But I remembered all the tales of people who tried to kill the Gentle Lord and failed. This burning darkness might be a more fitting weapon than a knife, but I couldn’t believe it would actually work, that the demon who commanded all other demons could die so easily. Most likely Ignifex would only suffer until dawn and then recover.
There were stories of people he’d tricked into such terrible fates that they had begged for death but lived on. Even if all I had managed was to give him a few hours of that pain, at least it was some measure of revenge— for my mother, for Damocles, for all the people he had tricked to their deaths and all the people he had allowed his demons to destroy. And while he was occupied, perhaps I could find a way to kill him once and for all.
I threw open the doors in front of me and looked out on the Heart of Water.
“Shade!” I called eagerly. Maybe he knew what had become of my knife, maybe he knew what I needed to do next. Maybe Ignifex could die tonight, and I could be free.
But he was nowhere to be seen. I wandered out to the center of the room, but he didn’t come. I was alone, and this night the lights couldn’t hold my attention; I kept staring at the still water, where my face was faintly reflected. It made me think of Astraia’s face, pale and wide-eyed as I left her.
She is avenged now, I thought, but that just reminded me of Ignifex’s face, full of the same blank horror as the darkness closed over him.
I shook my head. They were nothing alike. Astraia was kind and gentle and deserved nothing but my love, while Ignifex kept his dead wives as trophies and deserved nothing but my hate.
The Heart of Water, always so beautiful, suddenly felt empty and wrong. I strode out, blindly unlocking doors and turning corners until suddenly I was back in the dining room. The sky was pure, velvety black except for the silver crescent of the moon; chandeliers hung from the ceiling and cast warm, flickering light over the table, which was set with clean, empty dishes. I stalked forward, glowering at the table as I remembered Ignifex’s smile flashing at me over his wineglass.
I do like a wife with a little malice in her heart.
I picked up one of the wineglasses and flung it across the room. The other one followed. Then I dashed the plates to the floor and flung the silverware after. I threw the silver candlesticks at the wall; I seized an empty silver platter and started to beat it against the table.
That was when I realized how ridiculous I must look. I dropped the platter. Tears stung at my eyes; I scraped them away, but more came, until I was sobbing in front of the dinner table.
I had done what two hundred years of the Resurgandi—what every person in Arcadia, what even the gods themselves—had found impossible. I had taken revenge on the Gentle Lord. I had made him taste the pain he handed out every day, and even if it was but for a few hours, that made me a hero. My heart should be singing.
But I was inconsolable. No matter how many dishes I crushed, no matter how I thought of generations crying out for revenge, I couldn’t forget the fear in Ignifex’s eyes, or his harsh, panicked breaths as he begged me.
It was my duty, I thought, but I remembered my final words to him, and they had nothing to do with duty and everything to do with vicious glee.
I wanted to continue raging, to destroy this room and the whole house. I wanted to go back and strangle Ignifex with my own hands. I wanted to find Shade and make him kiss me until I forgot everything else. I wanted to wake up and realize my whole life had been a dream.
The tears finally stopped. I drew a slow, shaky breath as I wiped my face. And I realized that most of all, I wanted to go back and help Ignifex.
Immediately I clenched my nails into my arms, teeth gritting in shame. I wasn’t some fool who would forget she had been kidnapped after one or two kisses. I wasn’t some idiot who would think a man noble because he’d saved her from the consequences of his own crimes. I certainly wasn’t a girl who would consider her husband more important than her duty.
But I was a girl who had broken her sister’s heart and—for a moment—liked it. I had left somebody in torment and liked it.
I didn’t want to keep being that person.
So I wiped my face and turned to leave. I was halfway out the door when another thought struck me: what if the darkness could kill him after all, and he was already dead? Or what if the darkness had gnawed away his hands and face but left him still horribly alive, his throat too wrecked for screaming?
My stomach lurched. For a moment I couldn’t face leaving the room. I didn’t mind if Ignifex was dead; I could regret my cruelty, rejoice that I had avenged my mother, and go home to Astraia. But if he was still half-alive, maimed, and suffering—if I had to look on him and know that I had done it, for no reason but hate and accomplishing nothing—
Then I thought, If you stay here, you will be just like Father, who couldn’t even acknowledge he had sacrificed his own daughter.
I ran out of the room.
It seemed like it took hours for me to find my way back to him, but it was probably no more than thirty minutes. Every time I opened a door, it led somewhere new; time and again I found myself in hallways that curved back on themselves, that had no doors I could open, that twisted and turned long distances into darkness before finally dead-ending.
I thought this house belonged to him, I thought, running through a corridor with mirrors on the walls. Sweat trickled down my back. I skidded to a stop by a door and pulled it open. A brick wall stared back at me.
A short, furious scream scraped out of my throat. Shouldn’t it help me save its master?
Ignifex would probably say, Did you think a demon would have a kindly house?
I wrenched open the next door and charged inside, only to skip to a stop. I was in the mirror room, and through the glass I saw Astraia asleep in her bed, the swan-shaped Hermetic lamp glowing on her bedside table because she was still afraid of the dark, still afraid of demons. Like the one I was running to save.
“Astraia,” I gasped, and then, “I wish you could hear me.”
But of course she couldn’t. My chest hurt.
“You wouldn’t want me to be cruel, would you? You were always kind to everyone.”
She had been so delighted, so proud when she thought I would cut off the Gentle Lord’s head and bring it home in a bag. Against Father’s will—and she had to have known he didn’t want it, even though she hadn’t known why—she had schemed to bring me that knife.
She had been a child. She still was, and she had no idea what it meant to kill, much less what it was like to feel the living shadows bubble out of your skin—and though the darkness eating Ignifex was different, it was close enough that I couldn’t leave him to it. Even if my sister hated me.
“He’s a monster,” I said. “Maybe I’m a monster to pity him. But I can’t leave him.”
Then I ran out of the room.
Finally I found my way back into the narrow hallway. When I did, at first I thought that he was gone. Then I realized the lump in the middle of the clotted darkness was him.
I ran forward, but stopped at the edge of the worst darkness. “Ignifex?” I called, leaning forward as I peered at him.
He didn’t move. I couldn’t see his face, only the darkness writhing over it.
I knelt beside him. My skin crawled as I remembered my fingers sliding into the dead wife’s mouth, but I couldn’t back out now. Gingerly, I reached through the darkness to touch his face.
The darkness swirled away from my hand, as if frightened of my skin. Underneath, livid welts crisscrossed his face. I snatched my hand away, then realized he was still breathing. As I watched, the welts faded to pale white scars that began to subside into healed skin.
I shook him by the shoulder, the darkness boiling away further. “Wake up!”
One crimson eye cracked open; he hissed softly, and the eye slid shut again. The darkness crept back up his body.
It seemed to be afraid of my touch. So I hauled him up to rest his head and shoulders in my lap
; after a moment he twitched and curled into me. And the darkness flowed away.
“What are you doing?”
My head jerked up. Shade stood over me, his hands in his coat pockets, his pale face unreadable.
“I—the darkness—”
“You should leave him.”
“I can’t,” I whispered, trying not to hunch my shoulders. This was far worse than seeing Astraia. Shade was the last prince of Arcadia. My prince, who had helped and comforted me these past five weeks, who had kissed me not an hour ago and nearly said he loved me. I had kissed him back, and now I was embracing his tormentor before his face. It was obscene.
Shade knelt beside me. “Weren’t you going to defeat him?”
Weren’t you my hope? his eyes said.
“I was. I will. I want to, but—but—” I felt like I was ten years old, summoned into Father’s study to explain how I had spilled honey in the parlor. “This won’t defeat him. I hurt him just for revenge.”
“Do you know how much suffering he’s caused? This is the least of what he deserves.”
Ignifex had shown no sign of hearing our conversation, but I realized now that he was trembling.
“I know,” I said. I remembered huddling with Astraia in the hallway, listening to the screams from Father’s study. “But I can’t . . . I can’t leave anyone to the darkness.”
Shade’s silence was like a condemnation.
“Help me get him to his bedroom,” I said. “Then I’ll leave him.”
Shade’s mouth thinned, but he obeyed. He grasped Ignifex’s shoulders, I grabbed his legs, and together we dragged him through twisting hallways back to his bedroom.
I had never wondered where he slept, but now I half expected a dank cavern with a bloodied altar for a bed. Instead it was a crimson mirror of my room: red-and-black tapestries instead of pale wallpaper; red-and-gold damask bed curtains instead of lace; and supporting the canopy were not caryatids but eagles, cast from a slick black metal that glittered in the candlelight. All around the edges of the room burned row upon row of candles, casting golden light in every direction so that shadow barely existed.
Shade disappeared as soon as we had dropped Ignifex onto the bed, for which I couldn’t blame him. Now that I had appeased my guilt, I wanted to be gone as well. I looked down at my husband and captor. The weals had faded and most of the scars as well, but he was still pale as death and limp as wet yarn. He was also curled into a position that seemed likely to give him cramps—and while I found that thought amusing, I supposed that if I was going to help him, I should do it properly. With a sigh, I rolled him onto his back and straightened out his legs.
His eyes didn’t open, but one of his hands reached out and gripped my wrist.
I twitched and went still, but he made no further move. Then he whispered—so softly I barely heard it—“Please stay.”
I jerked my wrist free, about to say that even if I had saved him, I did not intend to be his nursemaid . . . but then I remembered the last time he had said please.
“Just for a little,” I said, sitting down on the bed. He grabbed my hand again as if it were his only hope. I hesitated a few moments, but he seemed far too weak to attempt anything, and I was tired myself. I lay down beside him, and immediately he rolled over to nestle against my back. He laid an arm over my waist, then fell asleep with a sigh.
As if he trusted me. As if I’d never hurt him.
Even Astraia, with all her hugs and kisses, had not relaxed against me like this in years. What kind of fool was he?
The same kind of fool as I was, I supposed, because I knew he was my enemy and yet I, too, was taking comfort from the touch.
His breath tickled against my neck. I took his hand in mine, weaving our fingers together; I told myself that I was here only because of my debt, that anyone, any warm body, would make me feel such peace. And wrapped in that peace, I fell asleep.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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13
The next morning I awoke to find Ignifex gone, the candles burnt down to stubs. On the bedside table sat a tray with a steaming-hot breakfast of toast, salted fish, fruit, and coffee; from the wardrobe door hung a dress of white ruffles. As I gulped down the breakfast, I glared at the dress the whole time; but it was clean and pretty, and in the end I put it on. I dropped the key Ignifex had given me in my pocket, slid the steel key that had unlocked the shadows down my bodice, and left.
The first place I went was the room with the mirror. Astraia sat at the breakfast table, mashing her half-burnt sausages with a fork and reading a fat book. When she shifted to reach for the coffeepot, I saw the illustrations and realized it was Cosmatos & Burnham’s Handbook of Modern Hermetic Techniques—one of the first serious textbooks that Father had set me to read.
Father entered the room; Astraia looked up and said something—I couldn’t see her face clearly, but Father smiled. So she must not be studying for a rescue attempt: Father would never allow her to do anything so dangerous, and she didn’t have it in her to deceive him.
Maybe she wanted to join the Resurgandi in my honor. Did any of them still believe that I might succeed?
Maybe they shouldn’t. Last night I had rescued the Gentle Lord. Who knew if I’d be strong enough to collapse his house around him and trap him with all his demons?
“I will,” I said softly to the mirror.
Father leaned down to plant a kiss on Astraia’s forehead, but I didn’t feel the normal twinge of bitterness, even though he had last kissed me when I was ten.
“I’ll destroy him,” I told Astraia. “I’ll do it. You don’t need to study anything.”
Father sat down beside her. He pulled the book between them and traced one of the illustrations with his finger. Astraia leaned in, and Father’s free hand came to rest on her shoulder as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
And it seemed I was still capable of envy and hatred, because for one moment I wanted to tear Astraia away from the table and spit in her face. All my life, I had comforted myself that at least Father respected me. I was his student, his clever daughter who learnt every diagram in record time, and even once I realized that I could never study hard enough to make him love me, the lessons had still been one thing I had that Astraia didn’t.
And now she was his student, and beloved besides.
I turned away and I was almost to the door when I stopped myself. I didn’t look back, because that would only make the hatred choke me again.
“I love you,” I said, staring at the doorframe. “I don’t hate you. I love you.”
Maybe someday it would be true.
Then I ran out of the room to explore.
Almost immediately, I found the red door into the library. I opened it idly—and the breath stopped in my throat. It was the same room I remembered: the shelves, the lion-footed table, the white bas-relief of Clio. But now, tendrils of dark green ivy grew between the shelves, reaching toward the books as if they were hungry to read. White mist flowed along the floor, rippling and tumbling as if blown by wind. Across the ceiling wove a network of icy ropes like tree roots. They dripped—not little droplets like the ice melting off a tree but grape-sized drops of water, like giant tears, that splashed on the table, plopped to the floor.
I dashed through the doorway and grabbed the codex off the nearest table—but though water dripped across its pages, it did not soak into the paper or smear the ink.
I, however, was quickly getting soaked. The ceiling had started dripping faster as soon as I entered.
I dropped the codex back on the table and shivered, pulling a strand of wet hair out of my face. Water trickled down the back of my dress. Now that I knew there was no emergency, I remembered how last time the books had refused to be read, and I nearly left—but as I glanced about, I felt no silent hostility from the dripping shelves. Maybe I had only imagined it t
he first time. The library, after all, was not where the demons lived.
I shuddered—we will eat them all, oh!—and slammed my hands into the table, relishing the hard sting against my palms that was not a million nibbling shadows, the splash-thump that was not a million singing whispers.
And I wandered the library. There was no sound besides the drip-drop of melting ice and the occasional splash when I found a puddle. The mist swirled away from my feet and then back around my ankles, like a fearful but affectionate cat. I shivered, but the cold air had a sharp, clean taste as sweet as honey that made me want to linger.
I remembered the hours I had spent in Father’s library, drugging myself with books so I could forget my doom for an hour; how I had stared at the pictures and pressed my hand against the page, wishing I could vanish into the safe lines of a lithograph. Now I felt like I had done it, slipped into a picture or a dream: a place that was uncanny, but without any hidden horrors.
Then, in a little room with one window, I found Ignifex. He sat in a corner, knees pulled up under his chin, his eyelids low and thoughtful. His dark hair hung limp and soaked around his face; his coat too was dripping wet. Mist lapped at his knees, and one slender finger of ivy trailed into his hair.
My feet stopped when I saw him. Words clotted and dissolved in my throat. I couldn’t be kind to him after what he’d done, couldn’t be cruel after what I had done, couldn’t forget his fury or his kiss or his arm about my waist as he saved me from the shadows.
Then I realized that he was watching me.
“Shouldn’t you be off tempting an innocent soul to his doom?” I demanded, striding toward one of the bookcases.
“I told you.” He sounded mildly amused. “It’s never the innocents who come to me.”