Chapter 35
On the other side of the flames was the largest room I’d ever seen, a massive circular space with thousands of fires on multiple levels.
Through the one to my right, I caught a glimpse of a bedroom that looked like the one I slept in when I first arrived in the In Between.
To my left was an office of some kind, a Judge bent over a desk scribbling away.
The line of fires was punctuated with dark spaces every so often, as if those fires had gone out.
A few grates down, one burned with a slight blue tinge, and the view through the flames was more distorted than the others.
The room on the other side looked a lot like one from my old cloister.
Salamanders scurried through the space, passing from one fire to the next, climbing the walls to reach those on the upper levels. One in particular, three levels up, seemed to be the most popular destination.
This was how the salamanders traveled, both in the In Between and the World of the Living—a fire network.
Relief swelled within me. I wanted to leave everything behind, to find a place I could hide, and this meant I could go almost anywhere. The question was where?
I could hide in one of the castles here or go to the World of the Living.
I’d never seen salamanders anywhere but in the convent, so I assumed those fires led to the various Orders of Death around the world.
Maybe even the Orders of Shadows. In the unlikely event that someone looked for me, they’d never be able to reach me there.
If I didn’t like the location I chose or felt unsafe, I could always come back and try another.
I turned towards the closest blue fire, intent on exploring, but my feet wouldn’t cross the threshold.
It wasn’t just the warped energy coming off the flames, which made me worry I might be torn apart if I passed through, that held me back.
I didn’t know anything about being a salamander.
What I needed to eat, or drink, or the kind of place I needed to live.
I vaguely remembered the vivariums in Death’s workshop that housed many of the salamanders, but I hadn’t looked closely enough at them to glean any information that might help me now.
Maybe it would be better to stay in the In Between so I could observe the others. I also remembered Death saying they spoke to her. Did that mean they could communicate with each other? I’d never heard any of them make any noise, not even my friend Star. Maybe they communicated telepathically.
I looked around for a salamander to test my theory on, venturing further into the room, but the ones that passed me acted like I wasn’t there.
Even when I moved into their path, they simply walked around me.
I paced from one to the next trying to get someone’s attention, my chest tightening with each failure.
I was about to start shouting at them in my mind, when I locked eyes with a salamander across the room. They froze, one foot in the air.
My pulse raced as I recognized the yellow star on their snout. Star. There was no way they’d recognize me like this, but I didn’t need them to. They’d seen me, which was more than any of the others had.
Before I could approach them, they dropped my gaze and started walking again, face resolutely turned in the direction they were traveling.
I wanted to cry in frustration. I was truly on my own.
My heart shrank. Ironic since solitude was all I’d wanted five minutes ago.
I watched Star walk past, swallowing hard.
As they drew level with me, their head flicked the tiniest bit away from me as something nudged at my consciousness.
I blinked in confusion. Was that—?
“Follow me in two minutes.”
The words were faint but clear, in a female voice I’d never heard before.
“And wipe the eager look off your face.”
Star’s tail disappeared into a fire on the other side of the room with a flick.
My mouth opened in shock and my forked tongue snaked out on its own. I tasted soot and hot embers before I reeled it back in. It took a moment for me to realize that I could taste the air. It was the oddest sensation.
Two minutes, Star had said. Without any way to tell time, I waited what I hoped was long enough before padding over to the fire she’d disappeared into and followed.
As soon as I passed through the flames, my eyes went wide.
The fire led to a hot spring. Water bubbled in shallow pools surrounded by bushes and trees.
The air tasted of soil and plants with a hint of sulphur.
And most shocking of all was the sun shining in the blue sky overhead.
Had we traveled to the World of the Living?
“Where are we?” I thought the words.
“We’re in the Dungeon, in one of the cells.” I startled at the sound of Star’s voice in my head. She sounded so human, it was eerie.
Titus had said the Dungeon cells become whatever the occupants need. Grief knotted in my belly at the thought of him. He’d told me that moments before I’d nearly shredded him.
Star stood on a flat rock above the water, her head cocked, as if she could tell from my silence that something was wrong.
“Clever use of the Dungeon’s magic.” I pushed the sadness away, not ready to deal with it.
“You can come closer. I won’t bite.” There was a hint of amusement in her voice.
I padded over to where she stood. Or squatted. As salamanders, our bodies were close to the ground.
The rock she stood on was heated, and as soon as I approached, Star splayed her limbs out so she was lying on the warm surface. After a moment, I followed suit.
“Nice, isn’t it?” She gave a little contented hum. “You can stay as long as you like. You’ll be safe here.”
“Thank you.” My heart warmed at the offer. Then the meaning of her words hit me. “Safe from what?”
“The others. Death would give anything to have you in her grasp, Maeve. Even in salamander form.”
I froze. “How do you—?”
“I’d know you anywhere. You taste of death.” Her tongue flicked towards me. “And power.” There was a knowing in her voice that made me stiffen.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Sasha.” Her name tickled something in my memory. I’d heard it before somewhere. “I was Death’s Successor before you.”
“But that… that’s not possible. Death shredded her Successor’s soul.” That was what Fen had told me.
“That’s what it looked like, but it’s not what happened.”
I had the sense of the ground falling out from under me. There could only be one Successor at a time. “If you’re still alive, then how am I here?”
“Alive is a relative term.” She sighed. “I’m sure Fen has told you about the night he became the Devil.”
An ache flared in my chest at his name, followed by a pull so faint I might have imagined it. I pushed it away, not ready to think about him yet, and I nodded, my whole head bobbing up and down.
“When a soul is shredded, energy is released. To most people, it looks like a burst of light, but to Death or the Devil it’s something they can feel.
Even absorb. Fen wasn’t the Devil yet when Death attacked me, so he couldn’t have known that what he was seeing was an illusion.
Instead of shredding me, she transformed me into a salamander.
She used her power to pin me in place until the confrontation was over.
Then she drained my soul’s essence until there was very little left, not enough to be Death’s Successor.
I’m a husk of what I was.” She sounded almost unbothered, like she was reporting facts rather than relating a traumatic event.
A hundred years had passed since then, but I suspected her distance was a coping mechanism. Some wounds never truly closed.
“Death drained your essence like a Wraith?” I shivered despite the heat.
“She didn’t drink it like they do, but the effect was the same.”
“Why would she do that?” It was so wrong.
“Because without the Death Chord with her Devil, her power is limited to what she can generate on her own from transferring souls back to the World of the Living. She drained him, too, before she destroyed him. I think she was storing as much as she could, knowing what she was giving up.”
I felt a spark of anger. What was it with feeding on people?
Death had fed on Sasha. Fen fed on the pain of souls in the Dungeon.
Both created power. They were supposed to be helping souls, not using them for their own gain.
As quickly as it had risen, the spark fizzled out, replaced with a heavy weariness that made me want to curl up and go to sleep.
I resisted, needing to hear what Sasha had to say.
“So, you joined the salamander ranks,” I said.
“No. The salamanders here were just regular salamanders when Death turned me into one. I was the first one of my kind.”
“So, the rest of them are just—”
“No, the regular salamanders disappeared fifty years ago. They’re now all like me.”
“Where did the rest come from?” Dread and disgust made it difficult to swallow. I had a feeling I knew where this was headed.
“Judges and trainees. Death drained a few at a time over the years, turning their souls into husks and then transforming them into salamanders. They have just enough awareness to report to her everything they see.”
“She turned them into spies,” I said. The realization was staggering.
A solution both elegant and efficient. And horrifying.
“That means she knows everything that goes on in both castles.” I thought about Bea, about how proud Fen had been to install a spy in Death’s castle.
It had all been for nothing. Though if Death knew about Bea, why had she left her alone all this time?
“Not everything. She’s not omniscient. Just anything a salamander has witnessed.”