His laugh was a harsh bark. “Some things cannot be reversed.”
“And if they can be?”
He considered and then pointed at Bluebeard. “Then my head will decorate his wall.”
“It doesn’t have to end so,” I warned.
“Doesn’t it? It feels to me as if the great tides of fate have been tugging on us all, surging us where they will, and if we are shattered on the rocks then that is as the song has been written and who can deny it?”
“As keeper of the singing flowers,” Grosbeak whispered to me so loudly that everyone could hear. “Bluffroll is a master of song and music. His flowers can bring the rain or turn back the tides.”
Bluffroll inclined his head in acknowledgment of Grosbeak and said, “But they cannot turn back this tide. It will roll in and bear away the last of the Wittenhame.”He looked around him sadly. “And I shall do all that I can so that my kin will not suffer unduly in the depravations of the pale, miserable, mortal world.”
“This does not have to be,” I warned. “Bargain with me. Do not harm my lands and I will carve a place for you.”
He smiled sadly. “While your audacity enchants me, and your misplaced confidence tastes of citrus and cinnamon, I will not make a bad bargain with you. I have tongues to collect, souls to harvest, and slaves to take from the ranks of the mortals. No hand will turn back what I unleash.”
“Then we are enemies,” I said grimly.
“I cherish the knowledge of it.”
To my surprise, his answer felt more like a prospective lover accepting a memento from his beloved than a dark Wittenbrand Lord making an enemy, but that was the Wittenhame.
“The game is over, Izolda Savataz, wife of the Arrow. The chips have been wagered and lost. I’ve already lost my favorite two stallions, Coppertomb came to collect three of my consorts — and they were not the three I wanted to wager — and my foot aches from where my toe was taken from me. That’s a loss, mortal woman.”
For the first time, I could see the bitterness. But I shook my head as I followed Death from the war camp of Bluffroll, and I wondered if the mortal world would wash out the violence and delights inherent in the Wittenbrand, or if the Wittenbrand would set the mortal world ablaze. I rather thought both would be true and in the mingling, they would bring out the very worst of each other and dull the best parts.
“I can see you thinking,” Grosbeak murmured. “And if your thoughts are that you and your Bluebeard have been each other’s undoing, then you are correct. Star-crossed lovers doomed to die tragically. The woman who trips up the great man and brings him down. The pair that marry for love only for their children to savage the world and squander their inheritance. These occur again and again in stories for a reason, and you are playing out the piece before us like a pantomime.”
I gave him a long look.
He laughed. “Don’t stop. The entertainment is worth the price of admission.”
“Your life?” I asked incredulously.
“I think you’ll have to stop teasing me about that,” he said smugly. “Now that you are dying, too.”
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
It was only oncewe finally left the army behind that we found the place beyond them — Bluffroll’s Estate — and it was to there that Death led us.
“Whistleroll,” Grosbeak said. “It’s what he calls this place.”
“I need to stop finding myself astonished by what I find in this land,” I breathed.
“It would certainly save time.”
Bluffroll — thick, heavy, gauche Bluffroll — lived in an estate made of spun glass and crystal. Its towers rose fancifully high, twisting in sugar-spun shapes that seemed impossible and utterly impractical and yet stole my heart away the moment I saw them. His home was spun of the palest lavender and rose glass as if formed by the clouds at sunrise. It was whimsy and fairy dust and the exuberant joy of spring meeting the delicate wings of a butterfly.
“Whistleroll,” I gasped. “It seems nothing like him.”
“Well, how would you know? You’ve barely spoken to the man. We are not how we look on the outside. I would have thought a plain thing like you would realize that by now.”
“Consider me chastened,” I said coolly, but I felt the other brides behind me relaxing as we drew closer to this estate. It had none of the terror of the other Wittenbrand homes. No hideous dead things gathered or displayed, merely very impressive gardens, all flowering at once though there was no possible way that all these flowers could be in season at one time. Lilacs bloomed alongside roses, which in turn bloomed alongside peonies and orchids. Perhaps these enchanted flowers were permanently in bloom. Their scent was heavy in the air, making each breath thick with perfume, though the ground continued to heave and roll and the flowers with it, timed to my husband’s lurching breath.
When we were close to the tower, Bluebeard doubled over, sliding down my back, and coughed a terrible, wracking cough, and as he coughed the ground shook so intensely that one of the glass-spun towers of Whistleroll came crashing down in shattering pieces, tinkling and sparkling as it collapsed.
I drew in a shuddering breath. I was losing him.
