He didn’t respond, but his hand didn’t leave my arm as we began to walk. I kept fading in and out, falling asleep on my feet, and then I felt myself swept up. Death carried me lightly through the labyrinth of halls.
“What is your name?” I asked, or tried to, through the thick cloud of sleep that clung to my mouth and my eyes. “I can’t keep calling for Death.”
I woke again when a cup was pressed to my mouth, bidding my lips to part. “I have no name,” I thought I heard him say. The cup smelled bitter and dark. I tried to tell him, but I couldn’t get it out.
He shushed me and the cup came back to my mouth. “Drink, Salomé. Let me heal you.”
I wanted nothing more than to please him. To make up for this crushing gentleness in the face of my shortcomings. I had wasted my time, been injured in my failings, been stripped of my dignity and my clothes, but I refused to break. Being unbreakable was how I survived. But here, it felt as if his kindness could break me. I did not know why he bothered. I had proven myself good at nothing; goodfornothing. “Open up,” he coaxed again. I swallowed through my dry mouth and opened my lips for the bitter draught.
I must have flinched, for his hand came to my head, not a push, but to hold me upright against the cup. “Go on. Do not stop.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I opened my throat and drained the cup.
The wind howled and I shivered. It struck me strange that I was on cold stone and not my bed—how quickly I had made that room mine in my head—but I trusted him and did not think anything more of it. I could hear Death not far from me, paper rustling, and I managed to open my eyes. Bleary candlelight flickered on the arched ceiling.
The chapel.The one where Rochelle had appeared. I was stretched out on the altar. For a split second, terror filled me. Out of the corner of my eye, a streak of hellfire darted behind the chapel columns, as if trying to get me to come over.Run, it seemed to urge.
Every part of my body pounded with that word. I wanted to run from this chapel. I wanted to run from this house. I wanted to run so far I could outstrip the pain in my body, the terrible shadows that loomed over me, and the memories of being flesh.
But then another voice urged me to trust Lord Death. Hadn’t he saved me multiple times already? Hadn’t he kissed me and still I had not died? He had been so good to me. So kind. Those little moments of tenderness flashed through my mind—the way he’d healed me when I first arrived, the way he’d looked at me and touched the threads. He said he did not want me, but I felt that in those little gestures there was a crack in the door, that maybe with patience and work I could spring it wide open to his heart. My fear was, I realized, because I was so afraid ofchurches.So I stayed there, trembling on the slab, breasts bared to the cold and my palms flat on the stone.
I was only a moment like that. I guess it was the draught he’d given me, but when it hit my blood, it felt likecourage. Like my mind suddenly connected to my body and a rush of warmth spread from my toes up into my chest and my head until my trembling stopped. I sighed and melted into the stone like molten gold. My eyes were so heavy, but I don’t remember closing them or becoming unaware. It was onlyone long blink—one closing and opening, as if waking from a strange, lucid dream.
IT COULD ALL HAVE BEEN A DREAM. WHENIWOKE AND THEchapel, the slab, the howling winds were all long gone and I was tucked tight into my bed, dressed, warm, and clean, with no recollection of how any of it came to be, the only thing it could have been was a dream. But I felt sure I hadn’t put myself there—the midnight blue velvet curtains were drawn, parted only enough to see the fire crackling. And then I moved.
It hurt all over, nothing and everything all at once. Not like a broken leg or a bruise, this somehow burned under my skin and pounded under my skull, an agony of being alive and breathing I had not ever felt.Wrong. Wrong.I wanted to lay down and die, but instead I stumbled out of bed and threw up into the chamber pot. I needed something. I needed help. I clawed myself up and to the door.
The sun was up. I had no fear about getting lost—the rules of the house seemed to know to deliver me where I needed to go. But I had to lean on the wall and the tapestries one by one to keep myself upright as I made my way to the richly carved doors of his chambers. I knocked on the wood and the sound seemed to split my head in two.
The doors opened. A shirtless, sleep-tousled Death looked down on me, all hard lines and irritation.
Suddenly aware that his perfection extended from his face to his body, and that I was about to throw up on his feet, I gulped, unsure. “Wrong,” I rasped pitifully. “Something is wrong. I need your help. You have to help me, please.”
He looked me over quickly, as if expecting me to be bleeding or broken. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I … what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“The chapel. And the altar.”
He tilted his head. “I came home and found you collapsed in the hallway.”
“But then …” I waited for him to fill in. To make sense of my memories.
“I took you to your bed. Do you not remember?”
“I remember the chapel. And a light …” I trailed off.
“This house can give you vivid dreams.” He sighed. “I didn’t expect you to wake until later. You should be resting.”
“No, it wasn’t …” I swallowed against the nausea. “I feel empty somehow. I’ve never felt like this.”
“Have you eaten?”
“I was sick.” I felt a twinge of shame. That maybe I shouldn’t have woken him up.
He sighed and ran a hand through his sleep-roughened hair. It was the gesture of a man, not a god or a servant of the underworld. I couldn’t tell how I was supposed to see him. It felt as if there was a strange trick of light that caused his visage to flicker in and out of godhead. Maybe that was the nature of a creature such as Death. Maybe it was me.
