“I’m sorry.” He touched my cheek. “I came as soon as I could.”
I had been ready to greet Ignifex with hatred and courage, but Shade’s gentle sorrow left me shuddering as I remembered the terror of those first minutes. I grabbed him in a sudden embrace.
“Thank you,” I said into his shoulder. “I’m all right. I’m all right.” I swallowed, my throat tight. “Why does he keep them here?”
Shade shrugged. “Look,” he said, pushing me to turn. He raised his hand and light gleamed into the room. In the sudden illumination I could see that the girls were all young, all lovely, all laid out with their hands crossed over their chests, coins upon their eyes and flowers in their hair. Their bodies were so perfectly preserved, I might have thought they were sleeping—if their faces hadn’t had the pale, waxy emptiness of death.
“I try to make it proper for them,” he said. “But I can’t remember the funerary hymns.”
How many years had they lain here, lacking the final rites that would allow them to cross the river Styx and find peace?
How many years had he watched over them, trying to give them at least a proper death and knowing he had failed?
I gripped his hand. “Kneel with me,” I said. “I’ll teach you.”
As daughter of the manor lord, it had been my duty to assist at the funerals of the poor and orphaned. I had learnt the funerary hymns when I was only six, a book balanced on my head to ensure I had correct posture, Aunt Telomache looming over me with her mouth puckered.
It was one of the few duties I never resented, no matter how my neck ached and my tongue stumbled over the archaic words. The hymns were written by the twin brothers Homer and Hesiod, in the ancient days when Athens was but a cluster of farms and Romana-Graecia not even a dream. When I spoke them—a child in my father’s parlor, standing under a wreath of my dead mother’s hair, the black lace collar of my mourning dress scratching my throat—I felt briefly as if I were no longer an appendage of my family’s tragedy but just another girl in the ocean of mourners who had spoken these words for nearly three thousand years.
Now I cupped my hands upward, closed my eyes, and began to sing.
There are seven funerary hymns: to Hades, Lord of Death; Persephone, his wife; Hermes, the guide of souls; Dionysus, who redeemed his mother from the underworld; Demeter, the patron of crops and motherhood; Ares, god of war; and Zeus, lord of gods and men. Normally only one hymn is sung, to whichever god was the dead one’s patron in life; but I sang them all, hoping it would be enough to grant all eight girls rest. By the time I had finished, my throat was dry and scratchy.
“Thank you,” said Shade.
We sat in silence awhile.
“I still don’t understand why he keeps them here,” I said.
“He sends me down here too, sometimes,” Shade said quietly. “To meditate, he says.”
“On what?” I demanded. I could almost hear the laughing lilt of Ignifex’s voice as he decreed the torment, and I wished he were there so I could strike him. “The depths of his evil? There’s nobody alive that doesn’t already know that.”
Shade shifted slightly away from me. “On my failure.”
His voice, barely more than a whisper, made my breath stop. I was about to protest that it was not his fault, however he had ended up a prisoner—it was surely not his place to defeat a demon that could sunder the world, that had ruled Arcadia since before he was born—
But as I stared at the colorless lines of his shoulder and turned-away face, I remembered him showing me the lights. The nearest thing we have left.
He had seen the stars. He was not merely a luckless soul whom Ignifex had tricked at some point in the last nine hundred years; he was a captive from the Sundering, spoils of that initial war.
“He keeps you,” I whispered. “He keeps you as a trophy. Like those poor girls.”
I had assumed that Ignifex had forced Shade to wear the face of his master. But maybe it was the other way around: maybe Ignifex had chosen to wear his captive’s face in cruel mockery.
And of all possible captives, I could think of only one whom he might hate that much.
My heart thudded. Everybody said that the Gentle Lord had destroyed the line of kings. The words forming on my tongue felt insane—but here, in this insane house, they made sense.
“The last prince . . . didn’t die, did he?”
Shade turned, his blue eyes meeting mine; his mouth opened, but again his master’s power stopped him. He swallowed, and stared at me as if hoping his eyes could convey everything. Maybe they did; as I stared into those eyes, I felt sure that he was the last prince of Arcadia, who had been captive in this house since the Sundering.
Seventeen years of waiting for marriage had left me bitter and cruel. Nine hundred years of slavery had left him gentle, still trying to help every one of Ignifex’s victims, even when he knew that he would fail. Even when the victim was me.
My breath dwindled away. I didn’t realize I was leaning closer to him until he closed the final distance and kissed me. It was slow and gentle but vast, like a rising tide. It felt like forgiveness. Like peace.
When he pulled back, his gaze flickered to my face only a moment before he looked down.
“You—” I started breathlessly, and then he dropped his forehead to my shoulder.
It felt like he was seeking comfort from me, though I couldn’t imagine why. But it was the least I could do for him, so I laid a hand on his shoulder, amazed all over again that I could feel the solid lines of his shoulder blade.
Amazed, too, that he wanted me. He wanted me.
“Shade?” I said softly.
He spoke slowly, and though I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was struggling against the seal on his lips. “I wish . . . we could have met . . . somewhere else.”
The air stilled in my lungs. If that was not a confession of love, it was near enough.
“I do too,” I said.
If I asked, he would probably kiss me again. For one moment I imagined staying. I could crawl into his arms and kiss him until I forgot everything, the dead girls and my monstrous husband, the doom upon my country and my duty to fix it.
Then I thought, I do not have time for such things.
I stood. “I need to go. I—I still have to find the other hearts.”
Shade caught my hand, slid his fingers through mine. The touch felt like lightning up my arm.
“He’s right about one thing,” he said. “This house has many dangers. I cannot save you from most of them.”
I clenched my hand until I felt the bones of his fingers.
Then I let go and forced a smile. “I wasn’t born to be saved.”
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11
At night, the hallways seemed longer and stranger, subtly out of proportion. It was seldom pitch-dark, for light glimmered from unexpected corners; but it was hard to tell exactly where the light came from, and I had to force back the suspicion that the shadows were falling toward the light, hungry for warmth and being.
Demons are made of shadow.
But the shadows had never attacked me before, no matter how late into the night I wandered the house. Ignifex must have ordered them to leave me alone. I had to believe that, or I would go mad with terror. I did believe it, mostly, but the nagging fear still itched down my spine.
I went on anyway. Soon I turned into a hallway decorated with elaborate gold molding and murals—I thought they showed the gods, but in the shadows, I couldn’t see more than a tangle of limbs. At the very end of the passage was a simple wooden door. Did my footsteps echo a little louder as I walked toward it? My shoulders prickled; when I reached the door, I paused—but heard nothing. No demon leapt out of the shadows to kill me, no doom fell down upon me. Taking a deep breath, I pulled the steel key out from my bodice. It slid easily into the lock. I
turned the handle.
I pulled open the door and saw shadow.
All my life, I had heard the warning, Don’t look at the shadows too long, or a demon might look back. It made me afraid of closed-up, darkened rooms, of dimly lit mirrors, of the quietly whispering woods at night. In that moment, I realized that I had never seen shadow. I had seen objects—rooms, mirrors, the whole countryside—in the absence of light. But through this door lay nothing at all except for perfect, primal shadow that needed no object to make itself manifest. It had its own nature, its own presence, palpable and seething and alive. My eyes stung and watered as I stared at it, but I could not look away.
Then the shadow looked at me.
There was no visible change, but I staggered under the weight of perception and the knowledge I was not alone. Gasping, I grabbed the door and started to push it shut. I leaned my weight against it, but the door moved slowly, as if I were pushing it through honey. When I glanced at the slowly closing gap, I saw nothing coming through the doorway; but when I looked back at my hands, I saw from the corner of my eye a webbed mass of shadow gripping the doorframe with its tendrils.
All this had happened in complete silence. I was too terrified to scream. But when the door was nearly closed, I heard a chorus of children’s voices. It sang the tune of my favorite lullaby, but the words were wrong:
We will sing you nine, oh!
What are your nine, oh?
Nine for the nine bright shiners,
The night will snuff them out, oh.
The sound crawled over my body like a thousand cold little feet. I had been taught charms against darkness, invocations of Apollo and Hermes. But the voices nibbled the knowledge out of my mind, and I sobbed wordlessly as I struggled to push the door shut.
Eight for eight dead maidens
Dead in all the darkness, oh.
The door was almost shut now, but the pressure of the shadow pulsed against me from the other side. One tendril touched my cheek, burning cold. I choked, the air stopping in my lungs.
Six for your six senses,
Never more will feel, oh.
With a final burst of desperation, I pushed the door shut. Gasping and shuddering, I staggered back against the wall. The shadow was gone, but I still shivered, and my eyes stung with tears. When I wiped them, the tears burned icy cold on my skin. I looked at my hand.
Liquid shadow dripped across my palm.
I remembered the people dragged before my father, reduced to broken husks. I thought, This is what it was like for them.
Then I finally screamed.
They sang from all around me, a million bodiless children whisper-chanting in my ears:
Five for the symbols at your door,
Telling us your name, oh.
Four for the corners of your world,
We are always nibbling, oh.
Shadow dribbled down my face and welled up out of my skin. The shadows in the hall responded, coming alive. I wanted to claw my skin off, to gnaw the flesh from my bones, anything to get the shadows out of me. I scraped my nails down my arms, but as I raised pink welts, I heard laughter again and I remembered: these were the demons of the Gentle Lord. I’d sworn to save Arcadia from their attacks. They wanted me to destroy myself.
I could not let them win.
Three for the prisoners in this house,
We will eat them all, oh.
I tried to run, but the shadows lapped at my skin, and though my feet pounded slowly I didn’t move forward. Then the air rippled and threw me back against the wall. As the shadows swirled around me, I sank to the floor, the last strength oozing out of my body.
Two for your first and for your last,
We will be them both, oh.
I knew the final verse of the original song, and I knew with a sick certainty that they would sing it just the same, and I was sure that if I heard those final words I would be lost.
One is one and all alone
And evermore shall—
An arm wrapped around my waist. A gold ring glinted on a hand. Fire blazed at the corners of my vision.
“Children of Typhon,” Ignifex snarled, “return to thy void.”
The shadows wailed like a rusty hinge as they flowed away and crawled under the door, out into the darkness. They wailed on and on, until my throat ached and my eyes watered—and I realized that the wail came out of my throat, and my eyes were still weeping shadow. Ignifex had me pinned against the wall by my wrists; my back arched and my fingers writhed as the shadows seeped out through the pores of my skin. I wanted them gone, but it felt like my body, my entire self, was tissue paper and the shadows were shredding it as they left.
If I could crawl after them, through the door and into their perfect darkness, I would still exist. I would be their plaything forever after, but I would exist. I felt the certainty in every jagged throb of my heart, and so I bucked and writhed against Ignifex’s grip. I had to follow them. I had to.
“Nyx Triskelion,” Ignifex growled, “I command you to stay.”
The sound of my name slashed through the compulsion like a serrated knife. I slumped against the wall and went still as I watched the last shadows flow back to the door and through the cracks. In a moment they were gone.
Without the shadows, the world felt hollow and listless. The walls of the corridor were flat and still, the remaining darkness dead and powerless. My heart thudded in my ears; my skin felt at once numb and prickly. I wanted to follow them, I thought, but I couldn’t yet feel anything about the idea.
Ignifex let go of me. I blinked at his moving lips and realized he was speaking.
“Are you all right?” When I didn’t answer, he slapped my face lightly. “Listen to me! Can you speak?”
“Yes.” The word came out low and rough.
He inspected my arms. “I do believe you’ll live. Tonight.”
The tone of his voice sparked my anger back to life, and the rest of me with it. I raised my head, teeth bared—
He poked me in the forehead. “But is there any limit to your idiocy?”
“You mean my idiocy of not being told your demons are running loose in the house?” I shoved him back. “I believe that would be your fault.”
“I told you that some doors in this house were dangerous. And I tucked you into a nice, safe room for the night. It’s not my fault that you snuck out of bed.”
“You locked me in a tomb!”
“Safe and snug.” Ignifex’s voice was still light, but there was a strained note to it. “And now it’s past my bedtime.”
Abruptly I realized three things: He was wearing dark silk pajamas. He was swaying as if about to collapse. And the darkness was eating him.
Not shadows. It sounds strange, but the little dark tendrils that lapped at his skin, leaving behind red welts, were nothing like the uncanny horror of his demons. Those shadows had been alive, aware; this was simply the nighttime darkness clotting around his body, as naturally as blood clots over a wound, and burning him as acid burns skin.
My skin still crawled at the sight.
Ignifex steadied himself with a hand against the wall. “You will help me to my room,” he said through his teeth, and there was a sudden strained note to his voice. Almost as if he was afraid.
The same way I had been afraid of the demons when they crawled out the door, and afraid of the dead wives when he locked me up with them, and afraid every day of my life because I knew the Gentle Lord was going to possess me and nobody would ever save me.
The cold swirl in my chest felt like an old friend.
I crossed my arms. “Why?”
He blinked as if he had never considered the question. Or maybe it was only dizziness, for the next moment he fell to his knees. The darkness swirled and swelled around him. Red welts bloomed across his face.
My heart scrabbled to beat faster, but I wasn’t afraid anymore. For the first time, I wasn’t the one who was helpless.
My voice felt cold, lovely, and alien as cry
stal in my throat. “Why should I help you anywhere?”
Though he was slumped against the wall now, he managed to look up at me. His catlike pupils were so dilated they looked almost human.
“Well . . . I did save your life.” Then he doubled up in pain and slid to the floor.
As long as I could remember, the anger had writhed and clawed inside me, and no matter how much it hurt, I had choked it down. Now at last I hated someone who deserved hatred, and it felt like I was Zeus’s thunder, like I was the storms of Poseidon upon the sea. I was shaking with fury, and I had never felt so glad.
“You killed my mother. You enslaved my world. And as you pointed out, I will live here as your captive till I die. Tell me, my darling lord, why should I thank you for my life?”
He was gasping and shuddering with pain, and he didn’t seem to be seeing me anymore as he whispered, “Please.”
I knelt over him and smiled down into his face. My body was wrapped in ice; my voice came from somewhere very far away.
“Do you think you are safe with me?”
Then I stood and walked away, leaving him all alone in the dark.
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12
I felt strong and proud and beautiful as I strode down the hallway. Let him be scared and helpless and alone. Let him taste what it was like for those eight dead girls to lie alone in the darkness, for Shade to be a slave in the castle where he had once been prince, for me to know that I was doomed and nobody would ever save me.
Let him taste it and die—if he could. I wanted to believe that the darkness would kill him, that it would burn flesh down to bone and bone to ash. Because then the impossible would come true: my duty would change. I wouldn’t need to collapse the house with myself in it. With the Gentle Lord dead, the Resurgandi would have all the time and freedom they needed to undo the Sundering without sacrificing me. And I would be able to go home, to tell Father I had avenged my mother, to beg Astraia’s forgiveness to her face instead of whispering the words to a mirror.