The Wizard's Knife
Demelza did not sleep that night.
After Yzara left, Demelza wanted to run after her, flip the tray of porridge and demand that the queen take back her words …
or at the very least tell her there was more than one way this could end.
She thought of writing a note to Arris and asking him to meet with her before they walked down the aisle, but Yvlle had taken him out for a stag night.
When he had told her this the other day, she'd felt a flicker of jealousy.
"You just spent countless weeks in the company of beauties and now you need a reminder of your fading youth?" she'd asked.
"No, no, you misunderstand me," said Arris. "We're spending the evening as stags."
Demelza blinked at him.
"Yvlle thought it would be entertaining if we tried to find another herd of bucks and then I'd fight them in a manly display of …
manliness. But don't worry, I'll only be a stag for a few hours, and during that time I'm really only hoping to enjoy one's heightened senses.
Did you know that a stag's sense of smell is about a thousand times more refined than ours? Imagine what I could forage—"
At that moment, Demelza had kissed him. Partly to cease his chattering. And partly because he was making her smile too much and her lips would soon be frozen in a grin if he kept talking.
Demelza thought of that kiss as she sat at the edge of her bed, twisting the ends of her hair. How long can love last without true choice? Without trust?
Demelza had always wanted freedom, and in a way she had it.
Arris had given her the winged necklace out of love.
Demelza had no wish to be free of Arris, but even if she did, she would stay, for she would die without him.
Love made for a beautiful prison, but what would happen to them over time?
Demelza thought of her own parents. Araminta and Prava loved one another, but it was a love steeped in its own poison.
A love that kept looking over its own shoulder, always circling, never settled.
Araminta once told her to be wary of passion, for passion that never cooled was like making a home in a burning house.
Demelza was still lost in these thoughts as her mother and sisters arrived.
All morning, Demelza remained in her private wing of Rathe Castle.
Every time she looked out the window, she was reminded of the future that waited for her.
Though the ceremony was not to begin until late in the afternoon, the roads to Rathe Castle were already choked with carriages drawn by pure white horses and feathered wyverns, bejeweled crocodiles and huge, tawny cats with curling horns.
The fox-faced attendant knocked and opened her door. "Your Highness—"
"I am not royalty," said Demelza. "Not yet."
"Very well," said the attendant. "I am to let you know that your mother and sisters have arrived."
"Thank you," said Demelza, but she made no move to get out of bed.
For a week she had been counting down the moments until she would see her mother and sisters, and now she could not bear to lay eyes on them. When she was little, Prava told her and her sisters that a group of swans was called a lamentation. He had delighted in the word.
"Look at my little lamentation," he said, ruffling their heads. "My little ruin makers, my little emperor slayers! What better word suits my girls, for all who know you shall weep!"
Demelza had always found it a sad thought and a sadder fate. But when her feathers never manifested, at least she could take refuge in the fact that being someone else's tragedy would never be her destiny. How wrong she was.
Demelza took a deep breath. The moment she stepped outside her room, she would be bombarded.
There was Edmea's final fitting and then cosmetic routine.
Her sisters would wish to catch up. Her mother would want to examine her new home.
Where was Arris? If he was here, perhaps her heart would race faster for an altogether happier reason.
But he was probably still a stag somewhere …
or else sleeping off the dregs of a silly night with his sister before the festivities truly began.
The attendant cleared his throat. "Before you meet with them, your father wishes for a private audience."
Demelza looked up. "What? When?"
"Now … if it is agreeable to you."
It was. More than agreeable, actually. Demelza wished to sag against her father the way she had done as a child.
She wanted him to fold up the vastness of the world so that it might fit in her palm.
She imagined herself six years old and sitting on his knee, fighting for space with Corisande and Dulcinea or spitting out Eulalia's feathers when her wings smacked Demelza across the face.
In the evenings, they had always loved crowding into Prava's study, where he would bring out the floating globe of the world.
One by one, he would show them the terrains of strange countries.
Warm Zazoa and the icy Yüttland Mountains.
The freezing Ocean of Tresses and the eerie, green deserts of Miraze.
He would show them the vast Isle of Malys surrounded by the Famishing.
One by one, he would press his finger to these lands and they would light up and turn dark upon the globe's surface.
Yours, yours, yours, he would say.
And then the globe would shrink to a marble, a mere plaything for Demelza and her sisters. The world no longer felt like a trinket; if anything, Demelza felt as though she were a toy within it. Perhaps her father would make her see differently.
"I will see him," she said.
The attendant nodded. "He will appear shortly."
Moments later, the wall beside her vanity began to glow.
The outline of the bricks took on a silver gleam.
The air thrummed with magic as the bricks shivered apart.
Bits of dust and mortar fell to the floor as a window appeared upon the once blank wall.
The window was shaped like a large oval, with gilding around its border as if it initially dreamt of being an ornate mirror before it had changed its mind at the last minute.
Though there appeared to be no pane of glass, there was an uncanny iridescence to the air that suggested the boundary was not to be crossed.
It had not been there the last time she had spoken to her parents and Demelza wondered if Queen Yzara and King Eustis had insisted upon certain conditions before Prava could see her.
At first, nothing appeared on the other side of the window but a swirl of smoke …
and then slowly, shapes coalesced. Her father's study, with its teetering piles of cobwebbed books.
An astrolabe on a bone table. And then, finally, Prava, who sat in his favorite armchair.
"Oh, my Demelza," he said, sniffing. He withdrew a handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose loudly.
Even though he could not be a wedding guest, he had still dressed for the occasion.
His hair, a duller version of her own, was combed back.
He wore a worn-looking suit, with buttons shaped like teeth fastened down the front.
Demelza looked a bit closer. Never mind, those were actual teeth.
"Hello, Father," she said.
She had not forgiven him for asking to carve out her heart, but he was her father and she loved him and affection crept into her voice whether she wanted it to or not.
"I can't believe you are to be married and I am not permitted to be there!" he fumed. "Who's to walk you down the aisle? Because if it's Eustis, that starry-eyed sack of flour, I shall burn down this Isle—"
"Mother is walking me," said Demelza.
Prava paused. His eyes shone with tears. "She is? Ah. How beautiful … I would have loved to see that. She is such a good mother to you girls. But does this mean I am never to see you again?" He gestured sadly at the invisible barrier separating their homes. "That it should always be like this?"
"Arris and I will come and visit one day," said Demezla. "Well, at least I will … I don't think the palace wishes for Arris to be anywhere near you. Sorry."
"No, I understand," said Prava. "I'd question the parenting choices of anyone who let their son near me. Though I am not so rabid as to attack him in my own home as a guest! I'm not a monstrous father-in-law."
"Just a monstrous father," said Demelza fondly.
Prava smiled. His teeth flashed. When he blinked, it was a slow thing, for while his eyelids opened and shut like a human's, he also possessed a reptile's nictating membrane, which shuttered across his serpent eyes.
When they were little, Eulalia had tried to poke him in the eye with a quill but the quill got stuck in Prava's second eyelid and when he looked elsewhere it swiveled about in a manner that frightened Eulalia so badly she refused to practice her letters for a year.
"You have probably not seen me so attired," said Prava, smoothing his old coat.
"I wore this to my wedding, you know, so I thought it would be a fitting occasion. Plus, your mother says I am devilishly handsome in this." He smiled and then took a deep breath as he looked up at her.
"Demelza, I've loved your mother for a long time …
long enough to understand how she would wish to be loved.
Long enough to understand that I have fundamentally failed her and also …
that I don't care. I have no desire to risk losing her, and so my love is selfish and airless.
I know that. Your mother knows that too.
I poison her with hope, you know … every day …
just to make her life manageable. It is a kindness, for I would see her happy. "
Queen Yzara's words floated back to her and Demelza's stomach twisted. "That's horrible, Father."
"I am what I am," said Prava, shrugging.
"But … fatherhood has made me soft. The moment I saw you and your sisters, it was as if the world had cracked open. You girls were so … so tiny. Your feathers no more than the length of my pinky." He dabbed once more at his tears.
"I remember cradling each of you when you had nightmares. You know, Evadne was so silly, she used to sleep with her brow furrowed and furious … as if the night itself had offended her."
Prava laughed, briefly lost in memories. When he looked at Demelza again it was with sorrow … and also hope. He opened his palms to her.
"I never want you to feel trapped, Demelza. I never want you to know a love that is airless. I do not want you to be controlled—"
"Arris cannot control me," said Demelza. She lifted her chin, hoping the light of her rooms would glimmer against her necklace and the softly fluttering wings of her pendant. "The moment I transformed, he gave me back my key. He restored me to myself. There was no hesitation."
She smiled proudly, expecting to see shock in her father's eyes.
But he bowed his head and looked away. He always did that when he did not wish to hurt them …
it was why he never took the splinters out of her or her sisters' palms when they fell.
He could not bear to be the one to inflict pain. Frost crept through Demelza's heart.
"And do you think I have not restored your mother's key to her in a grand gesture of love?" asked Prava. "She used to wear it about her neck until she realized it made no difference."
Demelza stared at him. "What are you saying?"
"When Araminta gave me her heart, it was for eternity," said Prava. "A veritas swan can only love once. It doesn't matter whether she wears her necklace or not … it is still mine. All I have to do is wish for it."
"But Arris—"
"Arris does not know yet what he can do … but sooner or later he will," said Prava. "And you cannot know what sort of husband he will be."
"He's not like you."
"Not yet," said Prava. "But if he loves fiercely enough, it can make any man a monster."
Demelza's heart began to race. Against her throat, the wings on her necklace trembled. She had wanted to wear it as a sign of trust. Now it was a taunt.
"There is, however, a way out," said Prava quietly. "A way to free yourself from the possession of love. A way to keep yourself wholly safe."
Sparks swirled and gathered in her father's hands, slowly solidifying into the shape of a knife with a glass blade and a hilt of purest silver.
"You have been raised to believe that a veritas swan cannot live without her beloved, for when her beloved dies so too does she …
and this is true. But not entirely true.
You see, I would never send my beloved daughters out into the world if I did not know how to protect them or how to ensure that they might always protect themselves.
"In the course of my studies, I learned that the part of the veritas swan that dies when her beloved dies is merely a portion of her heart. What dies of her is her dream … what dies is a way of living, but not necessarily her," said Prava.
"All those veritas swans who loved and lost and died did not perish because their beloved was deceased. They died of a broken heart, and it is my belief that they knew there was a choice to keep living and they decided not to. If your mother knew the whole of this, I'm sure she would have done away with me ages ago.
Don't look at me like that, child. I promised your mother honesty.
It is not my fault if her questions are not as well worded as they could be. "
Slowly, Prava pushed the knife through the barrier. It clattered to the ground. It looked like a piece of ice.
"So you see, my darling Demelza, you have always had a choice. All you need to do is cut out his heart," said Prava. "Cut out his heart and you shall be free."