Page 75 of Strange Grace
But Nona doesn’t, and Rhun falls quiet, and Mairwen touches the thorns on her chest, pressing hard enough to make them ache. She loves him so very much, and Arthur, too, and she isn’t going to let anything happen to either of them, or Haf or her family or the Priddys or Pughs, or to a woman like Nona Sayer, who never will talk about her past but was brave enough to leave it and find a future.
That’s what Mairwen has to do: carve a future foreverybodyin Three Graces.
Standing, Mair goes to the small trunk beside the bed, opening it. The mirror rests on a narrow shelf carved into the left side of the trunk. Its handle is made of bone, yellowed with age, and the mirror itself is backed with silver and mother-of-pearl.
Taking a fortifying breath, Mairwen flips the mirror around.
The first thing she notices are the stark lines of her cheeks that never were so blatant before. Her eyes are only slightly sunken with weariness, and the eyes themselves large as ever. Bowed lips plenty pink, and when she bares her teeth, she likes the shine of them. Her chin seems daintier now, because of the raw mess of her hair. It falls in jagged curls and weird layers, a true bramble.
And that blackness in her eyes. It’s a spiral pattern in one and random starbursts of black in the other. Mairwen shudders, loving it, even as it scares her.
She holds the mirror closer, at an odd angle, to inspect her hairline, to dig in with fingers to find any hint of more antlers or thorns ready to sprout from her skull. Nothing. Lowering the mirror, she unties her shirt and reveals the collarbone. The base of the small thorns are crusted with blood, for she hasn’t washed them well, and her skin tinges bluish.
She traces the path they create across her chest. The skin is so sensitive, like her lips. She wants to know what it feels like to have someone else touch her there, with gentle hands or mouth.
For a moment, Mairwen is lost in a forest growing up through the walls of the Sayer house, vines of thick green, bending branches full of emerald and dark purple leaves. The forest whispers in her ears, tickling her skin from the inside out. Her chest expands, her hips roll, and her head falls back as the forest promises to bring her to its heart, again and again.
The veil slips against her braids, against her shoulders and arms as he gently pulls it away. Through the white lace she sees the black flicker of his eyes, the shimmer of his form, always changing—antlers, fangs, fur, soft skin, four delicate legs, bare feet, hands that grip her waist, tendrils of thin green vines circling his arm, his neck, long hair dripping tiny flowers, feathers spilling along his spine, and wings, even, stretching like the night sky—and she longs to be brought inside all of that, a piece of him, when the veil is gone.
She gasps as it falls finally away, and smiles at the creature. Then a whisper in the wind makes her blood cold. He is gone. She’s alone, except no—
Who?
What is this. When is this?
Mairwen faces the girl in the long white veil, and the girl lifts her hand, points at Mair, and says—
A footstep on the stairs startles Mairwen awake, and she is only a young woman holding a mirror, kneeling in someone else’s bedroom, staring at herself. Her eyes are blacker now, and her gums ache as if her teeth are loose. She pulls back her lips to see her eyeteeth grown just slightly longer and sharper.
“Haf is here,” Rhun says. “She needs to show you something.”
•••
ADERYN GRACE STANDS IN THEcenter of her cottage, hands raised to bring down a dried bundle of yarrow. A persistent memory has caught her midaction, an image from her dream—a dream she’s experienced the past three nights.
In the dream, she’s pressed flush to the wall, laughing, as a man kisses along the curve of her neck. He smells like rain and summer flowers, and Aderyn opens herself up to him as if nothing in the world belongs inside her as well as he does. When he pulls back, taking both her hands, she sees his face and it is beautiful.
But when she wakes, his features fade to a blur of affection and distant memory. The Grace witch does not enjoy uncertainty, nor muddled memories. She’s never been inside the forest—why should her mind be affected as her daughter’s is?
“Aderyn?”
Hetty ducks around the kitchen table and pokes the witch in the shoulder. It startles Aderyn from her contemplation. “I’m all right. Only...”
“The dream. It’s your daughter, stirring up memories of Carey, and the early sacrifice, and all the questions. You know.”
Aderyn turns to Hetty and takes the other woman’s freckled face in both hands. “I hope it does not hurt you.”
“How could it? I’ll never resent any part of your life, especially a part that gave you Mairwen.”
The Grace witch smiles sadly, but with all her heart, and gently tugs Hetty nearer, turning her own head to allow Hetty’s lips access to her neck. She will replace the memory with hotter love.
“Ladies.”
The voice thunders through Aderyn’s ribs and she stumbles away from Hetty. Her eyes squeeze tightly closed as memories rattle her bones, jerking her heart into stillness. Memories of sex and purple flowers and her thrill at getting away with something terrible.
“Addie, I need something of yours,” the voice says, rich and crawling up her spine like a lover’s scratch.
Hetty screams.
