Closing Acts
I was wondering when our newest patron would show up.
She drags in her partner and openly points me out like a display piece. “See! Look at her. She’s so cute. She looks like a real necromancer!”
I really do. I checked the mirror in the bathroom, and my pupils are blooming red streaks while dark lines bunch under my eyes. It’s like I’m wearing a heavy costume, a child playing the role of necromancer.
“Just like you.” The woman touches up her partner.
They push back half-heartedly. “Yeah, yeah. I’m the cutest… Can I just have a chocolate?”
Embarrassed. They’re completely embarrassed. It’s embarrassing to try and practice necromancy as a consort.
Is Vincenza embarrassed of me?
I’m pathetic. I’m weak. I’m slow.
I keep my eyes on my servant as the night wears off. That makes her proud of me, necromancy. Maybe it’s just a better spell and she’ll love me.
No. It’s clearly not just that. Nascia didn’t win over Vincenza’s heart—Ring forgive me for using a dead woman to the benefit of my own romance—with a greater spell. Nascia came into Vincenza’s life at the only possible time in the only possible way they could’ve been equals.
“Night, Catarina,” Piero bumbles while stumbling out with Iulio.
If Vincenza will ever see anything in me, something has to change. I can’t share the wonder of a new exciting world with her, so this fundamental difference in my heart must be what’s wrong.
Vincenza coming out actually draws my attention. She states, “you did well. Let’s go home for the night.”
I turn around; the bar’s empty. “What about our servants?”
“Kivde kilit dilakdev ixak ve. Tirit lavdexi.”
My servant casually saunters into the back.
“They’ll rest in the freezer. You can rest in the car.” She circles the space to clean up any last trash remaining.
I was whispered something, weeks ago—a secret that would draw me closer to the Ring.
“I’m actually going to take a walk,” I say.
“You’re not… coming back to the parlour tonight?” She looks at me with heartbroken eyes.
It has to be embarrassment. She’s clearly completely honest in how much she wants me.
I’ll make our love acceptable.
“Too many cramped spaces today. I will be back for you after I stretch my legs.”
“I also could use… Do you want the time alone?”
I nod.
She hugs me, planting her lips to my hair. “Knock on my door when you get back. I’ll want to see you before I sleep, Hazel Eyes.”
“You don’t think this would be a beautiful thing for us to have in Lawrin?”
“I absolutely think it would, but that doesn’t make it possible. See you soon.”
“You should wait to say that until we’re outside and actually separating,” I giggle.
“Good point.” She sweeps me into her arms and escorts me to just outside our car. “Now, I’ll see you soon.”
“You should also kiss me on the lips.”
She takes my mouth so fast I’m unsure if it was even related to me asking. “Come back to me when you want more.”
I nod, and she lets me down.
As she drives away, I notice enough desperate glances—like she’s hoping I’ll decide to go with her anyway—that it hurts.
But this is what’s good for us.
I turn away from her and face the stars. “Great Ring, I heard from you before. I can’t tell how you told me, but I know it had to be you. You gave me the secret to your gift. Please. I’m willing to pay the price this time. Show me how.”
My heart crawls, my skin sputters cold, and my eyes cling onto a road sign. Surgical hospital, five minutes away.
The Ring’s price is life, but the people entering here appear so limited in it. I can hear the torment of all of them as I enter the bottom floor.
The soul grows as the body withers.
Yes… yes! I want to be closer to death. Show me the ones who yearn!
“Tirit lavdexi.”
“Ma’am? Are you searching for something?” A clinician in black scrubs taps on my shoulder. Her eyes clearly try to peer between my lips for fangs.
I stare through the walls at someone coughing their lungs out. “No, I know where I’m going.”
Gabriele Capello need to see her.
“I’m sorry, didn’t Gabriele Capello need to see you?”
“He’s already taking a visitor…” The clinician’s eyes widen. “Fuck—Fuck. Shit, no. Ring damn me.” Her expletives drag on as she runs down the halls.
Is this the Great Ring who invades my thoughts? Or its servants, the dead? They also have its blessing, so I am following its will either way.
I reach the door of my victim, deciding to enter without knocking. The Great Ring would’ve impeded me if it didn’t want me to enter.
The Ring has a plan. It wants this to happen.
“Hello?” An older woman lies in a hard bed, surrounded by candles and ritual symbols.
The smell of death is heavy in this room. Both literally and in the overwhelming eminence coming from that woman.
I can taste her dying heart. I almost wish I could be like her.
The Great Ring brings me.
“The Great Ring brings me.”
“Oh sweet Angel of Death!” the woman cheers up and comes to life. “You’re just like the stories they tell of the sweet Lich Queen, aren’t you? You’ve come to shuffle me along?”
A string width fragment of my mind wonders if I’m acting unusual. I’m clearly not. This is what the Ring wanted of me.
It’ll make Vincenza love me.
I stare down at my hands and search for the spell that was almost mine. It took the blood of a victim—as well as my own.
“Your death will be quick, my promise.” I search the table stand next to her bed for sharp items.
Next to the ashtray with a heavy smell of tobacco is a cigar cutter. It flips out into a knife with a hole in the handle for bracing cigars.
I feel a cold spot grow in my hands, flooding my heart with the softest touch of grief. “Were you a smoker?”
“Still am, honey. Doctors won’t give me peace about it! They want me to be torn every which way to give me any extra week, and that makes it hard for them. Blegh. It’s been too long since I’ve seen my grandson.”
I wonder when Vincenza had her last cigarette.
Fuck. I’m doing something weird here, aren’t I? I shouldn’t be thinking about this. I don’t need to know her life.
I grab her hand and put the knife up to her palm. “Don’t worry. It’s just a small prick and it’s over.”
And I would pay far more than just a small prick for a future with Vincenza.
I quickly cut her hand then mine, grabbing our wounds together and whispering, “ixak xilikex. Tirit lavdexi.”
Her skin rots while a blackened soul crawls out, beautiful. Every flaw of this woman’s material body is reflected with something utterly perfect in her soul. It’s heavy with time, but not experience. The woman I killed led a boring life, and held a small soul for it.
But I don’t care for any of that. The most beautiful soul in the world is waiting for me to impress her, so I wipe the blood from my eyes and work through the setting exhaustion.
“Dexit vete ve. Rel dilakdev vetev ve. Tirit lavdexi. Dexit lavdexi ve.”
My breath is cold; my heart is warm.
I have created a vacuous hole in my mind that needs the warmth of her touch to fill.
I stand at her door, steadying my breath as I knock.
Despite how long I’ve been gone, there’s only a couple steps between her and the door opening—like she’s been impatiently waiting.
“So, what did my apprentice want to see me for?” She drags a finger across her smiling lips. “It’s quite late.”
I beg, “a kiss, please.”
She pulls me close enough that I can almost see into her room before our lips meet.
I close my eyes, but I know it worked without them. It’s too easy to feel my connection with the Ring spilling into her. This patron–consort bond, it’s finally become mutual, and she doesn’t even know yet.
She concludes the kiss and places her mouth next to my ear, cheeks nuzzling together. “I was right that I was obsessive with you—I can’t believe I’m suggesting this, but I need to hold you in public. Let me take you somewhere. Restaurant, café, park, I don’t care.”
“I would like that.” That and so much more.
Her hands tenderly touch my sides before gripping my ass, drawing a sigh from my lips. “I don’t spoil you half as much as I should. Tell me, tonight, what do you want?”
I open my eyes. “I want you to be proud of me.”
“Of course I am.” She pulls her head back to speak, but her jaw just falls slightly open.
All the sounds of the world stop. The music in my heart and the Ring’s flows between us snuffed out like ill fitting memories, cast aside.
I don’t think it’s horror this time. I’m not sure if she knows enough to be horrified. Her eyes just stare blankingly.
Through still lips, monotone, she whispers, “Catarina, what am I looking at?”
I tie a thread around my voice and restrain it into something nearly enthusiastic. “I became a Ringborn, for you.”
She blinks.
“I told you this is what the Ring wanted. I knew the Ring had chosen me. And look! It has!”
“I don’t—Catarina. I don’t understand.” Still no expression.
“Remember when I told you I felt hollow? The thoughts which obsess over death, they showed me the way into its grace.”
“That’s not something you can do.”
“Are my eyes not glowing?”
“Spectacularly.”
I grab her hand and hold it over my heart. “Vincenza, this changes everything! You’ll never have to feel guilty over what’s between us. This won’t turn sour—I have as much faith in that as I do the Ring—but you don’t need to worry over the consequences of that. My future is safe.”
“Catarina… I’m used to making excuses. I gave them out freely every day for over forty years, and I still find new ones to give. My guilt over touching you as your mistress was an excuse.” She sullenly shakes her head. “I need to know, now, what you did.”
I inhale her fear, and it causes me to hesitate. “The price was death, a soul. The Great Ring showed me a soul that was in pain and wanted the invasive procedures keeping them materially bound to end.”
“Of course it is.” She pulls me inside her room and locks the door. “Catarina, we can’t stay here.”
“W-what?”
“There has never been any explanation for the Ringborn, nothing beyond platitudes. You created one, and now it’s the only one that’s been proven possible. And…” She grabs her face, shuddering. “I always wondered why necromancy was outlawed.”
One known method, and I just rediscovered it.
It’s just one spell, one death.
Unless there’s something I don’t know, there’s now only one demonstrated origin for the Ringborn. And it questions their blessings, their natural right.
“Ring’s shadow, I didn’t think…”
Vincenza throws me into her chest. “This isn’t something you’re at fault for, or that you should even feel guilty for. There’s no known illegal spells, and you did no wrong. But we’re still unsafe here now.”
“Where are we going?”
“I have some family in Lawrin; they won’t know you ever weren’t a Ringborn. You need to pack your things, and I need to write out a notice that the parlour will be closed for the season. Patrons will need refunds or extended memberships…”
“But—what are we doing? How do we come back?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” She kisses my hair. “It’s impressive just how easily you took over my life.”
“I-I just wanted to impress you, convince you we could attend the wedding together as a… I didn’t want to ruin your life. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It isn’t.” I clutch her dress. “I could just go to Lawrin. I’m a Ringborn; I can sustain myself.”
“Kate, you have deeply upended my life, but not in a way that’s completely awful. You have a talent—and a discovery that I want to explore. Do not deny me my ability to explore you.”
She can just reach into me, make me feel any way she wants.
I’m obsessed too. Been for a while. “...I won’t. Explore me however you wish.”
“Go back to your room and arrange your things. I’ll… do the same.” There’s a pain in her eyes as she takes them off of me, to a framed photo in too dim of light for me to see what it’s of.
But I can guess.