Maybe I had wanted him only because he looked so much like Shade. I told myself that, and after a while I started to believe it.
Day and night, I was free to explore the house—and I went everywhere that I could, for my key opened almost half the doors. I found a rose garden under a glass dome; the roses formed a labyrinth in which I always got lost, and yet—according to the cuckoo clock at the door—I would always stumble out again in exactly twenty-three minutes. I found a greenhouse full of potted ferns and orange trees. The air was thick with the warm, wet smell of earth. Bees hummed through the air; the glass walls were frosted with condensation. I found a round room whose walls were covered in mosaics of naiads and tossing waves, and the air always smelled of salt, and no matter which way I turned, the door was always directly behind me.
Every day I went to look in the mirror and see Astraia, and most nights I visited the Heart of Water at least briefly, to walk on the water and watch the lights. Usually Shade was there too; there were not many things he was permitted to say, but we would sit in companionable silence. He often drew the lights down; sometimes he gave them to me, sometimes wove them into lacy patterns around us, in the air or trembling on the surface of the water. I watched and said very little. At those times, I could almost forget my mission, and I felt no hatred festering in my heart. It was the only peace I’d ever known, and I didn’t want to lose it.
I desperately wanted not to lose it. So I never kissed him again. Occasionally he touched my wrist or cheek, and then I wanted to twine and lock our fingers, to kiss him and sink down into the water and be lost in perfect azure peace. But I didn’t know that he would want it. And every other time I’d loved somebody, it had twisted in my heart. I couldn’t risk it with him.
Instead I sat still beside him, my heart beating fast but my face as calm as his, and only darted him sideways glances. A hundred times I wished I could ask him, Why did you kiss my lips? Why don’t you kiss me again? But the words always stuck in my throat: they were too needy, too selfish, too foolish—and how could I ask for more, when he had already given me so much?
I still wasn’t sure that I loved him. Love—the kind that was holy to Aphrodite—was not something I had ever allowed myself to think about much. If you desired someone, if he comforted you, if you thought he might leech the poison out of your heart, was that love? Or only desperation?
Whenever the knot of emotions in my chest grew too tight, I jumped up and practiced racing from the Heart of Water to my bedroom at a dead run. When the time came, I would have to write all the sigils quickly; as soon as one heart failed, Ignifex would surely notice and try to stop me.
I got faster. I learnt to race through the hallways and pick all the right doors back to my bedroom while barely even looking, and I arrived still breathing easily. And once I was in my bedroom—far enough from any of the hearts that I didn’t have to worry about an accidental reaction—I practiced the sigils, training myself to draw them not just accurately but swiftly, until the motions became like a dance.
But no matter how I searched, I never found a trace of the other hearts.
Until one morning, five weeks after I arrived, I tried a new door and walked into the vestibule where I had first met Ignifex. And it occurred to me that I was still a virgin, and my virgin knife—still never used to cut a living thing—was right here, albeit embedded twelve feet up in the wall.
I had never believed in the Rhyme before. And when Ignifex had taken the knife away from me, he had treated it like a joke, not the only weapon that could destroy him.
But I suspected my husband would treat being cast into the abyss of Tartarus as a joke. And while he was happy to let me attack him with all the cutlery at the dinner table, he had gotten my knife away from me at once. That didn’t prove that the Rhyme was true . . . but he hadn’t punished or imprisoned me for my previous attempt at stabbing him, which meant it wouldn’t hurt to try.
It took me the whole morning to get to the knife. The house did not seem to contain any kind of ladder, so I had to find furniture suitable for stacking, and that day I couldn’t find a single room with tables, only chairs and stools. It was a rather precarious-looking pyramid that I built, but it held when I climbed it, and finally I was able to grip the hilt of my knife again.
I grinned. Whether Ignifex lived or died tonight, at least he would receive a nasty surprise.
I tugged at the knife. It didn’t move. I tugged again, harder, and then there was the tiniest bit of give. With a grunt, I gave the knife a sudden jerk—and it came out as if it had never been stuck. I wobbled a moment, then fell over backward—
Into a pair of arms. The shock was enough to daze me for a moment, and in that moment Ignifex set me on my feet, plucked the knife from my hands, hid it somewhere on his person, and raised an eyebrow at me.
“I’m starting to wonder if I should ever leave you alone,” he said mildly, dropping a hand to my shoulder.
I stiffened.
“Then don’t,” I said. “Stay right here and never strike another bargain.”
“Oh, you’re that desperate to be with me?” He leaned forward, his hand still on my shoulder. “If you wanted a kiss, you only needed to ask.”
His touch was light, but I felt it as precisely as the lines of a lithograph, with my body for the paper.
“I’m that desperate to stop you,” I said, but the desire for him was back as if I’d never seen what he was capable of doing.
“Desperate enough to kiss me? You are in a terrible state.”
It’s only because he looks like Shade, I thought, but in that moment I knew the words were a lie: this laughing, crimson-eyed creature might wear Shade’s face, but I wanted him for none of the same reasons.
I realized suddenly that his coat was open, and I could see the hollow at the base of his throat but also the leather belts hung with keys that crisscrossed his chest. And Ignifex wasn’t the only one who could turn people’s words against them.
“You boast to me every day about the people you kill,” I said, trying to gauge the location of the keys while keeping my eyes fixed on his. There were two hung high, close to his neck. “Of course I’m desperate.”
“I don’t kill people,” he said easily. “They ask for favors, and I grant them. If they don’t realize the sort of price required by my power, it’s on their own heads.”
Long ago, Astraia once dared me to climb onto the roof. I felt the same way now as I had then, knotting my handkerchief to the weathervane: dizzy and alive, the world swooping around me, my body made of sparks dancing to my heartbeat.
It was monstrous to want him. But to kiss him for the sake of saving Arcadia—that wasn’t entirely evil, was it?
“Then,” I said, “suppose I did ask you?”
“Then,” he said, “this.”
And he closed his lips over mine.
He was my enemy. He was evil. He wasn’t even human. I should have been disgusted, but just like the last time, I couldn’t help myself any more than water could stop itself running downhill. I managed to slide a hand up his chest, get two keys off their strap, and clench my hand around them; then I dissolved into the feeling, and kissed him back just as eagerly.
It was nothing like kissing Shade. That had been like a dream that slowly enfolded me; this was like a battle or a dance. He took possession of my mouth and I took possession of his, and we held each other in a perilous, perfect balance like the circulation of the planets.
The bell tolled in the distance. I barely noticed it—then Ignifex let go of me. I wobbled backward until I hit the wall.
“Some poor soul has called for me.” He bowed. “Until later, my wife.”
Still leaning against the wall, I glared after him as he left, scrubbing my lips with the back of my hand. It was shameful that his kiss could affect me like this. It was humiliating that he knew it.
Though I could not stifle the thought, Perhaps it won’t be so bad if he ever claims his rights.
T
hen I looked down at the two keys I had stolen. One of them was golden, its hilt shaped into a roaring lion’s head; the other was plain steel. My lips curved in a grin of my own. Let him have his little victory. I was about to go exploring.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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10
Of course I went straight to the mirror room. But neither of the keys would even fit into the keyhole at the center of the mirror, so I set out to find a new door. Today the house seemed to look kindly on my quest: I found room after room I had never seen before, and door after door I had never opened. But none of the new doors would open to my new keys.
Finally, I found a room full of empty golden birdcages, hung from tree-shaped iron racks in a forest of delicate captivity. I saw no extra doors, and I turned to leave—but then I heard a chitter of birdsong, so faint that for a moment I thought I had imagined it.
I remembered the sparrow Lar. Astraia was the one who liked to see omens in every flight of birds, not me; but I still turned and looked over the room one more time. And then I saw a door in the far left corner of the room, behind the biggest pile of cages, where there had been only empty wall a moment before.
It was such a normal little door—short and narrow, barely large enough for me to fit through without bending, made out of wood and painted pale gray—that for a heartbeat I stared at it without fear.
Then my skin prickled as it always did when I saw one of the house’s transformations. This was not the most uncanny I had seen, but it still brought back that helpless, falling sensation of knowing that the house could kill me anytime it pleased.
But it hadn’t pleased. Most likely, Ignifex would not allow it to do so. And if the sparrow had meant to make me turn around, then . . . I still had no guarantee it meant me any good, but it had given me a few minutes’ peace and that put it ahead of the house.
I picked my way through the birdcages to the door and tried my key. It didn’t work. Then I tried the steel key, and it started to turn but caught. So I tried the gold key.
The lock clicked and the door swung open.
I stepped inside.
The first thing I noticed was the smell of wood and dusty paper: the smell of Father’s study. This room seemed to be a study too, though grander than any I had ever seen; it was round, paneled in dark wood, with swirling dark blue mosaics on the floor. Several tables piled with books, papers, and curios stood around the edges of the room with short bookcases between them. The ceiling was a dome, painted parchment like the sky; the lamp even hung from a wrought-iron frame shaped like the Demon’s Eye. Around the base of the dome was written in gold letters “AS ABOVE, SO BELOW”—the great principle of Hermetic workings.
But it was the center of the room that drew my eyes, for there was a great circular table, covered in a glass dome, on which sat a model of Arcadia.
I approached it slowly; it was so delicately detailed, I felt it would crumble if I breathed, despite the glass. There was the ocean, crafted of tinted glass so that it glimmered like real water. There were the southern mountains, pocked with entrances to the coal mines; there was the river Severn, there the capital city of Sardis, still half-ruined by the great fire of twenty years ago. There was my own village, sitting on the southern edge, near to the crumbled ruin that Ignifex’s house looked like from the outside.
I leaned closer. Through some trick of the glass, as I focused on my village, it grew larger; I saw thatch and tile roofs, the fountain in the main square, my own house, and the rock where I had been married. It was all perfect, down to the last detail, and I stared hungrily at my home until the magnification made my head ache.
I turned away from the model. On the nearest table sat a little chest of red-brown cherrywood. It had no lock, only a simple latch; no decorations but a tiny gold inscription set upon the lid. I picked it up and peered at the glittering miniature cursive: “AS WITHIN, SO WITHOUT.” Another Hermetic precept.
“What are you doing?”
I slammed down the chest and spun around. Ignifex was at the door; I barely had time to gasp before he was at my side, gripping my arms like iron, his face only inches from mine.
“What did you think you were doing?”
“Exploring the house,” I said shakily. “If I’m your wife—”
My voice died. The red in his eyes was not a simple flecked pattern like any human or animal eyes; it was a swirling crimson chaos, ever-changing as a living flame. I realized how foolish I had been to feel anything but terror for him. I had remembered that he was my enemy, but I had forgotten that he was a danger, my doom and likely my death.
“Do you think you are safe with me?” he snarled.
“No,” I whispered.
“You’re just as foolish as the others. You think you are clever, strong, special. You think you’re going to win.”
Abruptly he turned and dragged me out of the room.
“I knew who your father was when he came to me.” His voice was icy calm now, each word bitten off with precision. “Leonidas Triskelion, youngest magister of the Resurgandi. When he asked my help, he could barely say the words for shame, but he did not hesitate an instant when he sold you away.”
We turned down a stone corridor I had never seen before.
“Of course he was a fool to think he could bargain with me and win. But his plan to send you as a saboteur was not so foolish. Nor any of his choices since. He’s gotten his wife’s sister in his bed, he’s kept the daughter who looks like his wife at his knees, and he’s sent the daughter with his face to atone—humans can’t ever undo their sins, but I say he’s done pretty well.”
He stopped and shoved me against the wall. “You were sent here to die. You are the one that was not needed, was not wanted, and they sent you here because they knew you would never come back.”
I couldn’t stop the tears from sliding down my cheeks, but I glared back at him as best I could. “I know that. Why do you need to tell me?”
“The only way you see tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, is if you do exactly as I tell you. Or you will die just as quickly as all my other wives.”
He reached past me; I heard a click and realized that I was leaning against a door, not the wall. The door swung open behind me and I stumbled back into cool darkness until I hit the edge of a table.
“Think on it awhile,” said Ignifex, and slammed the door.
For one moment I thought I was left in darkness; then, as my eyes adjusted, I realized that faint gray light filtered in through a little slit of a window set high in the wall. I still couldn’t make out much. The air was cold. I turned, groping at the table; it was stone, not wood.
My fingers found cloth, then something soft and cold.
I shuddered, but my mind refused to recognize it until I groped farther and my fingers slid past teeth into a cold, wet mouth.
With a scream, I bolted back against the door. I rubbed my hand viciously against my skirt, but the fabric could not wipe away the memory of touching the dead girl’s tongue.
The dead wife’s tongue. Because now my eyes were growing truly accustomed to the light, and I could see all eight of them, laid out on their stone blocks as if stored for future use.
When I was ten, Astraia and I found a dead cat while playing in the woods. It was half-buried under a drift of leaves; we did not realize until I poked it that it was dead and swollen. It released a noxious stench that made Astraia run away wailing, while I sat choking and weeping with horror. Now, as my breath came quicker and quicker, I thought I could smell that stench again, just a hint of it floating on the cold, still air.
My nails dug into my arms, my harsh breaths the only noise amid dead silence. Ignifex would put me here. When I made my final mistake, he would kill me and put me in this room, and I would lie on the cold stone with my dead mouth hanging open.
With a great effort, I too
k a deep, slow breath. And let it out in a great shriek. I slammed my fist into the wall, then turned and kicked the door twice, still yelling. Though the door shook in its hinges, it held fast. But when I fell silent, panting for breath, I was no longer panicking. I was furious.
No: I hated.
All my life, I had hated the Gentle Lord, but only in the way that one hates plague or fire. He was a monster who had destroyed my life, who oppressed my entire world, but he was still only a story. Now I had seen him, dined with him, kissed him. I had watched him kill. I had a name for him, even if it was not true. So I could truly hate him. I hated his eyes, his laugh, his mocking smile. I hated that he could kiss me, kill me, or lock me up with perfect ease. Most of all, I hated that he had made me want him.
Hatred was nothing new; I’d been hating my family all my life. But my family I had always had a duty to love, no matter how they had wronged me. Ignifex, I had a duty to destroy. Crouching in the darkness, I realized that I would enjoy it every much.
I felt at my bodice. The golden key I had foolishly left in the door handle, whence Ignifex had doubtless reclaimed it; but the steel key was still safely lodged against my skin, waiting to be used.
I made myself search the walls of the stone room by touch, but there was only one door, and no amount of pounding would make it budge. So finally I settled back against the door to wait. Ignifex would probably let me out tomorrow, when he thought I would be thoroughly cowed and frightened. I would pretend to be so, and get back to exploring as soon as his back was turned.
I had just started to doze off when the rattle of the lock snapped me awake. In an instant, I was on my feet and turning to face the opening door. But it wasn’t Ignifex who stood on the other side; it was Shade.