I could not bear the idea that I had become so desperate for power that I might have traded even my very soul. I hated the sickening lurch of my stomach knowing that, at this point, my scars could not be undone. But even more so, I could not bear that Perchta might see what I refused to. After all, there was nowhere in the world for someone such as me—nowhere except by his side. Anger surged up my spine. This was a fight I wasn’t willing to fight.
Renaud and I were making something powerful together. Something different.
Valerie had not held the power to keep us safe. Neither had I, the night Rochelle was taken from me. But it could be different now. I understood now what Renaud had meant when he spoke of peddlers and witches and the kind of magic he was trying to teach me. He’d been right all along.
Without a word, I stood and turned and stalked into the forest.
Perchta did not try to stop me, and before I’d even left the grove, I heard the swing and thump of her hoe into the ground as she resumed her work, which made me even more irritated. Was I not even worth fighting for?
My mind was crowded, and I had to stop and take deep breaths to clear my head and find my way back, so I fixed my mind on Renaud’s quarters, his study, the smell of his books and the parchment. The scent of iron and blood mixed into my mind, and I thought again of those keys.
As if unlocked, the forest opened before me. My path home took far less time, and as evening fell, I stepped through my little stone gate.
I knew Renaud had returned the moment I crossed the threshold. I immediately flushed with some strange heat of guilt. He had looked for me, I was sure, and found me missing. I didn’t know how I would explain, and with Perchta’s shrill warnings about him in my head, I felt prickly. I tiptoed through the halls and managed to make it to my quarters without seeing him. But I felt his presence pressing against my skin. My chest.
A purple twilight had fallen outside, bathing my blue room in bruise-shaped shadows. Stripping off my sweat-stained dress with its burrs and seeds and streaks of summer grass on the skirt, I threw it aside. The tub was full and waiting with cool jasmine-scented water, and I slid in, eager to rid myself of the edginess buzzing under my skin.
I had just wet my hair when Renaud walked in, not bothering to knock. I covered my chest with my hands, but he didn’t pause for any modesty, just stalked to the side of the tub and sat in the chair beside it, long legs splayed and masterful.
“How goes the business of Death?” I asked coolly, dropping my hands from my chest. If he wasn’t going to act affected, then neither would I. I ran my hands through the water, not looking at him. I wanted to ask if he had delivered my letter to Dacia, but I did not want to remind him I depended on him for anything.
He didn’t answer, though I felt the intensity of his gaze settle on me. Aware of my audience, I picked up the soap and linen and began to wash.
“You were so wild when you came here,” he said suddenly.
I glanced over, meeting his gaze, dark and smoldering. The fading light had fallen and the angles of his face were a weapon so sharp and beautiful only the gods could have forged it.
“Raw and feral. Fragile,” he said.
“I was frozen when I first came,” I said. I was annoyed at his demeanor. I was annoyed at his locked bedchamber. I was annoyed that it felt like he only wanted to see me struggle.
“You were powerful when you first came,” he said with a touch of reprimand in his voice.
I hadn’t felt powerful. But I remembered the ferocity in my desire to live, and I remembered the cut on my palm from the thorns and the voice in the cold. I remembered, too, the way Renaud had brought me back to life and had hidden his splendor until I was safely in his home as his pupil. “I became powerful here.”
He gave me a smile, slow and tinged with a terrible cruelty. But I knew he was not. For he had cared for me and taught me and been devoted to me. His cruelty was only the mask Death wore. The mask the gods gave him to wear.
I alone knew the man beneath Death.
The fires were banked in my room from the heat and no candles or lanterns had been lit, yet his dark eyes somehow seemed to hold the last of the evening sun over the mountains, glinting in the moody blues of the darkening room. “And you have only just begun,” he murmured. “Wehave only just begun.”
A thrill raced down my spine, making gooseflesh on my arms and shoulders. He seemed to always know exactly what I needed most to hear. I didn’t care even if he had destroyed more powerful women than me, as Perchta had accused. He was not going to destroy me. We were doing this together. I ducked my head to hide my smile.
“If you’re committed,” he finished.
I kept my smile pinned and busied myself with scrubbing all hints of that lightning and dirt magic out from under my fingernails. Why did he continue to doubt me? “I’m committed,” I said firmly, quietly.
“How can you be?” He shrugged and looked away from me, out the three-paned window that overlooked the dark forest. The cut of his cheek flexed in the shadows. “You never stay focused on your tasks. You wander away.”
“Am I a prisoner that I can’t leave? That I can’t enjoy the forest?” I asked, thinking I might trap him.
“You are free to go.” He swept his hand toward the last bit of purple light touching the tips of the firs. “You are no prisoner. Leave me. Return to whoring, if you wish!”
There was a long moment of silence before I finally said with as much dignity as I could muster, “I have no intention of leaving.”
“I don’t want you to leave either,” he said. “I want you to focus. To stay strong. To become even more powerful.” He stood up and took my chin in his hand, forcing me to look at him. “It is hard to escape how beautiful you are,” he said.
The compliment caught me off guard. I was desired, I knew that. Butbeautiful? Desired was from the earth, from the groin, it was quickly satiated and forgotten; but beauty was a higher feeling, beauty was inspiration and longing. Great work was created in the name of beauty, while things were only destroyed in the name of desire. I looked up at his eyes, seeing myself reflected as a magician, powerful, beautiful, and strong. A consort of Death. To be that reflection? I would do anything. I would give up anything. Even my freedom.
