Chapter 27
XXVII.
Voice from the Void
He was always a step ahead of me, turning just out of reach in the narrow, winding staircase.
I tried to go faster and slipped, coming down hard on my arse on the stone steps and nearly sliding off.
Even then, he did not turn. Cursing myself, I stood and followed more carefully, hobbling against the growing ache in my spine.
When I finally reached the bottom, I ran after him in the hallway, breathless and sore. “It was just the emotion of seeing her. I wasn’t thinking.”
He ignored me, striding forward as if I weren’t there.
I felt like a pest, like a bothersome gnat, circling but never even swatted. He turned into his chamber and I stopped, deflated, in the middle of the room. “Please, Renaud,” I said. “Please understand.”
He looked at me then, his eyes bright and fierce with hurt. “I must go. I’ve spent too much time here, lingering with you. I have neglected my duties.”
“I did not mean to wound you,” I said, again to that deep, sad place behind his eyes. If only he let me love him. Let me reach into that dark place. But how could he when I did things like this?
“You are the only one who could hurt me. I warned you of that.” He turned his back and took his cloak, and with that he strode away, leaving me alone once again.
I sank into my desk. The stallion hooves rang across the courtyard. The silence descended and the chateau began to sag again, melting in the end-of-summer heat, and still I sat in the same place, staring a hole into the carpets, cursing my stupidity and my mistake.
But in the silence. In the emptiness. I started thinking again of Dacia and the rest of the girls.
What good was I sitting in this fine house in my fine dress with powers that I didn’t use?
I was no man’s ornament. Not even Death’s.
But I was afraid. Hadn’t Renaud warned me about using my powers without him?
I knew what I might do, but I did not know what I could do.
I clutched the keys in my pocket and stood.
I don’t know what drew me back to that first hallway he’d sent me to, when I had first arrived.
Maybe it was the house itself that directed me there, but when I lifted my head and found the locked doors sitting quiet under the flickering torchlight, I wasn’t surprised.
They were exactly as they had been the first night.
Waiting for me to return. I pulled the ring out of my pocket and flipped through the keys.
After all, what good was power never used?
If he found out, Renaud might chastise me when he returned, but I would survive.
The lock turned with a click and the door fell open without my touch, as if it had been expecting me.
But then, I knew what to expect too. This was a room in the House of Blue Sleep, it warped around me, always anticipating needs and wants and building a world inside, from the earth to the sky.
The fine house with the carpets of fatal blue flowers and tubs of steaming water and food that appeared and disappeared without a sound.
I stepped into a void, the torchlight to my back, following the sound of murmuring Latin.
The spell was the same as it had been, built inside this room, self-contained and running eternally. Waiting for me.
It struck me then, how frequently Renaud brought me into churches.
Familiarity didn’t lessen the vulnerability I felt.
My very body roiled with the memory of Valerie’s loss.
The discomfort of that lecherous-tongued spirit behind the cross.
The hours of darkness in the Mother’s chambers.
I felt so trapped and helpless. As if I never left those places at all.
Out of the dark, the candles winked into life. Then the priest in amber relief, hands raised as he spoke. Sweat beaded on my forehead and despite the effort to control my breathing and stay calm, my heart raced a frantic animal beat under my ribs.
This time though, I stopped and waited. The spell continued around me.
The Riquewihr priest, the illusion of our village rites, the world narrowed to this room and its rules.
I had left behind the knowledge and self of Salomé, so enmeshed inside this spell it was as if I were part of its machinations.
I felt myself pulled down into the aisle, but I resisted.
That small resistance sent a ripple through the spell.
A ripple I could sense. I thought of sitting in Perchta’s garden.
I thought of the thread of magic that led to the shrine.
I didn’t know what I would do, but I reached for the ripples and searched through the working for the thread that fed it.
While I searched, the flow of magic kept moving onward.
My dress changed. A gold chain hung heavy on my neck.
Prostitutes clustered around me, ravens in their black cloaks.
Even if I ran, I would not be able to escape, so tightly was this illusion drawn.
The congregation rose, and with them, a choking panic.
I felt as if it would all continue around me no matter what.
Somehow the spell seemed set to bring my mind to Valerie, to fear that what had happened to Valerie would happen to me.
And it might. I would never be safe. The village crowded in the aisle, coming toward me like a mass of bugs from some uncovered hole, but I stayed firm—I had found the threads.
Threads, for there were several. I trailed my finger along them in my mind, holding them loosely.
I’d learned too much—passion, energy, control—would break me away from the working.
The crowd lined up to receive the sacraments, but I stayed focused on the threads.
I traced them all the way back to what they fed on.
Me.
When I had come to this room the first time, I had thought myself like one of those gruesome spirits, caught in the flow of life like a rag in the wind. It was everything I’d always feared. To get left, invisible and alone.
Darkness swallowed everything but the circle of wavering light on the stone thrown by the altar candles.
The priest kept his low murmur of absolution.
I was supposed to be moved along with the others, almost to the altar, sweating like a pig in my elaborate dress and veil.
But I knew more now. As soon as I had entered the room, the spell had hooked itself into me, feeding off me, pacing ahead of me to build the illusion on what it read in my own heart.
I was not the things of my nightmares, insubstantial and invisible. I was its originator. I was its creator.
Had I been walking around with other spells hooked into me?
Things I had not even imagined? Even the thought made my chest tighten and made it hard to draw a breath.
But I wrenched my focus away from my fear.
I could not lose this sense of myself. Deliberately, I grasped the threads and began to pull them out of me.
At first, I felt an intense drain on my body.
Immediately, a sickening tremor rolled through me, as if everything in my body and self tried desperately to hang on to the threads.
I breathed deep. Slow. I thought of my feet rooted into the ground.
Myself planted in the dark and wild forest outside these walls.
I remembered the way the magic there flowed like currents, not threads, deeper, stronger.
I stopped fighting the spell and began to unweave it, pulling the threads out instead of breaking.
And then I stood alone. Breathing hard and sweating.
Left behind, there was only a room bathed in banal daylight.
No church, no priest, no village. Just bare stone, ruined and empty.
The sun shone in and leaf litter piled in the corners.
I walked to the window and put my elbows on the edge.
It was too narrow to lean out, but it overlooked the trees bordering the river.
The summer green was starting to turn golden, and I took a deep breath of fresh air that promised cool nights were coming.
I wondered if there were gods, even now, who roamed the mountains, bringing a tide of gold and silver frost behind them.
I thought of Perchta and for the first time felt regret.
It was she, after all, who had taught me so many useful things.
But I had more ahead of me, so I turned from the window.
Quickly, I walked to the little door at the other end of the room and let myself through.
Right on the other side, I took the key ring and tied it to myself with the strings of my tunic.
But even tied to myself, I did not let it go. I could not lose them this time.
My footsteps were silent, back in that grand hall with its arched ceiling and walls bathed in glimmering candlelight.
The strangers in rich clothes glimmered and whispered with every shift and breath.
The tall man with regal bearing behind a boar’s mask wearing a golden crown studded with jewels.
Just like before, every eye turned to me, sharp and whetted behind their fine masks, feather and diamond headpieces.
And the thing that made me shudder in sickening memory—the suckling pig.
I felt for the threads right away, imagining it to be the same. But I could not find them. Bewildered, I gripped the keys tighter, just to remind myself. I had tied them to me, but I was back in the dress of scarlet threads and the keys had been unbound. I gripped the ring in both hands.
Someone twittered.
“Mademoiselle écarlate,” the Emperor said, standing from the table. “Nous vous attendons.” He rounded the long table toward me, hand outstretched.
It was the same déjà vu. It was the same world of the spell. Where were the threads? I cast about in my mind, searching, but I could find no separation between myself and the world.