I do not know why you must walk, my husband, but I fear you need help now,I told him in his mind and he certainly did. He could not seem to rise from his bent state and his breath was so shallow I could barely hear it, his eyes shut tight. With a sigh, I crouched down, set Grosbeak on the ground, and then maneuvered Bluebeard onto my back, slinging one hand under him to hold him in place even as I lifted Grosbeak’s lantern pole again. I was bowed under Bluebeard, even though he was not heavy. Somehow, he seemed to make me bend beneath the figurative weight of all he was. But it was no matter. I would never let him go. Not now, not ever.
Another tower fell as he coughed, clinging to me as if to salvation. I felt his bare chest heaving and clenching against the bare skin of my back.
He was getting worse. Time was running out. We had to make haste.
I blinked back hot tears that insisted on welling up even when I willed them away.
I turned to look back over my shoulder but the other brides were silent, though their lips formed words and their eyes were wide. Margaretta pawed at her face, panic rising in her eyes and then Corinnian turned to run, only stopped by Tigraine who seized her arm and forced her forward again with a grim expression.
“What manner of madness is this?” I gasped, glad I could hear myself, but none of the heads responded, not even Grosbeak who clearly wanted to, as he opened his mouth only to shut it with a furious grimace. We’d been silenced to each other, caught in our own bubbles of stillness.
Had all sound been removed from the Wittenhame then? But no, glass crunched under my feet, and as we moved around the broken castle to a new part of the garden, the perfect flowers became still, frozen, in time though they whistled and sang as the wind moved through them.
There were small signs hanging over the paths of the garden as it split off into five different paths between the whistling flowers, and to my surprise, Death stopped there and would not go on, crossing his arms over his chest and raising an eyebrow at me.
“This is for me to decide?” I asked, a little huffily.
But there would be no help — not from Death and not from any of my advisors. Annoyed, I read the signs.
Paradise
Hades
Pennstein
Angstbite
Desire
What a truly eclectic list of names. And now I must choose a path with nothing more than the names to go by. I hummed, trying to think, and to my surprise, the glass flowers all shifted with a tinkle and turned toward me. How odd.
Death shifted, and then suddenly faded away.
No! No. No. No. My breath was caught in my throat.
I turned in a circle in a panic, but he was truly gone. There was no one here with me except the silent parade behind me, and my beloved on my back.
Bluebeard?I asked in my mind, reaching for him mind to mind, heart to heart.Arrow?
He was not there. I carried nothing but a fading corpse. I was on my own.
I needed to choose a path and walk down it and I needed to hurry before I lost Bluebeard entirely.
Should I follow the path marked Desire? Perhaps I would find what I wished at the end of it. Or perhaps I should journey to paradise to find my lost love. Or hades. Pennstein sounded like my home and tempted me, but it was the name of the fifth path that arrested me.
Angstbite. The name of the marriage sword Bluebeard had given to me.
He’d known all along that we would come to this path, hadn’t he?
He had warned me to be silent, he had chosen me as his sixteenth bride and married me in the Wittenbrand way. One of the first things he’d given me was the golden key that opened the door to his other wives — to the blood of nations I would need to rescue him once he had given himself to the grave. Did it not make sense that his very first gift to me — my marriage sword — might contain another clue?
With my heart in my throat, I set down that path, only to have the glass flowers shuffle, tinkling as they moved, and barring my way. I turned, but they had sealed the way behind our parade, too. The big eyes of the wives and advisors met mine, glaring at me, demanding that I do better. And Grosbeak stared at me with slitted eyes like I should know the solution.
Sing for your Sovereign.
Perhaps, I should try that.
I began to sing, a song about a horse and rider but as I sang, the glass flowers pressed in, the nearest one slicing my arm and leaving a red weal. Grosbeak’s cheekbone was slashed, too, and when I glanced behind me my fellow brides were also marked.
