Chapter 16
I read and reread the entry inside the red book, memorizing every word while Bethany continued to whine about it.
Flipping through some of the other pages, I found many lists of other “beings worshipped by Witches.” There was an entry for time deities, nature deities, and deities that controlled beauty and motherhood.
I recognized a few names from mythology and legend, here and there amongst the sloppy text, but none were as intriguing to me as the gods listed on page sixty-one.
Mammy, I really wish you were here to tell me your opinions about all this, I thought, carefully stowing away Nin’s feather in my skirt pocket.
Somewhere deeper inside me, though, I knew very well that even a lapsed Catholic like Cat O’Rinn would never encourage me to explore anything to do with pagan gods and devils.
I was on my own.
My nurse’s watch read eleven thirty p.m. I still have time.
“Bethany,” I said, crawling off the bed. “I want you to stay here in the room.”
“Why? What are you planning? If you’re headed back outside to burn that book, I want to come with!”
“No one’s burning any books,” I said, crossing the room with my nursing lantern.
“Where are you going, then? I thought you said he told you to leave the feather outside the door if you wanted to see him again? You aren’t going to do that, right?”
“I’m not going to do that,” I assured her, snatching up the red book. “Just stay here until I get back.”
With a pounding heart, I cracked open the door to my room and peered down the long, dark hallway.
Nothing moved in the shadows, so I quickly shut the door behind me and made a beeline for the servants’ stairs.
I jogged down them, checked around the corner for any servants—all clear—and headed to the foyer.
The twin marble statues silently faced the front door.
I didn’t recall seeing Artemis or Apollo listed in any of the red book’s pages, but maybe I needed to study it further.
I made my way past them, anxiously looking over my shoulder, before I paused at the copper gate guarding the entrance to the basement crypt.
The gate was closed. Was it locked?
My fingers trembled as I struggled to relight my lantern’s candle. Once the flame caught, some of my anxiety lessened. I closed the hinged glass, took a deep breath, and checked the handle on the gate.
It turned silently. The latch snicked open. I let out a nervous breath and headed inside.
Down the steps I went, hitching up my skirts to avoid tripping.
I passed the hissing gas sconces and turned down the long, empty hall at the bottom, feeling my heartbeat stuttering after every step.
The further I went, the more nervous I became.
Then I got to the end of the hall and had no other choice but to exit into the cavernous dark of the crypt.
This is madness. I shouldn’t be here.
My feet didn’t want to move, but I willed them into action as I held my lantern in front of me.
Every shadow seemed to shift unnaturally as I rounded columns in the dank quiet.
Maybe he wasn’t here anymore. Maybe he’d been moved.
I wanted to call out for him, but I was too afraid.
Had I walked here before, with Bethany? I couldn’t imagine what had possessed me to do so then, much less now.
That strange yet familiar slithering feeling came over me as I stepped around a column where the painted occult symbols started. I didn’t want to go any further, and I couldn’t see anything past my shallow pool of lamplight.
I should go back, I thought. There was nothing here, and I was a fool to have believed—
Somewhere in the shadows, metal scraped the floor.
I stilled.
When I dared to peer around the column in front of me, I found myself looking directly into silver eyes.
Nin stood alone in the dark, his ankle bound in iron and a look of surprise on his face. “You came down here,” he murmured.
“Yes.”
“Why?” he demanded in an angry voice. “I told you to find that—”
I held up the red book. “Found it, read it. And now I’m here to talk about it,” I said. “Should I first bend the knee, Prince of Mourning?”
Silvery eyes blinked several times. Nin’s gaze fixed on the book… then on my face. “I’m not the kind of prince that you bend the knee to.”
“This book says otherwise.”
“It was written two hundred years ago by a madman who tortured both women and men in the name of fear,” he replied. “It would be more accurate to say that I’m the son of important people.”
“Like the Lord of the Dead?”
“Yes.”
He said this so easily, so casually. And by anyone’s standards, logically it was impossible. Yet, here I stood, conversing with a boy who was listed in a book written in the 1600s.
I walked toward him, and he toward me, until the iron chain around the ankle of his boot prevented him from going farther. I stopped a couple of feet in front of him and set my lantern on the floor.
“You were supposed to leave my feather outside your door,” he said in a low, deep voice. “You shouldn’t be down here, Molly.”
“Neither should you, if this book is correct,” I said. “How did you know my mother’s name?”
“I know all names.”
I made a derisive noise in the back of my throat. “Oh, you do, do you? All names in the whole of humanity?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “All that came before and all that are here now, and a few that are yet to be. I helped your mother grieve the loss of her own mother. I also helped her grieve a childhood friend from Kilkenny after she received a letter informing her of her death. I believe you’ve inherited that friend’s ring. ”
Chills ran down my arms. I balled up the hand that wore the claddagh ring.
I could count on two fingers the people who knew the origin of this ring.
One was a close friend of mine from school, but I’d lost track of her when my mom died.
I hadn’t told any of my sister nurses. No one else but my grandfather knew.
He had pawned it last year without my knowledge, and I’d been forced to borrow money and work it off in labor to buy it back.
“Lies,” I accused as a morass of confusion filled my chest. All of Bethany’s demon talk was coming back to me.
“I’ve told you before, I am no liar,” he said in a gravelly voice. “I speak true, Molly O’Rinn, for truth is an essential part of my death duties. When humans grieve, they are at their most vulnerable. It is only in a state of honesty that I can help them, when they are ready to face truth.”
His words settled my nerves a little because I definitely could relate to this in my experience as a nurse. Patients who weren’t honest about their symptoms couldn’t be helped.
“Fine, okay,” I said. “Let’s just say for a moment that I think you’re telling the truth. Why have me risk my position in this household by asking me to steal this book? You could’ve just told me all this.”
“Would you have believed me without proof? You, with that O’Rinn hard head? Don’t look surprised. You’re as stubborn as your mother.”
If he thought he was insulting me, he could think again.
My stubborn mind was one of my best tools.
“All right. Then please, Your Highness, Mister Sad Face, or whatever name you’re calling yourself today, can you just tell me now, honestly, who you are and how you came to be here?
” I said in frustration. “No more books or vague answers. Just tell me who you are!”
“My face is not… sad.”
“Well, my face is going to be sad if you don’t talk to me. Nin, please.”
He stared at me for a long moment, and the light from my lantern flickered across the fine bones of his face.
The hollows of his cheeks were deep pools of shadow.
The truth was, he looked as regal as his name.
Beyond the bloodstained jacket and dusty, torn clothes, he carried himself with pride.
Every move he made, even the gentle tilting of his chin, held a feline fluidity that made my heart flutter inside my chest.
Or maybe that was just anxiety.
His eyes finally dropped and were quickly hidden by a dark fan of lashes.
“I suppose who I am,” he said in a softer voice, “depends on who you ask. I’m called different things in different nations, as you’ve pointed out.
” Silver flicked toward me for a second; then he turned his head away.
“However, in my homeland, I am officially known as the Prince of Mourning. My family addresses me by a word in my father’s tongue that means ‘grief.’ That word is ‘Nin.’ It’s my personal name, and few humans have ever spoken it aloud.
When I first found that book in Voss’s room, I was as surprised to find it there as you. ”
Goose bumps spread across my arms. Was all this true? I wanted to believe him, but doubts kept bubbling up. “But—this book was written two hundred years ago. You cannot be that old. Look at you…” I gestured with the red book, up and down his lean frame. “None of this makes sense.”
Nin’s dark brow lowered. “Now who’s the liar? I already know you remember me from years ago, so please be honest about what you believe and what you don’t.”
That smarted. But I guess he had a point. “How old are you?”
He seemed disappointed by my question. “I don’t have a neat and tidy answer for you. I don’t know exactly when I came into being. All I know is that humans needed me, so I exist. However, time moves differently in my homeland. Back there, I have seen nineteen winters.”
Nineteen… My heart skipped a beat. It made no difference to me, his age. I was not in the market for a husband—I’d leave that to Bethany. Yet, a little happiness bloomed in my chest to hear that in some ways we were similar. We had something in common.
My gaze wandered over the ragged suit covering his long legs and broad chest. Yes, it was the same boy I’d been seeing sporadically for half my life. “You don’t age here? You’re immortal?”
“In all honesty, these days I’m no longer certain what I am.”