Cruel Beauty

I stood. “I need to go. I—I still have to find the other hearts.”

Shade caught my hand, slid his fingers through mine. The touch felt like lightning up my arm.

“He’s right about one thing,” he said. “This house has many dangers. I ca

I clenched my hand until I felt the bones of his fingers.

Then I let go and forced a smile. “I wasn’t born to be saved.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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 pi

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.