LUNDENBURG 1006
IF I DID NOT reap my first soul by the end of the night, the Mother would destroy me. She would nail me to a bed of seething coals. She would cackle gleefully as the flesh melted from my bones, crack the knuckles on her wretched hands as I begged for mercy that would not come. I would never die, for I was not mortal. The suffering would be agonizing and eternal.
And dawn was but an hour away.
Seek out the moments of life and death , the Mother had said. Listen for the hopeless pleas, the desperate prayers. Look for love, and for the imminent loss of it. There you will find a soul for the claiming.
Yet tonight Lundenburg was at peace, no matter how transient. The savage Viking raids of earlier months had, for now, been vanquished, and the spring warmth had dispelled any lingering spates of winter sickness. The neat rows of thatched houses were quiet as dormice in slumber, illuminated by a supernova’s swirling smear across the night sky. The streets were ripe with the scent of tomato vines and freesia, hayricks and fresh-spread manure, the sour tang of warm bodies, the distant stench of a rat-infested tithe barn.
Not a desperate prayer to be heard.
To the passing eye, I resembled a normal human girl. I wore a simple blue dress and soft leather boots, dark hair falling to my waist in plaits. The devilish ash-tone had faded from my skin as I’d entered the mortal realm, pink as a newborn babe.
But much as I longed to be, I was not a normal human girl. I never would be.
Panic beat in my temples like a pulse as I paced the dirt-packed streets lying in the shadows of ?thered’s palace. I had come of age nearly a moon ago, and yet the new power that thrummed through me remained unspent. Whether through deep-rooted reluctance or genuine ineptitude, I had wandered the streets night after night and returned to the Underrealm empty-handed.
It was as though I was unlike the other devils in some fundamental way. They had a hunger for it, a marrow-deep thirst that only human souls could slake. They showed no morsel of mercy or regret as their victims burned on the coals to save their loved ones. I, on the other hand, possessed the single worst trait it was possible for a devil to possess: empathy. I felt human pain in my own flesh and sinews. Felt my heart beat like theirs in a place there should have been no heart at all.
Almost as though I had a soul of my own.
I knew in my bones that I was not meant for this life. All I wanted was to tend to a garden, the way humans did. To dig up earth-rich carrots, and prune pretty pink roses. Perhaps I could mend clothes – I’d always had an eye for fabrics – or eschew the expectations of young women and become an apprentice at the forge. I could join a makers’ guild, or bale hay, or bake bread, or sow wheat, or anything, anything, anything but this.
Indigo rose on the horizon beyond the palace, and I knew my time was about to run out.
As I stooped defeatedly past a low stone church, an echoing sob – louder than it should have feasibly been – lifted out of a tiny window. The sound plucked at the strings in my chest. There was a desperate timbre to the cry, something visceral and resonant that tugged at me, and all of a sudden the Mother’s counsel made sense.
Look for love, and for the imminent loss of it.
All my crooked instincts told me this was the moment.
I had to act, before I convinced myself otherwise.
Inside, the church was cooler than the night air, and I shivered as my eyes adjusted to the dim light. The space carried the scent of stewed lamb and buttered cabbage. Perhaps there had been a spring feast. In the corner, I picked out a lone sickle propped against the stone wall.
A young man – twenty at most – hunched in a pew with his head in his hands. Beside him, a candle sputtered at the wick, casting him in strange shadows. He had blonde hair to his shoulders, a badly patched brown tunic, and all the sloping contours of a man weighed down by grief.
I walked softly up the aisle and slid into the pew behind him. The candle reeked of melting fat. He sobbed desperately, muttering a frantic litany of please please please . He had not heard me approach.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, for lack of a better introduction.
He jerked in the pew, swivelling to face me, and I felt a prickle of shame at disturbing such a vulnerable moment.
Recovering as fast as he could, he sniffed and pressed the heel of one hand into his eye socket. ‘My sister is gravely sick. She has not long left.’
He did not seem perturbed by the sudden appearance of a stranger in his midst.
In his palm was a dark bezoar stone, which he rolled rhythmically between his fingers. Tears slicked down his cheeks in glistening rivulets, soaking into the thin golden beard tufted at his jaw.
Foolish , I thought with a devil’s distance, it is all so foolish, to love and be loved, knowing it will always end like this , and yet I yearned for it more than I yearned to breathe.
‘I am sorry,’ I said, and I was.
‘Beorma is but a child.’ His voice was low, hoarse, as though speaking hurt. ‘Our mother died birthing her. Now her sacrifice was for nothing.’
‘All sacrifices are, in the end,’ I replied. ‘But humans make them regardless.’
‘She was born in a caul,’ the man whispered. ‘It is supposed to bring good fortune. A lucky talisman. And now … it is not fair or right.’
Silence rolled out between us, and there was only the distant scratch of an apple tree against the church wall. A framed painting near the altar depicted a reptilian winged figure with twisted features and long, cruel fingers. Below the imagery was a cautionary passage: ‘Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion, your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.’
All of a sudden, the young man let out an almighty roar, a clap of thunder that vibrated through the bones, and then hurled the bezoar stone at the stoic wooden cross. The echoes of his yell reverberated long after it had rolled to a stop on the stone floor.
‘I can save your sister,’ I blurted out, my voice not the clipped cold of the other devils, but instead a painfully human fumble. Too much gravel in the throat, too much emotion in the words.
Breathing ragged, his pale brows knitted anguish and confusion together. ‘Are you a healer? You have not even asked what ails her.’
‘I have the power to cure disease, among other things, but only if enough is sacrificed in return.’
An absurd statement, given what I had just said about the futility of martyrdom. But alas.
He shook his head and looked away. ‘If it is gold you seek, I have none. The tithes are already too steep.’
‘Not gold. Something far more valuable.’
The air in the church stilled. ‘What might that be?’
‘Your soul.’
His gaze snapped back to me, and he studied my outline as though seeing me for the first time, the subtle glaze of wine in his misty stare, his teeth stained a bloody purple. ‘Beg your pardon?’
Something sharp hitched in my throat. ‘I can save your sister, but you must suffer immensely for it.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I am already suffering.’
‘Emotionally, perhaps. This is another thing entirely.’
‘I know not what you mean.’ His back had gone rod-straight, his expression sober as a priest.
Now or never.
‘If you agree to let me save your sister, you will be taken to the Underrealm. You will be nailed to burning coals for seven days and seven nights. Your pain will feed the Mother, and allow her to grow stronger. You will not die, nor will you enjoy the sweet release of passing out. You will feel every second of it. And then, for the rest of your mortal days, you will serve the Mother as I do. You will reap souls.’
His expression was impossible to parse. ‘You expect me to believe this?’
I allowed a rich beat to pass. ‘I think you have little other choice.’
Please say yes. I am sorry, I am so sorry, but please say yes.
‘Who are you?’ he asked, face ashen, an awful hope burning in his eyes, and I wanted to die from the shame of it all.
How to answer? The devil would be the closest thing to the truth, and yet my lips would not form the shape of the word. I was born to the Mother; it had not been a choice. My terrible fate had been assigned to me seemingly at random.
This was all some cruel mistake. I was just a girl. A girl who wanted to please her Mother. A girl who wanted to let herself love, and be loved in return. A girl who wanted to live.
The most human things of all.
Grappling with the evil deed I was about to commit, I knew that this innocent person would suffer horribly in order for me to survive, but it would be temporary. If I did not reap his soul, my own pain would be eternal.
Still, an answer to his question did not readily appear, and so I decided to assign myself a name. A real, human name. One that felt right on my tongue, in the aching corners of my chest. One that was close enough to devil that I could argue to the Mother that it had been a simple slip of the tongue.
I swallowed hard, choking back the emotion of the moment. ‘Evelyn.’
He nodded once; an unspoken agreement, a fate sealed, a promise that could never be unmade. A nod that would define a millennium.
‘Arden.’