The air smelled wrong — clean in the way hospitals were clean, like something had died and been scrubbed away. Genieve lay beneath the linen sheets, trembling. Her body was caught somewhere between fever and floating. The scent around her was heavy with black tea, morphine, heroin, and lavender — the strange Mircela mixture her mortal friend had once promised would dull the pain. It worked too well. It made her body feel soft and distant, like she'd been poured from wax and left to cool.
Her grandmother had sealed her ears with wax this time. She could understand why her eyes and mouth had been covered before — but the ears? That felt like cruelty. It left her trapped in silence, forced to live by scent and touch alone.
When she grew thirsty, she reached for the rope with the light thorns beside her bed. She had been told that was how she must ask for nourishment. Each time she gripped it, the thorns bit through her palms, and her blood ran down into a metal bucket waiting below. At first, she could hear its hollow sound through the muffling wax, but when she tried to lift it one day, it was too heavy to move.
Curiosity overcame her pain. She slipped her hand inside.
The world bent sideways. The bucket wasn't metal anymore — or maybe she wasn't flesh. Images bled up through her fingertips: she saw herself as a small girl, laughing with her father before a mirror. His face glowed with warmth. Then her mother appeared, and there was laughter again — only now there was a dead servant at their feet, a knife shining in her mother's hand. Genieve laughed beside her in the vision, though she didn't remember why.
Then came shouting. The laughter broke apart. Her father took her hand and fled the house, dragging her into the mortal world. That was the only time she had ever felt free.
Time passed in a blur of perfumed sickness and wax-stiff dreams. Genieve no longer walked of her own will; her grandmother's servants lifted her like a marionette, turning her head, arranging her hands, dressing and undressing her as though she were a plaything. The old woman called it "keeping up appearances," but Genieve knew it for what it was—a lesson in humiliation.
Once, she had been the one commanding others to move, the one who snapped her fingers and watched lesser souls obey. There had been a hierarchy to things, a natural order she'd inherited with her blood and her name. To find herself on the other end of those strings felt unnatural, almost obscene. She had been born to sit above, not beside.
If only Viktor had been hers. If that strange island woman, Ayoka, and her wretched little half-thing had not crept into his favor, all would have remained as it should. She would have stood beside him, adorned and adored, her place secured among the powerful. The Shadow Man's blessing might have passed through her veins instead of theirs.
Ah, the Shadow Man. How galling that he had once shown her his wonders—only to withdraw as though she were unworthy of his notice. To be dismissed by such a being felt like mockery. She could have had them both, Viktor and the Shadow Man, had the world kept its sense of propriety.
So after all this time, why would her toys betray her? Why would the world she had so carefully arranged refuse to kneel? She had fed them, clothed them, made them beautiful. Even Sabine—her little doll who once curtsied on command—and that red-headed boy, Sasha, the one her father had so carefully polished for court.
She could still remember the fuss her father made over him, the endless evenings spent scraping the wildness out of that child until he looked half-presentable. An ugly thing at first—freckled and sullen—but shaped into something the court could admire. They had both been nothing before her family touched them.
"They should have been grateful," she murmured, bitterness soft as sugar. "All of them should have been grateful."
Her grandmother's voice slid through the wax, smooth and cold.
"Come to tea, my little butterfly," the old woman said. "Let us see how well you've grown from your cage."
The words shivered through her bones. Servants appeared at once, dressing her, turning her limbs, setting her posture straight like a doll revived from storage. The air smelled of wax and rosewater. Somewhere beneath it all, the ropes still tugged, invisible but absolute.
The servants moved with quiet precision, lifting her from the bed as though she were made of porcelain. They dressed her in pale silk that clung to her hollow frame and combed what remained of her hair until it shone in the candlelight. Her grandmother's house had always been like this—ritual disguised as refinement. Even cruelty had manners here.
When they sat her at the table, the tea was already steeping, dark and fragrant, the steam curling upward like incense from an altar. The china gleamed, trimmed in gold, the pattern one she remembered from childhood—roses and vines, delicate and strangling.
Her grandmother watched her from across the table, eyes bright as lacquered amber. "Now," the old woman said softly, stirring her tea with slow precision, "let us see what startles the child this time."
The wax curse on her mouth began to hum. Genieve tried to resist, but the words came spilling from her like blood from a wound. She spoke of the visions, of the mirror and her father and mother and the laughter that wasn't laughter. Each word hurt to say. Her grandmother listened with polite detachment, sipping her tea as though hearing a sermon she'd already memorized.
When the confession ended, silence fell. The candles guttered. The air smelled of honey and stormwater. Her grandmother set down her cup with care, her voice quiet but final. "It is time. Since you came into this world naked, you must learn to find power naked. But first—your family must see you."
The wax cracked from her eyes. Light stabbed through.
Her father stood beside her mother, both drawn thin by war and old anger. Her father looked weary, the lines around his eyes deep as scars. Her mother stood tall, unshaken, her beauty sharpened to a weapon.
Her father's lips trembled. "Please… get stronger, daughter. If you don't—"
Her mother struck him sharply across the back of the head. "Do not beg her. She is one of the reasons we are in this mess."
Genieve's heart lurched. She tried to shout, but when she reached for her lips, the wax still clung there. She felt her voice press against it, useless. "Why show me this?" she gasped. "Why trick me like this?"
Her grandmother's smile widened, cruel and bright. "Because, child," she said, "just like you—I can be bored."
The servants came at the signal of her hand. They tore away Genieve's silk gown, their movements brisk and practiced. Her grandmother's tone never wavered. "Now we go to the garden," she said. "You will strip and walk naked. You will have no hair. You will be very bald."
Genieve's fingers flew to her scalp, trembling. "No," she tried to plead, but her mouth betrayed her only with silence. The scissors glinted in candlelight. Her hair fell in thick, dark strands that clung to her shoulders before sliding away. They shaved her bare—head, brows, even the faint hair on her arms—until her skin gleamed raw and pink beneath the lamplight.
Then came the bath. Steam rolled across the marble floor, the water hissing with heat. The servants forced her into it. The scalding stung like judgment; the lavender only made the pain more elegant. The wax began to melt, sliding in milky ribbons over her shoulders.
Her grandmother watched from the edge of the room, her voice faintly amused. "Let it all fall away, my butterfly. Let the body forget what the mind cannot."
The servants pressed her under the water.
She opened her eyes, and the world was wrong—stars burning beneath her instead of above, the basin gone, the ground collapsing into light. Something vast and unseen rose from that bright darkness and coiled around her legs.
She tried to scream, but the wax still clung to her tongue. Only silence came.
Only the smell of thunder.