My cheeks pinked. “Well, you’re my first secret then, my first lie. Does that please you?”
“Only if it pleases you.”
I was blushing so furiously then I could no longer meet his eyes, and the closeness of his body was so intoxicating that I was certain I’d do some manic, lascivious, animal thing if I couldn’t get away from him. My gaze caught on something white on the floor.
In a heartbeat I managed to remove myself from Sevas’s grasp, bend down, and pick it up. It was a white feather, smooth and glistening with a faint brush of gold paint.
“Here,” I managed. “This must be yours. From your cape.”
Sevas’s mouth fell open. I could tell that my odd behavior was perplexing him, but I wasn’t doing it by design. I was only trying to keep him safe from the strange and garish thoughts in my mind, from the desires that would doom us both, even if they were only mine.
“Why don’t you keep it?” he said. “You can use it in one of your witch’s brews.”
“I told you, I’m not that kind of witch.”
“Keep it anyway,” Sevas said. “If you ever find yourself in dire financial straits, I’m sure there are women in Oblya who would pay a baffling amount of rubles for a feather that once touched Sevastyan Rezkin’s skin.”
He said it all without a trace of smugness or pride. The feather felt warm to the touch, as though his flesh had leached some heat into it, as if it still held the memory of being under those sweltering stage lights. With a heedless rush of wanting, I tucked the feather into the pocket of my dress.
“I know a story about a beautiful bird who was the envy of all the other fowl,” I said. “They all loathed him for his beauty, but he just wanted their love. So he gave away one of his beautiful feathers to each of them, until he was plucked completely bald.”
“I think I like that story better than Bogatyr Ivan.”
My brow furrowed. “But why?”
“Because at least it’s closer to the truth. People are resentful and cruel and desirous.” Sevas shook his head slightly, as if he wanted to rid himself of the thoughts. I saw a small metamorphosis in him then: a shift from the brute, unpleasant reality to the smiling, indulgent dream-world. From Sevas to Ivan, a glimmer of mischief in his eye. “Have you ever taken a stroll down the boardwalk?”
“No. Not since my mother was alive. My father—”
“Let me guess, he finds fault with the sea itself. But your father isn’t here. So let me show you.”
There was another spell of silence, a long moment like a held breath. Behind me, a woman’s laughter rippled the air like the susurration of tiny wings.
“You can’t,” I said at last, even as the lemon balm wafted into my nose and the spearmint parched my throat. I was thinking of the salt air and the black sand, all the things that would reveal me without Papa even needing a potion. “It’s so far from here, and I need to be getting back home . . .”
“It’s not even midnight, Marlinchen.” He leaned closer, and suddenly I felt the metal between my breasts burn like a bullet, all its shrapnel fissuring outward. I felt half-dying, and there was lead in my veins; how could he stand to be so near to me? Wasn’t he scared that whatever I was would catch?
I drew my hand over my chest, as if to cover the wound, but Sevas didn’t pull away, and said, “What use is there sneaking out from under your father’s nose if only to run back again before you’ve even gotten to see your own city?”
“It’s not really my city. The Vashchenko family has lived here since before it was Oblya, when there was just the steppe that ran right into the sea without anything to stop it. Before the land was lashed to bits and each scar was given a name like Kanatchikov Street. Oblya is a rude intruder to the place we’ve always known.”
“And I am an intruder upon the intrusion?” Sevas arched a brow. “You don’t need to drag around your family history like an old dead dog.”
“That’s easy enough for you to say—your family is hundreds of miles away.” My breath caught at my own meanness.
“It’s not easy at all,” Sevas said quietly, and finally drew away from me, raising himself to his full height and rubbing some of the sweat-dampened gold paint that remained on his cheek. “Do you think I left everything in the slums of Askoldir? Dr. Bakay tells me that history lives in the planes of my skull and the thrust of my brow. I don’t know of any surgery that can excise a century. That’s how long my family has lived in Rodinya, give or take a few years. But I know that, if I could, I would shave off those years like slivers of bone.”