I’m supposed to be her best friend, and I didn’t even notice she was falling in love with a monster.
It takes me a while before I can speak. I lift my chin, looking her straight on. “You’re too good for him. You deserve more.”
“More?” Her irises are shiny. “What could be more than being his queen?”
After all the words we’ve thrown at each other, the silence that follows is horribly loud. It grows, stretches, spirals out, a physical distance, building feet and miles and whole countries and lifetimes between us, between me and the pure, beautiful girl who once blushed at the mention of just a kiss and worried that she wouldn’t be enough for the King.
“I should go,” I say eventually in a constricted voice. I wait in case she disagrees with me. But her expression is just as defiant as before.
I turn to the door, eyes prickling. As my hand lifts to slide it open, her voice sounds behind me.
“You really love her?”
There’s a flash of the Aoki I know in her voice: tender, compassionate.
I spin round. “Yes,” I reply eagerly, offering her a smile. I step forward. “Oh, Aoki, I’m so sorry—”
“You shouldn’t.”
The rest of my sentence tumbles away. In an instant, coldness returns between us, as jolting as a wave of ice water. Her look is so hard it’s painful to hold, and I falter back toward the door, one arm wrapped across my chest, like a shield.
“At least I chose who I fell in love with,” I say roughly.
As soon as it’s out I want to take it back. But I can tell by the look on Aoki’s face that it’s too late, and I hurry from her room before I make it even worse, tears blurring my eyes as something splinters deep in my chest.
TWENTY-EIGHT
SCREAMING WAKES ME THE NEXT DAY. Instead of the usual gong, and too early, the dark still shivering with almost-burnt-out candles and traces of moonlight on the floor. A horrible raw sound that tears through the night on broken wings. Not even screaming. Wailing… wild and untamed.
The sound is close. It’s accompanied by shouting, sharp words, and the rap of talons on the floor. Madam Himura.
Something is happening to one of the girls. That’s my first thought. My second is—
Wren.
I lurch outside, sucking in a hiss at the coldness of the floorboards on my bare soles. The other girls are already up, looking out from their doorways, faces tight with apprehension. From the room opposite, Aoki meets my eyes before quickly turning her cheek.
“Please!” a girl screams. “It won’t happen again, I promise!”
Halfway down the corridor, Mariko is sprawled on the floor. The robe of her nightdress hangs open, revealing the heavy curves of her breasts, the pale flesh of her legs. She struggles, hanging on to where Madam Himura is gripping her hair to drag her down the hall.
“Let’s just hear what she has to say,” Mistress Eira pleads. She’s crouching, trying to get between Mariko and Madam Himura.
The eagle-woman swings out with her cane. “You’re too soft on them, Eira!” she snarls, and Mistress Eira doubles over as the cane cracks across her back. “I told you before, when Lei refused the King. You show them the slightest bit of leniency and this is how they repay you!”
“Blue!” Mariko cries. Her eyes are crazed as she seeks her out of the watching faces. “Blue, help me!”
Blue stiffens in her doorway. A glimmer of something passes across her face, but she doesn’t move.
Wren steps forward instead. “Madam Himura,” she asks steadily, “what is Mariko being punished for?”
Madam Himura’s yellow eyes flare. “For being a slut! She was found by one of my maids last night, legs spread for a soldier.”
I’m reminded suddenly of Wren’s words that night in the isolation room. She said that the guard outside my room had slipped away to meet a girl. Was it Mariko?
“I’m sorry!” Mariko sobs, her face splotchy and red. “I won’t do it again!”
“Of course you won’t,” Madam Himura retorts. “Because you’re never coming back to the palace.”
Mariko freezes. “Wh-what do you mean?”
A wheezing laugh escapes Madam Himura’s throat. “You think you can defy the King in such a way and an apology is all that’s needed to make up for it? Foolish girl!”
I wince, instinctively reeling back as she turns her attention to the rest of us. She glares around with her cutting eyes. The layered feathers on her humanlike arms ruffle open as they spread into the beginning of wings, making her seem twice her usual size.
“Come, the rest of you,” she commands coolly. “You’re about to discover what happens to paper that turns rotten.”
Using her wings to steady herself against Mariko’s struggles, she drags Mariko down the corridor. With no choice but to follow Madam Himura’s orders, I pad behind them with the rest of the girls and our maids. Mariko’s maid, a plump dog-form girl called Vee, is sobbing so hard she has to stuff her hands over her mouth to muffle the sound.
“It’s all right,” Lill whispers, helping her along. “It’ll be all right.”
She looks up, meeting my eyes where I’m watching over my shoulder, and it hits me that it’s the first time I’ve ever heard her lie.
We trail Madam Himura to an empty room. She throws Mariko down the minute she gets inside. “Get Doctor Uo,” she directs one of the maids as we file in with reluctant steps.
Mariko thrashes on the floor. “Please!” she begs. “I can’t leave, not before I see Kareem! Where is he? Where did you take him?”
Madam Himura glares down her hooked beak-nose. “Your soldier is being dealt with by General Ndeze. He’ll be stripped of his title and banished from the palace. That’s if the King is feeling generous.”
Mariko dissolves into wails.
“I can’t watch this,” I breathe to Wren next to me.
“We have no choice,” she replies.
“I don’t care.” I take a step forward. Wren hisses at me, but I ignore her, rounding on Madam Himura. “Why can’t we take lovers?” I ask her loudly, throwing out an arm. “The King has his pick every night, and when we leave, there’ll just be a new set of girls for him to play with.”
Her eyes widen. “What did you say?”
“Maybe if the King weren’t such a cruel, disgusting excuse of a leader, we wouldn’t look for comfort elsewhere—”
Though I knew it was coming, the crack of her cane still takes my breath away.
I double over, clutching my jaw. The metallic tang of blood fills my mouth. Wren pulls me back before Madam Himura can strike me again, but her attention is distracted just then by the doctor’s arrival.
Doctor Uo looks as though he’d just woken up. His robes are mussed, his hair matted. “What’s going on?” he asks, scratching at one curving boar tusk, blinking out from behind his round spectacles.
Madam Himura points to Mariko. “This girl has forfeited her place in the palace. She must be branded.”
The doctor’s expression is as blank as when he was inspecting me. “I see.” Mariko scuttles away as he crouches down in front of her. “Someone hold her still,” he commands, and I’m thrown back to the assessments shortly after I arrived, the helplessness I felt as the doctor stripped me.