“No more leaping between worlds for you, mortal woman. None but a lord or lady of the Wittenhame is granted this key, and none but a lord or lady is fit to use it. Two days I grant you.” And now his eyes skimmed the scarlet cloak covering my husband’s huddled form for the first time since he grabbed hold of me. “Two days to raise your dead, or bury him, for I will not have revenants walking this plane. A geas I place on you now.”
My skin tingled as if I could already feel the magic and I shivered with the cold touch of it. But I would not beg for mercy. I would not ask for leniency. I knew Coppertomb too well to think he’d grant me either.
“Strike a deal with Death. Raise your dead. Or, in two days’ time, your hands will bury him under the power of my geas and you will present yourself to me here as my bride for my Coronation Ball.”
“Tell me this,” I whispered, holding his gaze with mine. “The Wittenhame is thick with women so lovely they could break your heart in twain. Why do so many of you then find the need to steal an ugly mortal as your wife?”
Coppertomb’s gaze flicked to my barely conscious husband. “He takes nothing without purpose and treasures nothing without value. If he found you desirable as his bride, then so will I. If he claimed your heart, then I will claim it doubly. If he laid possession to your flesh, then I will mark it as my own.”
“I think you have a kingdom to rule,” I countered. I did not like how he made my skin crawl or how certain he sounded that he could take whatever he wanted.
Coppertomb watched me, considering. “I will not marry. Nor will I be given in marriage. But you will come here in wedding clothes and surrender yourself to me and all my appetites, and I will see the heart I gave the barrow broken in twain and shattered forever.”
He leaned forward, menace in his eye, and said. “Two days,” before turning his back to me and addressing the growing crowd.
“Subjects!” Coppertomb called out. “Denizens of the Wittenhame!”
It was exactly the factual precision I expected from him. And yet, watching him address the Wittenhame, I felt almost as if he were falling apart, too. His eyes were too empty. His gestures overly dramatic. He was a parody of himself.
“The Hounds of Heaven have been called. Death walks among us! The sky falls to the earth and the earth dissolves beneath the fires of heaven!”
There was a cheer. Practically everything in the Wittenhame resulted in a cheer, even the announcement that the world was crumbling.
“What do we do now?” Grosbeak whispered. “Two days is not long enough!”
Fear crept into my bones. How powerful was this geas? Would it truly force me to bury my still living husband under the ground? I felt something tighten within me but I did not know if it was the magic, or merely fear, gripping my heart.
“Our time now has come! We ride against the Hounds of Heaven in the Great Hunt! Boons will be granted to the party that succeeds! Geases placed and the tax of a finger levied on all who fail!”
A finger is too great a tax.Perhaps my husband was more lucid than I thought.But he would know, for he had to forfeit his.
Husband,I gasped in relief in my mind. But I couldn’t help glancing at Coppertomb’s hand caught in a single glove. Did one of the fingers look stiff? Immobile? Like the finger of the glove might be stuffed with wool? I shook my head. It did not matter.
Can you free me from this geas? I must flee Coppertomb.
Patience, wife of mine,Bluebeard whispered in my mind.
There was a great cheer and the Wittenbrand began to chant, “Coppertomb! Coppertomb!”
Hold your patience.
Coppertomb turned and smiled his wicked twist of a smile and in his smile, I felt the barb of the geas on me. “Two days, little mortal. You’d better run.”
With the suddenness of lightning, a murder of ravens rose up from around the platform in a roar of flapping wings so loud that they drowned out everything else. They rose over Coppertomb, buffeting him, the rearing mounts, and the startled Wittenbrand as they went. A pale unicorn reared, screaming horsily while a double-headed panther swore and snapped, batting a paw at the black mass. They cawed and flapped, obscuring faces, and figures, and voices, and then all at once they swirled around us.
Stand your ground.
I planted my feet, braced myself, ready to be bowled over by the surging avian bodies … and was lifted suddenly, into the air in a flurry of squawks and a rain of feathers.
CHAPTEREIGHT
“Well, that was terribly informative,”Sparrow said, considering, as we rose into the shredded sky on the shifting backs of the ravens. “Two days, is it?”
Bluebeard reached out and clung to me like a small child clutching a parent in sleep and I leaned into the softness of his embrace, sad because he was not warm and could not guide me. He had carried me far and fast in this Wittenhame, and now soon I must carry him again with my slow mortal feet. He had rescued me again and again, and now I must find a way to rescue him, and I only had two nights in which to do it.
“I believe my husband is the true Bramble King,” I said quietly to myself, my thoughts turning inward. Coppertomb was missing the finger he’d bet. He wasn’t in a woven cage … unless it was woven of something I could not see. Disaster, perhaps?
I prodded at the thought and finally spoke in my mind,Are you the true king of this land, husband of mine?
