Devil's Deal: A Dark Fantasy Romance

41. Silence

This screech is the worst yet. She thrashes until she falls off me, and I grit my teeth, moaning through the pain as I roll up to my knees. My left arm is useless, so I frantically search with my right hand. She doesn’t notice, and keeps rolling on the ground while her scream grows more and more high-pitched.

Finally, I find another nail. And then, my hammer.

Black spots dance across my vision, and I blink repeatedly, but it doesn’t clear them away. I breathe deeply, trying to feed some strength into my unsteady body. I shake so badly, the hammer falls out of my hand. It’s too heavy.

I look at it numbly.

Right. Can’t use a hammer and a nail with just one hand.

I grip the nail and lurch up to stand. The world rocks around me, and I bend over, heaving in deep, calming breaths.

Can’t lose it now. Have to keep going.

A moment later, I’m steady enough on my feet to walk the few steps to the poludnica’s side. I drop to my knees by the thrashing, screeching bies, and climb on top of her when she rolls onto her stomach.

She stills, feeling me on top of her. A pitiful whimper rises from her throat.

“Don’t move, and the pain will end,” I lie, my voice so hoarse, it’s barely louder than a whisper.

But she hears me. When I grip her right hand and yank it from under her chest, she doesn’t resist, her whimpers growing louder, pleading. She doesn’t move when I lay her palm flat on the dry ground, between the wheat stalks.

When I line up the tip of the nail with the middle of her palm, she’s silent.

I press in with my right hand, putting my entire weight into it. The nail goes through her palm and into the ground. She screams so loudly, my ears pop, but the nail’s gone through the dry, loose layer and into the dense one, and it keeps going. I press and press, putting all I have into it, until the nail is all the way through. It’s long enough to keep her palm pinned.

She screeches and struggles against me, but she doesn’t try to yank her palm out. I think the pain must be too great.

She’s trapped. I won.

I heave a sigh of relief and sit on her back, licking my dry lips. Agony rolls through my left side, black spots dotting my vision, but I know it’s not over yet.

Dadzbog is high in the sky. The night is hours away.

“And now we wait,” I tell the poludnica, who whimpers softly like a wounded animal, lying, defeated, under my weight.

I wonder where my bottle rolled off to. My throat is parched, my body weak, and my hat is gone. I’m dying for a cool drink. The idea of sitting here for hours to come, without anything to shade myself with or drink, is excruciating.

But I can’t go home or even move away. One nail won’t hold her if I’m gone. I almost died, for Perun’s sake. I’ll see this through.

And yet, it feels so reckless to sit out in the shadeless field without a hat or water. It’s exactly what I’ve warned people against. I know how deadly the heat can be, especially now when I’m wounded.

But I always finish what I started.

I settle in, gritting my teeth harder and harder to keep myself from screaming. I swear, the pain gets worse with every breath. The wounds pulse with scorching heat, and whenever sunlight falls on my arm, it gets even worse. I try to keep it covered without touching the charred skin. I don’t even look at it. I might puke out what little water is still in my stomach if I do.

I think this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

But despite all that, I laugh under my breath, half-delirious. If the heat of the sun killed me now, it would be the joke of the century. There is a poludnica right here, and she can’t strike me with her powers, but I could still die from the very thing she causes, only slowly. I wonder if Woland would appreciate the irony.

Why didn’t he come?

Time passes, marked by the excruciatingly slow progression of the sun across the sky. I drift somewhere between waking and dream, the bright light burning my eyes, the poludnica’s whimpers burrowing into my ears like worms. The pain pulses in one rhythm with my heartbeat. Weaker, stronger, weaker, stronger…

The certainty of what’s going to happen to me by the end of the day slowly slithers into my mind, and I push it away. Not now. Think of something else.

Time has never moved so slowly before. Maybe that’s the secret of ruling it. Torture, heat, and char.

It’s a pity I won’t get to learn that secret. Or pleasure him in exchange.

Thoughts swirl in my mind, some clear, some so fleeting, I forget them as soon as I think them.

If Woland came to save me now, I’d probably give in. It would be such a relief.

When the day finally crawls into late afternoon, the poludnica stirs, her whimpers growing more desperate. She thrashes weakly, and I manage to stay on top of her despite swaying from exhaustion. It’s hard, but not because she’s struggling. She’s too weak to push me off.

It’s hard because I keep forgetting why I’m sitting on her. What is even the point? I remember for a moment, and then it’s gone, and I have to try so very hard to remember again. I only know it’s important, so I stay.

But I wish I could lie down by her side and ask her why she sang that song. I want to wipe her bloody saliva off her chin and promise her she’ll finally be at peace.

It’s such a strange thing, two beings going off together. Maybe we will hold hands on the way.

I don’t tell her anything. I sit on her, mute and numb, while she weakens further. When the sun nears the horizon, painting the sky in golds and pinks, she grows still, emitting a thin, reedy sound of unquenchable suffering.

I’d sing with you, little one. If only I could.

My throat feels as if someone poured dry sand into it. My arm has grown numb in a way I know is very bad. I wonder who will cut it off now that I’ve chased Czeslawa away? Will Darobor do it for me?

My body grows weightless and detached. I don’t feel much now, not even the pain. My thoughts become more real than my skin, my heart, my flesh. As if I’m getting ready to abandon this mortal shell. My mind gallops toward freedom. I am almost untethered.

The physical sensations come from far away, and it feels like they belong to someone else.

The way my heart beats is so very weird. It’s like it can’t decide on a rhythm. Thu-thump, thump, thu-thu-thump…

Or maybe it’s too late to cut off my arm, I muse, acknowledging the obvious, unstoppable truth that beats out in the slowing pulse of my blood. The necrotic, burned sickness is in my veins, spreading inside my body. Maybe I can’t be saved.

The overwhelming heat finally recedes. A deep cold settles in my stomach, radiating outward. I welcome it. It’s such a relief.

I wonder how Woland will feel when he sees me after. I hope he’ll be sorry, even just a little. I know he doesn’t desire me as a person, just as a tool in whatever war he’s waging.

My breath comes faster, shallower, the air too hot to enter deep into my cooling body. I can’t draw enough. It’s a relief.

And yet, I still hope I matter to him just a bit. Maybe enough to be sad for a few moments when he realizes I am gone for good. Not because he lost a tool, but because he lost me.

I gasp and gasp. My lungs won’t let the air in.

But then, I won’t be gone. I’ll be in Nawie.

Wiosna will box my ears for dying so stupidly.

I can’t wait.

Something in my chest settles and releases. It’s quiet inside. Too quiet.

The moon rises in the east.

The poludnica is silent. I am slumped on top of her, and my heart doesn’t beat, and yet, I am still here. My eyes burn, and yet they see. My ears hear something akin to a roar, coming from far away.

Suddenly, Chors’ mark on the inside of my palm pulses, cool and restful like water in the river at night. I try to raise my hand to look, but it won’t listen. I am just a mind trapped in a body. And my body, which was always so obedient, refuses my control.

Yet, I feel everything. I feel the sickness inside me. It’s in every part of me, little black particles that settle in my organs and float down to the bottom of each vein like silt. Everything is so motionless. So still.

The roar is louder now. The mark on my palm stops hurting.

I try to blink, but of course, my eyes don’t listen. They burn and burn, tears gathering in the corners, but at least, I see.

I see the poludnica crumple to dust under me. I slump forward, my face pressing into the ground. If I breathed, I would draw a lungful of her dust into me.

My being grows thinner, freer. I feel a call to detach and fly. To look at everything from above. To see the world. All the worlds.

And yet, I’m not sure. Should I leave? Or maybe there’s still something worth staying for?

A memory appears in front of me, as clear as if it happened yesterday. Little Jaga when she was twelve, her blood-slicked hands clutching the handle of the sacrificial knife. How scared she is. I wish I could protect her.

The roar is gone, and silence surrounds me. I wonder if my ears stopped working. What even was that sound? But my eyes are still open, though I can’t feel anything. I’m still inside my body, so when someone rolls me roughly to my back, I see the ground falling away, the sky coming into view.

And then it’s not the sky. Woland is above me, his face grief-stricken and scared. He looks so unlike himself, I want to laugh.

He says something, but I can’t hear him. He repeats it, over and over, with such incredible desperation. His eyes are so wide, and they blaze with emotion, but in a cool, pleasant way. Not like the sun’s heat. Not like the pain that tore at me for the last few hours.

The heat in his eyes is good and comforting, and I wish I could smile to show him my gratitude. I’m thankful because the last thing I’ll see is his face.

It’s so expressive. The neutral mask he sometimes has around me is fully gone. He’s so stunning without it. Even more beautiful than Chors.

His expression changes, the grief falling away to reveal something more visceral.

I see the exact moment his fear morphs into rage. Despair evaporates, replaced by resolve. His full mouth presses into a flat line, his eyes narrow with focus, anger swirling in the gold. He puts both hands on my head, but I don’t feel his touch.

And then, I do.

I explode into a thousand shards, fracturing in agony greater than any pain I’ve ever felt.

My body is ripped open, and I become a multitude, pieces of me tearing and tearing and tearing apart, yet all connected by thick, pulsing cords of vicious suffering. They spring back and form the shape of my body. Each particle is so tiny. Each place where it touches another hurts with impossible agony.

I am an intricate patchwork of torment, sewn together with fire. But the pieces don’t fit together, and so I’m ripped apart again, becoming a mist of bloody pieces, and put together again, and it doesn’t fit, and I scream but I have no throat, and I weep but I have no eyes.

It happens over and over, my being ripped apart and rearranged, and the adhesive holding my body in one whole is pain. I lose count of how many times it happens. It’s an eternity. A torture that will never stop, never fade. I soak, drown, submerge in pain.

Sounds drift to me in the brief moments when I’m whole. They are words, and I should understand them, but I don’t.

“A bit more.”

“Brave girl.”

“I’ll save you.”

If I had a body and felt this kind of pain, I’d lose consciousness or die. But I am dead already. There is nowhere to go but here. Nothing to feel but pain.

It’s all red, the world bathed in blood, and it’s my blood, a flood of it drowning the fields. Again, I’m torn and sewn together. Again, the pieces don’t fit.

Again. Again. Again.

“You’re almost there.”

“I’ll take care of you.”

“Live for me.”

I open my eyes with a gasp. The air feels intrusive, unwelcome in my lungs, so I cough and cough, somebody’s hand on my back, their body curved around mine. I choke on my coughing, and then I’m forced to take another breath, and it hurts just like the first.

I squeeze my eyes shut, and they ache, and I clench my fists, and they respond with pain. But it’s nothing like it was before. This pain is but a trifling.

“Easy. Small breaths. Easy now.”

The words are simple, and I realize I understand them. My mind seems to be working. Slowly, I open my eyes a fraction. It’s dark, but a golden glow, like candlelight, surrounds us. I look at my lap where my hands rest. I wiggle my fingers, and both hands respond. I am whole.

The next breath hurts a little less. And the next one, too. Soon, I’m breathing continuously, my heart thudding in my chest, strong and even.

I’m not even dizzy.

“There. Can you hear me? Can you see?”

Slowly, I raise my head. I’m sitting in Woland’s lap, my head leaning on his chest, his arms curled around me. He sits on the ground, and we’re not hidden among his shadows. We’re in the wheat field, and the moon is so high in the sky.

A circle of illuminated orbs, their light golden and warm, surrounds us. I imagine if anyone saw us from afar, it would look like an apparition.

“How long was I dead?” I ask, and my voice is so scratchy, I immediately cough again.

My chest hurts from all the coughing. Everything feels… tender. Like new skin under a scab.

“Not long.”

I look up. His face is perfectly neutral, the mask firmly on. I have a shadowy memory of seeing him without it, of seeing him in pain… But it’s blurry and soon trickles out from my mind, just like water would trickle out from my cupped palms, the faster the more I tried to hold it.

So I forget. Maybe it was a dream.

“You didn’t come.”

This time, my voice is surer, but my throat still burns. Like my vocal cords are unused to speaking. Maybe they are. Maybe he made me anew. I reach up to my left arm, and there is only smooth, healthy skin under my fingers.

I realize I’m naked.

“I was in a battle,” he says through clenched teeth. “I came the moment I felt you die.”

“Oh.”

I’m silent for a moment, trying to gather my thoughts, but they are slippery. It’s as if my mind, too, is reborn. Like it has to learn how to think all over again. Finally, I have a thought that seems clear enough to speak.

He said once he hated watching his friends bleed out.

“But if you left, will they be fine?” I ask. “Your people.”

A low growl reverberates in his chest, vibrating against my cheek.

“I don’t know. I don’t fucking care.”

His vehemence makes me shiver and curl against him. He releases a long breath through clenched teeth. His arms, which tightened around me in his anger, loosen by a fraction. He still holds me, though. He doesn’t have to. I can sit on my own. I could probably walk.

“I called for you,” I whisper.

Another long breath. Another tightening of his hands, his claws denting my bare flesh, and another conscious moment of release.

“I know. I should have realized you wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t your last resort. I should have come at once.”

I sigh, settling in. His heartbeat is slow and sure. It sounds like a drum, and I listen to it for some time while he simply holds me.

And I’m not angry. I should be. All this pain, the agony of dying and being brought back, and for what? Because we play this game. He sends a danger to make me scared, I fight the danger to prove I can, he sends another.

He comes and saves me. But when I break and call for him, he doesn’t come. It’s like a badly thought out dance, a horrible tale of mistakes and missed opportunities. What is even the point?

My body feels sensitive but aches less now. I settle into myself, breathing deeper, feeling more.

“How did you do it?” I ask, not really expecting a straight answer.

He huffs. His hand strokes up my arm, so gently, my skin covers in gooseflesh, and settles on the side of my head. He strokes my hair. It’s loose, my braids undone, my pins gone, just like my clothes.

It makes me wonder where they went, but maybe it’s only reasonable my body is completely bare. From what it felt like, he tore me into pieces and put me back together so many times. Clothes would only hinder that process, I think.

But how does he know he did it right? Do all my pieces really fit? Or maybe he was tempted to switch some things around.

“I am a god. I can do many things. This was nothing.”

I’m not disappointed by the evasive answer, because it’s exactly what I expected. Yet, a weak flame of anger and hope bursts to life in my chest.

“What else did you change?” I ask, my voice husky with emotion.

He is silent. I try to sit up straight, but he growls and presses me closer. Like a dog with a bone.

“What else?” I hiss, unable to stand that current of hope and trepidation.

“Nothing,” he finally answers. “You’re exactly as you were. Only unhurt.”

Unhurt.My fingers trail down my stomach, and I hold my breath, feeling, seeking…

The air rushes out of me, and I slump against him in defeat. The scar is still there, the skin dented and uneven, slightly tender to the touch. That means he only healed my fresh wounds, not the old ones.

It’s a strange mix of emotions, that relief and violent disappointment. I take in a too-fast breath, releasing it quickly. His hand stroking my hair stills.

“What’s wrong?”

But he won’t give me answers, and I don’t owe him any, either.

“Everything,” I answer simply. “All of it is wrong. I died.”

He makes a soft sound of agreement. “I know. Which is why we’ll do things differently from now on.”

He straightens, his hands sliding off me. I sit up, looking at his face. Before I understand what he’s doing, he gently holds my chin with his thumb and forefinger, tipping my head up, lowering his face to mine. I expect him to kiss me, and he does, but not on the mouth.

His kiss lands on my chin, right underneath my lower lip. He kisses me the same way he did in my cottage, except now, there is a brief moment of heat, a whisper of magic against my skin. When he moves away, he looks at the spot he kissed in evaluation, his thumb tracing the place. I gasp when his touch gives me a prickle of pain.

“What did you do?” I ask, wary and tired.

So very tired.

“What I should have done from the start,” he says, resolve burning in his eyes. “Sleep, Jaga.”

Shadows whirl around us, and suddenly, we’re no longer in the field but in my cottage. He lays me on my bed, and even though I feel like I should stop him and ask questions—so many questions—my eyelids lower, and deep inertia fills my limbs.

Before he leaves, he says something that sounds like, “You’ll never die again.”