Chapter 4 #2
Carnations.
“We have to go.” Corvin’s fingers dig into the flesh of my arm once more. “We stopped for too long.”
He yanks me forward again, faster now, making me stumble a few steps before I manage my strides. We pass rusted bars that line one side, prison cells, doors hanging open like mouths. A chain hangs from one door, black with age.
“The crown is a magical binding, demanding a debt to be paid,” he huffs, pulling me toward a stairwell that spirals upward a short distance, faint light casting down on it. “But what happens when the curse gets fed with the blood of the creditor?”
The scent of Death fades slightly, or perhaps it’s the burn in my lungs fooling me. “I don’t understand,” I pant. “You want me to feed Death’s blood to the crown?”
“Not just that, but complete the entire rite. Come on.” He shifts behind me, hand releasing my arm and wandering to the small of my back, herding me up the tight spiral as if my body is the only door he can slam between us and what we’re running from. “Up this way, Your Majesty!”
The stone stairs sweat harder beneath my soles than my armpits do, slick and warm, and with each turn the air thickens—less piss and iron, more damp heat, like breath trapped under glass. A wet gust hits my face, heavy with loam and something mellow. Sap. Leaves. Growing things.
The torchlight dies behind us, and a pale, sudden brightness spills down from above, so abrupt I blink hard, eyes stinging as my pupils scramble to adjust. Green flickers; yellow-speckled leaves clinging to life, blackened stems, a tangle of branches that scratch against iron trellises.
Dirt crumbles beneath my heel. My breath catches.
Glass glows. Condensation weeps. Where…?
I squint into the light, and my stomach turns over. “Is this—”
“Queen Maeryn’s greenhouse, yes. Your Majesty…
” He steps in front of me and drags a breath deep enough that it makes his chest rise.
His eyes flick once to the panes above—too much light, too exposed—then back to me.
He scrubs a hand over his stubbly jaw, the words stumbling as if they’re reluctant to be born.
“If…if he’s got a body, he’s got blood. If he’s got blood, it can be spilled.
And if that blood touches the crown while the rite binds you together…
then the loop closes. The curse shatters. ”
The words land like a punch. “The rite? But how—”
“Coronation,” he blurts. “Making Death your consort is our only hope. Your Majesty, you have to…have to…” Another deep breath. “You have to wed him. Bed him. Crown him. Then slit his throat and bleed him over the gold.”
An unexpected bark of laughter rips out of my throat, sharp and hysterical, bouncing off the glass panes. My head spins, the scent of damp soil and warm greenery suddenly cloyingly rich, turning my stomach. I stumble back, hitting a potting bench hard enough to rattle the clay pots stacked there.
“Wed him? Bed him?” Again? “Put the crown on a god’s head and then slit his throat?” The sheer, towering absurdity of it makes the world tilt, the condensation-streaked glass above swirling into a kaleidoscope of gray sky and rotting leaves. “This is madness.”
Corvin looks at me, unblinking. “Kael was certain. He had spent years unrolling scrolls, finding hidden translations to unravel the roots of this curse.”
I grip the rough wood of a bench just to stay upright, breathing through the sudden wave of nausea that threatens to purge my meager breakfast. “This is too much. It’s too—”
Corvin’s gaze snaps past me to the glass panes above, to the drifting gray light, to the condensation shivering, as if the greenhouse itself has begun to listen.
“He desires you. That’s leverage. Use it,” he says. “I have to go.”
“What?” My grip tightens on the bench until my knuckles blanch. “You can’t just drop a theology of impossible tasks at my feet and leave!”
“There’s too much information to be tortured out of me, and the less we appear to know, the less threatened he’ll feel,” he throws over his shoulder, boots whispering over damp soil before he shoves past a trellis. “There’s no more I can do here.”
“He already knows what Kael tried to do, or he wouldn’t have gotten rid of the girl!” I hurry after him, half stumbling, skirts catching on a thorny branch. “How am I supposed to achieve any of this?”
“In the same manner you managed to seduce Death.” He reaches a portion of wall swallowed by ivy so thick it looks like a rotting curtain, digs his fingers in, and wrenches it aside. Behind it, a narrow door reveals itself, iron-banded and old. “Consult the scriptures if you must.”
“He was furious at my coronation.” My breath comes too fast, dragging dense warmth into my already exhausted lungs. “He was in my face last night, shouting and snarling, so it’s safe to say he hates me!”
“His hate is not your greatest hurdle,” he throws over his shoulder, voice rough with urgency as he fumbles a key ring from his belt. “Yours is.”
Those last words land in my stomach before I can even process them, my mind still stuck on wed, bed, crown, slit—on the absurd choreography of it. “My hate?”
He stutters a key into the old lock, letting the door grind open on age-old rust. “Love. You have to love him.”
Another sharp laugh scrapes out of me, more breath than sound. “Impossible.”
He squeezes himself through the gap. “Good luck, My Queen.”
“Corvin—”
The door howls shut.
The plant curtain draws.
I don’t move for a long moment. I simply stare at the trembling ivy, dumbfounded, the greenhouse humming with damp life struggling to survive. Water drips from a leaf. A thorn clings to my skirts. Somewhere above, a cloud darkens the already gray sky.
Something shifts at my core.
So this is what it takes…
Love aside, if I approach this sequence backward, it appears doable.
I look down at my hands, calloused from shovel handles and grave dirt.
Fuck, I’d love to drag a blade over Vale’s throat.
Put this crown on his head? Be my guest. And bed him?
I’ve done it once. Twice. Kind of. I can do it again.
But how does one convince Death to become your husband?
My lips twitch into a smile.
No, not convince.
Demand.