Aurora

The next morning, at breakfast, Rosalyn's face was languid and content and with a dark look, I knew Nikolae must have promised to return to her another night. My jealousy was paramount and I was good enough to admit that it was so, still, I did not enjoy the feeling of the Green Eyed Monster eating away at my rationality. I'd no claim over Nikolae in the first place, what right did I to think of him as my own? Instead I focused on my own meal and whispered to Magdalena what I'd witnessned the night before. Her eyes shot daggers at Rosalyn and she made an attempt to confront the girl; an attempt I hastily stopped. I did not need a fight to break out between these two beauties. There was too much going on here as it was.

Instead, Magdalena called Rosalyn a filthy whore under her breath and flipped her curls over her shoulder, the way she did when mad. I smiled a secret smile into my porridge and continued to eat. Rosalyn did not even glance my way. A small part of me wondered if maybe she hadn't even known that I'd thought he fancied me, maybe she'd just gone to him like she'd gone to all the other men. No, she must have noticed our conversation the other day, she was much too jealous to not notice if a young man talked to another girl who was not her. I couldn't think about this, though. Far more important things were taking place today. The younger and middle aged girls kept looking at us, all a twitter.

Tonight at dusk, we would be hunting. My feet tapped the floor sporadically - I had tense written all over me. How could I hunt when I knew that Dog was in the forest? How could I hunt knowing Adrian, Prince of Wolves was in the forest? I would not shoot, of course I would not, but the other girls would and by accident, they might hit something that was rapidly becoming important to me. How could I let this happen? I considered telling Delphine of my friendship with Dog and how he was one of the forest...briefly considered. The thought was out of my mind the moment it came, my head laughing it away. She would slap me again and that would be if I were lucky. At the very least she would not let me see Dog again. I just must be very, very careful. I must keep close watch on the other girls.

Before that, though, I must go see Nikolae on a favor for Delphine and see if we could trade Ileana's bow for something better. I bemoaned the fact that Ileana should go as it was her bow, however, Delphine insisted that it was me who go. My dread of seeing the man was quite high. I did not detest him for what he had done last night - how could I? He was simply a young man doing what all men do, still, the sting of his rejection burned my skin like scalding water.

Truthfully, I thought as I waded through the deep snow once more towards the Lodge, it was Rosalyn I was more mad at. She had a power to bewitch men that not even Magdalena posessed, although Magdalena had something far greater: the power to make them fall in love with her. These 'powers' were, of course, not gifts from the forest or anything like that, still, I could never count the men who wrote poetry and sang and begged for Magdalena or count the number of men (some of them the same men) who had come to us in the middle of the night for Rosalyn. She'd known of my small fancy for Nikolae - she'd seen it and she'd sqaushed it out. No matter how hard I tried, he would never look my way again. I wanted to curse her but she was my sister and she'd always been the way she was. I could not change her, not for anything in the world. And that was what I hated most. Knowing I accepted why she'd done what she'd done. I hated it, but I understood. That was that.

Nikolae waited for me once more at the doorway and gave me a large smile. I took a deep breath. "Before I come in, I must inform you that I know you were with Rosalyn last night. I was up to get some water and I accidentally saw you together. And I want you to know that I will not tell Delphine." I did not tell him that I'd been up simply because my legs had felt restless, for that seemed suspcious. I watched as Nikolae's face turned ashen gray with worry to relief.

"Thank you, then. I don't want you to think that I do not value this job. I need it. It is very important to me." His words were awkward and his cheeks flushed. "You seeing us is...unfortunate." He swallowed and put his hand on the doorframe. "You must think I'm an insensitive bastard." With that, he rubbed his chin. I didn't correct him, instead, just looked at the sky. It was grey and threatening to snow.

"May I come in? It is quite cold out here," I asked and Nikolae let me in with an apology. He closed the door and I wandered into the large room to warm my hands by the fire. He followed me; I felt his eyes on the back of my head. "I'm not mad at you or anything, I swear," I explained, my back still to him. "I never expected anything from you when I met you." Now I turned around. He was closer to me than I thought. I smiled a tight smile. "Well, maybe I expected a little bit from you, but I suspose I didn't really believe that you could ever have an interest in me when girls like Magdalena and Rosalyn are right in front of you. Still, I had a small hope and it...hurt a little when I saw you."

Now Nikolae looked quite embarassed and for that I was glad. "I did, I do, whatever, have an interest in you. Rosalyn was...not a slip or an accident, I cannot lie that way. She came to me, willing and I took her because she was so. I had her because I could and that is terrible and you must never, ever live that way, Aurora, but I do. You must understand, though...it is hard for men to be princes."

"I do understand." The silence in the room soon became unbearable so I asked about Ileana's bow. Together we went into the store room, found a bow we thought would be suitable to her and I left back towards Lunarenstein without saying much else to him. I wondered if he expected me to throw myself at his feet, to ask for a kiss, to ask to be his? No, of course he did not expect that. He did not have that kind of self-importance and he must know that I was not one of those girls. There was some sort of disappointment in my chest, however, as I walked towards the castle and I was able to pinpoint it when I stepped inside and shook out the ends of my black and white dress. I had hoped that he would drop down on his knees and beg for my forgiveness, plead with me to have him, to kiss him. I didn't expect him to do something so dramatic, still, a declaration that I was more than a passing fancy towards him would have been nice. He had said that he had had an interest in me and that he still did.

It changed not my opinion of him, not really. Each time my heart fluttered with the knowledge that his eyes rested on me for even the briefest of moments, I would be reminded of his kiss with Rosalyn in the dark.

When I looked up, Niamh stood in the doorway of the foyer, a wicked smile playing on her lips. In an instant, I felt on guard. "Are you going out?" I asked, reaching for her coat, trying my best to be friendly. I'd always been a bit more wary of Niamh than I had of Rosalyn. She'd never said much of anything to me and when she did, it was never a kind word. There was something cruel about her, something sinister beneath all her smoky beauty. Her smile turned to a grin and she took a couple steps towards me, putting her hands on her waist.

"No, no, just thinking. I understand that you went to see Nikolae. Did he tell you all about his escapade to Rosalyn's bed last night?" she asked.

Stiffening my head, my hands turned into fists. "How did you know about that?" I asked.

"I know all about the men she brings into her chamber each night. She boasts of them, thinks I am her closest confidante. I am considering, however...to tell Delphine. Even a forward thinking woman such as Delphine will see Rosalyn for what she truly is: a slut. Delphine shall kick her out and then all the young girls shall follow me and only me around. It would be nice, to be in charge here for once." She grinned and folded her arms. "Oh I'm sure you're wondering why I am telling you all of this. I shall explain, however. You have something I want. Schloss Lunarenstein. And I'm sure with Rosalyn and you out of the way - Magdalena soon following - Delphine is sure to name me heiress to Lunarenstein. And then of course, I shall turn all the girls into my Ladies in Waiting, reinvent myself as a princess and marry some distant prince. Perfect, hm?"

I swallowed. "And how do you plan on getting rid of me?" I questioned.

"Well I suppose I'll start by telling Delphine that you've never once fired a shot at the wolves. And after, I'll tell her that you've befriended a creature of the forest; that disgusting dog of yours. You've been walking on very thin ice for some time now, Aurora. I know that when I inform Delphine of what you have and haven't done around here, she'll be more than happy to disown you." She grinned at my grey face. "I'd get shooting if I were you. You might want to kill something this time. I have a feeling you won't, however."

With that, she gave me a wink and flounced off. My legs shook; suddenly weak and I found solace in leaning on the stone wall near the door. They still couldn't hold me up, though, and I slid down the wall, my eyes not really seeing what was in front of me.How could she know that I'd never fired a shot? Then, closing my eyes, I thought an entirely different thought. How could anybody not know I'd never fired a shot? I'd been painfully obvious in my disdain for hunting and Niamh was far cleverer than I'd believed. She must have figured it out with ease. I felt even more of a fool than last night. I wished Dog were here with me, but he never came at this time. Something inside my head told me I would not be seeing him today. Instead, I struggled up and wandered into the sitting room where I usually read to the younger girls. Sitting on one of the couches, looking dazed, was Rosalyn. She stared at the fire but her eyes, like mine earlier, did not see.

"She came to you, then." My words were high, tense, strangled.

Rosalyn snapped to attention. Her mouth moved open and closed over and over again. Then she got up and walked towards me, her face livid. I backed up, thinking she was about to attack me. However, she walked right by me and I whipped around, about to call out to her, when she stopped right in front of a table, picked up a small personal looking glass that sat on it and threw it as hard as she could at the stone floor where it shattered into dust. "YOU ARE A FOOL!" she screamed. Then she walked right over the broken glass to me and took my shoulders, shaking me hard. "Why?! Why?!" she screamed and screamed until I saw tears flooding from her eyes. Then she collapsed onto me and held me around the shoulders. "This is the only home I've ever known." Her voice was a strangled whisper. No one came rushing to the doorway and I knew no one had heard us. The perks of living in an enormous castle.

Her feet were bloody and I led her over to the couch and sat her down. Standing up, I went to the fireplace, where I pulled on a bell pull next to it. This was only used in emergencies and a member of the staff would come scurrying to our rescue. In under a minute, we had two competent maids standing in the doorway. "Can you please clean that glass? And can I have a bucket of water and some soap, please?" I inquired. The maids curtseyed and rushed out, probably to get something to clean out the mess of glass and blood. I turned back to Rosalyn's feet and began to brush away the glass. "Delphine will never make you leave, Rosalyn. She has never made any of the girls leave, you know this."

"How can we know what Delphine will or won't do? She hit her own child."

I flinched. "How did you-"

"I came back to ask her a question and heard." We were quiet as the maids came back. One of the maids had a bucket of water a large cube of soap with her. I set the water to get hot over the fire. I planned on picking the glass out of Rosalyn's feet but I did not wish to do it without washing my hands thoroughly before. We did not need Rosalyn to come down with an infection. Rosalyn turned her hard, yet beautiful face to me. "How do you do it?" she asked.

"Do what?

"Be the way you are. Kind. To everyone, even those who least deserve it."

"I have never been kind to you and you know it."

"You take my abuse without any words."

"I don't have the courage to stop you." Quiet again. "Why did you do it?" I finally whispered. Rosalyn knew I was talking about Nikolae and hesitated. I left her to check on the water. It was steaming already, the fire was hot from having been burning all day. Carefully, I used a hook to get the bucket off the fire and onto the stone. I dipped my hands and then scrubbed them with the soap, making sure to get under my nails. I scrubbed and scrubbed until I could see tiny white scars dotting the otherwise perfect porcelain skin. I dried my hands on the dry parts of my skirts and turned back to Rosalyn. I'd gotten most of the glass but now sent to picking some of it out. I took some water from the bucket and began to rinse her feet off, which made finding the pieces of glass much easier. She hissed in pain but said nothing. Rosalyn never, ever complained. That was one thing I truly admired of her. Once she'd fallen into a deep ravine and had cut from her shoulder to her elbow. The village doctor had to be called up and as he rubbed salves and ointments on her skin, her face purpled but she made no other sounds except harsh breathing.

When at last she began to look normal again, she turned her eyes towards me. "Haven't you felt so lonely that you could die sometimes?" she asked. I did not say anything. She knew that meant yes. "I do. All the time, I do. Each night I think, 'This time, this time he will love me. This time he will wake up tomorrow and ask me to never leave his side.' They never do, though. Sometimes they promise they will come again, as Nikolae did, but in my heart of hearts I know that they will always leave and each morning I will wake up lonely, aching for something I cannot even name." She shook her head as I pulled the last of the glass out. Then I rinsed her feet again and scrubbed them with the soap. "It is a poor excuse, but it is why." She smiled then, but it was not kind. "You are blind, do you know that?"

I stopped scrubbing. "Blind? I can see just fine," I answered.

"No. You are blind to the men."

I laughed, it sounded much too bitter. "Ah that is where you're wrong, Rosalyn. I only wish I could be blind to them."

She made a frustrated and annoyed sound in the back of her throat and it came out as a haughty bark of laughter. "And see, that is where you are blindest of all! When you walk down the street of the village you do not see how they stare at you, stare at you as if you were some bright goddess. And more than you are blind to the men, you are blind to yourself."

"I do not posess the same beauty that you, Magdalena or even Niamh have," I protested, flushing.

"No, but we are not made of stars." Her words caught me off guard and I looked up. "You are not beautiful like Magdalena or Niamh or even myself, and I - as we all do - see my beauty even less than others. You are incandescent and burning, though, and you cannot see it, cannot understand it. When anyone is around you it is like being close to a warm fire. For a moment you are content and feel as if the entire world is right. Then the moment you leave all becomes chilly and dark." She shook her head. "And more than anything, you do not see how deserving of this quality you are. Even when I yelled at you, broke a future mirror of yours and shook you, you cleaned my feet. You may say you have not the courage to oppose me but I do not hear from others that you speak of me behind my back."

"If I am some star, then why do all the men look awkward in my presence? Why do they all not wish to be left alone with me?" I questioned, beginning to wash once more. I noticed that the floor was clean and the maids had gone. I wondered how much of this conversation they'd heard and how much of it they'd tell the others. I hoped not much, if anything.

Rosalyn sighed. "You know the story of our Mother Artemis? How she cursed a man who accidentally saw her bathing? It is like that, Aurora. You are like that. Because you are Delphine's daughter and because of your glow. They know you are not meant for them and they know they do not deserve you and they stay away." Now I dried her feet with my dress and made sure that she was not still bleeding. She wasn't. Not much of the glass had broken the surface. Her feet looked fine.

"Why would you tell me this?"

Standing up, Rosalyn brushed the wrinkles out of her lemon yellow skirt and gave me a sharp look. Me, sitting on the floor with the bucket of dirty water, feeling smaller than small; Rosalyn towering over me, this beautiful, terrible creature. How could I ever be some star? How could I ever be some bright goddess? Never, never. "Because each time I tell myself I hate you, I know that isn't true. I have never hated you and will never hate you, no matter how hard I've tried." I had nothing to say to that. Rosalyn made her way carefully to the doorway, skirting past the area where she'd broken the looking glass. "We always knew you never shot, Aurora. No one was going to tell."

With that, she left the room. I still sat, feeling stunned. Did this make us friends? In the back of my head, I knew the answer would always be no. I wondered what would happen to her and Niamh. Rosalyn hadn't said much of what Niamh had said to her, although I assumed it was much of the same as what she'd said to me.

Running my hands through my long hair, I stood up and started towards my room. Maybe Dog would be there, maybe he would comfort me. I could use his wind-voice at this moment, even if I doubted he'd be there. And when I opened my door, I saw that I was right, Dog was not there. However, another form sat on my bed. Magdalena. She was smiling and had her hands in her lap. I hesitated and then closed the door. I almost told her about my confrontation with Rosalyn, but thought better of it. She need not know about Niamh and her plan to get rid of me, Rosalyn and Magdalena in order to become Delphine's heiress. Magdalena stood up at my presence. "I thought you might like it if I braided your hair for the hunt tonight."

Magdalena was good with her hands - she was the best at sewing and knitting - and could make intricate braids that would not fall out no matter what happened. My unruly hair tended to get into my eyes and at a hunt, one must be on alert at all times. I nodded and moved to the desk where my friend stood behind me and grabbed all of my hair and my comb and began to brush. I picked up the looking glass and began, once more, to inspect myself, to discover this star-like quality I possessed that made men intimidated by me. As Magdalena brushed I was quiet, a question playing in my mouth that tumbled out on its own accord. "Magdalena," I began, looking at her through the mirror. She paused for a moment and looked down, letting me know she was listening. My mouth was turned into a frown. "The boys in town...do they ever look at me?"

She seemed shocked that I would ask this. Her hands began to rapidly braid. "Yes. They look at you. Then they look away."

"Do you think I'm pretty?"

At this, Magdalena laughed and leaned down to rest her head on my shoulder. In the mirror, I stared at our reflections. She was so beautiful and bright. I looked at myself and found that next to her, to my surprise, I was not such an unworthy companion. There was something pleasing about the curve of my mouth and the way my eyes sat on my face. My small scars reflected the light in a way that made me look as if my skin were made out of some magic substance. For the first time, I was pleased with my reflection. "Of course," Magdalena replied. "I have always thought so." She grinned at me once more and set to finishing my braid. Then she looked down on my desk, where the pure white blossoms still sat. "These are pretty! We should braid them in your hair." She made a move to touch them but I stopped her, a sick feeling growing instantly in my stomach. She should not touch them, something told me.

"No, they are much too fragile. One fell apart as soon as I picked it up to look at it." Magdalena pulled her hand away, a concerned look on her face. "It is all right. We're not heading to a country dance, Magdalena. We're hunting tonight."

"Yes. Just remember what Delphine told us. Don't shoot them, shoot in front of them."

I wanted to tell her that I knew she knew I did not shoot, but I only smiled and nodded. She patted me once on the head and left my room. I found myself looking at my reflection once more in the mirror. Magdalena had tightly braided my hair down the sides of my head and had twirled the two braids into a tight bun that would not fall out for anything. I did not touch it, though, not wanting to risk it. I should get up soon and put on the clothes we used for the hunt, but I sat in the chair at my desk and looked out the window. Stars spilled out into the moonless night. I could not even remember a time when there was a moon. I'd seen it in storybooks and people had told us they remembered the moon, but I did not. What if it I never saw it? So many great poets had lamented to the beautiful moon and I wished to see it in all its sad elegance. I would only see it if I saved the Moon Queen.

I would only save the Moon Queen if I defeated the Liche Queen. If I killed the wolves. Closing my eyes, I thought of Niamh's threat and shivered, despite the warmth of the room. In my head I saw Adrian, Prince of Wolves, lying in the snow, black blood spilling against the stark white snow and felt sick. Niamh's dark smile fought for a place behind my eyelids. I must shoot tonight, I knew. I must shoot to kill.

And I would kill.