Chapter 28 #2
Truly, I had set the snare myself, first in my mind.
I made him something greater than he was and did not stop to think about what that meant for the world.
But under my own spell, I felt exalted in this form.
I had no mind to struggle, and I relished knowing that if I did, I would have pulled tight the cord on my throat and strangled myself within minutes.
Every time I swallowed, I felt it tighten.
When I opened my eyes, my gaze fell on the upside-down door etched into the stone behind him.
The one that locked away his heart. His soul.
His deepest secrets. I spun slowly away and closed my eyes, resisting the urge to squirm. Surrender, I reminded myself.
Looking back, I should have known how much power I held, even then. It took a great amount of discipline to stay there like that. To hold the shape of the spell I’d cast over myself so thoroughly, so cleanly, and to hold his entire being inside my working.
I was constantly fighting the urge to scream, to struggle, but the edge of fear made me wetter. My flesh was bound and straining. He had tied the cords in such a way that there was the temptation of pleasure in their movement to entice me to move, if only I was willing to pay the price of pain.
Time slipped away. He watched me for a long time, and I’d fallen into a kind of trance of slow, steady breathing. “Mon lapin,” he murmured as he slid his fingers into the core of me.
I gasped, but the cord on my throat tightened, reminding me where I was.
Awareness slipped over my body, and again I had to fight the urge to squirm.
I exhaled to regain control. But he was ruthless.
Again, his fingers swept deep inside me, tempting me to cry out, to choke myself with my own need.
He kept going. Bringing me to a frenzy, and still I forced myself to stay still and limp.
I never ended up regretting it. Not even at the end.
For it wasn’t until I hung there that I understood how powerful I might become.
He brought me to the edge of that abyss with its other worlds and roiling stardust and then only walked me along the edge.
“You’re perfect,” he said at one point, and I knew I could do it.
He left me on the edge and did not let me cross.
Not until he finally lowered me to the bed and gently loosened my bindings.
Then he let me tear off his clothes and pull his staff deep into my body.
Release was quick and sweet, and afterward he held my face between his hands.
“I will send your threat so that your friends might be saved, even if I defy the will of the gods to do it.”
I did not think of it as a payment, but as a triumph.
I DREAMED I WAS BACK IN RENAUD’S CHAMBERS, SUSPENDED in the cords, but there was no spell this time.
I had no power. I was just hung, like a village prostitute, like game killed in the hunt.
And from my upside-down angle, a strange man dragged a young girl through the room by her hair.
A cloying trail of blood smeared on the floor in her wake.
I tried to scream myself awake, to scream for Renaud to save me, but each time I screamed, the cord he’d tied to my throat pulled tight, choking me.
The man opened the door set into the stone, and blood flowed out in a seeping river. He dragged the girl inside his beating heart.
I woke with a start, hands flying to my throat, heart racing. The air was cold, and out my window the forest stirred with a northern wind. The giant’s lantern was my only light, throwing long and treacherous shadows over my room. Then suddenly a ball of fire leapt up to the bed and meowed at me.
“Schneid!” I cried, gathering him up and snuggling him.
I’d never been happier to see a creature of the otherworld.
“I missed you!” And I had, despite his ornery nature.
He yowled and twitched but seemed to tolerate my hug.
I loosened my grip, and he leapt out of my arms, turning a few circles on the bed by my leg, before settling into a tight little ball of glowing embers, his horns tucked neatly back.
But he did not sleep; his lamplight eyes watched me.
By now, the nightmare illusions of screaming women or Renaud’s voice had become so rote I could calm myself quickly when I heard them, but faraway in the house another cry came—but this one made me go very still.
Dacia?
My breath became shallow. I could not look away from the door, my whole body straining to hear. Schneid lifted his head.
It came again but fell away in a faint sob.
How would the house know Dacia’s voice? I pushed back the covers and leapt out of the bed.
Schneid followed me in a bolt of fiery light.
I had prepared this time. In one hand I grabbed a bundle of dried vervain and mugwort, lighting them with the banked coals.
In my other, I took the lantern the forest giant had given me.
With a deep breath and the keys in my pocket, I unlocked my door and strode into the dark hallway.
No more screams echoed. No sobs. But I felt certain into the marrow of my bones it had been Dacia’s voice. Dacia’s cry. I headed down the hall, the giant’s lantern lighting my way, Schneid at my side, and the smoke from my herbs clearing my path.
At the end of the hallway, I came to a fork, one I’d never encountered before. Both paths looked the same. For a moment, I was afraid that the herbs were not working, and I wanted to turn back. But I could not forget Dacia’s scream.
Heartened by Schneid at my side, I chose the right fork. As we went, the fine carpets and the windows and all the tapestries all fell away. Soon I was in a bare stone hallway and the torches burnt low and sickly.
I did not know where in the labyrinthian house I was, weaving my way deep into the heart of the blackened chateau.
I remembered how the house had changed when the old god had appeared in my dream, and my heart raced at the thought.
Maybe the god had returned. Maybe all this darkness and terror was because of something I had called into existence.
This thought came so strongly that it stopped me in my tracks, lantern swinging.
Maybe the thing stealing women was some creature I had called.
It was me who had hurt Maxime, it was me who had found Death, it was me who had called the old god, it was me who had brought the bandits to Dacia, it was me who had summoned the demon who took my sister.
It was my arrival that ultimately saw Valerie burned. My curse. I felt sickened to my core.
As my thoughts swirled and the smoke of my herbs thickened around me, the crumbling stone of the hallway grew more decrepit, covered in a kind of soot.
Schneid scratched at the base of one. At first, I thought he was trying to ferret out a mouse, but then I noticed the markings etched along the foundation stones, and I bent for a closer look and froze.
They were marks from that cursed manuscript.
The one in the library with the spell that had locked me into place and drawn the creature.
I recognized them, but I did not know what they meant.
Or why they were here, etched into the foundation of the chateau.
I leaned forward to touch the marks, and a flash of white-hot pain seared through me. I jumped back with a yelp.
My finger was unmarked, but I felt scorched. Lifting the giant’s lantern close, I tried to get a better look, committing them to memory so I could find them later. But as I studied them, a low rumble ran through the stones.
Schneid mewed at my feet and slid through my ankles into the hall. He looked back expectantly.
“Wait,” I whispered.
But he sat on his rump and began yowling so loud and incessantly, I was afraid he’d be heard through the whole forest. “Fine,” I hissed and stepped out after him.
Schneid walked ahead, tail swinging. We turned down a new hallway. No other sounds came from the house. No doors opened. I clutched the keys tight and thought about going back to my room. Just then, a door banged shut. I stopped and so did Schneid.
In the torchlight, it seemed as if the walls moved—until I looked directly at them, and then they were simply walls.
Slowly, as if in a dream, I unlocked the door and turned the knob. Schneid followed me inside. Instantly, his flame lit the entire room, dozens of small fires sparking in the night.
I was in the room of my nightmares. Mirrors were set all around me, and unlike my nightmares, they were poured of clear silver and unbroken. Everywhere I looked, there I was. My reflection—long hair unbound and my pale shift and fear-stricken face at all angles.
I spun to leave—but just as my footprints had been swept away in the snow the night I’d run from my grave, now there was no door, no exit, just more mirrors.
No way out and no way in. Schneid darted around at my ankles, hissing and scratching at the many Schneids in the mirrors, his light making everything grotesque.
Using my hands rather than my eyes, I felt along the edges of the glass, hoping to find a seam or lock that would tell me where the door was.
Schneid continued to howl.
“Why don’t you be useful and help find the door?” I asked him, exasperated. I tried my best not to look at my many reflections. Then, out of the corner of my eyes, the mirrors winked. I screamed and jumped, landing on Schneid, who howled and singed my sleeve.
I stamped out the embers and looked at the wretched two of us—me and this hellcat.
The mirrors had gone back to my reflection, but now I looked closer and could see—the ways the reflection bent at the edges, the way I shifted and trembled when I moved.
The strange way I kept seeing the shadows of the forest or my room behind me.
These weren’t mirrors. They were eyes.
I was seeing myself reflected in the black of the watching house. I backed away and hugged myself tight. This was how the house knew what I needed, this is how it trapped me. It had tracked every step, every breath. I had never been free from its watching.
The mirrors blinked again, and it was so horrid, so terrifying that I grabbed Schneid, screwed my eyes shut, and screamed.
Somehow, the scream tore away the little room. When I opened my eyes I stood in the hall, breathing hard. I wasted no time in running for my room.
My herbs had only just died by the time I made it safely inside and closed the door. I threw the last bit onto the fire and leaned against the edge of the bed, heart pounding so hard I wasn’t sure it would ever stop.
The house had beaten me—I had followed the sound of Dacia’s screaming right into the knowledge that I’d been hiding from myself.
I had drawn this darkness down. I had built this curse on which my entire world seemed to sink. I couldn’t let anyone—not even Renaud—know what I had done. The only way to fix this was to find a way to undo it.