I couldn’t speak with his hand on my throat. But if I could, I would have saidnow. I would have told him to do whatever he wanted.
“Shall I set you in a snare?” he asked, still holding me. His eyes were dark and brutal, never once straying from my trembling, naked body underneath him. “Or have I already?” He let me go suddenly and stepped away.
I flinched at that cold brutality in his voice, but in that spell I justified it. He needed me to always be the woman on the road, half frozen and near death. A rabbit in a snare. Panting, not with desire, but with fragility and fear. I stayed limp against the desk, waiting and allowing myself to tremble.
I was rewarded.
He came back with the silken red ties like the ones that bound meat the Emperor’s table. Without letting me go, he unwound the twine. A loop of the cord settled over my throat. Over my wrists. Around my thighs and hips, pulling me apart with one tug from him.
As he worked, I relaxed. If I struggled, the cord hurt, but if I stayed limp and heavy, it all supported my body perfectly.Surrender, I heard him say. And I did.
He hung me from the sturdy cross posts of his bed and sat in a chair, shirtless, with the sheen of sweat across his chest, surveying his work. I softly spun in the snare he’d set. My head lolled back, my wrists bound, my legs split wide open and held.
Truly, I had set the snare myself, first in my mind. I made him something greater than he was and did not stop to think about what that meant for the world. But under my own spell, I felt exalted in this form. I had no mind to struggle, and I relished knowing that if I did, I would have pulled tight the cord on my throat and strangled myself within minutes. Every time I swallowed, I felt it tighten. When I opened my eyes, my gaze fell on the upside-down door etched into the stone behind him. The one that locked away his heart. His soul. His deepest secrets. I spun slowly away and closed my eyes, resisting the urge to squirm.Surrender, I reminded myself.
Looking back, I should have known how much power I held, even then. It took a great amount of discipline to stay there like that. To hold the shape of the spell I’d cast over myself so thoroughly, so cleanly, and to hold his entire being inside my working.
I was constantly fighting the urge to scream, to struggle, but the edge of fear made me wetter. My flesh was bound and straining. He had tied the cords in such a way that there was the temptation of pleasure in their movement to entice me to move, if only I was willing to pay the price of pain.
Time slipped away. He watched me for a long time, and I’d fallen into a kind of trance of slow, steady breathing. “Mon lapin,” he murmured as he slid his fingers into the core of me.
I gasped, but the cord on my throat tightened, reminding me where I was. Awareness slipped over my body, and again I had to fight the urge to squirm. I exhaled to regain control. But he was ruthless. Again, his fingers swept deep inside me, tempting me to cry out, to choke myself with my own need. He kept going. Bringing me to a frenzy, and still I forced myself to stay still and limp.
I never ended up regretting it. Not even at the end. For it wasn’t until I hung there that I understood how powerful I might become. He brought me to the edge of that abyss with its other worlds and roiling stardust and then only walked me along the edge. “You’re perfect,” he said at one point, and I knew I could do it. He left me on the edge and did not let me cross. Not until he finally lowered me to the bed and gently loosened my bindings. Then he let me tear off his clothes and pull his staff deep into my body. Release was quick and sweet, and afterward he held my face between his hands. “I will send your threat so that your friends might be saved, even if I defy the will of the gods to do it.”
I did not think of it as a payment, but as a triumph.
IDREAMEDIWAS BACK INRENAUD’S CHAMBERS, SUSPENDEDin the cords, but there was no spell this time. I had no power. I was just hung, like a village prostitute, like game killed in the hunt. And from my upside-down angle, a strange man dragged a young girl through the room by her hair. A cloying trail of blood smeared on the floor in her wake.
I tried to scream myself awake, to scream for Renaud to save me, but each time I screamed, the cord he’d tied to my throat pulled tight, choking me.
The man opened the door set into the stone, and blood flowed out in a seeping river. He dragged the girl inside his beating heart.
I woke with a start, hands flying to my throat, heart racing. The air was cold, and out my window the forest stirred with a northern wind. The giant’s lantern was my only light, throwing long and treacherous shadows over my room. Then suddenly a ball of fire leapt up to the bed and meowed at me.
“Schneid!” I cried, gathering him up and snuggling him. I’d never been happier to see a creature of the otherworld. “I missed you!” And I had, despite his ornery nature. He yowled and twitched but seemed to tolerate my hug. I loosened my grip, and he leapt out of my arms, turning a few circles on the bed by my leg, before settling into a tight little ball of glowing embers, his horns tucked neatly back. But he did not sleep; his lamplight eyes watched me.
By now, the nightmare illusions of screaming women or Renaud’s voice had become so rote I could calm myself quickly when I heard them, but faraway in the house another cry came—but this one made me go very still.
Dacia?
My breath became shallow. I could not look away from the door, my whole body straining to hear. Schneid lifted his head.
It came again but fell away in a faint sob.
How would the house know Dacia’s voice? I pushed back the covers and leapt out of the bed. Schneid followed me in a bolt of fiery light. I had prepared this time. In one hand I grabbed a bundle of dried vervain and mugwort, lighting them with the banked coals. In my other, I took the lantern the forest giant had given me. With a deep breath and the keys in my pocket, I unlocked my door and strode into the dark hallway.
No more screams echoed. No sobs. But I felt certain into the marrow of my bones it had been Dacia’s voice. Dacia’s cry. I headed down the hall, the giant’s lantern lighting my way, Schneid at my side, and the smoke from my herbs clearing my path.
At the end of the hallway, I came to a fork, one I’d never encountered before. Both paths looked the same. For a moment, I wasafraid that the herbs were not working, and I wanted to turn back. But I could not forget Dacia’s scream.
Heartened by Schneid at my side, I chose the right fork. As we went, the fine carpets and the windows and all the tapestries all fell away. Soon I was in a bare stone hallway and the torches burnt low and sickly.
I did not know where in the labyrinthian house I was, weaving my way deep into the heart of the blackened château. I remembered how the house had changed when the old god had appeared in my dream, and my heart raced at the thought. Maybe the god had returned. Maybe all this darkness and terror was because of something I had called into existence.
This thought came so strongly that it stopped me in my tracks, lantern swinging.
Maybe the thing stealing women was some creature I had called. It was me who had hurt Maxime, it was me who had found Death, it was me who had called the old god, it was me who had brought the bandits to Dacia, it was me who had summoned the demon who took my sister. It was my arrival that ultimately saw Valerie burned. My curse. I felt sickened to my core.
