A bell rang, clear and true, and everyone stilled, then lifted their glasses toward me. I kept screaming, kept twisting, but I had become invisible once again. No one seemed to hear or care. I heard the mad old woman in the woods telling me to mind my borders, that I was leaking something out of me, but I did not know what she meant. Myself? My magic? The Emperor was giving some kind of speech, but I could not hear it. I gave up fighting, my sobs a low animal bleat for Death. Surely he must hear me. Surely he would return.
But no one came. The bell rang again. The Emperor rose toward me. A large knife glinted in the light, hovering over my flesh.
I begged for him to stop. Pled to stay his hand. But he laughed and turned the blade up, slicing through the netting to let my flesh fall free. He prepared the cut.
I don’t know how I escaped, how I made it off the table. I came to awareness only as my scream was knocked out of my chest and I struck the stone floor,hard. Quick and desperate, I pushed off the ground, running into the dark with the frayed ribbons streaming from my wrists and ankles and the tinkling of diamonds in my wake. I found the door behind the tapestry and fell through it naked and desperate only to escape. Tumbling back into the quiet hallways of the château, I fell onto my hands and knees on the blue flowered carpet, dragging in a ragged breath of the perfume of incense and smoke on stone.
At first, I was relieved. I thought only of my waiting fire and clothes and bed. I stumbled down the hall, diamonds popping off the nettingthat still bound my knees. After a few feet my body faltered, and I dropped to the floor. It hit me then—
I had lost the keys.
“Ma petite chou,” his voice came softly when he found me, the cool leather of his gloves sliding across my bare and burning skin. I forced my eyes open and found his dark gaze piercing through the haze, bringing me back to earth. I couldn’t help but choke back a laugh, which sounded more like a sob.
He might have been Death, but he was my savior.
XIV.
Bring the Key
Death gathered me up in his arms and I turned my face away, into his chest, unable to bear the idea of telling him. “I am sorry,” I sobbed. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this human, this torn apart, like an egg all cracked of its shell and dripping.
“There, there,” he murmured, petting my hair.
“I lost the keys,” I confessed into the fine linen of his shirt. I had failed. But worse, far worse, my nightmare had come true and I had lost the most important thing anyone had ever entrusted to me.
The scent of snow and dark decay clung to him again, and it was strangely comforting. “I was so careful. I don’t even know how they were taken from me.” I’d had them running from the priest. But after that, I lost track of myself.
“Yes, I see that much was taken,” he said.
The words were so gentle, so kind, I lifted my head. He wasn’t looking at me or my tear-stained face, rather the elegant line of his profile was turned away, studying the torn ribbons still lanced around my wrists and ankles, and the shredded scarlet threads streaming like blood. He grasped the end of the ribbon on my wrist and pulled.
It did not even occur to me resist—I trusted him, I trusted his control over the château, the world I now lived inside. I had, even then, surrendered to him. He gently moved the ribbon behind my back. I could hear his breath—quick and shallow. My heart raced, though Ifelt uncertain about what was happening. He pulled it tighter toward my shoulder blade. So tight it almost became pain and made me want to wince and cringe against it.
But I didn’t. I held still, waiting for his release, determined to withstand it. He teased it up higher and then turned to me. The fathomless darkness of his eyes glinted with something—not like light, but something feral and deeper. The gods must have chosen him for Death because he looked like a beautiful one. One that you might welcome, even in your fear. I met his gaze, and something crossed his expression like a cloud. “Yes, you’ve lost much here. I had hoped for more.”
I lifted my chin, my arm still bent behind me and held only by the wrap of the red ribbon around his leather-clad finger. “I too had more hopes for myself. You’ve made me remember them.”
It felt like a confession—partly shame and partly unburdening. For he had made me hope for so much. In those rooms, even as it all unfolded into nightmares, I could see what he might have wanted from me. I could see myself as that person, but only now that I was in his arms. It’s what made the failing so wretched.
He released the ribbon and my body sagged in relief.
“What am I to do with you? My little whore from Riquewihr,” he said, and fool that I was, my heart galloped off at the intimacy in his tone. “You truly are a danger to yourself. You must become soft if you have any hope of succeeding.”
It sounded like what the old woman in the hut had said—not to mistake strength for power. I couldn’t remember her exact words, but the similarities rang a note of clarity across my exhausted mind.
“What is this?” He hissed and I followed his gaze to the wound on my side.
“From the—” I tried to find the words, but it was all catching up with me and my tongue felt slow and thick. “The chapel.”
“What is this you put on it?” he asked, rubbing his finger in the smear of fat and herbs.
“A poultice. I tried to heal it.”
He played with the red ribbons again and I began to feel the edges of my nakedness, still tied up in the dress of the scarlet threads. “You’re overheated and this smeary mess you’ve put on this wound won’t help. Come with me, I’ll make it right.”
I nodded and moved out of his arms, but I was so exhausted that when I tried to stand, my knees buckled like a newborn calf.
He took my arm and held me upright. “Let me.” He unfasted his cloak. He must have just arrived back and heard me screaming. Taking it off his shoulders, he threw it over me. That chilled, rich scent closed in around me, and I breathed in deep. My legs straightened and I blinked, suddenly aware. It was late. All I wanted was to go to bed and sleep forever. “I’m so tired,” I said.
