The Ride
The carriage wheels clattered steadily over the cobblestones, carrying Eva farther away from someone else’s palace and its cloying music. A magical lamp glowed softly beneath the ceiling, filling the cramped space with an even, warm light. Eva sat with her arms folded, already back in her favorite traveling outfit—plain, comfortable, and not trying to turn her into a porcelain doll. The hideous yellow dress in which she had spent the whole evening feeling like an overfed canary now lay in the trunk beneath the seat.
She had worn it on purpose.
“I’ve already explained this,” Henry said without looking up from his newspaper. “People will fawn over you. Always. You are a princess. This is not news.”
Eva kicked the trunk with real feeling.
“I don’t want people fawning over me. I want at least one person to tell me the truth. One person at that entire ball. Just one little hint: ‘Your Highness, you look like scrambled eggs.’ But no. Every other fool was gushing about how the color brought out my eyes.”
Henry turned the page.
“I tell you the truth on a regular basis.”
“You don’t tell the truth. You’re just rude.”
“One doesn’t preclude the other.”
Eva glared at him.
“No, you really are deranged. How did it even occur to you last time to tell the count I’d eaten my geranium and praying mantises were coming for me?”
“You told me to get the guests out.”
“Not like that!”
“The guests left.”
“Henry!”
At last he lowered the newspaper just far enough to look at her over its edge.
“What? The task was completed.”
Eva rolled her eyes and leaned back against the seat.
“Sometimes I think you don’t have a brain in your head. Just a set of crooked little gears.”
“Thank you.”
“That was not a compliment.”
“Then I’ll take it as a comment on the design.”
Eva blew out a sharp breath through her nose.
“Gods, why did I have to end up with you?”
“You chose me yourself, Your Highness.”
“Because out of a hundred polished little idiots, you were the only one who looked at me and said, ‘What are you staring at?’”
“I told you already. I was late for the selection and didn’t know what the princess looked like,” Henry replied calmly. “And you were wearing some sort of rag that looked suspiciously like a maid’s uniform.”
“It was a traveling skirt.”
“It failed at looking expensive.”
“You understand nothing about fashion.”
“Thank the gods for that.”
Eva glanced sideways at him, then suddenly snorted.
“With that personality, you’ll never find a bride.”
“I will, should the need arise.”
“Oh, really? And what desperate soul would ever take an interest in you?”
Henry raised the newspaper again.
“The important thing is that it certainly won’t be you. I would rather not end my life on the gallows because of overly bold taste.”
Eva choked with indignation.
“Have you lost all fear?”
“No. That is precisely why I’m thinking sensibly.”
“Insufferable.”
“So are you.”
For a couple of seconds she stared daggers at him, then gave in first and turned toward the window. Dim streetlamps and the dark silhouettes of houses slid past the glass; fog crept along the paving stones.
The silence did not last long.
“What are they saying, anyway?” Eva muttered.
Henry began folding the newspaper.
“Disappearances again. Five this month already, and that’s only in the capital district.”
“Five?” Eva turned to him. “Do you think it’s demons?”
“Possibly.”
“Possibly is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have for now,” he said dryly. “Before, there were at least some magical traces left behind. Or blood, at the very least. Now—nothing. People simply vanish.”
Eva shivered.
“Is someone letting them in?”
“Perhaps.”
“But why?”
Henry gave one shoulder a slight shrug.
“People do plenty of vile things simply because they can. Or because they think they can control something they should never have touched. History has had no shortage of idiots who let demons drink their blood—out of curiosity, or for pleasure.”
Eva grimaced.
“That’s horrible.”
Henry set the newspaper aside completely. His voice became quieter.
“No. The blood is not the horrible part.”
She looked at him more closely. He let a short pause pass.
“They need blood no more than one needs wine with dinner. It isn’t the point. The point is what the person feels. Fear. Pain. Despair. The things that break a person from the inside.”
Eva said nothing.
“You can make do with a pig,” Henry continued, his tone even now. “But you can’t make a true monster of yourself on pigs. For that, you need a human being.”
He looked her straight in the eyes.
“Because you cannot drive a pig into primal terror. A human being, though—that’s easy.”
Eva did not look away at once.
The carriage jolted and came to a stop. Outside, the coachman’s voice called:
“We’ve arrived, Your Highness. Madame Blanche’s shop.”
Eva blinked, as if returning from far away. The brooch. Yes, she had to pick up the brooch she had ordered—a trifle, merely a convenient excuse to leave the reception early.
Henry slipped the folded newspaper into the inner pocket of his frock coat, opened the door, stepped out first, and offered her his hand.
The street was empty. A dull light burned in the shop window, and just beyond it began a narrow alley, choked with darkness and littered with empty crates.
Eva had already taken a step toward the shop door when she suddenly stopped.
From the black mouth of the alley, through the rustle of the wind, came a sound.
Quiet. Broken.
Someone was crying in the dark.
