“No one really cares about you, Cecile.” The coy voice touches her with a ring of doubt, but the feelings of furtive disbelief have all but grown numb by now and she merely draws back her head to hear. She can feel the slippery fingers brushing back her hair, coaxing the curls into place and stumbling over the pearls. The noxious words sit as vultures on the air.

“They look down on you. You see the scowls they barely conceal. They talk of you as they would mention a joke; despite the place you hold, you are nothing to this household.”

Cecile sits up, turning her face to the mirror before her. Eyes wide and worn stare hollowly across, caked with powder to reduce the effects of bad sleep. Her mouth, painted, curls down cheerlessly, but haughtiness still lingers in the distant way she holds herself: a look of frightened queenliness. Despite each careful measure she appears years beyond her age; the shadows creep past the meticulous make-up.

“But I care; no one loves you as much as I do. Why, even he…”

She draws in a breath, shutting her trembling eyelashes. It hurts regardless of how many times she hears this, and the bitter reaction only sends a half-choked sob up her throat. The hands still float through her hair, but she feels them pause, no matter how briefly, through the heavy silence. An expectant quiet.

She had told herself many times how selfish she was being; how possessive her jealousy made her feel and how spent she was with anger. She had begged and pleaded, coaxed and chided, and been reduced to tears in her confusion.

But he had ignored her cries and become immune to the marks of her sorrow. He would talk to her no longer, and the scathing look he gave her sometimes told her of how much he had begun to loathe her company. She knew he was tired of her; she was not in the least deaf to the whispers that went among the maids.

He had drawn her in as effortlessly as he now forsakes her.

Her hand moves over her swollen abdomen, wincing at the thought of what now grows inside her. His poison, his mark; the evidence of his corruption.

The taste of bile streams up to overpower her, and she opens her eyes to a dizzying sensation as the final adjustments are done to her hair. She can feel the old woman’s eyes boring past her, through her, and her hands fly up to catch the withered pair.

No one cares. Her grip tightens, steadfast, pleading, and she seeks comfort in the face looming over her in the looking glass.

“Please, Fama.” Her voice is hoarse, trembling, overcome by a wave of sudden hope. “You can talk some sense into him. You are like no one I’ve ever known, and he will listen to you… Please.”

“Cecile, you know I could never convince him of anything.” Her expression falls, the glimmer of yearning gone, but the old woman does not remove her hold. Her caress is cool, steady and without reassurance, but the black eyes dazzle her from the mirror. “You should not need to beg his permission or approval for anything. You are free of him; he has made your liberation as certain as it can be.”

The sparse color leaves her cheeks at Fama’s cruelty, but she can no longer ignore the blunt truth behind her words. He despises her – they all do; the hate is there without a doubt, swelling from their careless eyes and mocking smiles. Her hands fall from the old woman’s leathery clutch, flying like startled birds over the edge of the vanity. All the fruits of his deception seep and clamber from her touch: ropes of pearls that burn her skin with ice and iridescent rings that have shriveled to pale stone. She gropes for the vials of honeyed perfume, the strings of jade and ivory, desperate for any trace of the cloying promises that had once been hers as well.

Those stark eyes pity her progress.

“I can’t do it.” Weariness compels her back, and her voice wavers above a whisper. “I can’t go… We are married, joined together…”

How easy would it be for him to taint her wine with toxin? A whispered word, a tie in the right place. She is aware of the enamored looks her own serving girls touch him with.

Her look lingers over the glass vials.

“There is no end here for you but your own end.” Fama’s voice is a soft-silk sigh, her breath a thin caress. “No tears, Cecile; you are stronger than that. Know that you are not the first young wife to succumb in such a way, and you will not be the last.” Her smile is thin and throaty, as though her lips creak with it, and two fingers sink into her worn robe to emerge with something dangling in-between them. Cecile watches the bottle from her mirror, captivated by the colorless liquid that swishes among the glass walls.

“Two drops is all it will take.” Fama’s tone is as lulling as ever; those fingers brush her hair apart. “Tasteless when diluted in wine.”

Something stirs inside her, and Cecile clamps a palm over her midsection, mouth pallid with an emerging guilt.

“But his child…” she starts, stumbles, and stops herself. His child. His property. She knows that he values the baby on the same level he now sees her; it would sooner end up by the doorstep or shoved down a sooty alleyway by one of the servants. No, better yet to take what belongs to him. A greater agony she could not hope to draw than to leave him bereft of his own possession.

“You will not leave me, will you?” She is a child again; weak, clinging. That smile curls before her eyes, and she feels the airy kiss fall against her jeweled scalp. The black eyes are filled with an edgy hunger.

“Never, my lady. Not until all is done.” The bottle is warm against Cecile’s eager palm.