“Wait!” Ale said, and grabbed my wrist. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You’re right. This is… this is the way it’s supposed to be.”
“Of course it is,” I said.
“And it is real, in its own way,” he said. “I know that. You’re my best friend.”
I didn’t say another word. I just yanked free of him and marched pointedly back to the parlor. He joined me, of course, and we finished our coffee in silence, avoiding each other’s eyes.
That night, I sat in my window, staring down the street at the House of Morandi. The candle in Ale’s bedroom was still burning, a tiny pinprick of light against the blackness of the veil. After a few hours, his shadowy figure appeared at the windowsill, and he blew it out. I leaned over and blew mine out, too.
He disappeared, but I stayed there. Still watching.
I didn’t have any other friends. I had a nursemaid who knew entirely too much about me. I had followers who clustered around me at parties. I had family who passed down their legacy and pushed me to do even better. They were all important, but they weren’t friends the way Ale was. Ale didn’t spend every day with me because there was something he wanted. The only thing Ale ever wanted from me was… me.
I didn’t have any paramours. I never had. Just the other day, Chiara Bianchi and I had been alone in a garden alcove, and in the middle of sniping at each other, she’d faltered and looked at me in a strange way. And I’d felt… something. But I didn’t know what to do with it. I wasn’t prepared for it. So I turned away. I preferred to keep those feelings locked up. I could let them out in my bedroom, late at night, not around a real girl—a girl who could betray me or discover my omen or, worst of all, decide I was unremarkable and treat me just like everyone else.
I didn’t need any of that. I had Ale. Ale didn’t have any paramours. Ale didn’t have any other friends. He had no romance to offer me, but he’d also never marry somebody else, and he’d never carry on a life without me. He couldn’t.
He wouldn’t.
TEN
I DON’T KNOW WHY I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE EASY TO GET A trunk with a girl inside it down a steep, dark staircase. My first approach is to get in front and pull, but after it nearly runs me over, I try pushing. In an instant, it’s gotten away from me. I chase it down the steps, grimacing at the obnoxious noise. When I finally manage to catch it, I wrestle it down, and down, and down. Just when I start to fear the stairs will never end, I wind around a bend and find an arched doorway, two flickering lanterns on either side.
I leave the trunk for a moment. I creep to the doorway and peek into the room.
I never saw the underground well in Occhia, but I was taught how it works. The watercrea collected blood in a glass tank beneath her tower. Then she opened a hole at the bottom and let it flow down into the well. She used her magic to transform it as it went.
After ten years of nightmares about the watercrea, I have a very particular mental image of what I think it all looks like. It makes seeing the well of Iris even more jarring. It’s not a small hole in the floor, like the one I imagined for Occhia. It’s wide, taking up most of the space in the round room. It’s full to the brim, the surface dark and glassy. And there’s no glass tank holding blood above it. There’s nothing above it—just endless stone walls stretching up into shadow.
Off to one side is a black doorway. It must lead to the catacombs. This place has a silence to it, ancient and total, that I would never find in the city streets above.
I move to the edge of the well and kneel down. I can’t see the bottom.
Verene claims that she spends most of her day here, filling the well. But I don’t see any sign of that. I don’t see a chair, or a bottle of wine, or an easel and paints. I don’t see any signs of… anything. The well looks like it was simply filled out of nowhere, by magic.
I touch the surface of the water, just to be sure it’s real. It’s cold.
Occhia could live off this water for days. Months. Years.
Behind me, there’s a loud crash. I whirl around to see that the trunk has fallen onto its side, and Verene is tumbling out.
I run for her, my sewing scissors out. But she’s already on her feet. She’s pushing her mussed hair out of her eyes, and all at once, she’s looking at me. In the dim light, her eyes look bigger. Colder.
“So?” she says.
I can’t move. I can’t even breathe.
She gestures to the well behind me, and I stumble back.
“Do you believe me yet?” she says. “Or are you going to tear up the catacombs, looking for whatever evidence you think you can find?”
The scissors are shaking in my grip, and I clutch them with both hands.
Verene sighs. “That’s what I thought.”
I jab at her. I have to. I have to do something. But she lunges at me, like she’s not even afraid of getting stabbed, and grabs my wrists. And the scissors are out of my hands and in hers. I have no idea how it happened. I thought I’d be better at using a sharp thing on another person. It seems like the sort of thing I should be good at.
“This is insulting,” she says. “It’s really insulting. You attacked me for no reason, and then you tied me up in the most undignified way—and I’m sure you snooped around in my things, too. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for this city. I give so much of myself, and I do it for you and everyone you love. Can’t you see that?”
She’s coming at me. The scissors are clutched in her white-gloved fingers. And her eyes are unblinking. Unrelenting.
“Just explain it,” she says.
“Ex—” I’m stammering, even though I’m not the sort of person who stammers. “Explain what—”
“My magic is real!” she says. “You have to know that! You can see it all around you! So why do you and your little group of conspiracy theorists still have meetings in the greenhouses? Why do you make up these ridiculous rumors about how I’m taking blood from people in their sleep? How would I even do that? I couldn’t. Things are so good in Iris. Everyone is happy. Except you.”
She won’t stop advancing. I stumble along the edge of the well, groping the cold wall for balance.
“I—” I say.
“I’m not like her.” Her voice is too loud, echoing off the stone walls, and I swear she still hasn’t blinked. “I would rather die than be like her. Do you think you had a bad time of it, with her ruling over you? Imagine being her daughter. She treated me like a prisoner, too. She never let me go anywhere. She made me watch as she stuck needles in dying people and took their blood. She—”
She cuts herself off. She’s breathing hard, and the scissors are trembling in her grip. She presses a hand to her forehead, like she’s suddenly dizzy.
I feel like I’ve been frozen inside. I haven’t been thinking. I’ve just been backing away, instinctively, trying to get away from her eyes. But all at once, I come back to my senses.
If I was being attacked by magic, I would know. I’m terrified right now, but the sensations in my body are all my own.
The moment I realize that I’m still free to act, I do. I lift my skirts and kick Verene in the stomach, hard. It catches her off guard. She doubles over and drops the scissors. I snatch them up and back away. And I wait to see how she’s going to retaliate.