“Now, that is truthful,” he said. He leaned back, long body unfurling like the stretch of winter evening. And then something strange happened. He smiled.
The smile was red and sharp-toothed. It did not change his eyes. It was the smile of a predator. But he was Death, and he was so beautiful, so compelling, the blade of his words felt like such a gift of hope—I could have saved her! It felt as if the sun were trying to shine behind thick clouds.
“Come here,” he ordered.
There was nothing about what he said or did that suddenly made me remember myself as a prostitute. But as I crossed the front of his desk to stand before him, with that predator’s gaze watching the flicker of my pulse in my throat, I remembered all the same.
This was different, I told myself. I stood before no man, but Deathhimself. As a pupil, not a prostitute. Fully clothed—though I felt naked under his piercing gaze. He stayed seated, long legs stretched elegantly at leisure. His gloved hands rested on the chair with the kind of still tension that was deadly.
But who was I that Death would be interested in me? I remembered the mortification of curtseying. As he said, it was the expectation of my own pride. I resisted the urge to squirm.
I had never been like Dacia or some of the younger girls, hoping some patron might one day fall in love with me, that they could pay my debt and whisk me away. But it turns out that I wasn’t as immune to those fantasies as I thought. My heart raced a little, to stand and feel so naked. It made me bold and unthinking. “Are you a god or a man?” I asked, ignoring the heartbeat at the softness of my throat.
He shook his head, raising his gloved hand in a motion to stop. “This is your surrender, not mine.”
I tried to shake it off—to fight the strange haze that made it impossible to hold on to my own thoughts.
He made a low noise in his throat. “No. Accept the confusion. How can you ever know something if you do not surrender to unknowing first?”
At first, I couldn’t—it felt too terrible, too much like … like … being laid bare, stretched wide open.Too intimate?It felt like I would be pulled right out of my skin, caught in a current I could not control. Who knew where I might be pulled to? I stopped on the edge, gripping harder than ever.
“You’re almost there,” he said, just above a whisper, eyes never leaving my face. He leaned forward and rested his gloved fingers on my cheek, guiding me to my knees before him. “Go on. Surrender to it.”
I did not want to. I had a sense that I would never recover. But instead of fighting and looking for the way to hold on, I took a deep breath and allowed it. For Rochelle. For Dacia’s future. For a life. I let go of fighting.
Immediately, a strange wave made all of stars came together as if tobuoy me somewhere. Someplace. I saw a flash of red that filled me with unspeakable horror. I shuddered then, suddenly afraid, and started to draw back.
“No,” he commanded. “Stay here.”
I didn’t think I could. I heard a whimper and then realized it was from my own throat. My mind slipped below the dark surface. The stars rushed and swirled, faster, and hotter and stranger. I could let go, but what would become of me?
“I’m here,” he said soothingly. But it was not soothing at all. Worse than not knowing what would become of myself was someone bearing witness to my undoing. “Surrender to it,” he coaxed.
And I was, I had. I was falling. Deep into the core of that terrible red. I felt as if I heard a woman scream.My scream?
“Look at me,” he ordered.
I forced my eyes open and found him. Only him. In that dark with the stars rushing past.
He took my chin in his hand and with one masterful move, pulled me close. Before I knew what to expect, he dipped his beautiful, proud mouth to mine and kissed me.
I thought, somewhere in the back of my body, that now I must surely die. For who could live after a kiss like that? A kiss from Death himself? It was a deep, sensuous kiss. A kiss of ownership and claiming. His mouth hot and just as endless as the dark. The red turned thick and viscous, and we swam in blood.
Finally, he pulled away and the world split like the shards of a broken mirror—all the blood locked in the glass. Between those shards—a void. I did not know how to feel, where to move. There were no stars, no light, no current. It was nothing. A void that could swallow me into its throat and I would never escape its belly. I tipped forward. I tried to scream. The sound got caught in my throat.
“Come back, Salomé,” Lord Death said, and the sound of my name brought together the shards with a snap.
The carpets. The crackling fire. The sound of the snow hitting thewindow filled in the silence. The world settled back into the comfort of his quarters. I took a deep breath and sank onto the floor. “What did you …” But I couldn’t finish. My hands trembled on my lap.
“Are you acting the maiden?” he asked with amusement. “I thought you understood.” He eyed me suspiciously. “Don’t linger on it. It was only a way to help you access that power with my own.”
I nodded. Of course, of course. I rubbed my cheeks with my hands to hide both the blush and my shaking. Of course, I understood—I was a prostitute after all.
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
I did not know how to answer.
“You have more. More in you,” he continued. “I felt only the surface.”
