I waited. I knew what he would say next: Let me do something about those virgin hands, and we’ll have a deal. It was only logical, for obviously I could get the knife whenever I liked, and as long as I remained a virgin, I could still use it to fulfill the Rhyme.
No matter how much I desired his kisses, the thought of letting him possess me entirely was still terrifying. But I’d come here prepared to offer up that much. I couldn’t back out now.
“Deal,” he said.
I blinked. He reached up and tapped my wrist.
“All right!” I jerked the knife away. He caught my wrist, took the knife, and threw it across the room.
“You’re worried about the knife but not my hands?” I demanded.
“Well, I’m the mighty demon lord and I have your knife. It seems only fair to leave you some advantages.”
“But—” I realized with a wave of embarrassment that despite my relief, I was also disappointed. My face heated.
He grinned as if he knew and kissed my palm.
I slapped him across the face. “Don’t waste my time,” I said stiffly, and got out of bed.
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16
“But you must remember something,” I said.
Ignifex leaned over my shoulder. “I remember fire and blood. I suppose that was the Sundering. Then my masters explained to me the terms of my existence. And then I was here in my lovely castle, and I think you know the rest.”
We were back in the library. Whatever mood had gripped it yesterday was gone; daylight shone through the windows across dry floors and nothing grew across the shelves but a faint layer of dust. The warm air smelled again of old paper.
This room was long and narrow; a round table sat at one end, with just barely enough room around it for walking. I sat at the table with books stacked all about me while Ignifex alternately paced and hovered. It had been my idea to start here: I thought there might be something to learn from what was censored in the books. So far, all we could discover was that we weren’t supposed to know much about the old line of kings.
And I had discovered that no matter how often I got annoyed with Ignifex, it did nothing to stop the humming awareness of how close he was, how I could touch him if I only reached—
“Who are your masters?” I asked, at the same time reaching back to snag a key from one of his belts, because outwitting him was a much better idea than kissing him.
Just in time, as he turned away to pace again. “If you knew them at all, it would be as the Kindly Ones.”
“The Kindly Ones?” I echoed, sliding the key up my sleeve.
“Of course you don’t know them.”
“Of course I do, because I spent my whole life studying anything related to the Hermetic arts, demons, and you.” It really was not fair that getting annoyed at him did nothing to stop my wanting him. “But there are only a few garbled references to them in some very old tales. Everyone thinks they’re a myth—maybe another name for the hedge-gods—”
“It’s been nine hundred years since they were seen in this land.” He turned back to me.
“Since we were sealed away.”
“Since they acquired a broker.” He dropped his hands to the table on either side of me and spoke into my ear. “Where do you think I get the power for my bargains?”
I looked up to answer him, but the movement nestled my head against his chest. The warmth of that contact dazed me for a moment, and in that space he slipped his fingers up my sleeve and pulled the key out.
“Better luck next time.” He kissed my cheek.
The condescension felt like needles under my skin. I wasn’t pretending at all when I slammed a fist sideways into his chest; I used the movement to pull another key off his belt.
“Tell me about the Kindly Ones,” I said immediately, and the distraction seemed to work, for he set off pacing again while I dropped this key down the front of my dress. “Who are they? Gods or demons?”
“Neither, I would guess. They’re the Folk of Air and Blood. The Lords of Tricks and Justice.”
I wiggled, and the key slid down to rest over my stomach. I was fairly sure he wouldn’t look that far down.
“They avenge the wronged, when it suits them. Strike bargains with the desperate, when it suits them. They love to mock. To leave answers at the edges, where anyone could see them but nobody does. To tell the truth when it is too late to save anyone. And they are always fair.”
“‘Fair’? I think demons must use that word differently than we do.”
“Let me tell you a story from before the Sundering.” He turned back to me, and I readied myself to try for another key. “Once upon a time, there was a man whose wife took ill but a month after their wedding, and in three days she was nearly dead. The man went into the woods and called upon the Kindly Ones, who offered him this bargain: his wife would live and for ten years he could enjoy her love, but after that time they would hunt him through the woods and feast their dogs upon him. Yet most kindly, they offered him this chance to escape: if at the end of ten years he could name just one of the Kindly Ones, they would allow him to live the rest of his days in peace.”
Frustratingly, Ignifex remained a few paces away, one hand rested against a bookshelf, completely absorbed in his story. Trying to look absorbed as well, I rose quietly and stepped to his side.
“The man agreed. His wife lived, but she was bedridden ever after and drove him half-mad with complaints. She bore him a daughter, but the child was simpleminded; she said nothing but a single nonsense word all day long, no matter how he beat her. So the man lived in misery for ten years. When his time was up, he tried to bargain for his life by offering up his daughter instead.”
I plucked a pair of keys from one of his belts, my hands as light as a feather, and I tried to ignore how smug he sounded. As if the man had done wrong for the sole purpose of proving Ignifex right.
“The Kindly Ones refused, but before they set their dogs upon him, they told him that the word his daughter said was the name that could have saved his life. Had he been kinder to her, he might have guessed it and lived. Tell me, was that not justice?” He smiled and caught my clenched hands in his.
“He was a terrible man,” I agreed, tugging at my hands. His grip was like iron. “But it seems to me that if you break a thing, you can’t complain that it’s in pieces.”
Ignifex shifted his grip to try prying my hands open. In an instant I had ripped my hands free and spun around, flinging the keys across the room as Ignifex grabbed my waist from behind.
“No honest people ever bargained with the Kindly Ones.” His breath tickled my neck. “Only the foolish. The proud. The ones who believed they deserved the world at no price.”
I hoped that he couldn’t feel the key still nestled in the stomach of my dress. “Is that what you think of those who make bargains with you?”
I remembered Damocles saying, I’ll do this for her if it costs my soul. Certainly he had been a fool, perhaps in a way he’d been proud, but he had been more than willing to pay.
“Of course.” Ignifex let go of me and chuckled as I stumbled forward and caught myself against the table. “It’s what I thought of your father when he came to me begging for children.”
I remembered Father saying, I determined to save Thisbe, no matter the cost, his voice stiff and dry as if he were describing a Hermetic experiment, not explaining how he had come to sell me.
“A lifetime devoted to felling the Gentle Lord, forgotten as soon as he saw his woman’s tears, even though he knew how it would end. So eager to sin for her, he couldn’t even bother thinking through his wish enough to realize that he’d asked for his wife to have healthy children, but not for her to have a body that could bear them and survive. He deserved what he got and she did too.”
My hands clenched on the table. I remembered kneeling
in the family shrine, telling Mother just the same thing. Remembered feeling it for years, even if I never let the words form.
I whirled around and slapped him across the face.
“Never speak of my mother that way again,” I said.
My hand stung from the blow, and it felt like more of a trespass than when I had tried to stab him, but I couldn’t take it back. Not yet, with the fury still writhing in my stomach.
His grin got wider. “But I’m welcome to speak of your father?”
I clenched my teeth. I wanted to deny it, but I hated my father and some part of me enjoyed hearing Ignifex blame him for everything.
“You are a fit bride for me,” he went on. “More than I expected, and I always hoped your father would pick you.”
“You watched me?”
“Now and then.” He stepped forward. “I watched all your family. Your father, punishing you because he wasn’t brave enough to punish himself. Your aunt, hating you for proving your mother would always have the whole of his heart. Your sister, pretending that smiles would make the darkness go away. And you. Leonidas’s sweet and gentle daughter, with a world of poison in your heart. You fought and fought to keep all the cruelty locked up in your head, and for what? None of them ever loved you, because none of them ever knew you.”
“Yes.” I could barely choke the word out; my whole body was taut with rage. “You’re right. They never knew me. They never loved me. And I certainly never deserved their love.” I shoved him a step back. “Does that make you happy? Do you think, if you can condemn the whole world, that will make you guiltless?” I stepped toward him. “Because if you do, you’re an idiot. My father and my aunt wronged me, but I am still a selfish, hateful girl who loves her life more than Arcadia, so I deserve to be punished.” I had him backed up against a bookshelf now. “Or do you think that your masters excuse you? Because I don’t see how you’re any different from your bargainers. The Kindly Ones furnish your castle and lend you their power, and you think you’re a prisoner? Even if you can’t fight them, you could still reject them.”
Our faces were barely a hand’s span apart. My throat ached; I realized I had been shouting into the face of the Gentle Lord. In a moment he would mock me with that perfect smile until I had no more pride left, or he would finally grow angry enough to punish me, or—
He dropped his gaze.
He looked down and to the left, no smile on his face, his jaw tight. As if he didn’t have an answer. As if he cared what I had said.
“I’m sorry I slapped you,” I muttered.
“ . . . It’s all right.” He still wasn’t quite looking at me. “I suppose I shouldn’t have mentioned your mother.”
“And why do you keep acting like I won’t hurt you?” I whirled away from him, tears stinging at my eyes and little shivers running up and down my body. He was a fool for trusting me. I was a fool for caring if he got hurt. Why wasn’t my hatred simple anymore?
He caught me again by the waist; I tried to pull free and instead sent us toppling backward to land against the bookcase amid a small shower of books. I ended up in his lap, and in a moment his arms were locked around me.
“Well,” he said mildly, “as you may have noticed, I am not so easy to kill.”
I held myself rigid against the warmth of his arms. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”
“Do you know why I love you?”
I opened my mouth but couldn’t speak.
Ignifex went on as calmly as if we were a normal husband and wife who discussed their love every day. “Everyone who ever bargains with me is convinced that he is righteous. Even the ones who come sad-eyed and guilty—they weep to the gods that they are sinners, but in their hearts they believe their need is so special that it justifies any sin, that they are heroes for losing all their righteousness and paying with their souls.”
“How could you know that?” I demanded.
“Because they always believe the price I tell them. They always think they can pay it, because they think they are only paying for the wish itself, and deep down they believe they deserve that wish by right. What they don’t understand is that they aren’t buying the wish, they’re buying the power to accomplish it. And that power—the power of the Kindly Ones—has an infinite price. So they all deserve what they get.” His arms tightened around me. “But you know what you are, and what you deserve. You lie to me but not to yourself. That’s why I love you.”
“I don’t believe you.” The words scratched and bit in my throat. “I don’t believe you, and even if I did, I would still kill you.”
“Don’t be so confident.” He leaned his face into my hair.
I wanted to hit him again. I wanted to cry. Most of all, I wanted to forget my mission and lose myself in the embrace of the one person who had ever seen my heart and claimed to love me after.
For a little while, I did lose myself. I rested in his arms and did not think. Then—as suddenly and distinctly as a clock chiming midnight—I knew that I had to move right then or lose myself forever after. I pulled free of his arms and stood.
“How did you make Shade into your shadow?” I asked. “Do you remember?”
The question broke the mood; in a moment Ignifex was back on his feet, all grace and half smiles and narrowed eyes.
“I didn’t make him. I’ve always had a shadow, like everyone else. And I hate him because he’s a fool and a coward and he tries to steal my wives.”
Those last words were so unexpected that I laughed. Then Ignifex raised an eyebrow and I realized that he was serious, at least as much as he ever was.
“What? Don’t tell me he hasn’t kissed you yet. You’re no Helen or Aphrodite, but you aren’t plain.”
I remembered last night and my face went hot. Sure he could see the truth on my face, I blurted the first thing that came into my mind.
“And you would know so much about women, locked up in your castle.”
“Locked up with eight wives. And sometimes I make house calls for my bargainers. There’s many a lovely woman desperate enough to bargain with me.”
This idea had never occurred to me before, but, “You touch another woman and I’ll cut your hands off,” I snapped.
He looked delighted. “I thought you were afraid of hurting me.”
There was nothing I could say without making it worse, so I glared at him until he laughed and said, “I’ve never struck that kind of bargain. Though it’s nice to know you’re jealous.”
I crossed my arms. The key hidden in the front of my dress dug into my skin, reminding me I was here for more than bickering.
“How is Shade a coward?” I asked.
“Now I’m jealous.”
“Don’t worry, you’re still the only one I want to kill. Why do you call him a fool and a coward if he’s never been anything but your obedient shadow?”
“He’s plenty disobedient. Do you think I tell him to go around kissing my wives?” He caught at my chin. “They say that if you want a thing done well—”
I slapped his hand away. “If he’s just your shadow, isn’t it ridiculous to compete with him? And how do you know he’s a coward?”
Ignifex’s eyes widened a fraction. “He’s a coward and a fool,” he repeated distantly, as if he had learnt the words by rote. Then his gaze snapped back to me. “Why shouldn’t I know my own shadow?”
“He got better than you at kissing somehow,” I said. “Don’t you ever wonder how?”
If Shade was really the prince—and I still thought he was—then perhaps he could stir up some of Ignifex’s memories.
Maybe I wanted him to be jealous, too.
Ignifex opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off. “You can meditate on that for a while. I need to go look for ways to defeat you.” I strode out the door, knowing that in a moment he would count the keys on his belts and remember the ones I had thrown across the room. If I was lucky, he wouldn’t notice that the third key wasn’t on the floor until I’d had time to expl
ore.
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17
Iran down the corridors, trying door after door, but the stolen key would open none of them. At last I halted, panting, in a hallway with walls paneled in dark wood and a floor painted like the sky, pale parchment with a scattering of clouds—and burnt-out holes. I realized I was standing on one, and shifted my feet. I wondered if I would have seen the painted holes two days ago. If I went back to the round room with the model of Arcadia, would its parchment dome have holes as well?
That room wasn’t one of the hearts, I was sure. But the mirror with its keyhole that I had never been able to open—Shade had never answered any of my questions about it, so it had to be important.
Maybe the Heart of Fire lay on the other side.
It was worth a try. I retraced my steps, thinking of the mirror room. It had always been more mobile than the other rooms; in just a few minutes, I opened a door and saw Astraia sitting on a stone bench in the garden. Her knees were pulled up under her chin, and her forehead was creased in thought.
Movement flickered at the edge of my vision. I spun, expecting a wrathful Ignifex, but instead I saw Shade sliding across the wall behind me, still trapped in his bodiless daylight form. He paused, wavered, and then one of his shadowy hands flowed across the floor to grasp my hand.
My fingers curved around his phantom grip. It had been just the night before last that he released me from the room of dead wives. I remembered crying into his embrace, remembered kissing him and wanting him as surely as I wanted to breathe.
It felt like a hundred years ago. And his quiet presence, once so comforting, made me want to shrink away. I felt like Ignifex’s kisses were written across my face—but surely I should be ashamed instead of kissing the man who was not my husband.