It was because of those things both, for better or worse, that I was falling in love with him, and though I did not know it yet, falling in love with myself.
“Go back to your mistress,” I told the hellcat. “I’ll be fine.”
He yowled and loped off into the forest.
I wrapped my cloak across my chest, trying to bring back that small invisibility I’d used in the forest. Holding my breath, I let myself into the château.
For some strange reason, I’d almost expected it to have disappeared while I was in the forest. Once I walked through that abyss, Death’s home in the mountains felt unreal, the kind of place I’d never find my way back to—at least not as it was. But here it stood, and everything was the same. The same silence and smell of freshly fallen snow. The same gleaming stone and brightly lit torches, waiting for no one. Lifting my skirts, I tiptoed across the polished floors and darted up the steps as quietly as I could. It had been years since I left the nuns, but I hadn’t lost the muscle memory of sneaking past their watchful gazes.
I should have paid more attention to the light when I was with Perchta. Now, I braced to turn a corner and find myself once again face-to-face with Death, a few half-conjured excuses already forming on the tip of my tongue.
Triumph swept over me as I recognized the Garden tapestry next to my door. I had made it. But as I picked up my skirts and rushed forward, a low crackling noise broke the stillness, and a whoosh of pressure strong enough to pop my ears hit me as a wall of fire appeared across the hall, blocking me from my door. I slapped my hand over my mouth to stifle the scream. This must be an illusion, a trick of the house. I would not scream and have Death saving me again. I turned to escape the way I’d come—and another wall of fire appeared behind me.
I was trapped.
The heat on both sides rolled over me, blistering my face and hands and softening the silver threads in my dress.Don’t be fooled, you can die in his house, I heard the old woman’s voice echo in my thoughts. Throwing my cloak over my face, I tried to think of what to do. But there was nothing. I was too naive, too unlearned. I could not think of any magic to help in a crisis.
I was going to die like Valerie. The way I had seen in my nightmares. I fell back against the tapestry-covered wall, gasping for air. I tried to scream, finally, but that, too, was swallowed by the dull roar of the fire. The tapestry curled around me. It had only been seconds, and the firewalls met. My cloak burnt away. My clothes. It all became fire.
This was hell. The eternal burning, the fire that did not end. Valerie had been condemned to hell by her neighbors, not by God, and now I was there too. My eyes dried and popped like heated sand had been poured over them, but still the vision did not end. The agony of being burnt and never relieved by Death.
Oh, Death, where was thy sting? Grave where was thy victory? My skin blistered and flaked off like wet ash in the fire. The fire ate until the sinew and muscle on my arms was exposed in raw torment.
Out of that raging inferno,sheappeared.
She moved behind the flames—her white dress billowing with the heat, fingers blackened, black hair long and twisting in the roar of the furnace. I tried to call for help. I tried to reach my arm toward her, beseeching—but my body was stuck, melted and charred and unable to move. She stood through the fire, watching it with a grim, stern face. I thought, in a far-off kind of way, that she looked like me.
No, shewasme.
I was dead and there was no peace in it. I had become a ghost. A profound unending pain opened inside me—worse than even the pain in my body. The fire twisted around my bones, and my ghost disappeared.
I was alone in my suffering.
I was alone.
The fire winked out.
I collapsed on the carpeted floor in the empty hall. My body was whole, my skin smooth. No sign of fire or smoke or the ghost in the flames. I crawled the rest of the way to my room, shutting myself firmly inside.
XVII.
The Call of the Void
Islept for two straight days. Mercifully, I did not dream.
On the third day, I managed to open my eyes without going rigid with terror. I felt strong enough to bathe and eat before sinking back into the fresh linens and blankets to float on the changing blue light. He came, at one point, to check on me and whisper to come to his chambers when I was ready. I fell asleep in the hazy afternoon light, warm and content that I had not made him angry.
Whether I fully recovered or whether I found myself eager to return to his side, I woke the third day determined to feel like myself again. I bathed, ate, and dressed myself in a warm dress that had been laid out, made of fine red wool with silken ties. After braiding my hair and donning a black veil, I made my way to Death’s chambers.
“You are luminescent in the color of blood,” he said when I curtsied at the threshold. “I’m glad to see you’ve recovered.” He welcomed me with a chaste kiss to my hand. “Maybe we are going about this the wrong way.” Still holding my hand, he led me to a small, tidy desk he had arranged opposite his.
I blushed, stuttering out my thanks and something inane about my willingness.
“Sit. I have much work for you, if you are willing,” he said as he set out piles of books and scrolls.
I was apprehensive at first, but he assigned me the task of translating into French and transcribing his notes into one massive book of magic—his grimoire. It was familiar work, much the same as I’d done with the Mother Superior. It was also the arcane knowledge I’d longed for, to save Rochelle, rather than stories from madmen.Not so mad, my mind whispered, thinking of the soot-covered walls of the château. But I pushed that aside.
And so began my education in magic.
