Cruel Beauty

No: I hated.

All my life, I had hated the Gentle Lord, but only in the way that one hates plague or fire. He was a monster who had destroyed my life, who oppressed my entire world, but he was still only a story. Now I had seen him, dined with him, kissed him. I had watched him kill. I had a name for him, even if it was not true. So I could truly hate him. I hated his eyes, his laugh, his mocking smile. I hated that he could kiss me, kill me, or lock me up with perfect ease. Most of all, I hated that he had made me want him.

Hatred was nothing new; I’d been hating my family all my life. But my family I had always had a duty to love, no matter how they had wronged me. Ignifex, I had a duty to destroy. Crouching in the darkness, I realized that I would enjoy it every much.

I felt at my bodice. The golden key I had foolishly left in the door handle, whence Ignifex had doubtless reclaimed it; but the steel key was still safely lodged against my skin, waiting to be used.

I made myself search the walls of the stone room by touch, but there was only one door, and no amount of pounding would make it budge. So finally I settled back against the door to wait. Ignifex would probably let me out tomorrow, when he thought I would be thoroughly cowed and frightened. I would pretend to be so, and get back to exploring as soon as his back was turned.

I had just started to doze off when the rattle of the lock snapped me awake. In an instant, I was on my feet and turning to face the opening door. But it wasn’t Ignifex who stood on the other side; it was Shade.

“I’m sorry.” He touched my cheek. “I came as soon as I could.”

I had been ready to greet Ignifex with hatred and courage, but Shade’s gentle sorrow left me shuddering as I remembered the terror of those first minutes. I grabbed him in a sudden embrace.

“Thank you,” I said into his shoulder. “I’m all right. I’m all right.” I swallowed, my throat tight. “Why does he keep them here?”

Shade shrugged. “Look,” he said, pushing me to turn. He raised his hand and light gleamed into the room. In the sudden illumination I could see that the girls were all young, all lovely, all laid out with their hands crossed over their chests, coins upon their eyes and flowers in their hair. Their bodies were so perfectly preserved, I might have thought they were sleeping—if their faces hadn’t had the pale, waxy emptiness of death.

“I try to make it proper for them,” he said. “But I can’t remember the funerary hymns.”

How many years had they lain here, lacking the final rites that would allow them to cross the river Styx and find peace?

How many years had he watched over them, trying to give them at least a proper death and knowing he had failed?

I gripped his hand. “Kneel with me,” I said. “I’ll teach you.”

As daughter of the manor lord, it had been my duty to assist at the funerals of the poor and orphaned. I had learnt the funerary hymns when I was only six, a book balanced on my head to ensure I had correct posture, Aunt Telomache looming over me with her mouth puckered.

It was one of the few duties I never resented, no matter how my neck ached and my tongue stumbled over the archaic words. The hymns were written by the twin brothers Homer and Hesiod, in the ancient days when Athens was but a cluster of farms and Romana-Graecia not even a dream. When I spoke them—a child in my father’s parlor, standing under a wreath of my dead mother’s hair, the black lace collar of my mourning dress scratching my throat—I felt briefly as if I were no longer an appendage of my family’s tragedy but just another girl in the ocean of mourners who had spoken these words for nearly three thousand years.

Now I cupped my hands upward, closed my eyes, and began to sing.

There are seven funerary hymns: to Hades, Lord of Death; Persephone, his wife; Hermes, the guide of souls; Dionysus, who redeemed his mother from the underworld; Demeter, the patron of crops and motherhood; Ares, god of war; and Zeus, lord of gods and men. Normally only one hymn is sung, to whichever god was the dead one’s patron in life; but I sang them all, hoping it would be enough to grant all eight girls rest. By the time I had finished, my throat was dry and scratchy.

“Thank you,” said Shade.

We sat in silence awhile.

“I still don’t understand why he keeps them here,” I said.

“He sends me down here too, sometimes,” Shade said quietly. “To meditate, he says.”

“On what?” I demanded. I could almost hear the laughing lilt of Ignifex’s voice as he decreed the torment, and I wished he were there so I could strike him. “The depths of his evil? There’s nobody alive that doesn’t already know that.”

Shade shifted slightly away from me. “On my failure.”

His voice, barely more than a whisper, made my breath stop. I was about to protest that it was not his fault, however he had ended up a prisoner—it was surely not his place to defeat a demon that could sunder the world, that had ruled Arcadia since before he was born—

But as I stared at the colorless lines of his shoulder and turned-away face, I remembered him showing me the lights. The nearest thing we have left.

He had seen the stars. He was not merely a luckless soul whom Ignifex had tricked at some point in the last nine hundred years; he was a captive from the Sundering, spoils of that initial war.

“He keeps you,” I whispered. “He keeps you as a trophy. Like those poor girls.”

I had assumed that Ignifex had forced Shade to wear the face of his master. But maybe it was the other way around: maybe Ignifex had chosen to wear his captive’s face in cruel mockery.

And of all possible captives, I could think of only one whom he might hate that much.

My heart thudded. Everybody said that the Gentle Lord had destroyed the line of kings. The words forming on my tongue felt insane—but here, in this insane house, they made sense.

“The last prince . . . didn’t die, did he?”

Shade turned, his blue eyes meeting mine; his mouth opened, but again his master’s power stopped him. He swallowed, and stared at me as if hoping his eyes could convey everything. Maybe they did; as I stared into those eyes, I felt sure that he was the last prince of Arcadia, who had been captive in this house since the Sundering.

Seventeen years of waiting for marriage had left me bitter and cruel. Nine hundred years of slavery had left him gentle, still trying to help every one of Ignifex’s victims, even when he knew that he would fail. Even when the victim was me.

My breath dwindled away. I didn’t realize I was leaning closer to him until he closed the final distance and kissed me. It was slow and gentle but vast, like a rising tide. It felt like forgiveness. Like peace.

When he pulled back, his gaze flickered to my face only a moment before he looked down.

“You—” I started breathlessly, and then he dropped his forehead to my shoulder.

It felt like he was seeking comfort from me, though I couldn’t imagine why. But it was the least I could do for him, so I laid a hand on his shoulder, amazed all over again that I could feel the solid lines of his shoulder blade.

Amazed, too, that he wanted me. He wanted me.

“Shade?” I said softly.

He spoke slowly, and though I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was struggling against the seal on his lips. “I wish . . . we could have met . . . somewhere else.”

The air stilled in my lungs. If that was not a confession of love, it was near enough.

“I do too,” I said.

If I asked, he would probably kiss me again. For one moment I imagined staying. I could crawl into his arms and kiss him until I forgot everything, the dead girls and my monstrous husband, the doom upon my country and my duty to fix it.

Then I thought, I do not have time for such things.