Chapter Text
“Oh, darling,” Margot said, brushing Morrigan’s hair away from her face. Her feathers hadn’t fully grown in, in that awkward fluffy way that she had seen on unnimal crows and on crowwuns major, between prepubescence and adulthood. Jupiter sometimes made a soppy face at it when he thought she wasn’t paying attention.
Originally she had been embarrassed by it because she thought he hated her curse as much as her father or grandmother had, both of whom only had feathers in coverable places. She had only discovered her grandmother was even like her when a maid had dropped hot tea on her arm (and had been immediately fired) and she had had to roll up her sleeve to get it treated in enough time. Her father’s feathers sometimes spread out to his hands if he didn’t trim or pluck them frequently enough, but since he had married Ivy she had never seen any evidence of it.
The portrait of her uncle Bertram was at a three-quarter angle, but the side of him that hadn’t been facing the painter had strange shadows dancing up and down his face that she had often thought could only have been for the same reason as hers.
Now she knew it was for a much more different reason, but if she thought about it too much her stomach would clench like she had swallowed hot chilli powder on a dare again (Thaddea’s fault) and she just- really didn’t want to deal with it right now.
“Hm,” Margot said, tilting her head up, the stronger feathers on her neck much more obvious.
Morrigan remembered a story she had once heard, of a bird of an other species being trapped in with a group of elegant swans, like it was an uglier, worse kind of that bird. At the end of the story it had been happy. The truth had willed out. It was just another sort of bird. It didn’t need to be a swan.
The Darlings were all swans. And Morrigan was a crow in every sense of the word. No matter how she dressed it up.
But they were her family too, and she wasn’t about to abandon it now. So what if she didn’t look like the rest of them? They said they loved her, that they wanted to keep her close. They were her real family. She just had to stick in her heels and refuse to move until it felt right again.
“Maybe a veil?” Miriam said. Her lips were doing a strange thing. They weren’t frowning, but at the same time, something in Morrigan curled up, showing its belly, like a meek little unnimal, afraid to show any kind of belligerence. Wanting to please, so, so badly.
“Oh!” Modestine said, rifling through one of Meredith’s drawers, picking through layers and layers of… stuff. All white, or pink, and lacy or gauzy. Ridiculous stuff. “I have just the thing!”
Squall scoffed at her when they finally landed on the golden gossamer bridge.
“What?” She pulled the stupid thing off her face.
“This is what I meant,” he sighed. “Why you didn’t need the distraction. Especially from such a family. Tell me, Miss Crow, or, Miss Darling-” Morrigan tried not to flinch, but from his raised eyebrow and the sardonic shift in his face, she doubted that she had pulled it off very well. “Was this your idea?”
“Was what?” she asked, balling up the fabric in her fists.
“Oh dear,” he said. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Well, I’m not your parent or guardian. I hardly care. And I suspect this might be a lesson you’re better off learning on your own besides. Now, I have thoughts about teaching you Masquerade-”
“So you’re like… a crow?” Louis frowned at her, his fingers just short of actually touching her face.
Morrigan flinched back. She wasn’t an unnimal to be petted. “Crowwun,” she said coldly. “And I know who you are too.”
Lottie sighed apologetically, “I swear we didn’t-”
“We didn’t know,” cut in Louis, his face apologetic. He seemed to have gotten the hint, and had leaned back, far enough that she could shift into a more comfortable position. “I promise. About what our dad was - is - doing.”
“I’ve only seen a few wunimals before,” Lottie said, her voice thoughtful. “The Vulture.”
Morrigan thought about it. She hadn’t really - not completely - registered that in the Silver district, at least in the Greater Circle, she hadn’t seen - there didn’t seem to be - any other wunimals. Except for her. And the Vulture.
She had seen his feathers dotting up and down his face, bedraggled and blood-drawn as the rest of him. He didn’t seem to remotely bother grooming himself. He didn’t seem to bother to do anything much, except spend a genuinely creepy amount of time staring at her.
It made sense, she thought, something sinking in her stomach. The things Dame Chanda had said to her, months and months ago, after the Opera Horse incident, about the older generation, about keeping wunimals as pets. Of course, if the Silver District was so enclosed, if they barely socialised outside of the Greater and Lesser circles, then the fact that the only wunimals were her, and the Vulture (three guesses, she supposed, for what sort of wunimal minor he was).
But that didn’t mean that it didn’t make her feel unbelievably lonely all the same.
It didn’t mean she didn’t hear Marigold’s slightly too curious comments to her mother and aunts over what was wrong with Cousin Morrigan? as her mother and father quickly shushed her, or the nanny took her out the room with surprising alacrity. Or the way the cousin parade eyed her, as they saw their parents and adult family members twice a day.
“I was at the wedding,” she said. “You really didn’t notice then?”
Louis shrugged, his face a little pained, “I thought it was a make up thing. It looked cool! Looks.”
“Oh,” she said coolly. “That’s nice. Thanks Louis.”
“Urgh,” Lottie said, rolling her eyes. “Ignore him. He’s a moron. Do you want to see something cool?”
“Less of a jumped up gutter rat,” Noelle said, her lip curling as Morrigan rubbed at her wrist. “And more of some kind of magpie. Always stealing,” she sniffed. “Always. Taking. Things. Away. From. Me.” Her voice cracked, “You took everything. Unit 919 and the Society, my chance at a peaceful debut, my reputation, my family’s place, Louis.”
Morrigan blinked, “Louis? When did I take Louis?”
“Shut up!” She raised her hands, as if to push her but thought better of it. “You think you’re so much better than me, but maybe the Hollowpox should have taken you too.”
She felt all the hairs on her skin rise, her feathers fluff up in an instinctual way that might have made her bigger were she a wunimal major, “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand Noelle.”
“Oh, you’re going to tell me to watch what I say are you?” She sneered, “Whom are you going to tell exactly? Your precious mother’s family? Like they want you for more than- well. They don’t even want you. Maybe if you had been human, but they can’t stand what you are, and I can see why. Someone should put you in a pie.”
Morrigan’s hands twitched, fingers moving as if to slap her across the face, but she had seen enough paper headlines, had heard enough barked lines through megaphones to know that a wunimal hitting a human, even if the wunimal was a Darling and Silverborn, would look like if it broke. Especially if that wunimal were a wundersmith. “Why have you-”
Noelle’s eyes widened behind her, and the conversation, as terrible as it had been broke down amongst accusations of corruption in the Silver Council and Morrigan teaming up with the Vulture. She left her with a book in her hands that would only stay there for a handful more seconds after she had left the area, snatched away by Morrigan’s Aunt Margot and promptly thrown in the fire.
“Here,” Aunt Margot said, just as they were about to leave the house, to head to the arena. “Let me help you with that. It’s come a little squint.”
Morrigan frowned, but stood still as the veil was tugged neatly over her face, despite the fact that she had lifted it specifically because it kept clinging to her face as she walked, and it had gotten old, covering her face, covering her feathers, as they grew stronger, more and more black, finally graduating her to some form of adulthood.
“There,” she said, her smile soft. Almost maternal. Loving, maybe. “That’s all better, don’t you think? You look absolutely perfect.”
When Morrigan turned in the hall to stare at herself through the mirror, she couldn’t disagree more.