaved in rock where things are buried forever, hidden until they crumble away to shadowy loam. He looked cold and remote in a way Criminy never had, as if growing older had ossified his heart and caused his veins to shrivel into sharp things, claws that forever grasped. He leaned over, and I found my hands hovering over my chest as if begging him not to snatch out my heart in his twisted talons.
“And I have found that everything in this world has a price.” He leaned closer, close enough that I could smell the blood on his breath. “Except, perhaps, yourself. And do you know what that tells me, mademoiselle?”
My breath caught, and I tried to smile and utterly failed. “That you need a bigger checkbook, monsieur?”
Although I’d considered every smile from the suave older man a triumph, the one he gave now chilled me to the bone. “It tells me that I simply need to find the right cage and the right lock.”
I took a shuddering breath and sat up, my backbone suddenly going from gaseous to solid, sublimating into rage and defiance. “There’s no cage,” I said distinctly, “that can hold me. I’ve broken out of four so far, and I’ll beat my wings against the bars of the next one, too. Right until it fucking breaks.”
I was so scared that my knees trembled under my skirt, but his eyes were pinned on my face, and so perhaps he didn’t see. And yet something about the way his nostrils flared, like a dog scenting a mailman, told me that he knew. And he liked it.
Lenoir raised his chin, spun, and returned to his palette and canvas slowly, his boots silent on the thick carpet, as if he walked on the moon.
“The funny thing about cages, Mademoiselle Ward, is that if you build them just right”—he winked at me before disappearing behind his canvas—“the creature within need never know it’s been trapped.”
I heard the rasp of dry bristles on canvas and instinctively moved my arm back into place, my mouth freezing of its own volition into a smile I no longer felt. Not until the cool glass kissed my lips did I realize that he’d moved to my side and refilled my champagne flute, that the glass pressed heavily against my mouth, demanding to be consumed. But the liquid within wasn’t light and bubbly and as frivolous as butterfly wings and fairy glitter. No. The moment I scented it, I knew it for what it was. Absinthe. And blood. And other things that, I knew now, had been there all along, hiding under the heavy nightmare of anise and the coppery heat of hunger. His fingers pressed the glass to my lips, urging them apart. My own hands were frozen on the chair. I had no choice but to drink.
By the second sip, I no longer cared what it was.
By the third, I’d forgotten I had wings at all.
After that, time ceased to pass. I seem to recall cool hands on my arms, pulling laces, tugging on shoes, moving me like a grand, cold doll. I remember a slight thump as my head hit the wall on the way down the stairs. I recall, like some faraway dream, Auguste’s shocked gasp and his soft murmur. “Monsieur, is she even alive? It’s too much.” And then the beat of an engine, the rocking of the stairs, and the beloved, dark, infinite quiet of silk sheets sliding over my body.