Chapter 51
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Eurydice
Silence, total and absolute. Barefoot in a snow-covered field.
Arms crossed over my body. A threadbare shift hung from my shoulders, patched and faded, as though I were a little girl again and preparing for sleep.
A strange light suffused everything, like torchlight in mist, and endless gray silence otherwise.
No queens, no swords, no blood, no battle.
“You found your way back.”
That voice. The most beautiful voice I’d ever heard—the one I thought I’d never hear again.
I turned. She stood ten paces away in her own shift, her body unbroken, with that almost-smile on her face. My mother.
If I moved, she might disappear. If I spoke, all of this might evaporate.
“It will,” she said. “But not as quick as that.”
She’d read my thoughts. “What is this place, Mama?”
The almost-smile didn’t leave her. “It’s a tomb, Eury. A place of death.”
My heart kicked in my chest, and I held myself tighter. The moment of my death burst in—the feeling of a blade sliding between my ribs and into my heart. A total and final darkness. For once, I hadn’t found a way through. I never would again.
Ash drifted down around me like snow. I knew this place. The first time I’d come, my mother had told me I wasn’t supposed to be here yet.
“I failed, Mama.” I met her eyes. My face crumpled. “I died.”
She came forward, and when her arms wrapped around me, they felt as real as in life.
Here, nothing separated us. Her head touched my cheek, and she was her very best self—cooing, whispering words I couldn’t understand.
Not the mother who lay in bed with the door shut, but the one I spent every day wishing for, even the days when I had her.
“You didn’t fail, my love,” she said into my ear. “You lost who you thought you were.”
I stiffened in her arms. Those words were familiar. They weren’t hers. I leaned back until I could see her eyes, searching her face. “What do you mean?”
Her head tilted to the side. She only smiled that secret smile I knew well, the one she wore when she expected me to understand.
“It wasn’t you who said those words.” The spiritstag, that was who’d said them. A god had spoken those words to me. “Mama, are you real?”
“Is anything real, Eurydice, but what we perceive?” She stepped out of the cradle of my arms, turned sidelong to reveal a throne twenty paces off. Bone and gnarled root, unchanged. “What do you perceive, my love?”
The throne stood tall and unnerving, a monstrosity. But on its seat lay a blade, changed from the first time I’d been here.
Caustrix’s tooth. The dagger of ice and spite.
Then, it had been asleep. Now, it glowed. Hummed. Vibrated with awareness.
Light bled from it, expanding, deepening, and soon I sensed all might change. That this silent peace would disappear—and my mother with it—as the dagger flared brighter.
“You don’t belong to this place of ash,” she said behind me. “Not yet.”
I twisted around to keep her in my sight. “I need to know something. The truth.”
She inclined her head. “Always.”
I turned fully toward her, away from the throne. Death stripped away fear; it left nothing to lose.
“Mama, am I a monster?”