And then his gaze snapped toward me. “What are you doing here, Marlinchen?”
“I was going to make you breakfast.” The words fell out of my mouth and clattered too loudly on the floor, like marbles dropped.
“I’ve already eaten,” Papa said. He took the chicken’s comb and tore off a piece of it with his teeth, then chewed and chewed and chewed. It must have been as tough as salt pork for how long he chewed it. Finally, he swallowed. “Go wake your sisters. Don’t think I have forgotten your treachery.”
I turned around just as Papa picked up the beak and swallowed it in one gulp; I could see the sickled shape of it as it traveled down his throat. It reminded me of the earliest days of his curse, when his body was still accustoming itself to its new and depthless hunger. When nothing existed outside or between Papa and his appetite.
I trudged back up the stairs and went first to Rose’s room. She was still sleeping, curled as tight as a baby bird in its egg, fist closed under her chin. I stood beside her and prodded her shoulder gently.
Rose shot up at once, violet eyes wide as two spills of water, her long black braid lashing.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Papa wants us,” I said.
Rose pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m not going to be angry at you, Marlinchen. Papa has enough anger for twenty. But it was a terribly selfish thing of you to do, and don’t you try to tell me otherwise. What’s the worst that would’ve happened, if you hadn’t gone? One man turned to a mass of vipers? But if he were an ugly man, one with less charm and no seduction in his smile, would you have minded at all?”
“I don’t want anyone turned to snakes because of me.”
“That’s not the point.” Rose threw off her covers. “I wish I hadn’t helped you on your besotted fool’s errand. All this talk of marriage is just a ruse; it must be. Some cunning new way for Papa to punish us, because the old ways weren’t working well enough. Go wake Undine. My eyes are weary of looking at you.”
I left Rose’s room, my mind still roiling with storm clouds, my body working like a cotton mill, unconscious and automated. My sister was clever, but she had not seen the way that Derkach had gripped the back of Sevas’s neck. She had not watched Papa devour a chicken whole. Perhaps I would have been clever too, if I did not have so much carnage behind my eyes.
Undine wasn’t in her bed. She was standing by the window in one of her ruined gowns, the left sleeve ripped off and the collar torn down the middle, exposing the cleft of her breast and a sliver of pink nipple. I turned around at once, flushing fervently, but before I could get through the door Undine crossed the room and grasped me by my wrist.
She hurled me away from the door, and I stumbled back, catching myself against her unmade bed, and while I was still reeling she slapped me across the face.
The shock of it swallowed a bit of the pain, but when the numbness ebbed, I felt as if I’d pressed my cheek against the lit stovetop. I whimpered at that bristling heat as Undine arched over me, breathing furiously through her nose. I opened my mouth—to protest? To apologize?—and she slapped me again.
This time, I bleated out a shocked little sound, like a rutted sheep.
“Stop being a baby,” Undine said as she stepped away from me. “I didn’t even hit you very hard.”
“It hurt,” I said.
“Well, I meant to. Hurt you, I mean. What would be the point in slapping you otherwise? You’re such an idiot, Marlinchen.”
“I’m sorry.”
She heaved a sigh—exasperated rather than exhausted—then pulled up the ragged collar of her dress so that it covered her nipple. “I think you’re so stupid you don’t even know why I’m calling you stupid. Do you?”
“Because Papa tore up our dresses and jewelry and says he will make us marry and that was because of me.”
“It’s not just that,” Undine snapped. She leaned over and plucked up a pair of slippers from the ground, matching the glossy peacock of her spoiled gown. The heels were tattered, like something small had chewed through the silk. “You don’t think I wouldn’t love to be wed to some man, any man, who would take me away from this disgusting place? This shrine to Papa’s curse, the instrument of his loathing? But he’ll never let that happen. Whatever he has planned for us, it’s only more misery.”
It was the same thing that Rose had said. Perhaps Undine was just as clever as my middle sister, under all her frothing cruelty.