The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski
THE GOD
RAVEN NEGLECTED TO POUR FRESHwater into my vase. Still, I bloomed. My petals sealed shut at night and flourished in the day. Raven added to her treasures, and I became invisible among them, an item that had lost its luster of newness.
Until the day she decided to wear me.
She sat before the mirror, applying cosmetics beyond her kith, braiding her hair into an elaborate, black crown suitable only for a lady. Once finished, she stared at her reflection, her admiration dissolving into wistfulness. Like Irenah, I understood: it can twist a human to long for something constantly denied, to see what others have and know it will never be yours. As Raven regarded herself in the mirror, she knew she was as beautiful as any High Kith born, but the thought filled her not with satisfaction, but the desire for revenge. She did not want to be equal to a High Kith. She wanted to be better. She wanted something no one else had, not even the most privileged of Ethin.
Her eyes fell upon me.
Yes! she cried, intending to weave me into her braided hair. She pounced upon me, snatching me from my vase.
But she had forgotten my thorns.
They studded into her fingers, my little nails digging deep enough to make her yelp.
Raven? Irenah called from another room. Are you all right?
Damnyou, Raven hissed between her teeth, and ripped my petals from their crown. Pain shredded me. I fell apart over her dressing table, throbbing, dizzied. She bent my stem, blood running down her closed fist, and tossed me aside. I lay in so many agonized pieces that I could not think. Raven ran from the room, shoving past her sister, who had come to offer aid.
You call that a gift? Raven sneered, and was gone.
Irenah leaned above the dressing table. With one finger, she touched a petal. I wanted to beg her to stop. It was too much. She looked down at the small heap of my petals, soft and ruined, her ordinary face growing horrible in its expression, yet dear to me, even through my pain, because I realized that I had missed her, that the only happiness I had known in many human ages had been to rest between her fingers, to lie hidden in her pocket, to behold the simplicity of her mouth, her eyes as green as a storm. Three tears fell from her eyes upon me: one that slid down the bowl of a petal into the shape of a crescent moon, the other two beading into perfect stars. Although to her I had no feelings, no senses, no soul, she pitied me for no other reason than that it pained her to see something beautiful destroyed.
Her tears hardened into jewels against my skin, and I was free.
Oh, Irenah gasped as I shone forth: whole, myself, a miracle. And in the light of the divinity she returned to me, I saw the fullness of her good heart.
I fell in love.
Which had surely been the god of games’s design all along. I heard the god’s terrible laugh. Well played, I told that god, full of bitter desire. It is the ultimate suffering to love a mortal, whose life is as fleeting as dew upon a flower.