Chapter 8
Gaetano
My harvest’s whole expression changes. Shadows dance across her soft features, as if ghosts have slithered out of the picture.
“Where did you get that?” she snaps, not taking her attention off the yellowing photograph in my hand.
I raise an eyebrow at her sharp tone. The Little Baroness has yet to understand that she’ll be expected to mind her manners around me. “You didn’t know it’s tucked away in the cupboard beneath all your childhood diaries?” I ask innocently.
The sound of her teeth grinding is audible as she clenches her jaw.
I examine the three faces in the Christmas picture.
A beautiful blonde woman, a younger version of the one who was just in the room.
A broad-shouldered man, wrapping an arm protectively around her.
And in front of them stands a girl about nine or ten years old.
Long copper hair frames a smile so wide it almost hurts.
All three are wearing Christmas sweaters, and behind their heads towers a lavishly decorated tree.
I trace the girl’s features with my finger. “You were a cute kid. What happened?”
“Don’t touch the photo!”
She crosses the distance between us in a few swift steps, snatches the photo from my hand, and sets it face down on the desk.
I follow the movement with interest. This isn’t the first time I’ve toyed with someone’s sentimental keepsake.
Usually, when they retrieve it, they clutch it to their chest, cherishing it, as if that sole action could bring back the past it holds.
Her? She keeps the memory at a distance, face down.
Just like she buried it in the cupboard—out of sight, but not gone.
I wonder if she’s not shielding a cherished memory but hiding one that consumes her.
Why keep the photo at all? Why not toss it, burn it, destroy it? Another weakness worth studying.
I stroll to the shelf lined with framed pictures. Friends, fleeting moments, maybe half-forgotten stories. No sign of her parents. Interesting… Among the photos lie perfumes and plush toys. Trinkets that remind me I’m in a girl’s room.
Madeline’s curse robbed me of the simplest pleasures, of the thrill of discovering something new, alive, and unknown. Every encounter with my harvests is a small celebration for the senses, a moment to escape the dullness of my exile. Call me a voyeur, but I enjoy rummaging around.
People’s belongings reveal what their mouths never will. Here, her room’s neatness screams of an obsession with order, but the small objects—the toys, the perfumes, the photos—hint at another story. Maybe one she’d rather forget.
Because of her need for control, I already know how irritated she’ll be when I run my hand over her things.
My fingers slip along the smooth surface of the shelf, brushing against anything that seems personal enough to disturb her order.
A few books, arranged perfectly. A small glass figurine that appears to be begging for displacement.
I give it a gentle nudge, just enough to shift it out of place, and the tension in the room begins to simmer.
“Stop touching my things!”
My hand freezes on the shelf. The Baroness has a temper that makes the game more entertaining. I rather enjoy the ones who fight back. Breaking them becomes so much sweeter.
I teleport in front of her in less than a second.
She gasps and stumbles backward, hitting the wall. I close the gap between us until I can smell her rose perfume mingled with the scent of fear. My voice drops to a dark whisper. “Rule number one.”
Her eyes widen.
I move closer to her ear. The nearness of female flesh caresses my senses, and warmth creeps across my skin in the form of a fleeting spark. The magic in my veins stirs in a manner I have long forgotten.
It has been years since I last had a real lover. And even longer since I met a woman as defiant as the Little Baroness. In the days when I was free, I would have taken great pleasure in subduing that rebelliousness.
I inhale her perfume and imagine breaking her in my hands, but the vision fades fast.
Instead, fury builds inside me, and the weight of my cursed fate weighs heavy on my shoulders.
Madeline stripped away everything that once gave me happiness.
She left me longing for lost opportunities, doomed to reach out to human women who are far beneath me.
Because that’s what my harvests usually are—ignorant humans who don’t possess a shred of magic.
“I give the orders. Push me one more time, and there will be consequences.” I press my palm to her forehead. Nicole tries to pull away, but all she succeeds in doing is trapping herself between my body and the wall. “See your future, Baroness.”
I project an image of my castle into her mind: tall stone walls cloaked in darkness that even the wall sconces can’t chase away. It’s more than just a play of light and shadow.Darkness is woven into the very fabric of the castle.
“Where… are we?” Nicole’s pupils dilate into black dots. In this moment, she’s blind to the reality of her own world.
“In my castle. A fortress born of magic, existing in a realm of its own, accessible to no one but me. And, of course, to the inhabitants. Look carefully. They’re the shadows with strange shape. Dark figures unlike anything you’ve seen before.”
Her blank face remains unmoved, but her pink lips part, drawing my gaze. Their fullness is tempting. They hold in a half-curve, and I know she has seen what I wanted to show her.
“Are those… are those people?” Her whisper is so faint it nearly dissolves into the air.
“Souls, Baroness. But don’t be fooled into thinking they’re anything special. They’re nothing more than a reminder of the cost of failure. Look at them. They were once like you.”
“Stop! I don’t want to see anymore…”
“Just a moment…” I say, before offering her a glimpse of my wall. The inscribed numbers. The countdown.
290.
I withdraw my hand from her forehead, breaking the magic’s hold. She blinks several times, seeming unable to believe that everything has disappeared. Then she straightens her shoulders, trembles as she adjusts her hair, and lifts her chin. “Was that thing with the voices the first trial?”
My lips stretch into a wide smile. I can smell the fear pulsing through her veins, despite her efforts to maintain composure. Watching their courage melt away when they come to understand there’s no escape amuses me more than anything.
“The first trial is the riddle I sent you for your birthday.”
She frowns. “But that’s not fair. I’ve already overcome one trial!”
“That was merely to reclaim your voice. I never forced you to do it.”
She clenches her fists at her sides, and her chest rises. I welcome the anger of my harvests. It adds a particular flavor to our games.
“I expect your answer in four days,” I say.
I recognize the spark of resolve in her features. It’s the gleaming fire that accompanies the first spark of self-deception. When most begin to believe they have a chance. That they can overcome my tasks. Might even outsmart me.
Excellent.
The thrill of the game to come rushes through my veins. I want her frightened enough to fight for her freedom. Deluded enough to believe she could defeat me.
I want her to play along. Otherwise, it gets boring fast.
Before she can say more, I teleport away. Every type of magic needs occasional recharging. Following the harvest bond and stepping into the world drains a great deal of mine. I already feel the weakness creeping in as I head back to the castle.
My first task is to check whether the protections around the realm are holding. I scan the area with my senses, tuning into the threads of magic. The wards are intact.
I wasn’t entirely truthful when I told Nicole that only I and the souls could access the castle. Madeline knows how to find it, too. After all, she created it with her curse. And to ensure she never crosses its threshold uninvited, I built something of my own—magical wards designed to keep her out.
The only drawback is that they demand a significant portion of my energy to hold. The exhaustion is worth it. The witch might’ve stopped caring about me long ago, but I can’t risk her discovering how close I am to the end.
* * *
I’m greeted by shadows drifting in chaos. If I peer into the blurred outlines of their bodies, I might recognize their faces, the beings they once were, before I stripped them of everything. Every soul harvested is a drop in the chalice of my liberation.
But today, the only thing I see in them is Nicole. I imagine drawing strength from her soft skin, erasing the girl in that photograph—the person she was before life messed with her and she became the Baroness. I imagine her as just a silhouette inside my castle.
As I picture myself taking her soul, another image comes to mind. Her eyes, a molten caramel, a flame I will extinguish once and for all.
Madeline forced me to become this: a man who extinguishes fires rather than stoking them.
I brush the thought aside. This is how it starts—with distraction, with flashes of weakness.
It’s either me or them. I touch the cold wall with the tips of my fingers, as though it were a lover I’m trying to cajole with a caress. My mind drifts back five hundred years to a different castle, and the instant the curse fell upon me…
A living wave of laughter and revelry swept across the walls, filling every corner of the castle. The grand hall trembled with dancing, the flames of a thousand candles bathing it in light.
Madeline insisted on leaving a mark on her guests—not a memory, but a legend of a feast. That’s why she always kept me at arm’s length. The man who transformed ordinary nights into spectacles.
After some of her balls, stories of what had transpired in her castle spread for months, passing from person to person.
Guests talked about the dazzling games, unlike anything they’d ever experienced.
Sometimes I sparked their imagination with passion; other times, I paralyzed their minds with fear.
It was like attending a movie, but instead of sitting in the safe front row, you became the main character, with no escape before the final credits roll.
I didn’t just create entertainment; I shaped nightmares and dreams, blurring the line between reality and illusion.
There was no finer architect of games than I.
Nor a more skillful manipulator during the negotiations held over glasses of wine.
While Madeline shone from her central seat at the table, I whispered into her opponents’ ears, planting words that wrapped around their minds like webs and became their own ideas.
I was an indispensable weapon in her court, and she knew it.
Many witchers could enhance the magic in their blood through dealings with the Higher Powers, but the mind, now that’s something you’re born with.
And mine was what Madeline valued most, along with my ability to read the true nature of beings.
Their most cherished dreams. Deepest secrets. Darkest fears.
The only one. I failed to read that night was Madeline.
By the time I felt the black veins of magic weaving into my muscles, slowing my vital functions, it was already too late. My body succumbed to the dark energy spreading with every beat of my heart.
If illusion was my domain, then control over the body was hers.
She rose from her seat, the flowing veils of her pale blue gown swirling around her like a blaze of ice. The music fell silent, as if magic had frozen the strings of the instruments. Sounds faded into a tense hush, and the light dimmed.
“The game is over, il mio giullare,” Madeline said.
My joker.
My barely functioning muscles managed enough tension to form a frown. Years of performances and games for her guests, dozens of manipulations carried out in her name, all to be called a mere joker?
I clenched my jaw. Not that I could speak in my current state, but to justify myself would have been beneath me. I already looked pathetic enough—a puppet on strings, left at the mercy of its puppeteer.
Madeline circled the table with movements so fluid they resembled some kind of ritual.
She held the veils of her dress with graceful nonchalance, yet every step was laced with menace.
The light vanished altogether, the colors of the hall fading to a gray hue.
A magical veil descended from above, severing us from the rest of the world.
“Because of you, the Cantoni family withdrew from my little project. And they’re not the only ones you tried to sway. Are you playing the saint, Gaetano?”
Every muscle in my body screamed, but I refused to yield. Silence was my way of showing her I was no puppet, no matter how much she wished me to be.
A smile spread across her lips—one that held me tighter than any spell she had ever cast. “Since you’re so eager to play the altruist,” she said, “then I shall prove to you that you’re quite the opposite. I’ll give you the chance to atone for your sins in a manner befitting your artistic nature.”
She moved closer, and the veils of her dress fluttered around her like living creatures, hungry for flesh.
“Three hundred souls, Gaetano. You’ll collect three hundred souls for me.
You’ll deceive them, break them. Bind them into a contract with no escape.
Harvests, stripped of everything, condemned to eternal misery. ”
The energy around us thickened, rising into a black mist that coiled around my body. Each word embedded itself into me as runes branded my flesh.
“From this day forward, you’re a prisoner of your curse, Black Joker.
A prisoner who may leave his cell once summoned.
With each harvest, you shall be free to unleash the full force of your manipulative nature.
” The mist swirled around her. “Eventually, you may even achieve the selfish goal of regaining your freedom. But if even one soul defeats you, you’ll remain trapped within my magic forever. ”