Chapter Twenty-Five #3
Elisavet laughs a vile laugh. “Did you really think you’d stick a knife in me, Orrin?”
His teeth glint in a sharp smile. “I damn well hoped so.”
She gives him a wounded look as she rises from her seat and wanders closer to him, tsking. “After so long together? More than a century. Do you know what it is to be betrayed thusly?”
He doesn’t reply, but I doubt she expects him to. He only stares, bleeding jaw tight, a muscle in it ticking.
She points to another demon, one waiting by the entrance. “Bring him in.”
A few moments of confusion later, and the demon returns with a human man, grappling against his hold, bloodied at both temples, one eye already swelling purple. The shock of red matting his snow-white hair. Mr. Brown.
“No,” I whisper. Don’t hurt him.
The demon man jerks him to the center of the room, just feet from me, so that he stands in between Elisavet and me.
Mr. Brown gives me one stricken glance then stares at his boots.
Orrin’s eyes are raging as Elisavet spins and walks over to pause right in front of him.
Only a few inches, only one motion away, and Orrin could end her, if only he had his knife.
Parlor tricks, magic, what good is it all?
Can’t he do something? Can’t Orrin make them let him go?
I watch, breath spastic. I can’t watch. If she does something to him…
Elisavet holds out her elegant hand and one of the demons manhandling Orrin passes over the knife. She turns the weapon over in her palm considering the blade. “It is so very difficult to lose those you love and trust. It really hurts, Orrin, my darling. Don’t you know that?”
No. No. No, I pray. No. If she kills Orrin, I will lose my mind.
But she turns away from him, and I let out a sharp breath of relief, before realizing she’s headed back in our direction—Aven’s, mine, Mr. Brown’s…
“Hello, Rupert.” She smiles at him. Without another word, Elisavet plunges the knife into his throat and jerks it across.
I vaguely register Orrin’s roar as the spray of hot blood floods Mr. Brown’s clothes, then mine, then Aven’s.
I grab my sister and yank her down, despite her resistance, dropping to my knees.
I shut my eyes, squeeze out the image, the surprise in Mr. Brown’s eyes, the sound of his body thumping on the hard, stone floor, the last gurgle erupting from him.
The demon laughter rings in my ears. They think this is funny, most of them. They think it’s funny.
Aven struggles to stand back up. Glaring at me, she mouths, “Let me go.”
“No,” I whisper, gripping her with all my might. “I love you, Aven.”
“Poor man,” Elisavet says sadly, theatrically loud. “It’s hard losing anyone, isn’t it, Orrin? Especially such a loyal servant.”
I tip up my face from our crouched position to watch the way she circles the room, and ultimately, me and Aven, at its center. The way Orrin’s knife is still gripped in her hand. I can’t breathe. I can’t think.
“Don’t you touch her!” he spits at Elisavet. She only throws back her head, a mean laugh erupting from her.
He is fighting now, to get out of the demons’ grip, to save me. No. I shake my head at him, the same way he did to me. They’ll hurt you more.
My movement draws Elisavet’s attention. She stares over at me. “I do not like people trying to take what is mine.”
“I don’t either.” I lift my chin. “I will kill you before I give up my sister, you soulless, evil bitch.”
“Such hatred.” Her light brows rise. “That surprises me.”
“Of course it does. You don’t know how you’ve hurt me or anyone else. You don’t care.”
“Oh, my. Do you even know what it is to really hurt?” she asks, still stalking me like I am prey. “Do you know what it is to be so desperate you rip out your own soul?”
“So you made yourself into a monster?” I taunt, turning to keep her in my sights.
She scoffs. “A monster? Everything I had was taken from me. I became a pioneer. Nobody else has done what I have. Every other queen was made by another. Only I made myself. Birthed myself. I am my own mother, a goddess, a god, a king.”
Her heels click on the floor as she walks, the tightness in the air increasing.
All eyes are on her as she moves, telling her story.
“Centuries ago, my village was at war. My people lost, and my family was trapped in a church, burnt alive by soldiers, a group of men so inhumane they listened to the screams of people turning to ash and did nothing but laugh. Only I was spared, so they could each take a turn with me.”
I squeeze Aven harder. She eases, settling beneath me. I count her breaths, count my own. I find Orrin. Then look back to Elisavet.
“In the empty days later, while they left me to bleed out from the injuries I’d sustained,” she continues, “I took my own humanity, ripping away my soul. I turned myself, the first to turn on their own. I am made by rage alone. I have given the gift over and over to those who couldn’t do it themselves.
You see, people seek power. They want to forget the agony of being human, and I give that to them.
I can give them revenge too, if they desire.
Like how I had revenge on those men, on their sons, on their daughters.
I watched them burn, all of them, and I danced in their ashes and spit on their bones. ”
What she’s been through turns me inside out, because she didn’t deserve such cruelty, and I can’t help crying. “You were hurt so much, but why would you do the terrible things you do? Why would you take my sister from me?”
“I didn’t take her. I took her in. I took away her pain too.”
“Like you took away Glisa’s?” I counter. Because no matter what Elisavet’s been through, she’s no innocent. The slippers seem to pulse on my feet.
Elisavet waves a hand, smirking in Orrin’s direction. “That was a shame, wasn’t it?”
He yanks forward, snarling. The brutish demon struggles but manages to hold him.
“Aven’s mine,” Elisavet says. “And whatever plan you and Orrin were enacting is not going to work. Besides, dear pet, I’m not afraid of you. Either of you.”
Truth. I hear it in her voice. And now that she knows I mean something to him, she’s going to make me pay. Make us both pay.
“I have big plans for you, and Orrin over there. The things I’m going to do to you both!” Elisavet warns me, eyes flashing. She steps over Mr. Brown’s body. “That man’s death was so quick, so very unlike what yours will be. So stand, now.”
I listen, and somehow, I forget to be afraid. I rise with stable legs, and my breath steadies. Elisavet is no match for my love.
“Come.” She motions to the demons holding Orrin to bring him to her. Then she beckons to me. “It’s time to teach you a lesson.”
“Yes.” I nod. “But after I dance. That’s why you invited me, isn’t it? One final dance to entertain your guests?” I only have one plan, one stupid, impossible idea. I don’t look at Orrin as I ask.
She waves me on, handing the bloody knife back to one of her burly guards before taking a seat once more on her throne. “I’m generous. Go on then. One dance because it would please me, and then you’re done. And I do mean done.”
At the cold finality of her words, I take a breath.
Then I rise up on my toes, and I begin dancing.
I tip forward, allowing my bust to push against the barely-there bodice, and I slowly tangle my arms up in the air, letting my hands reach.
Elisavet’s sardonic laugh, the demons murmuring around me, the jeers and the emptiness alike. Orrin’s silence. It’s all too much.
But I keep moving, feeling my body, letting the enchanted slippers lead me.
Elisavet’s soul, they seem to cry.
I dance through the confusion, Elisavet’s features blurring as I move: delicate yet sharpened face, lips pulled into a mocking smile, her black eyes, her gown and jewels.
Her scent envelops me even from afar: jasmine, red wine, blood sprayed down her front, speckling her skin, the scent of hate and emptiness.
Though it’s not only her body, her face I sense.
It’s her soul—pulsing energy, a sliver, much smaller than Orrin’s, but ten times as strong, as stubborn, tied to the cave, to the sea, to the dark of the night and the power of the moon, as old as five centuries, as lost as any lost soul.
She ripped most of it out, from rage and pain, but there’s enough left for me to sense it. But only barely.
It is hidden, protected.
Try as I might to narrow in on hers, focusing on what is left, I cannot touch it. I cannot reach it. Whether on purpose—most likely—or accidentally, she has surrounded it with the souls she’s taken.
So what can I do?
The answer comes to me, unbidden. It’s a risk—but it might be the only thing that works. The flurry of pulsing energy enveloping her lifeforce tells me what I need to do. I prance around the circle, searching with my eyes, connecting this soul with that demon.
The claret-haired woman who stands off to the side, jeering. As if there were a thread connecting the sliver of her soul within her to the remainder Elisavet holds, I connect them. Hers is weak, dried and brittle.
The slippers on my feet grow warm. Seem to guide me, not just into which movements to dance, but in what to do.
Grab it. Pull it toward her.
And where I unexpectedly touched Orrin’s last night, I purposefully do it now.
If I can touch it, maybe I can do more.
I’m no demon queen, and this isn’t a trade…it’s an undoing of one. I can almost sense how desperately the soul wants to be back to its demon. Like a magnetic force, aching to be back where it belongs.
Without removing my eyes from Elisavet, I use the magic of the slippers, all of my own, and the simple desperation of my own goddamned will to tug on the demon’s traded soul. My mouth fills with ash and copper, but the soul gives easily, breaking away from Elisavet.