Chapter 27 #2
“Regardez ca,” he said in dulcet tones to the crowd, turning me one way. “Succulente.” He spun me the other way, hand flowing elegantly down the line of my exposed body.
I closed my eyes on the people watching me, watching us, and tried to push it out of my mind. I needed to find myself. Somewhere inside this spell, I existed.
The Emperor’s breath came to my neck, smelling of sandalwood and something rich and warm. “Maintenant se régaler.” His teeth nipped just at the edge of the scarlet netting.
I took a breath, and the netting seemed to cut tighter and tighter. Opening my eyes, I was between the two attendants dressed in silk livery and masks. I still gripped the keys.
I didn’t bother to fight. What use would it be fighting illusions? The men moved me to the table toward the two poles and lowered me as the suckling pig.
Pain flashed as the hooks caught the netting, pulling it tight. Diamonds on my wrists and ankles popped off onto the dinner plates of the ladies and men closest. The men lashed me tighter with a red silk ribbon whose ends flickered with my struggle like fire.
I did not call for Renaud. They shoved a red apple into my mouth, and I choked on my tongue and the apple’s hard flesh.
A bell rang, clear and true, and everyone lifted their glasses toward me.
I closed my eyes and gripped the keys again to be sure I did not lose them.
Instead of looking for the threads, I thought only of myself.
I felt the edges of my body in the scarlet netting, hanging by the silk ribbons.
I heard Perchta telling me to mind my borders, that my magic was leaking out of me, and this time I found the threads at their source. Inside me.
The Emperor gave his speech. The bell rang again.
I opened my eyes just in time to see the large knife glinting in the light, hovering over the flesh of my naked and trembling loin.
He lowered the blade. I did not close my eyes or scream.
I only focused on what was in me, what was me.
I held my breath. I thought of a wall between me and the spell.
I thought of stone. I closed the spell off from me.
Everything froze. The Emperor and his knife.
The strangers with their masks, faces in grotesque displays of laughter.
I did not need to unhook myself, I only needed to tug at the ribbons and my bonds dissolved like snow in the sun.
The table fell away in a flurry of golden dust. With one strong wind, the entire hall was swept away.
I still had the keys in my hands.
I stood in my tunic in a room that was such a ruin, it had no roof.
I frowned and tilted my chin upward. There was no missing roof that I’d ever seen on any part of the chateau.
Above me night was falling and the deep green sea of the forest whispered below me.
I must have been in a room higher up, where the roofline was not visible.
Laying down on the stones, I held the key ring tightly on my stomach and took a deep breath, gaze trained on the boundless sky where the roof should be.
The stars were just beginning to wink into the sky.
I thought of Rochelle in the mirror, telling me to run. Why? I did not want an answer to the question, but I wanted to know what she feared for me. What I was missing.
I could try again. I had more power, more experience, I could try the spell again and ask her what I should do.
I did not have much time before dark, so I took myself quickly through the house, into Renaud’s study. Picking out the twisted, black key, I opened the cupboards and surveyed his magical items with the eye of an experienced witch.
I was, of course, only marginally more experienced than I had been the first time I tried.
And I knew nothing more about summoning, except to avoid the library demon.
But there was one thing different—I had more confidence in my skills.
I believed, not just in myself, but in the magic itself.
I expected it to work again. And I understood more about the ingredients of building a spell.
I pulled out a few jars and then put them back.
I needed things that Rochelle would recognize and be drawn to.
I stared at the cupboards, filled with so many wondrous and delicate objects, and my mind went blank.
It had been so many years, I could not remember exactly what she had loved.
A lonely, strange sadness filled my chest—not only could I not remember, I was the only one who would have been able to.
Her memory was fading from the world entirely, and it felt like that too was a failing on my part.
I closed my eyes, trying to recall her in vivid detail, But I found my mind was resistant to truly finding her.
Grief was a strange land. Losing her was still a raw and savage cut in my heart.
But over time I had gotten used to the wound as one would a hole in the roof that could not be repaired.
I did not wake up and stare at the hole every day as I had the first few years.
To remember her, I had to look through the hole in my roof, through the wound, and face that terrible open sky as if it had just happened again.
It was so painful; I did not think I could truly stand it.
But I found my memories. I found her in the garden, rolling up mint leaves and chewing on the edges as we weeded in the slanting evening sunshine.
I found her listening as I read out loud the Mother Superior’s manuscripts.
She’d never liked to read, but the Psalms whispered in candlelight brought her peace.
In the end, I chose mint picked from my little garden, fresh ink and parchment, and a bowl with a spoon in which I dropped some sulfur.
I cast these items into the sealed circle and began the same summoning I had performed before, in my room.
There was no mirror in this room, and I hoped this choice meant she would make it all the way to me.
I had no way of understanding, there with my arms raised and reciting the enchantments, that remembering alone was the most powerful part of the spell.
She did not appear before me. Nor in any surface. Instead, as I held the spell in tension and fed it my magic, ink suddenly appeared across the parchment I had used for the spell. Ink that bloomed into words.
I was so startled by this unexpected turn that I simply stood there with my arms upraised like a dunce. The spell shape held, and the words kept appearing. I silently translated. Quod requires.
What do you require?
“Are you okay? Are you safe?” I asked into the air.
I am more.
“Where are you?”
In the realm of ten thousand suns.
“You told me to run.” I swallowed, the room feeling close and strange, as if it listened to me and was not entirely friendly. “Why?”
You are in danger, mortal witch. This is beyond your power. He is coming for your saint.
I gasped and pulled back, as if simply dropping my arms would send this creature back. I’d been tricked. Mortal witch? She never would have addressed me so. This was not Rochelle. Why had I thought it was? “Who are you?” I demanded.
The writing came quickly, confidently.
The demon prince Mahazael.
How had I gone looking for my sister, with a pure heart, clear intention, and the items that had been beloved of her and drawn … a demon? In a sudden flash, I remembered the scroll Death had taken away from me—the red-robed creatures with the strange bishops’ hats … antlers.
This was the demon who took my sister.
I kicked the items out of the circle. Frantically scrubbed the chalk off the floor. I had to end the spell. Now. Before this demon slipped from his world to mine.
But suddenly something invisible grabbed me by the neck.
As if reaching through the spell itself.
I fought, but how do you fight against thin air?
Yet it held me tight, shoving me into the floor and choking me until I saw stars at the edge of my vision.
The entire room darkened and turned red.
I fought and my feet slipped and kicked at something wet.
The pressure disappeared from my neck, and I gasped, sucking in breaths.
The nightmare was not over. The whole room was flooded with blood.
The demon’s voice came then—tasting of sulfur and terror.
Cave lupum in vestimentis ovium. The door swung open and the dim light fell onto a tall, hooded figure, its face shrouded.
Behind him, the vague shape of bodies, and I knew without looking that the blood had come from them.
My heart was cold with terror. My mind blank. I slipped in the blood and scrabbled at the floor for purchase. I knew without being told—this was a demon, and he had come to brutalize me.
Then, just as quickly as it had come, it went. The room fell back to normal. I laid on the floor in the center of the smudged circle, chest heaving. No blood. No monster. The parchment where the demon had written was blank.
Now I understood why my masters had not given me any instructions on summoning.