34. Chapter 34 #4
I found her the moment I stepped beneath the archway, though she wasn’t on her throne and neither was her guard anywhere in evidence.
She knelt, alone beneath the boundless star-encrusted sky, in the nearest snow bed, speaking softly to one of the protruding heads, a hand ruffling frost off the ice-threaded hair.
It was such a bizarre sight it stopped me dead. How could she be so tender with the damned? That sweet, fond little smile on her face, the moon silvering her edges; she looked like something from a fairy tale.
What is she doing? I asked.
Her duty. Reminding them all of what they’ve done to earn this. She can show them images with her touch. The people they hurt, their treacheries, the messes they’ve left behind. Every day, she shows them.
Is that what you did to me, planted images? I said, unable to help being suspicious, even as I stood there with my teeth chattering. You forced that dream into my head?
Sweetheart, I don’t have her power. I’m sure I’m mediocre to the last degree when it comes to any ability I might have inherited from her. That dream was all you. I was just its lucky audience.
His mother rose from the snow, her dress billowing about her ankles. It seemed made from starlight, like she’d plucked the surplus from her skies and fashioned it herself. Eyes like smoked moonlight, her hair in elegant silver waves. I’d never seen a woman so beautiful and disturbing.
She didn’t lead with greetings or niceties.
“There’s something we need to discuss before I decide what’s to be done about this mess.
” She paused, studying me, my ludicrous layers, my probably-terrified expression.
I doubted she had had a conversation with something of my like in all her life.
“I need certain assurances that you would never use her name to bring any harm upon my daughter.” Her voice came tight, crisp as the temperature.
“She’s just a little girl,” I said reflexively. What reason would I ever have to harm a child?
Her dress, swagged with a fringe of icicles at the waist, shimmered in the light of the omnipresent moon. The expression on her face told me I’d said something ridiculous. “She won’t be forever.”
“I would never hurt her. I have no interest in bringing harm to any of you. All I want is for my mind to be my own again.”
“If she comes to any harm by your hand I will lay a curse upon you that would make you wish for a mere possession.”
I expected nothing less from her, the regent of this hauntingly beautiful Hell circle. “That seems reasonable.”
A lift to her silver brow. “Would you make a promise of it?”
“Of course.”
Making a promise to her isn’t a simple exchange of words, Des, Remy said from behind his window. His mother looked at me as if she could see him there as plainly as she saw me.
What does that matter, if I never intend to go back on my word? Whatever she threatens me with, it won’t happen so long as I don’t harm her daughter. Which I would never do.
She drew closer, so close I could count the snowflakes tangled in her lashes.
With icy, precise hands, she flicked aside my cloak and unfastened buttons to expose my neck.
So cold was her finger that it felt like a knife tip slicing across my throat, and when she pulled away, a frosty necklace of what looked, from what little I could see, like diamonds had bloomed against my skin.
“It will know the moment you go against your word,” she said, tapping the large, cold center stone, her eyes boring into mine, “and it will choke the life out of you.”
That was all well and good, but I could feel how finely wrought, how ostentatious, the necklace was as I groped it with my numbing fingers.
“It can’t look like this.” I tried to disguise the derisive laugh building in my throat.
“I’ll be attacked for it; people will try to steal it.
It will make them think I’m rich, they’ll kill me and try to prize it from my neck. ”
I think she thought you might like something pretty. She knows very little of the human world. This is good, Des, this means she’s going to let you go. You’ll be back home to Livvy by nightfall.
The silence of Frost echoed in my ears. I was suddenly quite keenly aware that I stood in the middle of a brightly glinting almost-nightmare where the monsters had no teeth or claws, only blood cold as ice and unearthly moonlit eyes.
My heart beat unsteadily. I couldn’t tell if I’d offended her by rejecting the necklace.
Her face was still, too still. My breath was freezing in my lungs and Remy was shushing my mounting fear as his mother reached for my throat again.
The weight of the diamonds disappeared, replaced by a long, spindly silver chain that still might draw unwanted attention, but I would at least be able to better hide beneath my clothes.
She rebuttoned me into my layers, her eyes on mine, so cold and clear I could see the moonbeam veins running through them, the starlight glinting from her pupils. “I’ll need your ankle next.”
My pulse was humming. I hadn’t thought this would happen so quickly.
I thought she’d deliberate for weeks, a month, more.
I dropped down to the ground beside a snowcapped head and unlaced my boot with clumsy fingers.
I had trouble with the knots, could hardly feel them when I was so numb, and I had almost won the struggle when a sound like some sort of enormous trumpet blasted through Frost.