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It all swung past her in flashes and pulses, in sync with the weak flickering of the many yellow tallow candles. An ivory fan idly flapping itself into a blur under her nose, Helena Harper glanced around the cavernous ballroom, painted in white and gold and sickly, weak yellow. The reedy sound of the fiddles reached her ears first, another song whining to life, scraped out by the men in their tailored coats. She watched the crowd with little interest, even though their celebration was, supposedly, for her. In reality, however, the roiling sickly green and blue and yellow skirts and the flashes of black, grey, ivory suits were for her parents, all the way across the room, chatting with foreign dignitaries. An opportunity. They were celebrating an engagement. She refused to call it hers. If she called it that it would lend legitimacy and flesh to what had only been a sticky and unsatisfactory courtship of a few months. She hated him and his yellow hair and his yellow palace and the way his sisters and their golden hair looked at her with cold grey eyes meeting violet. She hated his sticky kisses and how he couldn't even be bothered to arrive on time for his own engagement party.
Helena Harper sat up, and, righting her tiara where it was pinned into her hair, rose from the pile of cushions on her chair. The timid woman who'd been holding the ivory fan snapped it shut and handed it to her, grateful for the reprieve, but she recieved it with numb fingers and stepped into the crowd as if in a trance, right as a lively tune wound around the smell of sweat and the stink of woolen skirts and diamonds. Even with the breeze from the flapping fabric and the clack of lively feet echoing all around her, she was alone. Trapped. A hot ring of fire squeezed her insides.
Helena swallowed the bile that was rising with the nausea in her throat and lunged in, snatching the nearest suit away from his partner. Her powerful limbs and sharp nails and whipping hair left him mostly stunned and useless, and after a few brisk cantata steps, she let him go. Found another. Tried to scan the crowd for anything, anything at all that might relieve the awful claustrophobic aching in her gut. But nothing came. She grabbed the back of a suit jacket and yanked. Felt her mother's eyes on her. Ignored them. This one could keep up the pace, at least.
An hour later, she found herself gasping on the daïs, nearly sobbing with exertion. The ring of fire was tighter than ever around her heart and lungs and her liver. Once more, she glanced up from where she sat on her chair, panting, hair flapping in the breeze generated by the woman with the ivory fan. She didn't want this. There were no words for how much she didn't want this. She hated his yellow and gray and bland palace. And then, on her third sweep of the room, came her reprieve. A dot of scarlet. A sliver of black hair, black fan, crow's feathers at her throat. White teeth.
The dignitary entered the hall behind an older man, presumably her father, face half hidden by an ebony fan working itself into a flash of red and black feathers to combat the heat of the bodies packed into the hall. Helena watched, as if in a trance, as her long, slim arm extended to greet another foreigner. Fire was eating at her ribs again, but for another reason entirely.
She didn't know it was a sign, that their fates were intertwined, until the woman glanced up from her pleasantries and locked eyes with Helena, eyes flashing over the rim of her frenzily working fan. Stared directly at her from across the crowded ballroom. And winked.
Feeling heat in her cheeks, Helena snapped her head away. But despite the revulsion pounding at the walls of her skull, she rose for a second time, at first on barely functioning legs, but that grew stronger with every step. She whipped past her mother, heels clacking on the ugly gold stone with its tallow stains. Stepped past a few dance partners with barely a sideways glance, hands nearly touching and staining the ugly gold patterned wallpaper. By the time she reached the chairs of the dignitaries, she was a force of nature. Full, chestnut hair floating out from her shoulders in bold streaks, delicate green and ivory dress doing the same, lifting from the floor to expose a flash of lace underskirts, she worked her way through the dignitaries, shaking warm hands (her own were cool and firm) and exchanging empty greetings. This was what her mother wanted, right? For her contacts to meet the future princess? Here she had it.
Helena grinned (more of a grimace reminiscent of a wolf, a baring of teeth as they pulled back to take a bite) and pushed past the last pack of foreign men, flaxen-haired and polite (sweden).
The woman was even more beautiful up close. The itching pull she'd felt upon seeing the glimpse of crimson from the daïs was nothing compared to now. The future princess watched her as she whispered to a young man next to her. She was tall but delicate, dark but eyecatching. Her hands were tiny and nimble where they lazily rested on the man's bicep, gloved elbow curled up around his. She whispered into his ear again, fan making a heat haze of crow's feathers and covering their faces. She ignored how that made her feel and curtsied to the father.
"Welcome. How do you do?" Her voice lilted from her lips unbidden. The small, kindly man in his stark black attire's eyes crinkled when he smiled. He returned her curtsy with a bow.
"Princess."
"Sir." He grinned even wider at that, not even looking up when he waved his daughter over.
And there she was. Larger than life, the woman floated over, her liquid crimson dress clinging to her body and rippling over the floor. The man came with her, too, possessively clinging to her arm, but Helena barely noticed. Her fan stopped quivering for a moment to reveal another flash of white teeth and matching pearls, nestled among the crow's feathers on her collar bringing to mind some sort of bizarre nest. The elbow-length black glove of her free hand felt indescribably soft on her bare skin when they shook.
Up until this time, she'd been uncertain. Disgusted at the feelings welling up in her body, by the hatred that came on the heels of every glance from those caramel eyes. Driven by an unknown purpose, but scared and barely trusting of where her body was taking her. This was her way out, that much was clear, if not how or why.
"I'm Ada." Ada. It felt right on her tongue.
"Welcome, Madamoiselle. I'm Helena."
"Princess." Came the drawled reply, and from where her head was dipped in her curtsy she could feel Ada's irises burning into her scalp.
"Ada, if you could let me alone with Yang for a moment." Chirped her round father, tugging on the elbow of Ada's companion's suit.
"Of course, father." She let go of the man's arm, and, unless Helena was imagining it, shivered and shook her wrist slightly, as if to rid it of a bad sensation.
"Where's the fortunate prince?" When she smiled, even if just a curl of her lips behind the fan, her eyes glittered gold. Suddenly, Helena became partial to gold.
"Unable to make it. I thought it best to greet our guests in his place." Helena sighed. Ada countered by leaning in and lifting a silk hand to draw the fingers from her elbow to her shoulder. Maybe, in another context, it might have been a comforting gesture, but all it did was made the hairs on the back of her neck rise and a trickle of sweat (a product of the heat, she told herself) slide down her spine.
"Must be exhausting, you poor thing. I may have to have a word with your fiancee for leaving you to fend for yourself with such unsufferable company." Ada winked and gestured to the milling pods of foreigners, slightly withdrawn. Helena sucked her lip into her mouth and tore her eyes from Ada's face to the sea of heads.
"Not so bad. Some of them are quite lovely."
"Present company included, I hope." The hand hadn't left her body, tracing warm circles over her skin.
"Of course." Her voice dropped to a whisper. The hand retreated. Her skin grew cold in the absence.
"I hear you have lovely gardens here." The fan had resumed its routine, fluttering and twitching just below Ada's eyes as Yang and her father returned, and a big hand snaked its way around her waist. That made Helena's fingers ball into a fist where they were concealed in the folds of her skirt.
"I'm afraid I haven't had much time to explore them, but they're stunning at night." Was it dark outside yet? She hoped it was.
"I can't say I've ever seen a Russian garden, but I've heard great things. Would you mind giving me a tour?" Ada cajoled, low voice thrumming with something Helena couldn't place. She shouldn't leave the party. By now, her mother was watching her with pride, being such a good girl and talking to the political contacts instead of sulking in bitter silence as was her usual routine.
"Ada, don't go getting the princess in trouble." Her father chortled, torn between amusement and an attempt to be stern. So this woman had a reputation as a mischief maker? Good.
"We won't, father. Come on, Helena. Won't you take me?" Helena. Even before she'd said her name, Helena would have taken her anywhere, but as soon as it fell from her lips in between fan flaps, she was hooked. She wasn't sure why, though, or maybe she was and she didn't want to believe it.
"The labyrinth is off this way. It's my favourite part." Helena's hand replaced Yang's at Ada's waist, making her shake with a tiny thrill. They half-walked, half-ran away, quivering with suppressed giggles, Helena burning with that thing she could not place.
"Thank you. I was nearly about to suffocate." Ada wiped her forehead and opened her almond eyes wide at the lush gardens around her. The flowers were yellow, not to Helena's liking, but that was easily remedied.
"My pleasure, Ada."
"Do you keep roses?" The fan clicked shut with a snap, the spring evening air was cool enough.
"This way." Helena took her hand and they ran, giggling and gasping and tripping over uneven stepping stones and clods of garden dirt. The claustrophobic pulse of the ballroom gave way to the sound of a symphony of birds in a magnolia, to the crystalline pulse of the stars peeking out behind the shroud of twilight.
And before she knew it, they were truly and thourougly lost. Ada laughed, a loud, clear sound like a rare bell. Her chest heaved, her arms beaded with quickly cooling moisture. She flopped onto the lip of a fountain, her tinkling laugh stirring up Helena's insides. She sat, too, barely able to believe this was happening. That Ada had swung in with a flash of crimson and a ruffle of feathers, and saved her. Her problems were fading away, borne away on waves of heat pulsing up from her toes.
But then why.... why did she feel dirty? When she looked at Ada, the tiny taper of her waist and her iridescent feathers, almost a part of her now, why did revulsion boil up? Helena looked away, all her jubilant emotions from a few seconds earlier draining from the soles of her shoes.
"Are you alright?" Helena could feel Ada's heat on her shoulder, knew if she looked the curve of her pale neck would be in view. That just made her feel dirtier.
"Helena?" Came the whispered word by her cheek. For a second, Helena wished she was back inside the ugly yellow room with the smell of fat candles and wool and diamonds. Only for a second, though, before her gorge rose and the band of fire made a return, threatening to turn her insides to ash. Anything was better than inside. Anything at all, including the nausea that crested whenever Ada touched her.
Helena Harper, known for her steely spine and the flame that burned steady and bright in her eyes, wasn't going to be bested, not by an impotent fiancee in a drab castle or by her mother's disapproving eyes she felt on her back despite knowing she and Ada were alone. This was exactly what she wanted. And couldn't she get what she wanted just once before she was married? Before those garden gates closed forever and she was trapped in an ugly yellow flagstone prison? She thought yes.
So Helena whipped her head back around and pursued what she wanted, in a last-ditch effort to salvage something, anything from her future, so cleanly laid out and tied into yellow lines between the cracks in the ugly flagstones. The roses had been a lie, there were none to be found in the labyrinth, but she decided she was going to plant some when this castle inevitably became hers. Here. Bright red and bloody. Like Ada's dress, like the flush in her cheeks that manifested suddenly and without warning the second their lips crashed together. She tried to savour it before the eventual (and inevitable) shove away she was going to get. Ada surprised her by pressing in closer and closing her eyes, nimble fingers curling their way around her waist.
Oh.
Ada returned the kiss, and Helena felt the hard edge of the ebony fan, folded now, pressing into her hip.
Oh.
"Just relax." Ada sighed, mouth migrating from Helena's lips to her ear, letting forth a deep chuckle that made Helena's knuckles turn stark, bloodless white from gripping the carved stone of the fountain.
Even so, she curled an arm possessively around Ada's waist and pulled her in tighter. When, eventually, Ada laid her down on the short, soft, damp grass she could see the stars, glittering, winking at her.
She woke somewhere warm, to silk sheets and sunlight filtering through translucent windowpanes and thin, gauzy canopies. She woke to her dress draped over a divan, her shoes tossed haphazardly onto a carpet, and for a second she nearly screamed in terror before she remembered her precious tiara had been deposited at home.
All this had left her somewhat distracted, but she was brought back to earth by the soft shifting and rubbing of downy black hairs over her bare stomach. Ada's arm was thrown around her, holding her in a firm grip, even in sleep.
She watched her for a while, the way her lashes fluttered as she sighed, the way the naked curve of her hip looked with a ray of sunlight hitting on it. Until the fog of sleep cleared and she remembered.
I'll plant some red roses for you, she thought, and started to stand to leave. She'd planned to slip away, and had almost enough time to snatch her clothes and go, but she stopped, watching Ada stretch and yawn and blink at her with hooded eyes. She wanted to remember this forever. So she hovered, trying to save every miniature detail even as she stood disrobed in Ada's room, clutching her dress and kneading the stiff fabric like a comfort blanket. And Ada was able to rise, glowing slightly in the morning sun, and pull her back (with barely any resistance) into an embrace.
The words were whispered at first, just a few puffs of breath against Helena's chest where Ada's head was cradled.
"Hm?" She lifted a hand and sifted her fingers through the crow-black hair. Crows, she decided. That was what the castle needed. That was what was going to keep her alive after marriage, those glittering iridescent feathers and, of course, the scarlet roses. She'd finally accepted it, so Ada's next words came as an utter and complete shock.
"Run away with me." Helena's hand froze.
"P-pardon?"
"Let's leave Russia. We can take a buggy and be in the next country before anyone even notices we're gone." She lifted her head, face settled into that smooth, cool mask, caramel eyes dead serious.
"You're insane." Helena said flatly. Either Ada was out of her mind or she was.
"I've never felt saner, Helena." Ada lifted her body and leaned over Helena, pressing them softly together.
"Let me take you somewhere nice. Somewhere warm." She whispered. Before Helena knew it, she had agreed. As if she had any say in the matter. As if they hadn't been careening towards this moment since Ada's red dress broke up the sea of yellow.
Two women in tailored men's trousers hopped onto a train that afternoon, the thick slacks folding and bunching and bending at the knees where they were loose and the men's vests straining at the chest where they were tight. Helena pulled her hat down farther on her head and, avoiding any curious attention from passersby, took one last look at the spires of the yellow castle.
Two free girls, one crow and one wolf, one dark and one fair, slid off the train and piled into a coach with their meager bags. The horses were spurred into action, and they started moving rapidly west through icy fields of wild grass that waved in the spring wind, starting to grow slushy as they thawed. The yellow castle wasn't in view anymore. Helena was glad.