Star's Crossing

14: Courageously Onward

Mare's heart pounded in her ears as she followed Matilde into the dining room.

Her sister sat, shaking out The Star's Crossing Gazette and lifting a cup of tea to her lips. "'Can I tell you a secret?'" she read, "'I believe in love'...Oh, Mare. Doesn't it just stir your heart?"

Mare closed her hands into fists, gritting her teeth. Matilde had always roamed this strange no-man's land. Always she'd been a force of benevolence and malevolence both, almost in equal part. Her veins ran with calculation, and she'd been too clever for her own good-and everyone else's-since childhood.

Mare's father had taught all of his girls to play chess. Matilde was the only one who could beat them all, including Mare's mother, who was oddly talented at the game. After she'd slain her foes, usually while sipping tea or reviewing the paper idly, she could often be found playing herself. Late into the night, nothing but her own ghostly reflection watching from black-ice windows.

Mare studied Matilde now, remembering her as a child, sharp and clean as a knife. Matilde was Mare's favorite sister, as they'd spent the most years together, and in truth Matilde had often taken Mare's side in conflict with their mother. Mare sometimes wondered if this was merely for the triumph of felling the stronger opponent, as Mare had been meek, weak-willed, and easily cowed as a child.

But that was then. This was now. Mare planted her hands on the back of one of the dining room chairs, sizing up her sister across the way. Matilde seemed to sense Mare's malcontent. Her painted lips stirred in a slight, cold smile, though she did not look up from her paper.

So. Somehow, some way, Matilde suspected Mare to be the writer of the Gazette letters. What would her mercurial sister do with confirmation? With denial? Mare could hardly believe her sister would reveal Mare's trespasses to their parents. But with denial, she'd no doubt relish the cat and mouse of steadily forcing Mare to confession.

But what choice did Mare have? Her mother would lock her in her room until the end of courting season if she knew, and marry her off to the first bachelor that offered. If any offered with this deplorable habit-writing, dreaming, loving-unveiled to the whole of Star's Crossing. In print. Official.

No. Mare would face the brunt of Matilde's manipulation rather than outright confrontation. Matilde would drag this mystery behind her until nothing but pulp remained, and if Mare knew she needed anything, it was time.

How, then, to defer Matilde's scrutiny? With Mare's own condemnation? Vitriol, perhaps?

Or, cleverer still-pure, unbridled intrigue?

Yes. Lilith would like that.

"She's terribly good," Mare said, edging round the table to read over her sister's shoulder. "And to think, this letter must have been penned during the letter writing for the boys in her year. She'd be no older than, what, twelve, perhaps?"

"It's flowery," said Matilde dismissively, waving her hand as she scanned the page. The letter was there, strung together in pieces, entitled Star Crossed: Anonymous Letters of Star's Crossing's Youth. Her first letter and those that followed had no doubt been much too lengthy and meandering to be selected for the paper. "I doubt, somehow, that they're real. Look, they've announced they'll be publishing one per week until the close of courting season next summer. Where in the world would they have gotten them?"

Mare pressed her lips together. A thief, she thought bitterly. A cruel, vindictive saboteur. This was beyond what Mare might have prepared herself for. She'd made peace since the gala with her letters floating through the hands of strangers. After all, her name could not be found in any of the pages. This, however, was far more than she'd bargained for.