Bluebeard shrugged. “It seems you wish to hurry your meeting with Death. Do be my most honored guest.”
He flung his swords outward and to my surprise, they flew right past Bluffroll and stuck in his gilded throne, and before I could even gasp, Bluebeard had lunged forward, picked up Bluffroll in his powerful grip, and thrown him against the wall behind the throne.
He landed with a smack right between my nephew and his queen, and Bluffroll did not slide down the wall, because brambles erupted through the stone, winding quickly around him. Another branch of them grew — as if by decades, but all done in a heartbeat — right out his open screaming mouth, and two more curled and tangled out his eyes.
I sucked in a gasp as Death erupted from the ground, white and swirling. He bowed once to Bluebeard, and then his slug tongue shot out and sucked something pale from Bluffroll’s body. Before I could blink, Death burst apart like smoke in a high wind and was gone and nothing remained of Bluffroll but his grasping rictus of a skeleton caught within the brambles.
“I do hope you’ll leave that up on your wall,” Bluebeard said, seeming to address my nephew from where he hung beside Bluffroll’s desiccated remains. “It’s a far better tribute to my beloved wife than that monstrosity. I’d stand on the throne if I were you, wife.”
I knew a command when I heard one, gentle or not, so I scrambled up on the throne as Bluebeard raised a single eyebrow and the bronze statue melted, collapsing like water falling from a bucket and eating through the mass of Wittenbrand on the floor, burning them to nothing and bronzing the entire throne room floor in the time it took for me to accidentally let out a little cry.
I recovered myself enough to straighten and draw in a breath. “I prefer your choice of decor, my husband.”
“Indeed,” he said, smiling cruelly and then stepping up to join me on the floor. “And now, shall we go find Coppertomb and ruin the fun of his Coronation Ball?”
I smiled, but just like his smile, mine did not touch my eyes. “As much as I would love to hurry to his destruction, I think you’re forgetting something.”
“I forget nothing,” he said, waving a hand.
The spikes popped out of the shoulders of the mortals hanging on the walls. And with their removal, some spell was broken and I heard their cries of pain and sorrow and relief as they scrambled to one another, heard my nephew cry, “beloved” and fling himself into his wife’s arms. I thought, from what I saw, that he had healed their wounds, though their left hands were still missing.
“All restoration costs something,” Bluebeard breathed into my hair. “Days or pain or something else. Their freedom cost the lives of those I melted away under the shame of that terrible rendering.”
“Of course,” I agreed in a whisper. But though we spoke quietly, I could see the terrified mortals around us watching the strange pair standing together on their king’s throne.
“Will you pay a price now? One to restore them?”
I swallowed. “Name the price, husband of mine.”
He made a happy murmur in the back of his throat and lifted my skeletal hand, touching the end of each finger with his flesh fingers. “Give up your flesh hand forever and I will restore all of theirs.”
“Could you not restore them without such a sacrifice?” I asked, my voice trembling a little. I had liked having my flesh hand back. I did not want to give it up again.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Who values what is not bought at great price? Who treasures what is given for nothing?”
“I do,” I said firmly.
“I leave the choice in your excellent hands,” he said and I looked from his mercurial expression to the huddled people — maybe a hundred of them — who had just been set free of the curse that pinned them to the walls and I swallowed. He was not going to restore them on his own. That much was clear.
He loved me. I knew it.
And yet he could only be who he was. Incomprehensible as it sometimes was to me.
“I agree to your bargain,” I said calmly, though my voice shook a little. “My hand for theirs.”
He huffed out a breath as if in relief and leaned in close to breathe me in.
“Well chosen, wife of mine,” he said and then he kissed me so thoroughly that the sweetness of his lips dulled the sadness that welled up in me at my loss and when I opened my eyes it was to the sound of mortal awe.
“Remove the blue from this place,” Bluebeard said curtly. “And when next I attend these courts, I expect a more fitting tribute will be erected for my queen.”
Rolgrin bowed to him, spreading arms wide in agreement and his court and queen were quick to follow.
“And now we ride,” Bluebeard said.
“Wait,” I interrupted. “I should be sure my folk are safe.”
“Is that not what I just accomplished?” He seemed confused by the request.
