Page 88 of A Treachery of Swans

“I’mfine, sorciere.”

I crook an eyebrow. “Now that I’ve stopped lying, you’ve started?”

She sighs, and I know I’ve won. “It’s just my wing.”

Oh yes, then there’sthat.“Just yourwing,” I echo.

“Your father stabbed it with one of his ice shards when I res—when I found you.”

“Were you going to say yourescuedme?”

She looks away guiltily.

“No, no, go on, I like it.” I gesture for her to continue, grinning. “My knight in shining armor.”

“That’s not what I—” The wings on Marie’s back flex in exasperation. I stare, mesmerized, before I notice the wet bloodstains on the feathers near her shoulder blade.

“Oh, Marie, that doesn’t… have you not been able to bandage it?”

She doesn’t answer, and I get to my feet, walking around her so I can see more clearly. Now that I’m not fighting off tears, I realize the back of her wing, not far from her shoulder, is slick with blood, the feathers plastered together. It would be a difficult spot to reach, certainly. “You’ve just been bleeding all over like this? Did you even clean it?”

“I had other concerns.” Judging by the way she refuses to meet my eyes, I wonder if those other concerns were me. Warmth blooms in my chest.

“I know how to take care of wounds,” I tell her. Mothers know that I’ve patched up my own all my life. “Let me do it.”

She presses her lips together. “I’m not all that helpless, Odile, truly. I can take care of myself.”

“Perhaps, but you’ve just let me sob all over your shirt. This way we can be equally mortified. Come, let us go somewhere less… open.”

And so we find ourselves in the dressing room for the first time since that fateful night, Marie cross-legged on the floor, me staring at the length of her spine while my heart does jittery backflips. I can see now why she changed into the doublet—it’s held together with laces at the back, and she has left them loose around her wings.

Herwings. A contradiction within themselves, thick and powerful yet lined with fragile, diaphanous feathers. She untucks the injured wing carefully from her shoulder, lowers it so it splays on the ground. It reaches across the entire room, the tips of her primaries brushing up against an open chest of assorted props—papier-mâché fruits and masks and a disembodied goat hoof.

I’ve brought a candelabra to our side, and the flame limns each oval covert and shivering piece of down in trembling bronze light. I swallow hard. Then I force myself to study the vertical gash splitting the feathers near her spine in a brutal groove. It must have happened when she wrapped me in her wings, and it clearly has not been looked after: the edges are inflamed and a sticky yellowish pus is visible at the deepest point.

“It really was fine,” Marie insists, dropping the wing lower and wincing as I run a damp cloth along the injury. “I must haveaggravated it when I flew back to the palace. I was trying to get more of those yellow flowers for Aimé, but I was caught by a patrolling guard. He tackled me to the ground, and my wings got stuck under me. I managed to get free and fly off, but I had to go in the wrong direction to throw him off my trail. I couldn’t really take care of it until now.”

I clean a few particles of dirt out of the wound, wrinkling my nose. “Are you going to explain these to me, then?”

“I told you—”

“Not the injury, princess. The wings.”

“Ah.” She lapses into momentary silence, and I focus on rinsing the cloth off in a basin of water before bringing it back to the wing. “Honestly, I was hopingyoucould explain it. You are the expert in sorcery, after all.”

“Expert is asignificantoverexaggeration,” I say morosely.

“Oh? But you acted so confident that first night by the lake.”

I nudge her. “Hush, you.” She giggles, and I can’t help my own smile. “Tell me how it happened first. Perhaps that will help me understand.”

“It’s all a blur,” she admits. “The first time I did it, it was when you were running from the beast. After I escaped Anne’s guards, I tried to follow you, but I couldn’t find you. Suddenly I heard the glass shatter. I wasn’t far from the chapel, but I wasn’t close enough, either, so all I could do was run to the nearest window and look out and—” Her voice softens. “And I saw you fall. It was all instinctual the first time. I jumped after you, and it just… happened. I thought I’d imagined it afterward. That in my haze, I’d somehow…” She breaks off, laughing weakly. “I don’t know.”

I furrow my brow, running through what little knowledge I do have of magic. “Regnault told me once that when spells go wrong,they can transform people into something they did not intend. I think… hmm.” I reach out toward her with my mind, searching for traces of spell-threads. There issomething.A small glimmer, barely there, escaping my grip every time I attempt to grasp it. “I think part of my father’s curse was trapped inside you when I tried undoing it. I can still sense a piece of it, but… I’m not confident I could fix it. Not without a better understanding of magic. Though of course, if you want me to try—”

“No,” she interrupts. “No, I want to keep it. Keepthem.” She gestures to the wings. “I know it sounds strange, but they give me hope. That I don’t have to be swan or girl, that I can take control. I have never dared to do that before now. I’ve always surrendered myself to fate—first to my mother, then to being a swan. My life has never beenminebefore.”

“It shouldn’t have ever had to be that way,” I say abruptly, unable to stifle the rising guilt. “It’s my fault, all of it. If I hadn’t stolen the necklace…”

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