Chapter 35
XXXV.
The Curse of the Void
There was nowhere to go, especially not with Dacia in my arms. In a blink, Renaud grabbed me by my skirt and tore me down, the violence in shocking contrast to his previous gentleness.
My face smacked against the stone, my scream dying to a moan.
He dragged me in one hand, Dacia in the other, down the hall, without mercy.
His cold ferocity told me in no uncertain terms—
We were going to die.
The moment I thought it, some thread of the spell so deeply embedded inside me broke—and when it broke, the chateau changed.
It was a ruin. The same ruin I had arrived in the day he’d plucked me out of the woods. The spell was unraveling, I could feel it, and in feeling it, I realized it was a spell I’d unwittingly cast, or, no … fed.
I remembered in a flash those symbols on the hourglass during my first test. The hourglass.
They were a curse that tied me to this place.
He used their spell to draw on my power, the forest’s magic, using us to make up for his lack of ability.
And I … I had brought the spell alive with my adoration, my desperation, and my need for power.
But it was too late for understanding or revelation. I kicked and struggled but he dragged us on. The spirits followed us, a ghostly parade whispering to each other in words I could not hear.
It was as I had dreamed, so many times.
He brought us to the chapel, swinging the doors open so forcefully they thudded against the walls.
I had gripped the lantern this entire time, and I used the moment to throw it at him as hard as I could, trying to rip myself from his grasp, but he dropped Dacia among the pews and dodged it.
The lantern bounced onto the floor, but it did not break, and the flame did not go out.
Once again quick as a snake, he caught me by my hips with two hands, hauling me up on the altar in the same way as the night before.
“You bastard,” I screamed, kicking wildly.
He grabbed at my legs and missed. For a second, I thought I might get out, and I rolled to the edge of the slab.
But he was on me, rope already in his hand.
In less than a breath, he had me tied at my wrists and ankles until I was trussed and unable to move.
I heard Perchta in my head, admonishing me, You can’t save anyone. You can’t even save yourself. I saw Dacia’s limp body on the floor between the pews. I went still for a moment to watch her, straining to make sure she was still breathing.
“I’ve been waiting for you to stop holding back that power,” he said.
I jerked back to him, to the bonds and the way he had me trussed up like a pig on a spit. Death … Renaud … no … the Baron. “Because you have none of your own,” I spat.
“I kept trying to unlock it, to use it, but you only let out the smallest, barest, most frustrating amount. You loved me. You were supposed to surrender to me, whole. You surrendered your body. That was easy. You surrendered your mind. That, too, did not take much. And yet, you never ever surrendered that power. You always held that back for yourself. Selfish bitch. And now look what you did.” He gestured to Dacia.
Blood was trickling from her wounds, spreading slowly on the floor.
Her breath had been so faint when I pulled her from that room.
Did her chest move now? I strained to see.
He spotted my gaze and gave a bark of frustration.
Storming off the altar, he hauled her body up like a sack and dropped her on the floor below me. “You can die together,” he said.
The spirits rippled, silent witnesses to the scene.
“Leave her alone,” I screamed. You can’t save anyone. You can’t even save yourself.
I was tied to the altar, helpless and injured. But I was not that broken prostitute he had found in the road. I was not even that prostitute when he found me, though I had not understood that yet.
I had shattered my own coffin and crawled out of my own grave.
I had walked through the darkest part of the wood with bloodied hands and frozen feet.
He hadn’t known my strength, my true strength—how could he, when I hadn’t known it myself?
He’d only ever seen a glimmer of it behind the vulnerable shell of my body hung with grave dirt, and he thought he could own the whole of me?
My fear turned to rage. He could never.
I sobbed and tore my gaze from Dacia. I could not do this for her. Or for Rochelle. Or for Valerie. I must first do it for me. I must save myself first.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep, shaking breath.
I felt for the seam of the world, beyond the golden threads of magic, and when I found it, I opened it to the dark.
The abyss appeared. The chapel winked out.
In the distance, Dacia’s labored breathing and the Baron’s shuffling of ingredients as he prepared some spell.
But I stepped away, into the abyss, and its silence engulfed me.
In the quiet, I looked down and found Schneid at my ankles.
The stardust moved infinitely beyond me.
The great shadows of gods moving deep inside their tumult.
I had no fear of getting lost. For as much as this place was the otherworld, the place above and below and between all things, it was also the place inside me that called unto the rest of the world.
It had always been open to me, if only I knew to find it.
If only I knew myself. It was not a curse, but a window.
I closed my eyes on the abyss and opened them again to the dark chapel ceiling, drawing another deep breath into the bottom of my stomach. I thought of the bonds, and with an exhale, I pulled my wrists, and they slipped away.
He had his back to me, kneeling before his terrible book again, cloak askew in the chaos, papers scattered on the floor.
He chanted from it with so much focus, his body rigid, his face pouring sweat.
And yet—I nearly laughed—there was no magic, no spell he was building. He simply did not have the power.
He had knowledge, certainly. He could set a spell, could maybe even feed it a faint pulse of life.
But he did not himself hold power. He had not walked in the abyss, he had not been humbled in the face of the unknown expanse of the otherworld, and he did not recognize the smell of lightning and green herbs.
How had I ever seen this man as anything other than what he was? A man. A terrible magician. Pitiful. Desperate to hold powerful things in his hands and break them. I climbed off the altar and strode toward him, my bloodied feet firm on the floor.
He looked up only at the last moment—just as I threw him back against the floor.
At first, he must have thought so little of me, of what I was capable of, that he didn’t even think to fight back. He still clutched the book to his chest, still chanting whatever spell he was trying to cast. He pushed back away from me, and this time, I did laugh.
“If you cannot do a spell from that book, you cannot do any at all. You may bring death, but you bring nothing else.” I snatched the book from him and threw it away. His lips kept moving, kept casting. Pitiful.
I turned my back on him and ran to Dacia. She opened her eyes to me. Alive! The blue sky after rain. I wanted to weep, but I only began to pick her up.
“Salomé,” she whispered, reaching for my hands. “I am so sorry.”
“No!” I nearly yelled with the force of it. I clutched her close, the scent of her still there, lilies, even through the blood and rot. “No, I am sorry.”
“I thought about it,” she said. “I could not stop thinking. And I—”
But the Baron was still trying. “Mephistopheles!” he called, not understanding his spell was no more alive than a stone.
“Mephistopheles,” he called. “I call you here to do my will. I call you from the depths. I raise you to the earth. As your master I command you to restore my titles with the Emperor, restore my wealth, and restore my chateau.”
I was only half listening, but when I heard this, I stopped and looked up.
He was trying to summon a demon for that?
A demon for his titles, his wealth, and his hinterland estate?
All this pain, all those women, all those bruised shadows of spirits that were tortured and trapped.
All his pretty words and all his brutality exerted over my body.
All that for things I could burn in one day?
I was not weak; he had simply found me vulnerable.
I screamed with rage, a scream that filled that cursed chapel.
I dropped Dacia and yanked the candlestick off the altar.
He turned just as I lifted it. I struck him as hard as I could across the temple.
The Baron crumpled. Like the weak and fragile man he was.
I stood over him and looked down. Disgusted with myself, disgusted with him. I had worshipped him as a god—on my knees, lauding him, building him up to be something he was not. I spit on his face and struck him again. His blood sprayed across the altar.
I might have kept going if it weren’t for Dacia. She whimpered, breaking the haze of rage. I dropped the candlestick and crouched beside her, kissing her bloodied and bruised cheek, then picked up my dropped lantern.
The Baron pushed himself up, bleeding. His face twisted in fury. “You can save her if you help me. You can command the demon to restore her.”
“You are a liar. There is no truth in you. You are the son of lies,” I said, and I broke open the lantern and reached inside for the eternal flame.
I had not made the curse on these stones, but I had fed it.
I was his pig. His woman or child to enhance the spell.
The glyphs on my thighs, the symbols he’d painted on my belly, the cup, the blood, the altar.
He’d only ever seen me for a vessel to be emptied and used to bring forth.
I was responsible for undoing it. The task was clear.
I must break his spell and lift this curse.