Free Flawless//Broken by Sara Wolf Page B

found so lacking in many of the women at the French court.
    The horse came to a languid trot on the dirt road. Darius watched the farmers cull the early harvest - pearl onions, radishes, and sweet peas. The winter blight had killed everything, but still the farmers managed to scrape a living from the soil as they had for so many years. Power struggles and petty gossip meant little to them, and for that Darius was in awe. The house he arrived at was a thatched one-level farmhouse, the type soldered with hay and a prayer to keep the cold out. Darius tied his horse and made his way through the thick mud to the front door. He knocked, and it opened, the warmth and smell of bubbling pork broth a welcome change from the frigid air.
    The girl at the door had hair like spun gold, tied beneath a plain cap. Her eyes were blue, the sort of deep smoky blue periwinkles took on in the late spring. She smiled, meeting his eyes only briefly before the flush of her cheeks gave her away. He’d seen many supposed beauties at court, but she was far superior in every way - a true painting, not a copy. He expected her to be dull as the rest of them, but her beauty still made it hard to speak.
    “Hello,” Darius managed. “I’m Darius Montclaire, the court alchemist. I have a delivery for your father.”
    “Haven’t you heard?” She giggled. “It’s for me, not him.”
    “I deduced as much, milady. Few married men ask for marriage charms.”
    “I’m sure some man sometime will ask it of you. Beware of him. Only demons enjoy being twice married and twice miserable.”
    Darius laughed, and she smiled and let him in to sit by the fire as they waited for her father to return from gathering chestnuts. Her mother was in town buying cloth. He shed his heavy fur cloak and she offered him warm cider, which he took with gratitude. They spoke freely and with great joy on everything from making fun of nobles to the war in Italy to how pathetically desperate some farmboys seemed to acquaint themselves with the female form. Her name, she revealed, was Amelie. Darius felt himself coming alive with each passing second - her wit was sharp and her eyes danced with a mirth he’d never seen in his eighty years of homunculus living. Her love of life, each mundane moment, ensured she always smiled - every instance was too precious to waste with bitterness or anger.
    When her father did return, Darius casually asked for whom the marriage charm was to be used on - the man revealed a wealthy merchant from the next township over had expressed interest, and he was praying it would go through. The dowry money would be enough to keep the man’s farm running and the taxes well-paid. He seemed not to have a second thought of how Amelie felt about marrying the merchant, and the girl herself kept her eyes down and her mouth silent.
    Darius would visit her many times, each with an excuse that he was on some business in the area from the King. He and Amelie would walk in the peach orchards, and she’d make him eat a peach though he could not taste it, and he’d put blossoms in her hair. He bought her gifts - a warm fox-fur shawl, a new shovel for her father, a cauldron for her mother. Finally, Darius bought a ring, and asked the court carver to chisel Amelie’s likeness into it. Eventually, word got out at the court the alchemist had a sweetheart, and the hearts of many noble girls were broken, not that their mothers would’ve let them marry a handsome non-royal to begin with. But the rumors broke a particularly dangerous heart - that of the wealthy merchant Amelie had been promised to.
    He came to her farmhouse with a sword.
    Darius found the bodies - the mother splayed in the mud, cleaved from neck to navel, a spilled basket of still-warm chicken eggs beside her. The father was struck down as he turned the horse’s hay from behind, a strike only cowards used. And Amelie…
    His heart had been taken from him the night Nicholas Flamel turned an orphaned