Текст книги "Cruel Beauty"

Автор книги: Rosamund Hodge

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

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HarperCollins Publishers

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11

At night, the hallways seemed longer and stranger, subtly out of proportion. It was seldom pitch-dark, for light glimmered from unexpected corners; but it was hard to tell exactly where the light came from, and I had to force back the suspicion that the shadows were falling toward the light, hungry for warmth and being.

Demons are made of shadow.

But the shadows had never attacked me before, no matter how late into the night I wandered the house. Ignifex must have ordered them to leave me alone. I had to believe that, or I would go mad with terror. I did believe it, mostly, but the nagging fear still itched down my spine.

I went on anyway. Soon I turned into a hallway decorated with elaborate gold molding and murals—I thought they showed the gods, but in the shadows, I couldn’t see more than a tangle of limbs. At the very end of the passage was a simple wooden door. Did my footsteps echo a little louder as I walked toward it? My shoulders prickled; when I reached the door, I paused—but heard nothing. No demon leapt out of the shadows to kill me, no doom fell down upon me. Taking a deep breath, I pulled the steel key out from my bodice. It slid easily into the lock. I turned the handle.

I pulled open the door and saw shadow.

All my life, I had heard the warning, Don’t look at the shadows too long, or a demon might look back. It made me afraid of closed-up, darkened rooms, of dimly lit mirrors, of the quietly whispering woods at night. In that moment, I realized that I had never seen shadow. I had seen objects—rooms, mirrors, the whole countryside—in the absence of light. But through this door lay nothing at all except for perfect, primal shadow that needed no object to make itself manifest. It had its own nature, its own presence, palpable and seething and alive. My eyes stung and watered as I stared at it, but I could not look away.

Then the shadow looked at me.

There was no visible change, but I staggered under the weight of perception and the knowledge I was not alone. Gasping, I grabbed the door and started to push it shut. I leaned my weight against it, but the door moved slowly, as if I were pushing it through honey. When I glanced at the slowly closing gap, I saw nothing coming through the doorway; but when I looked back at my hands, I saw from the corner of my eye a webbed mass of shadow gripping the doorframe with its tendrils.

All this had happened in complete silence. I was too terrified to scream. But when the door was nearly closed, I heard a chorus of children’s voices. It sang the tune of my favorite lullaby, but the words were wrong:

We will sing you nine, oh!

What are your nine, oh?

Nine for the nine bright shiners,

The night will snuff them out, oh.

The sound crawled over my body like a thousand cold little feet. I had been taught charms against darkness, invocations of Apollo and Hermes. But the voices nibbled the knowledge out of my mind, and I sobbed wordlessly as I struggled to push the door shut.

Eight for eight dead maidens

Dead in all the darkness, oh.

The door was almost shut now, but the pressure of the shadow pulsed against me from the other side. One tendril touched my cheek, burning cold. I choked, the air stopping in my lungs.

Six for your six senses,

Never more will feel, oh.

With a final burst of desperation, I pushed the door shut. Gasping and shuddering, I staggered back against the wall. The shadow was gone, but I still shivered, and my eyes stung with tears. When I wiped them, the tears burned icy cold on my skin. I looked at my hand.

Liquid shadow dripped across my palm.

I remembered the people dragged before my father, reduced to broken husks. I thought, This is what it was like for them.

Then I finally screamed.

They sang from all around me, a million bodiless children whisper-chanting in my ears:

Five for the symbols at your door,

Telling us your name, oh.

Four for the corners of your world,

We are always nibbling, oh.

Shadow dribbled down my face and welled up out of my skin. The shadows in the hall responded, coming alive. I wanted to claw my skin off, to gnaw the flesh from my bones, anything to get the shadows out of me. I scraped my nails down my arms, but as I raised pink welts, I heard laughter again and I remembered: these were the demons of the Gentle Lord. I’d sworn to save Arcadia from their attacks. They wanted me to destroy myself.

I could not let them win.

Three for the prisoners in this house,

We will eat them all, oh.

I tried to run, but the shadows lapped at my skin, and though my feet pounded slowly I didn’t move forward. Then the air rippled and threw me back against the wall. As the shadows swirled around me, I sank to the floor, the last strength oozing out of my body.

Two for your first and for your last,

We will be them both, oh.

I knew the final verse of the original song, and I knew with a sick certainty that they would sing it just the same, and I was sure that if I heard those final words I would be lost.

One is one and all alone

And evermore shall

–

An arm wrapped around my waist. A gold ring glinted on a hand. Fire blazed at the corners of my vision.

“Children of Typhon,” Ignifex snarled, “return to thy void.”

The shadows wailed like a rusty hinge as they flowed away and crawled under the door, out into the darkness. They wailed on and on, until my throat ached and my eyes watered—and I realized that the wail came out of my throat, and my eyes were still weeping shadow. Ignifex had me pinned against the wall by my wrists; my back arched and my fingers writhed as the shadows seeped out through the pores of my skin. I wanted them gone, but it felt like my body, my entire self, was tissue paper and the shadows were shredding it as they left.

If I could crawl after them, through the door and into their perfect darkness, I would still exist. I would be their plaything forever after, but I would exist. I felt the certainty in every jagged throb of my heart, and so I bucked and writhed against Ignifex’s grip. I had to follow them. I had to.

“Nyx Triskelion,” Ignifex growled, “I command you to stay.”

The sound of my name slashed through the compulsion like a serrated knife. I slumped against the wall and went still as I watched the last shadows flow back to the door and through the cracks. In a moment they were gone.

Without the shadows, the world felt hollow and listless. The walls of the corridor were flat and still, the remaining darkness dead and powerless. My heart thudded in my ears; my skin felt at once numb and prickly. I wanted to follow them, I thought, but I couldn’t yet feel anything about the idea.

Ignifex let go of me. I blinked at his moving lips and realized he was speaking.

“Are you all right?” When I didn’t answer, he slapped my face lightly. “Listen to me! Can you speak?”

“Yes.” The word came out low and rough.

He inspected my arms. “I do believe you’ll live. Tonight.”

The tone of his voice sparked my anger back to life, and the rest of me with it. I raised my head, teeth bared—

He poked me in the forehead. “But is there any limit to your idiocy?”

“You mean my idiocy of not being told your demons are running loose in the house?” I shoved him back. “I believe that would be your fault.”

“I told you that some doors in this house were dangerous. And I tucked you into a nice, safe room for the night. It’s not my fault that you snuck out of bed.”

“You locked me in a tomb!”

“Safe and snug.” Ignifex’s voice was still light, but there was a strained note to it. “And now it’s past my bedtime.”

Abruptly I realized three things: He was wearing dark silk pajamas. He was swaying as if about to collapse. And the darkness was eating him.

Not shadows. It sounds strange, but the little dark tendrils that lapped at his skin, leaving behind red welts, were nothing like the uncanny horror of his demons. Those shadows had been alive, aware; this was simply the nighttime darkness clotting around his body, as naturally as blood clots over a wound, and burning him as acid burns skin.

My skin still crawled at the sight.

Ignifex steadied himself with a hand against the wall. “You will help me to my room,” he said through his teeth, and there was a sudden strained note to his voice. Almost as if he was afraid.

The same way I had been afraid of the demons when they crawled out the door, and afraid of the dead wives when he locked me up with them, and afraid every day of my life because I knew the Gentle Lord was going to possess me and nobody would ever save me.

The cold swirl in my chest felt like an old friend.

I crossed my arms. “Why?”

He blinked as if he had never considered the question. Or maybe it was only dizziness, for the next moment he fell to his knees. The darkness swirled and swelled around him. Red welts bloomed across his face.

My heart scrabbled to beat faster, but I wasn’t afraid anymore. For the first time, I wasn’t the one who was helpless.

My voice felt cold, lovely, and alien as crystal in my throat. “Why should I help you anywhere?”

Though he was slumped against the wall now, he managed to look up at me. His catlike pupils were so dilated they looked almost human.

“Well . . . I did save your life.” Then he doubled up in pain and slid to the floor.

As long as I could remember, the anger had writhed and clawed inside me, and no matter how much it hurt, I had choked it down. Now at last I hated someone who deserved hatred, and it felt like I was Zeus’s thunder, like I was the storms of Poseidon upon the sea. I was shaking with fury, and I had never felt so glad.

“You killed my mother. You enslaved my world. And as you pointed out, I will live here as your captive till I die. Tell me, my darling lord, why should I thank you for my life?”

He was gasping and shuddering with pain, and he didn’t seem to be seeing me anymore as he whispered, “Please.”

I knelt over him and smiled down into his face. My body was wrapped in ice; my voice came from somewhere very far away.

“Do you think you are safe with me?”

Then I stood and walked away, leaving him all alone in the dark.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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12

I felt strong and proud and beautiful as I strode down the hallway. Let him be scared and helpless and alone. Let him taste what it was like for those eight dead girls to lie alone in the darkness, for Shade to be a slave in the castle where he had once been prince, for me to know that I was doomed and nobody would ever save me.

Let him taste it and die—if he could. I wanted to believe that the darkness would kill him, that it would burn flesh down to bone and bone to ash. Because then the impossible would come true: my duty would change. I wouldn’t need to collapse the house with myself in it. With the Gentle Lord dead, the Resurgandi would have all the time and freedom they needed to undo the Sundering without sacrificing me. And I would be able to go home, to tell Father I had avenged my mother, to beg Astraia’s forgiveness to her face instead of whispering the words to a mirror.

But I remembered all the tales of people who tried to kill the Gentle Lord and failed. This burning darkness might be a more fitting weapon than a knife, but I couldn’t believe it would actually work, that the demon who commanded all other demons could die so easily. Most likely Ignifex would only suffer until dawn and then recover.

There were stories of people he’d tricked into such terrible fates that they had begged for death but lived on. Even if all I had managed was to give him a few hours of that pain, at least it was some measure of revenge– for my mother, for Damocles, for all the people he had tricked to their deaths and all the people he had allowed his demons to destroy. And while he was occupied, perhaps I could find a way to kill him once and for all.

I threw open the doors in front of me and looked out on the Heart of Water.

“Shade!” I called eagerly. Maybe he knew what had become of my knife, maybe he knew what I needed to do next. Maybe Ignifex could die tonight, and I could be free.

But he was nowhere to be seen. I wandered out to the center of the room, but he didn’t come. I was alone, and this night the lights couldn’t hold my attention; I kept staring at the still water, where my face was faintly reflected. It made me think of Astraia’s face, pale and wide-eyed as I left her.

She is avenged now, I thought, but that just reminded me of Ignifex’s face, full of the same blank horror as the darkness closed over him.

I shook my head. They were nothing alike. Astraia was kind and gentle and deserved nothing but my love, while Ignifex kept his dead wives as trophies and deserved nothing but my hate.

The Heart of Water, always so beautiful, suddenly felt empty and wrong. I strode out, blindly unlocking doors and turning corners until suddenly I was back in the dining room. The sky was pure, velvety black except for the silver crescent of the moon; chandeliers hung from the ceiling and cast warm, flickering light over the table, which was set with clean, empty dishes. I stalked forward, glowering at the table as I remembered Ignifex’s smile flashing at me over his wineglass.

I do like a wife with a little malice in her heart.

I picked up one of the wineglasses and flung it across the room. The other one followed. Then I dashed the plates to the floor and flung the silverware after. I threw the silver candlesticks at the wall; I seized an empty silver platter and started to beat it against the table.

That was when I realized how ridiculous I must look. I dropped the platter. Tears stung at my eyes; I scraped them away, but more came, until I was sobbing in front of the dinner table.

I had done what two hundred years of the Resurgandi—what every person in Arcadia, what even the gods themselves—had found impossible. I had taken revenge on the Gentle Lord. I had made him taste the pain he handed out every day, and even if it was but for a few hours, that made me a hero. My heart should be singing.

But I was inconsolable. No matter how many dishes I crushed, no matter how I thought of generations crying out for revenge, I couldn’t forget the fear in Ignifex’s eyes, or his harsh, panicked breaths as he begged me.

It was my duty, I thought, but I remembered my final words to him, and they had nothing to do with duty and everything to do with vicious glee.

I wanted to continue raging, to destroy this room and the whole house. I wanted to go back and strangle Ignifex with my own hands. I wanted to find Shade and make him kiss me until I forgot everything else. I wanted to wake up and realize my whole life had been a dream.

The tears finally stopped. I drew a slow, shaky breath as I wiped my face. And I realized that most of all, I wanted to go back and help Ignifex.

Immediately I clenched my nails into my arms, teeth gritting in shame. I wasn’t some fool who would forget she had been kidnapped after one or two kisses. I wasn’t some idiot who would think a man noble because he’d saved her from the consequences of his own crimes. I certainly wasn’t a girl who would consider her husband more important than her duty.

But I was a girl who had broken her sister’s heart and—for a moment—liked it. I had left somebody in torment and liked it.

I didn’t want to keep being that person.

So I wiped my face and turned to leave. I was halfway out the door when another thought struck me: what if the darkness could kill him after all, and he was already dead? Or what if the darkness had gnawed away his hands and face but left him still horribly alive, his throat too wrecked for screaming?

My stomach lurched. For a moment I couldn’t face leaving the room. I didn’t mind if Ignifex was dead; I could regret my cruelty, rejoice that I had avenged my mother, and go home to Astraia. But if he was still half-alive, maimed, and suffering—if I had to look on him and know that I had done it, for no reason but hate and accomplishing nothing—

Then I thought, If you stay here, you will be just like Father, who couldn’t even acknowledge he had sacrificed his own daughter.

I ran out of the room.

It seemed like it took hours for me to find my way back to him, but it was probably no more than thirty minutes. Every time I opened a door, it led somewhere new; time and again I found myself in hallways that curved back on themselves, that had no doors I could open, that twisted and turned long distances into darkness before finally dead-ending.

I thought this house belonged to him, I thought, running through a corridor with mirrors on the walls. Sweat trickled down my back. I skidded to a stop by a door and pulled it open. A brick wall stared back at me.

A short, furious scream scraped out of my throat. Shouldn’t it help me save its master?

Ignifex would probably say, Did you think a demon would have a kindly house?

I wrenched open the next door and charged inside, only to skip to a stop. I was in the mirror room, and through the glass I saw Astraia asleep in her bed, the swan-shaped Hermetic lamp glowing on her bedside table because she was still afraid of the dark, still afraid of demons. Like the one I was running to save.

“Astraia,” I gasped, and then, “I wish you could hear me.”

But of course she couldn’t. My chest hurt.

“You wouldn’t want me to be cruel, would you? You were always kind to everyone.”

She had been so delighted, so proud when she thought I would cut off the Gentle Lord’s head and bring it home in a bag. Against Father’s will—and she had to have known he didn’t want it, even though she hadn’t known why—she had schemed to bring me that knife.

She had been a child. She still was, and she had no idea what it meant to kill, much less what it was like to feel the living shadows bubble out of your skin—and though the darkness eating Ignifex was different, it was close enough that I couldn’t leave him to it. Even if my sister hated me.

“He’s a monster,” I said. “Maybe I’m a monster to pity him. But I can’t leave him.”

Then I ran out of the room.

Finally I found my way back into the narrow hallway. When I did, at first I thought that he was gone. Then I realized the lump in the middle of the clotted darkness was him.

I ran forward, but stopped at the edge of the worst darkness. “Ignifex?” I called, leaning forward as I peered at him.

He didn’t move. I couldn’t see his face, only the darkness writhing over it.

I knelt beside him. My skin crawled as I remembered my fingers sliding into the dead wife’s mouth, but I couldn’t back out now. Gingerly, I reached through the darkness to touch his face.

The darkness swirled away from my hand, as if frightened of my skin. Underneath, livid welts crisscrossed his face. I snatched my hand away, then realized he was still breathing. As I watched, the welts faded to pale white scars that began to subside into healed skin.

I shook him by the shoulder, the darkness boiling away further. “Wake up!”

One crimson eye cracked open; he hissed softly, and the eye slid shut again. The darkness crept back up his body.

It seemed to be afraid of my touch. So I hauled him up to rest his head and shoulders in my lap; after a moment he twitched and curled into me. And the darkness flowed away.

“What are you doing?”

My head jerked up. Shade stood over me, his hands in his coat pockets, his pale face unreadable.

“I—the darkness—”

“You should leave him.”

“I can’t,” I whispered, trying not to hunch my shoulders. This was far worse than seeing Astraia. Shade was the last prince of Arcadia. My prince, who had helped and comforted me these past five weeks, who had kissed me not an hour ago and nearly said he loved me. I had kissed him back, and now I was embracing his tormentor before his face. It was obscene.

Shade knelt beside me. “Weren’t you going to defeat him?”

Weren’t you my hope? his eyes said.

“I was. I will. I want to, but—but—” I felt like I was ten years old, summoned into Father’s study to explain how I had spilled honey in the parlor. “This won’t defeat him. I hurt him just for revenge.”

“Do you know how much suffering he’s caused? This is the least of what he deserves.”

Ignifex had shown no sign of hearing our conversation, but I realized now that he was trembling.

“I know,” I said. I remembered huddling with Astraia in the hallway, listening to the screams from Father’s study. “But I can’t . . . I can’t leave anyone to the darkness.”

Shade’s silence was like a condemnation.

“Help me get him to his bedroom,” I said. “Then I’ll leave him.”

Shade’s mouth thinned, but he obeyed. He grasped Ignifex’s shoulders, I grabbed his legs, and together we dragged him through twisting hallways back to his bedroom.

I had never wondered where he slept, but now I half expected a dank cavern with a bloodied altar for a bed. Instead it was a crimson mirror of my room: red-and-black tapestries instead of pale wallpaper; red-and-gold damask bed curtains instead of lace; and supporting the canopy were not caryatids but eagles, cast from a slick black metal that glittered in the candlelight. All around the edges of the room burned row upon row of candles, casting golden light in every direction so that shadow barely existed.

Shade disappeared as soon as we had dropped Ignifex onto the bed, for which I couldn’t blame him. Now that I had appeased my guilt, I wanted to be gone as well. I looked down at my husband and captor. The weals had faded and most of the scars as well, but he was still pale as death and limp as wet yarn. He was also curled into a position that seemed likely to give him cramps—and while I found that thought amusing, I supposed that if I was going to help him, I should do it properly. With a sigh, I rolled him onto his back and straightened out his legs.

His eyes didn’t open, but one of his hands reached out and gripped my wrist.

I twitched and went still, but he made no further move. Then he whispered—so softly I barely heard it—“Please stay.”

I jerked my wrist free, about to say that even if I had saved him, I did not intend to be his nursemaid . . . but then I remembered the last time he had said please.

“Just for a little,” I said, sitting down on the bed. He grabbed my hand again as if it were his only hope. I hesitated a few moments, but he seemed far too weak to attempt anything, and I was tired myself. I lay down beside him, and immediately he rolled over to nestle against my back. He laid an arm over my waist, then fell asleep with a sigh.

As if he trusted me. As if I’d never hurt him.

Even Astraia, with all her hugs and kisses, had not relaxed against me like this in years. What kind of fool was he?

The same kind of fool as I was, I supposed, because I knew he was my enemy and yet I, too, was taking comfort from the touch.

His breath tickled against my neck. I took his hand in mine, weaving our fingers together; I told myself that I was here only because of my debt, that anyone, any warm body, would make me feel such peace. And wrapped in that peace, I fell asleep.