With a slight frown, he turned around and bowed back.
“Ordinarily I take clients in the parlor, which is this way. Should we get started? I wouldn’t like to take too much of your time.”
“Yes, certainly,” he replied, but as we walked through the hall he continued glancing upward, and soon halted altogether to place his hand against the white plaster wall. I stopped too and waited for him to finish with a tight smile on my face, which was really more of a means of keeping myself from screaming in exasperation.
“There’s a very strong enchantment on this house, and an odd one at that,” he remarked finally.
“Yes.” I started walking again, relieved to hear the swish of his coat follow. “It was the first thing I worked toward when I began painting these portraits—it took me an entire year to earn. No fair one—”
“May harm an inhabitant within this house’s walls so long as you live,” he finished at a murmur. “Impressive work. Gadfly’s?”
I nodded, resisting the urge to look over my shoulder. As the parlor’s distinct smell rolled over me I adopted a more formal tone out of habit. “I’ve enjoyed his patronage for years. May I ask why you think it’s odd?”
“I’ve never seen an enchantment like it before. Nor would I have expected something like this of Gadfly.”
Now it was my turn to almost come to a dead halt. I kept myself moving with a physical effort, entered the parlor, and went about mechanically arranging the charcoal I’d need for the day’s sketch. Had the enchantment gone bad? Had I said something wrong to Gadfly all those years ago, left an accidental loophole in the terms of our arrangement? The possibility was so sickening my hands and feet started going numb.
“As a prince, I could destroy most enchantments if I wished,” he went on, still looking around at something I couldn’t see. “But when I said this one was strong, I meant it. It’s far beyond even my power. Gadfly must have spent a great deal of energy to achieve such a working, which is out of the ordinary, since I’ve never seen him so much as get up out of a chair unless he had to. He must enjoy your Craft immensely. I’m beginning to understand why he was so persistent in recommending I have a portrait done.”
I blew out a steadying breath.
One thing the prince had said sounded off—Gadfly had given me the impression he’d had nothing to do with this appointment—but I was so relieved the thought fled my mind almost instantly.
“I had no idea,” I said. “You’re the first to tell me—no one else has ever mentioned it.”
The prince brushed past, his sleeve caressing my arm. The parlor appeared to interest him greatly. It was the largest room in my house, and the most cluttered, though we took pains to keep it neat. At present the only unoccupied piece of furniture was the settee beside the window. In the corner to my left there was a varnished side table on which sat a crystal vase containing two peacock feathers, a set of imported china, a stack of leather-bound books, and an empty birdcage. The brocade chairs next to it were piled high with mismatched drapes, rugs, and curtains in every color and pattern imaginable. The rest of the room went on similarly, in each nook and cranny a different collection of curiosities, as though the parlor were a miniature, eclectic museum of human Craft. My chair and easel sat unassumingly in the very center.
The prince seemed too distracted to reply, so I continued: “When working with human patrons, portrait artists usually travel to their homes and paint them there. Because I can’t do that with fair folk, of course, we choose furniture and decorations and arrange them to your liking here in this room.”
“It restricts us,” the prince murmured, touching his fingertips gently to the birdcage. He ran them down the thin metal bars. I remembered the raven sitting outside and wished I’d had the presence of mind to put the cage in another room, even as I wondered what on earth he was talking about. Never once had a fair one acted anything but pleased to surround themselves with the parlor’s gaudy props.
He snatched his fingers away and turned around. His pensiveness vanished into a smile like morning mist dissolved by the sun. “Gadfly’s enchantment, that is. Why none of us have mentioned it to you before. It feels like having a pair of shackles around our wrists, as light as spider-silk but strong as iron. No fair one enjoys commenting on their own weakness.”
“But you’re an exception, sir?”
“Oh, not at all. I don’t enjoy it either.” His smile deepened, and the crooked dimple reappeared on his cheek. “I just have little regard for discretion, as you might have noticed.”
Indeed, I had. He was unlike any other fair one I’d ever met.
“Is there a proper way to address you as prince?” I deferred, crossing the room to start sorting through the fabrics for a backdrop that would complement his wardrobe.
“We don’t observe such formalities,” he said, and glanced at me. “I would have thought you already knew that.” How? I wondered. It wasn’t as though I had fairy royalty over for dinner. “In any case, my name is Rook.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “That’s fitting, sir.”
His eyes moved, searching my face, and it seemed to me his own smile grew even more familiar, confidential in a way I hadn’t known a fair one could manage. Standing next to him, I became aware that the top of my head only reached to his chest. My cheeks warmed.
Good lord! I had a job to do.
“I think this brocade would suit you,” I said, lifting a heavy rust-colored silk with copper embroidery.
He paused to look at it, almost impatiently. I always found this part interesting. One could learn precious little about fair folk, but occasionally their aesthetic choices opened windows into their souls (if they had them, that is—always a controversial matter at church). Gadfly enjoyed stuffing his frames full of as many expensive-looking trifles as possible. Another patron, Swallowtail, preferred only functional objects that had been used before: half-burnt candles, books with cracked spines and feathered corners.
Rook shook his head at the brocade and bent to inspect a row of blown-glass vases. He examined statuettes and mirrors, baskets full of wax fruit, chemistry bottles, quill pens, strangely arresting in his silence and grave concentration. I couldn’t begin to imagine what he was thinking. Finally he came back to the birdcage and looked up to find me watching him. His mercurial smile returned.
“I’ve decided I don’t want anything in my portrait,” he declared, and went over to the settee. He sat down with one arm stretched across the back and a knowing regard that told me he’d figured out exactly why I’d been watching him. “If you must stare at something for hours on end, I’d prefer it to be me alone.”
I struggled to keep my expression serious. “How gracious of you, sir. It will take me far less time to finish your portrait with you as the sole subject.”
He sat a little straighter and frowned, a trace of petulance darkening his aristocratic features.
What was I doing? It was easy—so easy—for a fair one’s pique to turn to dangerous ire. This wasn’t like me. So many years of being cautious, and in a matter of minutes I’d started slipping up. Swallowing my words, I went over to my chair, arranged my skirts, and selected a stick of charcoal. I pushed every other thought aside.
It’s difficult to explain what happens when I pick up a charcoal stick or a paintbrush. I can tell you the world changes. I see things one way when I’m not working, and an entirely different way when I am. Faces become not-faces, structures composed of light and shadow, shapes and angles and texture. The deep luminous glow of an iris where the light hits it from the window becomes exquisitely compelling. I hunger for the shadow that falls diagonally across my subject’s collar, the fine lighter filaments in his hair ablaze like thread-of-gold. My mind and hand become possessed. I paint not because I want to, not because I’m good at it, but because it is what I must do, what I live and breathe, what I was made for.
My concerns fell away along with the scrape of charcoal across paper. I didn’t notice the soft black flakes sifting down, dusting my lap. First a circle, loose, energetic, capturing the shape of Rook’s face. Then vigorous wider lines sketching in the ensnaring tousle of his hair, his crown.