39. Chapter 39
We landed briefly at the top of the hill above The Crossing to collect the bag Finn had left behind, just long enough to admire from afar the blazing ruins in the field, the swirls of embers in the air.
The flames looked like demons themselves, thrashing and flaring, the body of Luceric caught between their teeth.
“How long will the fire burn?” I was thinking of the rest of the city, how long it had until it went up in flames. The air below was windblown with pinpricks of sparks, full of smoke and distant screams. The human tide was flooding back into the streets.
I felt Finn’s eyes as he stood just behind me, still as a gargoyle atop a parapet. “If I’m not there to control it, it’ll die out soon enough. The city should be spared.” Bag over his shoulder, he took my hand again and brought us back to the wood in a blink.
I hadn’t missed this place. It was silent as ever and smelled like passing centuries, ancient gnarled trees blotting out most of the gray sky. A silver stream lay at our feet, smooth as a looking glass.
The only difference I could note was the lack of fog. “I thought there was no blinking in the wood.”
“There’s no blinking past the mouth of the Firstborn tunnel,” Finn corrected, only the faintest suggestion of gold frosting his skin in this dim, gray place. He seemed tired, his lashes low. “This is the receiving wood.”
“Where’s Valic?” I revolved on the spot, finding no glimpse of him.
“Cleaning himself up, probably. We can’t all three sneak back in together. We have to stagger our reappearances.” Finn dug through the satchel, unearthing the clothes I’d been wearing when we left.
“You’re a fucking prick, Finn.” Remy’s icy voice crawled up my throat as his brother turned his back so I could change my clothes. “You could have killed her.”
Finn flicked out an irritable hand and then knelt by the stream to splash water on his face. “You wouldn’t have let that happen.”
“You couldn’t know that,” Remy said as my white dress slithered down my body and puddled at my feet. “What if—”
“What is the point in what ifs, I wonder.” Finn tipped his head back toward the canopy. “We’re out, she’s fine, Luceric is dead. I don’t feel as if I deserve a scolding.”
“Fuck you.”
“Very clever. I’d forgotten how witty you are in our time apart.”
I did up my buttons and crouched next to Finn to dip my hands into the stream, rinsing the soot and sweat from my face. Maybe his methods weren’t the greatest, I said uncertainly as Remy carried on grumbling and pacing. But haven’t you gotten what you’ve wanted?
Yes, he said, though his snarl sounded very unhappy indeed. That doesn’t mean he’s not an asshole. You could have died.
Sure. I watched from the corner of my eye as Finn dashed off beads of water clinging like tears to his gilded eyelashes. But doesn’t this also mean he’s believed in you all this time? He knew what you were capable of even when you didn’t.
He scoffed. Finn doesn’t believe in anything but getting exactly what he wants.
Maybe so. I ran a wet hand along the back of my neck as Finn stood. But it seems what he wanted was for you to tap your potential. There are worse things to want.
“Who’s this?” Finn said suddenly, though he didn’t sound very alarmed, his voice oddly inflected. I looked around to find a prowling shadow slipping through a stand of trees. When he heard me climb to my feet, Finn glanced over his shoulder. “It won’t hurt you if you’re with a demon.”
“I know it won’t hurt me,” I said, gazing at the hulking black mass of the young hellhound, the slightly oversized paws, fur tousled like a black dandelion.
Same expression of polite curiosity he’d worn when last we’d met.
“I’ve seen him before. He was hurt. I healed a wound on his leg with faerie blood. ”
Finn gave me a longer look over his shoulder this time. “He let you touch him?”
“Probably only because he was so injured and sensed Remy was with me. I hadn’t been able to get near an animal in years before I met this one.”
Finn crouched, holding out a hand for the hound, who didn’t move an inch, though his red eyes kept returning to me. His tufted ears flickered.
“Remy said he must have gotten hurt during training. That he’d gotten on the bad side of a demon.
It was a nasty gash. He might not trust any of you anymore.
Will he just live out here for the rest of his life?
” I didn’t like the thought of him alone in this wood.
It seemed, to me, like the sort of moody place I’d only return to if I had a death wish.
Smoky wooded twilight, the forest closing up over my head.
I shivered despite myself, realizing a beat too late that the chill had come from Remy.
He didn’t like when I pondered my own death.
The hound sat back on his haunches. Twitched an ear.
“He might need some convincing to come back into the fold,” Finn said.
“Demons aren’t famed for their patience, and hounds have strong wills.
Well, they’d have to. They need minds of their own to guard the gates.
It’s in our best interest they think for themselves, but tell that to some of the cretins tasked with training them.
They’re not all like Riquin, unfortunately. ”
Finn gave it a few more moments but the hound didn’t approach, so he rose, dropping the satchel from his shoulder, and held out a hand to me.
“I want the dress, I’m not hoping for a dance,” he said dryly, when I looked askance at his outstretched hand.
I tossed it over and within seconds the dress and satchel were ablaze, smoldering into cinders. Finn’s eyes were hazy behind a veil of blue smoke. Before he blinked us out, I turned to say goodbye to the hound, but he’d already gone.
An arm in black armor reached out and snatched me by the wrist as Finn and I headed for the unmarked side entrance we’d left through hours earlier. I whirled around to find a guard looming over me, his face hidden by the closed visor of his hellhound helmet.
“Where’ve you two been off to?” His voice was muffled.
“Out.” Finn loosened the guard’s hand on me with a mild smile. “Is there a problem?”
A creak of metal as the guard turned to gaze at Finn. “Your regent’s been looking for you.”
“I’m sorry I missed her. Did you need anything else?”
I felt the guard’s eyes back on me though I couldn’t see them, and I dropped mine to my boots.
“Get back to Flame,” was all he eventually barked, and Finn led me by the elbow inside Hell.
He walked me back to Remy’s room, where two armored guards stood on either side of the door.
I doubted that boded well. They offered no comment as we slipped inside, and Finn closed the door behind himself with a snap.
The candlelight roared halfway up the walls at his appearance, flooding the room in red and gold.
“We were out on that chimera hunt,” he said, smudgy gold shadowing his eyes. “I got word one had been seen mucking around somewhere east of here, hours away. I felt your frost might come in handy; I burned off the ice at her ankle and spirited her away.”
“That’s a weak story,” Remy said flatly.
“Perhaps I wanted to take her somewhere private,” Finn said with a tired half-twist of a smile.
He looked like sublimity and chaos, his hair in disarray, red with firelight.
“And a chimera hunt was my ruse. Would that be more believable?” He took a few backward steps toward the door, reaching blindly for the knob.
“If you’ll excuse me, I have to go get berated by my regent. ”
The sconce flames shrunk back like they’d been chastised once he’d gone.
My knees went loose a moment before I sank onto Remy’s bed, abruptly exhausted, despite not having done much of anything.
You did plenty, he said, and I felt him relax too, reclining in his chair. I don’t think I could have summoned so much as a snowflake if I hadn’t thought you were going to die.
Without realizing it I’d seemed to leave behind reality and enter some strange, dreamy land where everything was backward and upside-down: a demon I had yet to meet cared about me and I clearly felt similarly, enough that it made my stomach crater to think what his mother might do to him for yet again stepping out of line.
I curled into myself atop the blankets, suddenly afraid. How angry will your mother be?
With you? Probably not very. He directed my hand to the silver chain around my neck. She made you make that promise already. She wouldn’t have done that if she wasn’t going to let you go.
My finger ran down the links of the chain. It was curiously cold, hadn’t taken on any of my body heat, and lay upon my flesh like an icy, docile snake.
How angry with you will she be? Two guards at the door; clearly she was aware I’d been gone. Would she storm in here in a swirl of frost and bestow some fresh hell upon me, us?
She’s always angry with me. He said it as if this were a throwaway concern. I don’t think I can remember a time when she wasn’t.
I let that float in the air for a little while before I responded, watching a shaft of firelight set ablaze a swirl of dust motes. That’s not much of an answer.
I don’t have much of an answer to give you. I’ll find out soon enough. She’s never been one to mince words.
She didn’t arrive until very early the next morning after I’d gotten little more than a fussy nap.
Without a knock, she swept into Remy’s apartment.
She wore a cloak that echoed the night skies of Frost, a velvety iridescent black spangled with starbursts.
Half her face was hidden behind a mask that seemed carved of ice, spreading across her nose and cheekbones, her moonlit gaze staring out from behind the eye holes.
A net of silver held her hair, dotted with gems that looked like starlight and sent rainbows blistering across the room.
She said nothing, but even her silences had teeth.
I felt a tremor of premonition as the hearth flames sucked back to embers at her presence. The torches gasped and nearly died, leaving behind nothing but a faint, ghostly glow.
She’s come from a judgement session. Remy sat up from his slouch. It must be nearly dawn.
A few seconds ground by in utter silence. There was no brittle humor in her eyes, which did not so much as blink as they considered me.
“I would hear your explanation.” Her voice was soft and dangerous. I felt it might have been better if she’d yelled. “I thought I made it plain that I wanted you to remain in your room until I came to find you.”
Inadequate sleep had left me with raw nerves, and I felt Remy’s fray as well beneath his mother’s expressionless gaze, as if he were facing down his doom.
“Finn needed help with an errand,” Remy started, in a voice of careful supplication.
“He thought my ice might come in handy. I’m sorry we left without a word but I didn’t think you’d mind.
You were about to lift the curse before the alarm went off.
You wouldn’t have made her promise if you weren’t going to let her go.
You never called for a council vote to get permission to execute her; you haven’t treated her like a prisoner—”
Frost broke across the stone floor as she drew closer to the bed. I had to fight the urge to claw my way backward toward the headboard. “This is the story you’re sticking with? Some absurd emergency errand with your ridiculous brother?”
My throat had gone so dry my voice was but a crackly whisper. “It’s not a story, it’s the truth.”
She stared down at me, most of her face hidden behind the glittering mask. I felt Remy get to his feet, pressing against his window.
“Mother.” He sounded the closest to beseeching that I had ever heard him. “It may have been a mistake, but none of this was her fault.”
She was the brightest thing in her son’s apartment, glowing like a star. “I know exactly where the fault lies.” Her voice was like a backhand. Remy had been about to say something else when she held up a finger and sat on the edge of the bed beside me. “I’ll hear no more.”
Taking my chin in her icy hand, she tilted my head back to look into my eyes. My heart shot into my throat at her touch despite the gentleness with which she held me. For a moment she did nothing but hold my gaze, silencing her son with a look of pure ice.
And he was silent, so absolutely quiet it was like he wasn’t there at all.
She dropped my chin, rose to her feet. Remy didn’t make a sound.
Are you okay? I asked. What’s happened?
But my words blasted through what sounded like a vast, empty space. No voice answered me, no anxious rustling. It was as if he’d disappeared.
“Where is he?” I clambered to my feet after her, limp with fear. I felt as if some hourglass were running out, time racing on without me, the future slipping through my fingers. The room rocked around me as I stood there, or maybe I was trembling. “I can’t feel him.”
Halfway to the door, she turned, a circle of frost arcing about her feet. “Gone.”
Gone. The word was so large it sucked up all the air in the apartment.
“Where?” I looked about the place as if I’d find him lounging in a corner.
Behind the mask, her silver eyebrows rose. The nearest feeble torch flame struck a jewel on the silver net around her hair, throwing a prism across the ceiling. “Do you think I don’t know when I’m being lied to? A chimera? Truly?”
A mist of hair rose on the back of my neck. “Is he—is he dead?”
The thought was too unbearable to imagine.
My dread was nearly transcendent as I gaped in horror.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way, in some dual abyss, no resolution, no ending.
He couldn’t be gone before we’d ever had our first lucid hello.
She couldn’t be so cruel to her only son.
I had to believe that, because the alternative was too much for me to stomach.
It felt as if my blood had paused in my veins, holding its breath.
She didn’t answer, heading back toward the door. Her cloak of midnight murmured across the iced stone. “It will be dawn soon. You’d better collect your things if you want to make it through the wood at first light.”