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I stared at the woman, Death’s magic thrumming within me. This proximity would be enough to hold the power back. The hunting and closeness always was at first, but something urged me forward. My own mind, potentially. Fear of capture after being subdued twice. If I didn’t end her life and wound up imprisoned by the king, the madness would consume me. I no longer had the precious luxury of time. She’d have to die today.
A prick of anticipation struck me. That power coiled around my muscles as I looked for another way but found none. I waited for the old couple to wander down the street before leaping into the alley behind Arabella. At first, she paid me no mind, likely assuming I was just a beggar or otherwise. And I wished I could have been. I wished the daylight didn’t have to see the stain on my soul. But wishes were for dreamers, and my dreams conjured nightmares.
I stepped onto the sidewalk, pulling the dagger. Sheer force of will shoved me back into the alley. I pushed my spine against the wall. Sucking in three sharp breaths, I moved again, creeping up behind Arabella, wrapping my hands around her mouth and dragging her backward. She kicked and screamed, and the old gods knew I wanted to cater, to cave to the begging. I wanted to be more than what I was damned to be.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
She went rigid, only then putting together who’d taken her. I should have pushed the knife home and ran, but she deserved a moment. It was the only thing I could give her, if not the peace of a death in her sleep.
“Please,” she managed. “Please, I have to take care of my mother. She’s… She’s sick.”
My stomach roiled. My fingers loosened on the blade. I was a monster. Her monster. Her nightmare.
“Before you die, do you know anything about the Life Maiden?”
“No. I swear it. No one has seen her, please. I’ll pay you,” she pleaded, turning to face me as my grip loosened. “I don’t have much, but I’ve got a bit. I’ve been saving to find us a home. You can have it.”
I shook my head, fingers instinctively caressing the mask on my face to make sure she couldn’t see the tremble in my façade. I was a killer.
“I can?—”
The blade across her throat was a clean cut. So clean that for just a moment, it looked as if it hadn’t happened at all. Only when her eyes widened, and the scarlet blood poured from the fresh wound, did I look away. She gasped. They always gasped. The only consistent thing in my life, beyond my title as Death Maiden.
It took him longer to come this time, but when Death appeared in broad daylight, I held my chin high, my eyes narrowed, and said nothing as he kissed my cheek and wrenched the harvested soul back to his court. His collection.
Exhausted, I stood in that alley for what must have been hours. The world passed by in a blur, hardly anyone paying any mind to the body of Arabella Grenwich. They’d looted her papers, and someone had tried to steal her shoes before they eyed me standing vigil. But she lay alone. Just like me.
These moments of desolation had defined me for so long. I felt as though my life was just happening around me, and I was nothing more than a pawn for the villain, an enemy for the masses that saw him as a god, and a victim of myself. I’d lost control of everything.
Staring down at the vacant face of the woman I’d murdered, I realized whatever my plight, it could’ve been so much worse. And I could let myself be a victim, or I could fucking rise. And I wanted nothing to do with the bottomless pit of my own emotions.
Forcing my legs to move beyond the exhaustion that rattled me within the abyss of spent magic, I shoved my arms under Arabella’s fallen body, lifted her from the ground, and walked out. I carried that woman down the middle of the godsdamned street, eyes and whispers and shouts of horror be damned as I moved. They would have sooner seen her rot than do the same, and I was not like them, despite the things they thought they all knew about me.
She grew heavy by the time I got to the empty bridge at Perth. Heavier so by the time I made it to Tolliver’s Pointe. But that was my own burden to bear.
“Fredrik?” I called, kicking on the door of a house nearby.
When the man, who had to be nearing his hundredth year, inched the door open, I gave him three seconds to take it all in before the door shut in my face; a chain could be heard sliding out of its locking mechanism, and he joined me on the crumbling step.
He slipped a hat onto his head and let his wrinkled face fall only inches. “Put her in the wagon, Maiden. What’s the name? For the stone.”
“Arabella Grenwich. She has a mother somewhere that’ll be worried.”
He nodded, pulling on his gloves. I hated to burden the old man with digging a grave, but as I dropped two coins into his hand, I knew he needed those as much as the next person.
“There’s another bag of coins in her apron. Make sure her mother gets them.”
He sighed, using immense effort to creep down the step. “Yes, Maiden.”
It was rare that I delivered a body to the grave keeper. Rarer so when it happened in broad daylight. But those who watched never followed, anyway.
From Tolliver’s Pointe, I could see the turrets and battlements of my father’s castle bathing in the last few moments of daylight. I found myself ambling down that familiar road, wondering what I might find, should I walk through the gate. If Regulas would still be there, kissing the ass of whatever nobleman Icharius Fern shoved into my father’s bed, or if he’d tucked tail and run off.
The red lights of the Scarlet District flickered to life, casting the world in Lady Visha’s favorite hue as I faded into the shadows, grabbed a familiar railing, and scaled a vacant warehouse, purely exhausted from my trek and the expenditure of magic.
Lying flat on the roof, I stared up into the starless sky. I could sleep here, but it was only getting colder. I would be too exposed, and I needed to hunt for the Life Maiden. It was important, but it seemed such a massive task when I didn’t even have a bed to crawl into. I had an invitation, though, and that thought lingered in my mind as a familiar voice growled.
“Tell me what you know.”
