Chapter Thirty-Nine Witch, Ghost, Villainess #3
The Nemeth twins had turned back, though it was not safe, to hear their brother’s voice and see their brother fall. They rushed to cover their bodies with his, trying too late to shield him.
Princess Vasilisa, whose lover had begged her to get out, must be still running.
Good for her, Rae thought. She should ensure Vasilisa’s escape. If Rae ran, the Emperor would chase her.
The Emperor held the heart in his gauntleted hand, with an air almost of bewilderment.
Rae seized her opportunity to use the oath of blood and gold. “I command you to let me go!”
She saw the enchantment in the air, scarlet and gold forming like blood in the water, and light in the dark.
And she saw how little effort it took the Emperor to break the enchantment.
Like blowing out a candle, or tearing a ribbon someone had foolishly believed was a chain.
“You’re not the only one with secrets. You have lightning on a leash, my lady.” He smiled. “A leash I can break.”
Rae said, in the voice of prophecy: “‘Oh I sing the saddest song. What must be, shall be. Show me a hero, and/I’ll write you a tragedy. Tell the tale a thousand ways/Truth remains like a bloodstain. You can never change your fate. It has always been too late.’”
She saw him flinch, as if with remembered pain. As if he knew the rest from dreams.
She leaned in. “Strive for glory, reign on high. Now as in the past. Emperor, I am your doom. Believe me at last.’”
He did believe her, as she had promised him one day he would. He lost his grip, and she did not finish the prophecy of doom. Even now, she couldn’t bear to do that. She tore free and ran, not towards freedom but towards the palace, the Emperor’s furious roar at her back.
She ran knowing he would catch her, ran through whirling shadows feeling his breath on the back of her neck. She raced through that dark, cold stone tunnel with death on her heels.
Nowhere in the Palace on the Edge was safe from the Emperor.
The null stone in the Court of Air and Grace had once stopped Key for an instant, but the courtyard was too far.
She would never reach it in time. She ran for the Maidens’ Tower and up the stairs, breath sobbing out with every step, into her bedchamber.
She threw herself from the shadowed staircase into her room, and slammed the door behind her. She stood panting in her tiny marble hall, vision contracting so she felt she was in a marble vault with stone angels on top. She bolted the door, even though she knew a bolt couldn’t keep him out.
But he slept outside her door every night. Perhaps it would amuse him to wait outside, knowing she would have to give in and go out sometime.
Rae watched as a single metal claw inserted itself into the shadowed space between door and threshold, slitting the air like a knife through a belly, sliding the bolt up.
She whirled into her bedroom, slamming another door shut between them, and stared in terror not at the door but at her bronze mirror.
She remembered the ghoul maid in her room, the dead voice making Rae promises. The bargain she had struck with the Great Goddess.
But it wasn’t the goddess.
Everything came clear to Rae, now it was too late.
The Great Goddess had never controlled the dead in the books. Key was the only one to do that. Now the Abandon All Hope Diamond no longer hung around her neck, Rae remembered Key could have inherited the power of controlling the dead from either parent.
When she called to the gods, the wrong god answered.
She made assumptions, and the god let her.
She called for a god while wearing the God’s Eye, after failing to take it off.
She knew the jewel influenced Key, and brushed off whatever influence it would have on her.
The Great Goddess never spoke to humans with contempt, but the god who answered Rae had.
Once again, Rae had seen only what she wanted to see, heard only what she wanted to hear.
Rae had made the bargain with the Great God, not the Great Goddess.
“You lying bastard,” Rae told the mirror, then dashed the mirror to the ground so her reflection was lost and the mirror hit the stone floor with an empty ring like a gong. No god answered, and there was no time left.
The window in the uppermost chamber of the Maidens’ Tower was the only one not barred.
For only a fool would ever jump out. Rae marched over to the little white bed where Lia had once slept and ruthlessly stripped the sheets, tying them into knots, pulling at them ferociously to see if the knots would hold.
She pulled down the blue curtains and tied them to the bedpost. A rope made of bedsheets and curtains, to escape a tower room.
It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was the only one she had.
Rae crossed the floor with its pearly mosaics showing the high Cliffs of Ice and Loneliness for the last time. She dropped the pale, twisted worm of material out the window, and climbed slowly down as the sparks flew upward in a radiant cascade, dancing scarlet in her sight.
She was almost halfway down when she realized the rope was holding. Within the terror echo-chamber of her heart, Rae felt something like hope creep in.
Then above, she heard the snick of metal, and looked up expecting to see the Emperor with his claws bared.
Instead, she saw Lady Ninell, hanging from her own bedroom window in the Maidens’ Tower, a few floors below Rae’s own. Ninell had a pair of pearl-handled scissors in her hand.
Dread made the tall stone tower seem to tilt and sway, sky and abyss bleeding into each other to form an endless drop into star and flame.
“Please don’t,” Rae begged between barely parted lips.
From this vantage point, she realized Ninell did not look as much like her former friend back home as Rae had thought.
Judging new people by past hurts was foolish.
Rae had believed Key could not value her, because others treated her as worthless.
Rae had believed Glacia could take Lia’s place, the place of a queen Key would love.
She ended up putting Glacia in Ninell’s old place, the place of a queen candidate Key would kill.
Rae had believed Ninell was a coward who wouldn’t dare directly harm her. She now saw her mistake.
Ninell’s dainty pair of scissors snipped, snipped, and snipped away at the twisted rope, until Rae hung by a thread.
Lady Ninell neatly cut the last thread. Rae went tumbling from the tower through the void.