He raised a hand. The gesture looked like a summons, but there was no one to see it.
Something was wrong; I felt it like the half-heard buzzing of a fly in the next room over. Was he summoning his demons? Were they already here? I glanced around the room—
And my gaze fell on his shadow. It was a tall silhouette against the wall, and despite the diffuse light, it was crisp as the shadow cast by a Hermetic lamp.
He had raised his hand. But the shadow’s hand remained at its side.
Demons are made of shadow.
My throat closed up in horror as the shadow lengthened and strode away from him—if that was the word for something whose paces made it slide across the wall—then its long fingers slithered over my wrist. The touch felt like a cool breath of air, but when I tried to jerk free, it held my arm in place like iron.
Don’t look at the shadows too long, or a demon might look back.
“Shade will take you to your room.” He reached inside his dark coat, pulled out a silver key, and tossed it to the shadow—Shade—who caught it out of the air. “Show her to the bridal suite,” he said as Shade unlocked the door carved with roses and pomegranates. “Bring her back to me for dinner.” The door swung open to reveal a long, wood-paneled hallway lined with doors, and Shade pulled me through.
“And make sure she gets a new dress!” he called after us. The door slammed shut.
At first, as Shade dragged me quickly down the hallway, I barely noticed anything but the hammering of my own heart. Every step took me away from the outside world, deeper into the Gentle Lord’s domain; it was like being buried alive. I couldn’t stop staring at Shade’s grip on my arm—it looked like a chance shadow, felt like a breath of air, but pulled me forward as if I weighed no more than a leaf. My stomach curdled at the unnatural horror of the creature.
Deliver us from the eyes of demons. That was the first prayer anyone ever learnt, no matter who you were and which god you prayed it to. Because anyone, duke or peasant, could be attacked.
It didn’t happen often. Not one person in a hundred ever met a demon. But it happened enough.
I remembered the people brought into Father’s study: the girl who huddled in a silent heap of bony limbs; the man who never stopped writhing, silent only because he had long ago screamed away his voice. Sometimes Father could make them a little better; sometimes he could only tell their families to keep them drugged with laudanum. None of them were ever sane again. And those were the lucky ones—or perhaps they should be counted unlucky—who actually survived meeting the demons.
Most did not.
Now I was in the hands of a demon myself. But with each step I took, my heart kept beating. My mind remained. I didn’t want to claw my eyes out of my head, to chew the nails off my fingers. The scream shuddering inside me was easy to suppress. I could think, He said he wants me alive till dinner, and the words made sense to me.
I watched Shade’s profile slide down the wall, rippling when it passed over a door frame. It looked exactly like the shadow that would be cast by a man walking one step in front of me, dragging me forward. But no hand grasped my wrist, only a band of shadow; and no one walked in front of me.
Except this walking shadow.
Nobody knew what the Gentle Lord’s demons looked like, because no one had ever survived meeting them sane enough to tell. But Shade didn’t look like something that could drive people mad with a glance. Slowly, I began to relax.
I started to notice the hallway. First the air: it had the clear, lazy warmth of summer breezes—nothing like the heat from a fire—though I couldn’t see a window anywhere. That was strange enough. Then there were the doors, running down both sides of the hallway. They looked normal at first, but then I realized they were a little taller and narrower than usual. And was it only perspective, or were the lintels actually slanted?
How long had we been walking? I could see the end of the hallway, but it did not seem to be getting any closer.
Was that a faint echo of laughter in the distance?
Suddenly the walking shadow seemed much less terrible than the warm silence of the hallway.
“Are you a real demon, or just a creature the Gentle Lord made?” I asked abruptly. As soon as I uttered the words, I felt stupid: how did I expect a shadow to talk, anyway?
“Or are you a part of him? Do all demon lords have walking shadows when they spring from the womb of Tartarus?” I went on, absurdly determined to make it seem like the first question had been rhetorical. “I suppose it makes sense that things spawned from the dark—”
Shade stopped so abruptly that I stumbled. The silver key twinkled as he unlocked one of the doors; then we stepped through onto a narrow spiral staircase of stone. Cold, damp air washed over me, a little sour, as if someone had once used the room for an aquarium. I looked up—and up, and up. For overhead, the stairs faded into the darkness with no end in sight.
“Does he plan to kill me with stairs?” I muttered. Then Shade pulled me forward and I went quietly, because I knew I would need to save my breath.
We climbed until my legs burned and sweat ran down my neck, despite the cold air. I stopped caring that my face was twisted with effort and my breath came in loud gasps. The world narrowed to the effort of lifting one wobbling foot after another and not toppling sideways into the void. Shade flowed on smoothly and relentlessly. Just when I thought I could climb no more, the staircase ended with a narrow archway into a square room with bare white walls and a plain wood floor. I stumbled through and fell to my knees.
“Please,” I gasped, my throat so dry the word was barely more than a croak.
He dropped my wrist. With a sigh, I collapsed onto my back. For a while I stared blindly at the ceiling and gasped for breath. At last my heartbeat slowed and my breath came easier, while the sweat cooled and dried on my face.
As I began to feel better, I noticed that Shade had knelt beside me, his shadowy form clinging to the walls.
His cool touch slid across my face and pulled a strand of hair out of my eyes. I batted a hand futilely at the air and sat up in a rush.
“I don’t need a hairdresser,” I growled. My heart was thumping again and the line he had traced across my skin tingled. The touch had felt gentle—but he was still a thing, if not a demon then at least a servant of the Gentle Lord. Like his master, his kindness was only meant to make later torments crueler.
Like Father’s and Aunt Telomache’s kindness in telling Astraia about the Rhyme. It had only made me able to hurt her more.
I hurtled to my feet. “Come on, you need to imprison me,” I said, looking down at Shade, who still crouched low, a blob of shadow against the wall.
He rose slowly, stretching up to stand almost a head taller than me, the same as the Gentle Lord. Then he took my hand but paused; I felt like he was staring at me. Now he was a clear profile, the silhouette of his nose and lips and shoulders crisp against the wall. I suddenly realized that although a monster, he was also something like a man; my face heated, and my free hand grabbed the torn edges of my bodice.
He had been watching when I tore my dress open. Would he still be watching when the Gentle Lord finally—
There was a twinge of pressure, almost as if he were squeezing my hand, as if he were trying to reassure me or apologize. But a demon—or the shadow of a demon—would surely have no use for any such kindness. Then he drew me forward, less violently than before.
The next room was a great round ballroom. Its walls were arrayed in gold-painted moldings; its floor was a swirling mosaic of blue and gold; its dome was painted with the loves of all the gods, a vast tangle of plump limbs and writhing fabric. The air was cool, still, and hugely silent. My footsteps were only a soft tap-tap-tap, but they echoed through the room.