The Worm in Every Heart

“It seems my Lady prefers to stand,” her husband told the walls. “And to stare.” A pause. “Am I so different, then?”

“Not at all.”

His brows raised. “She speaks! An honor surely worth a few years of anticipation.”

Carola swayed, abruptly, and sat. The curtains stirred at her movement, dust spilling, to wake a handful of moths nesting near their base.

“A—few—?”

The moths hovered, caught, about the Hand. Its corona picked golden scales from their wings.

“Fifty, to judge aright,” he replied. “Your pardon.”

At his gesture, the moths veered too far in, crisped and fell together, twitching.

“There was no need for that,” Carola said.

Her husband merely smiled.

“Hunger without need,” he said. “And power without conscience; yes. But a man must hold true to his own nature, must he not?” Softer: “Or a woman.”

As he spoke, Carola found her teeth had begun to ache once more. She rubbed at the corner of her mouth, sensing a stain.

“You cheated me,” she said, at length.

“I? Never.

”

Then, mildly:

“My Lady, you do me wrong. And let me be your mirror in this—a fair bargain, since I promise you’ll have no other.” He rose, gracefully. “You see your fields fallow and your people craven, and blame me for it. But look you—’tis your castle shunned, your name taken in vain and prayed against in hope of God’s protection.”

He gestured again, making the dead moths skitter in the Hand’s shadow.

“I am entirely innocent in this matter. My only crime is to have kept your marriage bed warm while waiting, these many long years, on your late return.”

Carola examined her hands, closely, in the wavering light. Saw—as if for the first time—the broken nails, black with grave-dirt and old flesh. Saw how the skin drowned in its own whiteness, eaten from within by immortality. She ran her tongue reflectively across her teeth, drawing blood.

And raised her head at last, voice level—

“You are noble.”

“As you yourself.”

“Had you—land of your own?”

A flicker, at the corner of one eye. Just a flicker.

“Once,” he said. “But that was long ago.”

“And did no one ever teach you our duty? To serve those who serve us, or be unworthy of their love and our estate?” She stood now, flayed toes digging the stone like claws. “All that I have, I owe to them. This I promised.”

Nose to nose with him, her voice rose to a thin shriek: “And you—you have made me break my word.”

He held fast and met her, stare for stare.

“You were born to this, Lady,” he said. “Dead or alive—hunter, to their prey. What matter whether they love or fear, so long as you rule?”