He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and looked up at me. The curve of his cheek caught the light, and I froze like a rabbit mid-leap. I was staring into the misty blue eyes of Sevastyan Rezkin.
A white silk blouse had been pulled haphazardly over his shoulders, but it was sagging open at the chest. I could see the gold paint flaking off his skin, off his cheeks, smeared where he’d rubbed at his mouth. A single white feather drifted from his black hair.
I mumbled something that was unintelligible, even to my own ears. Sevastyan held my gaze, eyes wavering. The whites of them were cracked through with red. I remembered his soft and graceful landings, the way his thighs tensed beneath his tights, the way his hips had pressed taut to the tsarevna’s, and my face went torridly hot.
His lashes fluttered with their false pearls, a fringed shadow over his sharp cheekbones. His skin was as pale and unblemished as the ivory handle of my mother’s comb, smoothed by so much time spent in my or my sisters’ hands. Thinking of it only made me blush further.
Even now, sweat-dewed and smelling of sick, he was so beautiful I couldn’t look away.
Before either of us could speak, the door swung open again. Another dancer, sandy-haired, still wearing his flame-red blouse and tights, burst through and sighed. His breath was a white cloud in the cold. He looked between Sevastyan and me and folded his arms across his chest.
“Come on, Sevas,” he said wearily. “Derkach is looking for you.”
Sevastyan stood up, wincing and holding his side. “Lyoshka,” he mumbled. “My hero.”
Sighing again, the other dancer took him by the arm and began to lead him toward the door. Sevastyan’s gait was unsteady; all his steps lurched sharply toward the left.
“Wait,” I said. My voice sounded too loud, as discordant as a gull’s cry. “You can’t—he’s very ill.”
The other dancer—Aleksei—paused and turned. The corners of his mouth quivered, and I could not tell if he meant to smile or to frown.
“He’s not sick,” he said. “Well, I suppose he is, but there’s nothing you or I can do for him, miss. In an hour, he’ll vomit up another half a liter of vodka and then fall asleep, and his body will punish him in the morning.”
With that, he took Sevastyan through the door, and they both vanished as it swung shut. Several moments passed before I could bring myself to move again, my own belly churning like laundry in a washtub.
Undine scowled and slapped my arm when I found them; Rose sighed and smoothed back the curls from my face. I did not tell either of them about my encounter with Sevastyan—I could still hardly convince myself that it was real.
As we hurried down Kanatchikov Street, I trained my gaze on the stained hem of my dress, the splattered toe of my slipper. My mind kept circling back to Sevastyan’s damp, shining face and his bright, quivering blue eyes. The whites of them were split like hairline fractures in Papa’s good porcelain. I could not fathom how he had managed to dance like that after half a liter of vodka; perhaps Aleksei had exaggerated. I’d never had a sip of vodka myself. Maybe a liter was hardly anything at all, just a little blurring at the corners of your vision.
I told myself that, but I didn’t really believe it. When we came to the gate, it unlatched for us so easily, without a sound, that I was astonished. It was like a wanting mouth, eager to swallow us back down. The goblin had ceased his whimpering. Indrik still slept. The eyeless ravens had not stirred from their perch.
My mind should have been spinning out like a compass point, fear turning me manic and unmoored. Yet the walk back through the garden passed me by almost obliviously. I was focused only on Sevastyan. All other thoughts had been momentarily evicted. It was as though I had forgotten how to even feel afraid.
Was this the magic that kept pulling my sisters out of the house? In that moment it seemed almost as strong as Papa’s spellwork. The city was a song that crooned unceasingly in my ear, and if my mind was a compass, Sevastyan’s face was true north.
Back in my room, I removed my dress and unlaced my corset, fingers trembling. I extracted all the dead leaves and wheat stalks from my sheets and tucked them under my bed, where the monster was snoring softly. When it was sleeping like that, I could not see the red ovals of its eyes.
They say his eyes had been plucked out and replaced with plum stones.
My teeth came together with an audible click. Lurid tales from the penny presses, nothing more. That I could let myself believe; Rose’s assurances were as easy to swallow as cool stream water. The only monsters left in Oblya lived here, under my bed or in our garden, and none of them had any lust for human flesh. All those sorts of monsters had died out long ago.