Chapter 34
XXXIV.
A breath of air came out of the darkened room—so foul and so heavy, I took a step back and nearly retched.
But there it sat. Open. Waiting for me to enter. Renaud did not appear. The house had not told him, had not called him back. At least, not immediately. I couldn’t see anything from where I stood, but I was terrified to step any farther. I felt suddenly that I had made a terrible, terrible mistake.
I might have gone no farther. I might have turned around and shut the door and crept back to my room. Except for the moan. A woman’s moan. Soft. Alive. Desperate. I could not breathe.
Without thinking of the consequences, I lifted the lantern and crossed the threshold.
I moved as if compelled. I must know. I walked straight into the foul mouth of knowing and the lantern light flooded the small, airless chamber.
With all I expected, I still could not have prepared myself for what I saw.
In that room the bodies of many women were hung like furs on their hooks, tied by their wrists on the wall.
There was blood everywhere, the scent of it, the stick of it beneath my bare feet.
Some of the bodies were skeletons. Some of them were rotting, their long hair the only thing not putrefying.
Nightmare could not describe it. The house had shown me many nightmares since I arrived, but none had prepared me for this bone-deep horror, this ocean of sorrow to drown in.
It was beyond any nightmare creature or terror.
A thing that could never be summed up in words.
Beside each dead woman clung a quiet, tormented spirit. They did not look at me. Did not move.
I had never seen ones like this. So broken themselves, trapped here.
I recognized some of the spirits right away—girls from the village who had gone missing.
Odette. And others I did not know, but who must have come from other villages.
I nearly lost my stomach again, but I was too focused, too sure.
I had to find that moan. One of these women was alive.
The giant’s light glistened on the wet bodies and slick blood, and everything was dark, decay, and terror. I had fallen into hell. Or something worse. But I covered my nose and mouth with my arm and kept looking. Finally, in the darkest corner, I found her.
“Dacia,” I whispered, franticly pushing back her hair, desperate for her to look at me.
She didn’t say anything, but I heard her faint breath. I had never heard a sound so perfect. I didn’t know how to cut her free or bring her down. The only knife I’d seen in the chateau was the one from the carving spit, wielded by the Emperor, and it had vanished when I unraveled the room.
I set down the lantern and began to rub the cord against the hook.
She moaned in pain as I worked, and my heart broke but I could not stop—I was desperate to free her.
My arms trembled and the smell of flesh and burning rope mingled with the blood and decay.
It was nearly too awful. I leaned my head against Dacia’s forehead and wept. “I’m here. I’m here,” I told her.
“Salomé,” she whispered.
The rope snapped, and she collapsed into my arms.
Despite my herbs, I was still weakened from the ritual the night before, and I did not know how I would carry her from that place. Dacia was nearly as tall as me, and though she had lost weight, her bones hung heavily. I tried to take a step and stumbled. Tears pricked my eyes.
But I had learned much in this home, this monstrous place that served the worst monster of all. Taking a deep breath, I ground my feet into the stone and thought the incantation.
My light filled the room, and even the spirits who could not look at me lifted their heads.
I gathered Dacia against my stainless white dress and lifted the giant’s lantern again.
As I walked us out of that airless room, I reached for each spirit to follow.
Each lost girl. Each forsaken woman. Some of them tried to speak, but I could not hear their words.
Some of them I recognized, and each time our eyes met I found more sorrow, more horror.
There was no one left alive in that cursed place, other than Dacia, and I gathered them all to my light tenderly, as a mother would her children, and led them forward into the chateau.
I didn’t know where to take them. Where to go. I needed a horse. I stumbled through the halls. I needed to take Dacia to Perchta’s hut. But as I turned the corner of the hallway, a tall man all in black came toward me.
Renaud had returned.
There was no hiding it. No illusion or spell to cover my tracks. He could see me, clear as day—barefoot and shining, covered in blood. My eyes wild, my breath fast. And Dacia’s limp body slung over me.
But other than a strange glint in his eyes, there was nothing that betrayed anything was amiss. “Did you cut yourself?” he asked, his tone kind and benevolent.
For a moment I thought I must have lost my mind—fool that I was, I had gotten it all wrong somehow!
His eyes, even now, looked on me with so much gentleness.
He did not seem surprised by any of it—my white robes, the spirits hovering behind me, the woman on my shoulder, or the lantern at my side.
Rather than me, it was Renaud who was filled with so much righteous confidence.
No look of guilt or fear. He seemed to have no shame, not even with Dacia’s labored breathing filling the silence.
This lack of shame made me hesitate. Had I missed something?
His dark gaze was as fathomless and clear as always.
Clear and endless into nothing. All this time I had mistaken nothing for great depths. A void.
My fear expunged everything, even my magic. Suddenly my spell light went out, and I buckled under Dacia’s weight.
He looked down and I followed his gaze.
I’d left bloody footprints up the steps, and the hem of my dress was soaked in blood.
“You …” I lifted my head, to accuse, to say something. But I was speechless. How had I not seen his true face. How had I been so fooled? “You are not Death,” I said. And then it clicked, the connection I should have made all along. “You are the Baron de Laval-Rais!”
He gave me that slow predator smile, teeth sharp and white, and stepped closer to me, his gloved finger coming to my chin.
My heart raced, raced like it used to race when he looked at me like this. Raced like when I thought he was someone special to me. But now I saw my feelings with clarity, separating them from myself, finding where I ended and he began. This was fear. How had I ever thought it anything else?
“Wrong, ma petite chou. I am your Death.”