The Church did not like us, but the State tolerated us, and all the monarchs of the world adored us, which was enough to keep us afloat. Of course, we were known only by our names and not by our faces. The Masked Court, where the infinitely tiny Russian consort sipped at her vodka and the shaking Ti'anese emperor coughed up pleghm from behind his stained cloth disguise, was our haven. A pity, that this is what we have become, my mother would say over her coffee with sugar, a pity. Too bad this is the world you will inherit, so tired at its end, so ready to sleep and so empty of discoveries.
That morning as I dressed I thought mostly of Blair. Light-eyed like her step-father and with skin of sun-warmed bronze, like her mother — her hair falling in a shining curtain down past her bared shoulders. In a world full of beauty she was remarkable, moving with all the fluidity of a housecat in a too-small cage.
My father stood in the kitchen, straight-backed and quiet, soft black hair gleaming like water underneath the spotted lights. He was smoking. Teague was always smoking, especially when he was with Jonathan or Marcus. At Court events I would see them cloistered together, their hair shining and tousled and dark, exhaling cigarra smoke gently into the air. Women would watch them with an uncanny shrewdness; men would observe dispassionately from afar. There was nothing to see; all three were good at disguising themselves when they had to be. And that was often.
“Jacqueline.”
“Good morning,” I said, moving carefully. He smelled of something toxic and alluring, similar to power; it reeked like an expensive cologne. Astraea was gone, vanished into the morning — Elias was still likely asleep, dark hair thrown over his vivid face in slumber. Sometimes, I felt the loneliest when we were together.
“Are you ready for today?” The initiation. I didn’t reply, because I didn’t have an answer. We were told almost nothing about it, had survived on shadows and murmurs and mistruths for years, listening through vents and in the slivers of light through almost-closed doors. Of course we’d been taught how to discern true gold from false, how to brace the body against the recoil of a handgun, how to lie. There had never been strict lessons; it hadn’t been so elaborate as that. Instead we were coaxed into this cold and unfamiliar world with a kiss on the cheek and a promise of greatness, lonely daughters of violent men.
“Marcus and Blair will be here at noon,” my father continued, blithe in his misunderstanding. He stubbed out the cigarra in a spare emptied whiskey glass, lifted his keen dark gaze to me. “Your brother is coming, too.”
Elias had passed the intiation three years ago, but he’d never told me what occurred there. “This place changes you,” he’d confessed to me afterwards, half-drunk on blood-whiskey with his dark hair throwing his eyes into shadow. The alcohol inspired something contemplative in my brother, something soft and vulnerable as a foal’s throat. It was strange to see. “It’s hard,” he finished, simply. “Hard to live a life like this.”
So much of our world was beautiful. The molten spill of morning light onto the lonely city; sitting side-by-side with Blair in her father’s long car, her leg pressed up against mine; Gabrielle’s elfin profile, her mouth as red and shiny as sweet-apples. She tasted of autumn cherries; I knew because she’d kissed me once, breathless and drunk on overpriced cocktails at some downtown bar. The boys around us had cheered, some agape and stunned by the sight of her mouth on mine. I always wished that it could be like this forever; but it couldn’t, and never would.
It recalled so many memories, of Lana and Blair and Gabrielle and me, the wind running its fingers through our long hair as we bolted through the uptown streets laughing, open-mouthed and wild. Gabrielle with her perfect nose and perfect smile, Lana’s eyes so lovely and so mournful, so much like the sky after it rained. And then Blair, tilting her chin up a little to look me in the eye, her gaze darting away just as it met mine. Her hand would squeeze mine, shy and gentle and always cold.
Blair. It had been such a long time, since we’d both been young. I remembered those days with not a small amount of fondness -- little frilly pastel dresses and scuffed patent shoes, Teague and Jonathan and Lana’s mother Natalya casting long shadows in the gilded afternoon sunshine. The light always looked so dizzy and drunken that time of the day, elucidating everything it touched to an utter exactness, and I can remember Lana’s father Yakim bending at the waist to gather her into his arms. Their hair was similar — so pale and bright it put the snow to shame, nearly as white as a snow fox’s pelt. I didn’t understand how I could be surrounded by such compassionate killers, criminals so soft-spoken and kind. I loved them all fiercely, at least a little — even Jonathan, even Marcus. Even though they frightened me, too.