Chapter 28
XXVIII.
Death’s Alone
Renaud returned right before dawn, just as the birds began to sing. I met him on the steps of the chateau, wild-eyed and exhausted.
As soon as he crossed through the hawthorns, I ran and fell on his chest, clutching at his cloak.
“Something terrible is happening. I need your help to stop it. We can stop it.” For Death must know who was responsible for the brutality I saw in my vision, and my fear of it was now far greater than my fear of Renaud’s disappointment.
Every time I blinked, I saw the blood rising.
He stiffened and his hands covered my wrists, softly rubbing the sensitive skin to soothe me. “Who needs your help? Have you been wandering again?” He pulled me off and guided me into the chateau.
“No. I mean …” I clutched at him, pulling away, lost to everything but my frenzy. “Not in the woods. I haven’t left, really. I tried to go … But I must help them, you see. What good is power if I can’t use it?”
He stiffened beside me. “What good is power if it’s wasted?”
“I’m not wasting it,” I said. “I only want to use it.”
“On what?”
“On helping … there’s somebody, something stealing away women.
You told me I could have helped Rochelle.
” My voice cracked and emotion and exhaustion caught up to me like a wall of rain pouring over the ridge.
“You told me, that first day, that I could have saved her if I had been who I am then. But I am here now. I need to save them.”
He paused on the stairs, gaze softening. “Ma petite chou,” he said gently, and I could tell they were the soothing tones of someone speaking to a person not in their right mind.
By this time tears were streaming down my face, and I did, I felt mad.
I didn’t know whether I was talking about Dacia or Rochelle.
I only knew that whoever was taking the women, whoever was torturing them, it was the gloved hands of Lord Death who received them.
He knew. I just wanted to know too, so I could put an end to it.
“You cannot save Rochelle,” he said, still gently. “She is gone.”
“But don’t you see?” I pleaded. “You’re right. I couldn’t save Rochelle. But I can save Dacia. If I act now, I can stop it. Tell me what has been happening so I can stop it. The Baron has done nothing to help them. Who will save them? You must help me save them.”
“The Baron? You mean the Baron de Laval-Rais?” He pulled back. “What does he have to do with this?”
“Isn’t it the job of a lord to protect the people of his land?”
“How is he not?”
“I just told you. Women … girls are disappearing.”
“Girls?”
“People!” I insisted, feeling hysterical. “Dacia is terrified. All the girls are.”
“Has this … your Dacia been harmed?”
His tone confused me, hard now where it had been gentle. “No. Not that I know of. But other prostitutes are missing. Odette.”
He shrugged and turned. “Prostitutes go missing all the time.”
I would rather he reached out and slapped me, over the way he shrugged.
The way he did not care at all, not even when I abruptly pulled back.
Had he forgotten I had been a prostitute?
Or was it that he, deep down, saw me as just as replaceable.
Just as worthless. Furious and reckless, I raced after him.
“How do they go missing to Death? Do you not know the time and place of everyone’s journey into the abyss? ”
It was as close as I had ever come to questioning him, and it stopped him in his tracks.
Slowly he turned. “The names of the dead are sacred to me, ma petite chou. I could not utter them even if I wanted to.” He paused.
His expression suddenly turned thoughtful as his gaze flicked over the fury barely contained in my body.
“If it makes you feel better, I can send a warning to the Baron. For him to do his duty.”
This stopped me short. “Really? You can do that?”
He nodded. “It is not looked at kindly by the gods, but I have my ways.”
“I will be your messenger!” I declared eagerly. “Use me. Have you not trained me for this moment?”
“No,” he said curtly. He entered his chambers, where my candle, long forgotten, still burned on the desk.
“Why not?” I demanded, following. I wanted the satisfaction of proving my power both to myself and to him. I wanted to flex my fingers and change the nature of things.
“It is impossible,” he said, removing his cloak. “You are far too much of a novice still.”
“You have no idea what I can do!”
“And on top of that,” he continued, removing his gloves. “You are far too emotionally involved.”
There was no denying I was. “But that won’t stop me.”
He turned toward me, a gleam in his eye.
I was about to protest, to continue to argue. I opened my mouth to speak.
Quick as a snake strike, he caught me by my throat, silencing me.
I was so surprised I couldn’t do anything but gape like a fish.
“But it will hinder you,” he said, holding me with his arm outstretched, fingers tight.
His face looked so composed. Deadly calm and pale.
“It will bring your guard down and make you reckless. It will cause you to fight for things that should not be fought for, and it will cause you to linger in places you should not linger. It will make you brutal when you should be merciful and merciful when you should be brutal.” As he spoke, his grip tightened.
I pulled at his fingers, twisting in a silent plea. Just when I thought I’d pass out, he released me.
I sagged, rattled and silent, my hands coming to the sides of my throat.
“I was making a point,” he said softly. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
I nodded, pressing my cool hands to my neck. I understood. I understood everything he said and what he meant by it, but I simply could not accept it. “I just can’t have anything happen to her,” I whispered. “Dacia is special. She is good. Not like me. The kind of person you fight for.”
“I will send a warning. That should be enough.”
I nodded, but inside my chest I despaired. It wasn’t enough.
“Oh, mon coeur,” he said softly, and his bare hand slid along my jaw, tilting my face to his.
“You do not need to be good to be fought for. You are powerful. I spoke so harshly because I fear I have become far too emotionally involved. This is the hurt. I should not interfere at all. It is not my place or my power. I risk the anger of the gods. But how can I deny you anything?”
I leaned into his open hand and nodded again. “Thank you,” I said, closing my eyes against the swell of emotion. And this time I truly meant it. “I appreciate all that you have done for me. All you continue to do.” I kissed the inside of his wrist.
His breath caught in a low hiss and his hand gripped the back of my neck, gently pulling me into him. He kissed me so thoroughly I grew dizzy and had to pull away and catch my breath with a gasp.
“Remind me,” he said, gripping me tight. “Whose whore are you?” He tugged at the edges of my hair.
I circled my arms around his neck. This, then, was familiar. An easy avenue to focus my frustration and energy. “Death’s alone,” I said in his ear, then tugged on his earlobe with my teeth.
It was like building a spell, with separate ingredients. Oil and water. One struggling against the other. The spell mixed, but not living—just the combination, me and him, infused with no magic.
We might have remained so. But I was so eager to please him, to be thankful for him, to prove again my worth to him, and to persuade him to help.
In some ways I felt if I truly won his regard, then I would have the space to sort through the complexity of my own feelings.
Until then, I was determined to be swept away in this fantasy we had built.
And so, my magic spilled out of me without me even noticing, dissolving the boundary that lay between me and him.
I built a spell inside that chamber, and fell into him with a fervent, violent frenzy.
He shoved his hand under my chin and pushed me down onto my desk, heedless of the parchments and inks I had left behind.
With one hand he kept me pinned and the other he ripped off my tunic, then my shift.
I panted and arched my back against the polished wood and slipping papers.
My breasts pushed up toward him, nipples swollen and aching for his touch, for his tongue. My thighs parted for his hips.
But he tormented me. With a sly smile he straightened the arm that still held me and looked me over. “You are like a wild rabbit; all you know is fucking and running. When will you let me catch you?”
I couldn’t speak with his hand on my throat. But if I could, I would have said now. I would have told him to do whatever he wanted.
“Shall I set you in a snare?” he asked, still holding me. His eyes were dark and brutal, never once straying from my trembling, naked body underneath him. “Or have I already?” He let me go suddenly and stepped away.
I flinched at that cold brutality in his voice, but in that spell I justified it.
He needed me to always be the woman on the road, half frozen and near death.
A rabbit in a snare. Panting, not with desire, but with fragility and fear.
I stayed limp against the desk, waiting and allowing myself to tremble.
I was rewarded.
He came back with the silken red ties like the ones that bound me at the Emperor’s table. Without letting me go, he unwound the twine. A loop of the cord settled over my throat. Over my wrists. Around my thighs and hips, pulling me apart with one tug from him.
As he worked, I relaxed. If I struggled, the cord hurt, but if I stayed limp and heavy, it all supported my body perfectly. Surrender, I heard him say. And I did.
He hung me from the sturdy cross posts of his bed and sat in a chair, shirtless, with the sheen of sweat across his chest, surveying his work. I softly spun in the snare he’d set. My head lolled back, my wrists bound, my legs split wide open and held.