I thought of all the women I had been—the cursed daughter, the evil sister, the rejected lover, the violent whore—and I found I did not have a true answer.
He smiled. I couldn’t see it, but I was certain he did. His response came thin and haunting in the cool wind. “Tu es plus que tu ne l’imagines.”
“Eine wilde fantasie,” I said, tearing my gaze from his empty face to the cold forest. But it was I who was in a wild fantasy, or felt it. “Is this how you spoke to all the others you’ve taken?”
For a long moment the silence stretched, and I thought I must have angered him. But finally, he answered. “You are going to die from the cold.”
“Who are you?”
“You know me.”
“They say you have a home in this forest.”
“The whores talk about me?” He laughed and it raced across my skin, icy and thrilling.
“Of course, we talk of Death,” I snapped.
“Forgive me, I did not mean to offend you. I am only trying to be as mysterious as you. A woman, wild and dark, and yet … A nobody. A whore.” He looked down and adjusted his gloves. “Tell me, are you a very good whore?”
Even though I stood there in my stolen hide and boots and grave-ridden body, this was familiar territory. “I am a good whore.”
He made a noise in the back of his throat.
My legs, frozen as they were, felt a strange flush of blue heat.
“And why is a beautiful woman like you a whore?” he asked, lifting his head to regard me. The intensity of his presence hit me again. It was like nothing I’d met in any man, and the darkness I’d kept tampeddown inside me leapt toward him in a slathering eagerness that made heat flood my cheeks. “That’s a trick,” I said softly. Surely Death would know better than to ask a whore why she’d become one.
“It’s not a trick. I asked what you are, and you said a whore …”
“And then you asked why. A common question among men. Which story do you want? That I was a good daughter, abandoned in some tragic way? That I am a great woman, only without a good enough man? I’ve heard it all before, my lord. That I am magic and night. Darkness and pestilence. That I am a flea. A disease. I am both the dirt on their shoes and the harbinger of devastation and plagues. I am pure goddess and filthy demon.”
“Which of those do you want to be?”
“None of those. Those are only stories men tell about themselves and their desires and their fears. None of those stories are mine.” And without waiting for him to reply, I turned. I couldn’t feel my legs or remember how to walk, but I somehow began to move.
I was halfway across the ridge slope when his voice came on the wind, as close as if he were at my ear. “Would you like to have a different story to tell about yourself,whore?” I whipped around, fists balled tight. Only to find myself alone.
“What are you?” I screamed into the dark, heart beating through my ribs.
“I am the lord of sleep. Your final fate.”
“Show yourself,” I snapped. I longed to fight, or maybe just to keep his attention—lethal though it may be. In some ways I felt woken from my stupor, alive in a way I could not remember being, filled with a sharp-toothed satisfaction at the thought of dying face-to-face with Lord Death. I spun, searching the edge of the empty slope.
Shadows moved along the wood like smoke. His sigh was on the wind. But no wind touched my face. The hair on my arms stood up. “Leave me be,” I shouted. “I am nobody.” But I waited, desperate to hear him disagree.
“Don’t you want something more?”
His voice came smooth as velvet, right at my ear. I jumped and turned to find him towering over me, a chill emanating from him—something blue and dreamy that moved in long swirls and smelled like burning leaves and the rotting rich spice of black walnut seeds in fall. And then he seemed to be just a man. A stranger. “Come home with me and be warmed,” he said kindly. “You will freeze out here. In the morning, I can take you wherever you wish to go.”
“Will you kill me?”
He scoffed. “You are not the kind of maid to be sacrificed in fairy tales.”
My throat tightened as I thought of my sister. If only I was such a maid. If only I had been taken in her stead.
“At my home, you will have your freedom and your power. I promise you will be safe.”
What choice did I have? He was right, I would die out here, right at the moment I was so desperate to live. “Swear it?”
