Only Krisztina has the temerity to address me directly, and only to my back.
“You may be her favored witch now, Anna the Cunning, even her dearest plaything.” Her voice follows me, so corrosive I can nearly feel it burning through my skin. “But as surely as she is a snake, the worm will turn—and then you will find yourself twisting, impaled upon the hook.”
I turn back to her, slow and deliberate, unflinching when I meet her gaze. “You had better hope that’s not the case, if you know what is good for you,” I say grimly, keeping my face composed, though my heart batters furiously at my chest. Now that they have turned against me, I cannot let them see how deeply the loss of their regard wounds me. And I don’t know what else to do but cling to my precarious ground. “For if I lose her favor, who do you think will stand between her wrath and you? And who else would send you food from her table?”
Her freckled face flickers with a rage to match Elizabeth’s own, though hers is pure and somehow clean, almost wholesome in its earnest fury. “We don’t need your protection, witch,” she snaps, spitting at my feet. “Nor your filthy scraps!”
“Then you may well die painfully, and hungry, to boot,” I snap back, bile welling up my throat. “I hope that suits your scruples better.”
When I whirl back to the door and stalk out, the room resounds with a deafening silence behind me.
Chapter Thirteen
The Pennyroyal and the Fléchette
Sometimes I think Elizabeth must have two faces.
There is the one I see each morning when she wakes, cheerful and eager to meet the day and all it offers. That Elizabeth is indulgent and kind, quick to offer praise and shower me with affection, teach me letters and ciphers and the mind-bending stratagems of chess. She is also quick to learn: insatiably curious as to the properties of plants, how they might be applied not just for sickness but to augment health and bolster beauty. She makes me consider familiar herbs in entirely unexpected ways, as if a wholly different world exists nested within the one I know so well. And all I must do is tilt my head to see it.
I find it impossible not to love that Elizabeth, the one who is beguiling in a thousand different ways. I want to hate her, now that I know what she is capable of, but how can I, when everything I have—my fine new garments, the rich food that leaves me fully sated for the first time in my life, and most important, the coin that keeps my family hale—I owe to her generosity? And the pleasure she wrests from me is beyond anything I could have imagined, second only to the closeness between us. She speaks of such enticing things under the cover of the dark, the secrets and hopes she concocts for us.
Her favorite is imagining what we might do if there were no Ferenc.
“Can you imagine, if he simply never came back,” she likes to muse while nestled in my arms some nights, blinking dreamily up at the canopy. Her eyes glitter like black water in the darkness, to match the wet glint of her teeth when she smiles wide at the thought. “If the war would only be so kind to us. We could be the mistresses of the keep, ruling side by side. We could even bring your family here, imagine! Your sweet sister and boisterous brothers, running wild in these halls. Your mother would never have to strain her poor hands again.”
“They are already so grateful for the coin I send them,” I always assure her, and it’s true. She has increased my salary to three forint a month, more money than I could have imagined earning. I send almost all of it to them—what use have I for it, when she showers me with such plenty? The letters that I receive in return, written on my mother’s behalf in Peti’s clumsy but careful hand, are joyful and exuberant with gratitude. My mother reports that Klara is even packing some meat onto her bones for the first time.
I have so much to be grateful for. And even more to fear.
Because there is the other Elizabeth, consumed by the raging choler, like a dark twin that writhes close beneath the surface. Sometimes I fear she will tear my beloved’s skin to shreds. I can see that thrashing shadow in her eyes even when she is at peace, as if that part of her never quite subsides or rests. Even when she is placid, there is the distant flicker of a rage just beyond the horizon. Like the threat of lightning playing across a cloudless sky.
That other Elizabeth breathes fire more readily than the dragons on her family’s banner, rises to rage like hot summer air whipping into wind. That Elizabeth thrust the head cook’s hand into the hearth for burning her favorite poppy-seed rolls; the smell was hideously like roasting venison. I still can’t eat meat for remembering it. That Elizabeth caught one of the maidservants pilfering sweets from the kitchens, and made her eat so many figs the girl was violently sick onto herself.
That Elizabeth haunts the halls like a lovely reaper. Only ever a breath away from wreaking torment and death.
And yet, every week that Ferenc is away, I count our blessings. As bad as it is, how much worse would it be if we had him to contend with, too? He is not the sole cause of her malice, I can see that now. Whether she was born with the ember of her choler already blazing within her, or developed it as she grew, it is undeniably her own. But his presence surely stokes her flames, fans them to ever greater heights. While he is gone, I can work at diluting the venom even if I do not understand it, gently quell her when she bursts into rage like a phoenix, ashes raining everywhere. Because of me, the clumsy cook retains use of her hand, and the gluttonous maidservant was able to expel the sticky mass of unchewed figs that would have choked her otherwise. Because of me, unsightly chilblains are the worst of lusty Orsolya’s fate.
You’d never know it from the foul looks they fling me, but I do what I can to watch over them, cleaving to the corners of every violent spectacle. Subverting the worst of Elizabeth’s will whenever I am able, bringing her to some uneasy balance.
I take some comfort in the fact that she has never raised a hand to me. Her affection and regard for me seem unshakable, entirely at odds with how easily she inflicts violence on others; it makes me believe there must be some hope for her yet.
And then Ferenc returns home for Christmas, and dashes all my efforts to hell.
“I. Will. Not.”
Elizabeth paces wildly across the confines of her chambers, storming back and forth, spinning on her heel like a whirling dervish every time she encounters a wall. More mobile obstacles, she kicks or pitches over, until the two of us are standing in a jagged sea of shrapnel. Were anyone else responsible for such destruction in her vicinity, I think darkly, they’d be lucky to escape with their life. Her hair tumbles in snarled curls around her stark-white face, and her lower lip blazes scarlet from being dragged viciously through her teeth. I hate to see her chew on herself so heedlessly in her distress, as if she has no care for her own flesh.
But I can’t blame her, not for this particular frenzy. Last night, Ferenc demanded that they dine alone, and she did not retire to her chambers to meet me after. I tossed and turned all night, alone in her vast bed, wondering how she fared. Morning saw my worst fears confirmed; she came tumbling in with another livid black eye, her fingernails splintered where she had tried to fend him off.
But this time, she does not take to her bed.
“I will not bear his foul, wretched get,” she hisses again, beating her fists against her hips to punctuate each word. “Even if he kills me for my barrenness.”