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“You need to get out of this place, Hanna,” Bell says. “I mean it. And unless you start playing the game—”
“He knows about the game, Bell,” I interject. “You heard him the other night. He knows I’ve been playing it and he especially knows it now since I couldn’t follow through.”
“You are allowed to change your mind,” she says quietly.
“I know that,” I tell her.
“He knows that too,” she says. I glance at her, and she widens her aquamarine Barbie-doll eyes. “What?”
“You are always sticking up for him. After all he’s done to you.”
Her little face falls and I immediately feel bad. Shit. She’s in love with him, isn’t she? The horny little mermaid is in love with Death.
“Hey,” I add softly. “I can’t pretend to know what it’s like to be you. You’re an entirely different species, in a whole other world. We both take imprisonment differently.”
She nods, worrying her lip between her teeth. “It’s not that I forgive him for what he’s done,” she says. “It’s just that I can’t hold a grudge. I just can’t. And I know that you’re going to free me when the full moon comes, so I’m already living in the future. This already feels like the past to me.”
Hell, with the way time is supposedly all chaotic out here, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true.
“Just remember,” Bell says, “your future will come too. And you will want to let go of grudges, so you can truly be free. You’ll be with your father again and this will all seem like some very strange dream.”
My heart clenches at the mention of my father. I’ve been trying not to think about him, because when I do I obsess and drown in a spiral of worry. I don’t know if he’s in the Upper World like Surma had mentioned. I certainly hope so, but at the same time I worry about his memory of all this being gone, which means he might not know what Eero and Noora are really up to. My only hope is that Rasmus made it back home too and will help my father. I know I was just bait to him, collateral to trade, but as long as my father means that much to him, I pray he’ll keep him safe.
“And if you don’t get out of here,” Bell goes on, “it’s because Death would have yeeted you out of here. That’s the word, right? Yeeted? Even Lovia wasn’t sure.”
Fuck. What if that’s what all the snow is about? What if it’s not so much Death dealing with a form of rejection, which must not happen often with a God, but that he’s planning my demise? The snow doesn’t mean he’s upset, it could be a personification of the violence and death to come.
Suddenly there’s a heavy knock at the door. I exchange a harried look with Bell and leap to my feet as she swims to the back of the tank until she’s completely hidden.
I walk to the middle of the room and clasp my hands at my middle. “Come in?” I ask warily. No one has ever knocked before. They always unlock the door first and then barge in.
Now the door opens without unlocking—which means the door was unlocked this whole time—and in steps Death.
“Good morning, Hanna,” he says in his deep voice, his presence flooding the room, bringing with him an air of power and death. “Will you take a walk with me?”
Oh, fuck. I’m dead aren’t I? I’m getting yeeted by his hand.
I glance down at my dress. In my bouts of boredom over the last few days, I’ve tried on everything in the wardrobe. Not everything fits, but some things I rather like. Today I’ve put on a yellow dress with puff sleeves and an empire waist that looks straight out of the Regency era. Since I’ve been lounging, I eschew anything with a corset, which I think are unnecessary evils, a million times worse than a bra.
“You’re fine,” he says to me, nodding at my attire. “It’s a walk through the castle. I’m afraid I can’t do anything about the weather at the moment…” He lets it trail off, as if I’m able to do something about the weather. My god, what if Bell was right?
I stand there, frozen in place, staring at him. Today he’s back to wearing his flowing robe and his skull is more simple, a human one with jagged bones growing out of the top to form a crown, but I can’t feel his eyes the way I normally do. I can’t read anything off him at all except his usual aura of authority.
“You don’t have to come,” he says after a moment, his tone softening. “I only figured you’d been in here for days. Not locked in here, as I’m sure you just realized, but inside this room nonetheless.”
