Chapter IX
IX.
In His Palace
I stepped into the light of the magnificently carpeted and painted hall. The ruined chateau had transformed. All the richness I had imagined in Death’s home was now laid out before me.
The dark and leaf-littered hallways were gone, replaced with chiseled stone, white and smooth as a sun-bleached bone and covered in plush woven carpets.
Some of the arched windows were even hung with colored glass held between curves of black iron.
I wanted to slow down, to stop and sink my bare feet into the carpets and trace my unworthy fingers across the fine threads and carvings.
So much magic and mystery made me dizzy.
“I have never seen a maiden so enthralled as you look right now,” Death said.
It took me a moment to answer. For his words even to reach me through the spell of enchantment as I followed him through those tomb-silent halls.
Everything dazzled me, even him. He stopped, and the torchlight bathed him and all his molten shadow and beauty in a golden, warm glow.
When I realized he was waiting for an answer, I gave a short laugh. “I am no maiden.”
His fine mouth twisted into something hinting of amusement. “In the House of Blue Sleep, you are whoever I say you are.”
The comment might have rankled me, if he’d said it under Josef’s roof or in a mud-sodden village, inventing fantasies about who I was.
But when he said it like he had, beholding my grave-sodden self and ushering me into my own room in this fine house like I was royalty born, his words thrilled along my skin.
It felt easy to believe him—to think that I was truly someone special.
He opened a door and ushered me forward with the sweep of his arm. “Your room.”
Once, a merchant came through the village with cloth that fell like liquid in his hands. We’d all coveted it, struggling to describe its qualities, to find the words for a thing we couldn’t imagine existing moments before. Now, I felt that way again.
Exhausted whore that I was, the first thing I noticed was the bed.
Not even the nicest room at Josef’s, reserved for rich merchants or the occasionally passing lord or bishop, could compare.
It was enormous, tucked under a shadow of heavy draped blue velvet and thick with blankets and soft furs.
If he had not been so direct earlier, I’d almost imagine he had plans for that bed.
There was nothing I longed for more than to sink into the luxury of comfort and warmth, close my eyes, and sleep for a hundred years.
But the rest of the room was so fine, the bed could not hold my full attention.
The walls and ceiling were paneled with richly carved wood and painted a deep midnight blue.
Every inch of the floors was covered in carpets of twining blue flowers—so real looking they might have grown up and choked me while I slept.
The biggest silver mirror I had ever seen was hung on one wall, and a trio of tall glass windows looked out into the inky dark.
I named these things with ordinary words like carpet and window and walls, but ordinary words could not hope to express the quality of the carvings, the incredible shade of blue, the smooth polish of the silver mirror, the texture of the carpet, and the way it all felt like I was a bride and mistress of Death’s palace.
The light from the hearth flickered along the blue like water and sunlight combined and …
“Oh!” The sigh escaped my chest before I could stop it. For there, by the fire, sat a large wooden tub with steam rising from the water. “A bath!”
“Rest,” Death said, as if he were showing me only the barest of cells for a novice. “You’ll need your strength.” He turned on his heel.
“Wait!” I called just in time to catch him in the doorway, shadows from the lit torches playing on his shoulders. It was beautiful, but after all, I couldn’t survive on beauty.
“Is there something not to your liking?” His expression was so emotionless, black eyes so dark; it was as if he had pulled that hood back up and become the abyss again.
My stomach dropped. Had I sounded ungrateful? “No! I just … thank you.” I gave a curtsey. It felt awkward, me in my dirt-ridden shift, on these fine woven carpets. My stomach growled, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask for more. “I just wanted to say thank you.”
He didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe. Lord Death—for in that moment he was entirely a lord—narrowed his eyes and made a noise in his throat that I couldn’t interpret. Mercifully, he closed the door, leaving me alone in the silence.
I didn’t know how to feel. Part of me wanted to run after him and say … what, I wasn’t sure, but something. Most of me was simply waiting for the sound of Josef’s fury to puncture this strange dream.
For this could only be a dream. There were no spirits, no creatures.
No one came to fetch me to work. The fire popped and sparks exploded up the vast chimney.
Steam swirled over the waiting water. I tiptoed across the fine carpet in my dirty bare feet and peeled off the much-abused shift, throwing it straight into the fire.
The cloth sagged on the wood, hissing and damp.
As it caught, a strange smell flooded the room—like grave and death.
With a shiver, I turned my back on the crackling flames and stepped over the lip of the tub.
The water was nearly too hot, and the steam carried the smell of juniper.
Dacia would have found this heaven, I thought with an ache in my heart—she loved to swim in the summer, and as often as Cook would let her, she would haul water and heat herself a small bath in the kitchen.
I slowly lowered myself to sit and a delicious spasm ran from my stomach to my throat as the water crawled over my bare belly and breasts.
The water closed over the crown of my head and I, finally, fully, for maybe the first time in my life, relaxed.
It was the fantasy of a young girl to imagine myself equal to this dark-eyed, noble-looking god, but I couldn’t help being swept up by that feeling.
In his home I was whoever he said I was—and he said I was singular, that I was powerful.
It wasn’t that I felt safe—how could I, in this isolated chateau, my tutor Death himself, and the unknown still stretching before me?
But I felt, for the first time, as if there were no one around me who could fall victim to my curse or be shocked by the part of me that opened into the howling abyss and found something to bring back.
I’d sat in that bare room with nothing but my own power and will and created.
That I held on to. Flexing my fingers in the water, I tried to recall the feeling, the fulcrum point of that power.
I knew I’d done it, and yet I already couldn’t quite remember how.
At the foot of the tub sat a chair and small table carved of soft wood.
I hadn’t noticed before, but on the chair was draped some fabric that looked as if it might be clothes, and on the table lay a bar of soap, some muslin squares, an engraved silver comb, and a bowl of steaming broth.
I pulled forward and reached for the bowl eagerly.
Something tugged in my brain. How had I missed them?
But I didn’t answer the question, only tipped the edge to my mouth and gratefully began to fill the ache in my stomach.
The broth was salty and hot and tasted of fresh herbs and meat.
It was hard to force myself to drink slowly, but I knew I must, to avoid becoming sick.
I took my time, soaking in the bath and drinking until the last drop of the broth eased down my throat.
Then, I dipped the soap and muslin into the water and scrubbed every inch of grave and wood off my skin and out of my hair.
I spent so long bathing that the water turned cool, and the fire burnt down to coals.
I emerged, finally, pink skinned, full bellied, my black hair twisting in long, clean coils down my back.
Straining my ears for any sounds in the house, I stood and hugged myself in front of the fire, turning like a pig on the spit as the water on my skin evaporated.
The mirror reflected my naked body, and in the firelight I could count my ribs and the brown spots of fading bruises on my thighs.
The reflection felt so real and clear, it was as though a second me stood in the room.
It didn’t feel like anything in the house breathed, and yet everything watched me, including my own reflection. Were there no servants here in Death’s manor? There must be, because surely he had not heated my bath water and dragged it here himself?
Still listening, I picked up the silver comb and began to work it through my drying lengths of hair.
It took awhile—usually Dacia did it for me so as not to miss the tangles down my back.
But for as long as I combed and listened, the only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the steady thrum of my own heartbeat.
I braided my hair and slid it behind my shoulder.
Over the arm of the chair, I took up the shift made of fine-spun wool, softer than anything I’d felt before, with tiny blue flowers stitched onto the hem.
It settled warm and light over my shoulders, and I tied the threads at my wrists and neck.
Then I took a deep breath for courage and tiptoed for the door.