His fingers trailed lightly over my throat and I shivered. My good sense was screaming to me that now I was mixing fear and attraction and if I wasn’t careful, I’d be drunk on them, and once drunk on that deadly brew, I may never be able to feel one without the other – which would be very dangerous indeed.
I agreed, but there wasn’t much I could do to prevent it. It was carrying me along like a swollen river after the spring melt.
His hands pulled away and settled back to the wall on either side of me. I swallowed and reached for the key so I could focus on something – anything – other than the powerful man caging me between his arms.
The key felt heavy, and when I lifted it, I saw it was the length of my pinkie finger, crafted of woven gold as if someone had magicked a thousand fine wires into a key instead of stamping one in a mold. It was impossibly fine workmanship, incredibly valuable, and it weighed far more than it should have.
“You will wear my key as some women wear rings,” he whispered as his cat’s eyes locked on mine. There was a sudden desperation in his eyes when he said, “but whatever you do, you must not enter the room the key unlocks. You must not open it. You must not use the key at all. Do you understand me?”
I nodded nervously and he exhaled a long, desperate breath.
“I have tried. Let it be known and remembered that I have tried.” He looked like he was in turmoil as he spoke, his eyes thick with something very like pain. Unconsciously, I reached toward him, stopping myself just before my hand touched his arm.
No, no, Izolda. You must not be sucked into his story. That will only complicate things. Remember who this man is – a murderer, a trickster, and a thief. And do not be drawn by pity or anything else.
“Well then, that’s the day,” he said briskly, startling me, and leapt from where he stood to the bed in a single massive jump, as if he were a large cat jumping on prey. He kicked off his boots and threw himself under the covers with so much violence that I could hardly catch my breath.
My mouth was still hanging open when there was a knock at the door. I had the foresight to draw my sword before opening it, but it was only Vireo.
“Your bag, Lady Arrow,” he said with a smirk, handing me my saddlebag.
“Thank you,” I said a little breathlessly.
“It’s not a gift,” he said harshly. “It is payment for the entertainment earlier. I haven’t watched the Arrow claim a head in so long that I almost forgot that he collects them. The opportunity you afforded will keep me entertained for many nights to come.”
I took the bag wordlessly – because what could you possibly say to that?
He collected them? Like interesting rocks or trinkets?
I was very careful to bar the door before I slipped my sword back into the scabbard, snuck into the bathing room and barred that door. That done, I sat on the floor, and sobbed until I could sob no more.
“Then she took the little key and opened it, trembling.”
- Charles Perrault, Bluebeard,
1697 as translated by Andrew Lang in The Blue Fairy Book 1889.
Chapter Thirteen
There is only so much crying a girl can do, and eventually, I sobbed myself to sleep. I woke with a muzzy head and looked out the window of the bathing chamber to see it was still dark. I changed into the nightdress in the bag – the ridiculous filmy lace one that Bluebeard had chosen – and worked to wash my dress of dirt and blood. It was the only practical one I had, and it would have to do for tomorrow. If Bluebeard left the inn in the same hurry that he’d entered it, I’d have to be ready to leave in the space of a heartbeat.
When the dress was clean, I did the only sensible thing a woman in my situation could do. I drew the key out and wondered to myself how one could use a key to open a door that was not there. I examined it from every angle, searching for clues and finding nothing. There seemed to be a very small bow and arrow placed somehow under the golden wires but that gave me no clues. There was no writing on it, no symbols, nothing to give away what manner of door it might open.
I put it between my thumb and forefinger, miming turning a key as I considered it.
To my shock, the air in front of me shimmered and then a rectangle of space opened up in front of me. I dropped the key in shock, and it fell to the end of the chain, thumping hollowly against my chest.
In my mind, words seemed to whisper as if the room before me was welcoming me.
I am sudden death to calm.
My roar breaks the hush.
My song, the mind’s somnolence.
I was no longer looking at the bathing chamber. Rather, I was looking into a large room with no windows. It was lined with fifteen glowing pillars set in alcoves, and before each pillar was an open book chained to a pedestal reader. The center of the room was carpeted with the layered skins of many animals I recognized and many I did not. I would not like to meet the one with the orange and black stripes on a dark night, that was for sure. Neither would I like to meet the scaled one with the very long jaw.
Each book glowed a faintly different color than the next so that some were pinkish and some golden, some spring green, and some the purest white. One was even faintly purple. And each book matched the glow of the pillar behind it.
At the very end of the room was a very large hourglass with the top bulb completely empty and the bottom bulb full of what looked like uncut garnets. As I watched, the hourglass slowly spun until the top bulb was now the full one. The first garnet hit the floor with a clatter, and then someone began to pound on the bathing room door. In a panic, I leapt into the mysterious room.
The pillars, it turned out, were not pillars at all. They were women, frozen in place, eyes shut as if they were sleeping, but utterly still. They stood on pedestals that brought their feet to the height of my waist.
I stared in horror at the one nearest to me, whose face was bathed in a very soft pink light. She was wearing a golden dress and had a face so much like Princess Chasida’s that they could be sisters. And one of her shoes was missing a golden bell.
I raced to her alcove and reached for her, but my hand met something that felt smooth and slick as glass surrounding her. There were no seams, no top or bottom, as if the once-living Princess Margaretta had somehow been blown into invisible glass. She still looked nineteen years old. The same as me.
My belly rolled uncomfortably at the thought.
I hurried from her to the next girl – a girl with a very impressive figure and flowing dark curls. Her red dress dipped low in the front in a way that made my cheeks hot.
I rushed on to the next in line – a girl with sharp, authoritative features and a very bulky dress with an elaborate belt as thick as my forearm ringing her waist. Her hair was white – but her features as young as my own. The book on her stand was signed on the exposed page and a tiny brass plaque on the alcove she stood in bore the same inscription. Ki’e’iren. Was that her name?
The next woman was curved perfection with full lips and cheeks and such an abundance of curls as I’d never seen before. She wore a two-piece costume too indecent to wear in society and her skin was flawless wherever it was exposed.
I fled down the line of beautiful women – one after another, stuck in perpetual beauty forever – as the pounding on the bathing door finally turned to the sound of wood cracking and splintering.
They were his wives, I realized. The wives of Bluebeard, encased in ... magic?
Dead. All dead. And there was one empty pillar with an empty pedestal and no glow in either located right next to the door.
Was it getting hot in here? I felt almost faint with the heat.
By the time I reached the hourglass, my breath was caught in my throat and little white stars were dancing across my vision. I collapsed in front of it as Bluebeard strode through the room, his face a thundercloud.
“Where trouble is, look for the woman,” he growled, his lip twisting up in a way that made his beautiful face look like a devil’s. “Speak to my riddle?
What creature must plumb every depth, turn every stone, tempt death and defy him to his face and all that only to reap what she never sowed and gain what she never earned? Whose curiosity devours like an army of locusts and mind seeks out danger as a man seeks out a lover? I will answer for you – it is a wife.”
He reached the place where I was crouched on all fours, reached down, and pulled me up by the roots of my hair so that I was looking into his eyes.
“I had hoped to spare you this, Izolda.” Fury and pain filled his face. “Do you long to dance with death? Does your heart yearn for the barrow before its time? Fifteen times before, I have watched this story unfold. Fifteen times before, I have given a key, and fifteen times before, it has been turned in the lock. I had hoped that perhaps you were too clever to fall into this trap, but oh how you have disappointed me, wife.”
He turned my head with my hair and pressed my face to the glass, his chest heaving with his infuriated breath.
“The proverb says, “Teach us to number our days.” See these garnets? They are the days of your life, Izolda. And because you opened this door, they are mine now irrevocably. Mine to spend as I want. Mine to rule over. Mine to direct. And when they are gone, you will be on that last pedestal and your days will be no more.”
I knew my eyes were wide and pleading. I wanted to speak more than anything. No, I wanted to stop crying even more. It was humiliating to let him see me cry.
“Your tears cannot save you,” he whispered, his gaze catching mine, and for a moment his fury faded away, replaced by a dull misery that ached out of him and seeped into me. “Even my tears will not save you now. You are well and truly trapped by magic too great for you. All that now remains for us is to see how we will spend the time you have.”
He swept me up into his arms as if I were his lover rather than his enemy and carried me from the haunting room. As he went by the last pedestal, I saw that it now bore my name. Izolda Savataz.
When we left the hidden chamber, the door vanished as if the room had never existed at all.
Bluebeard carried me through the ruin of the door, through the horrible room of the inn where Grosbeak’s eyes followed us, to the large bed where he laid me on the mattress and stepped back for a moment, catching his lower lip between his teeth before he tugged up the eiderdown and tucked it under my chin.
“Sleep, treacherous one. You cannot break our hearts more tonight.”
For the second time, I cried myself to sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
I woke to a hand clamped over my mouth. I barely bit back a scream when I saw Bluebeard’s pale cat’s eyes staring into mine.
Something slammed against the door and wood crunched behind us.
“No time to dress, wife,” he said, shoving my fur-lined cloak into my hands and the pair of belts with my sword and knives. “Hurry. They’ve found us.”
His blue coat and shirt were completely unbuttoned and untucked, revealing skin so crisscrossed with scars that I gasped at the sight of them. They were worse the more skin I saw. What had happened to him? Another key – silver – dangled on a chain around his neck. I shuddered, wondering if it led to the same kind of place as the golden key hanging inside my lace nightdress did.
I finished clasping the cloak and buckling on the belts over my filmy nightgown at the same moment that Bluebeard slung my saddlebag over my shoulder. He had his own hanging over his.
“Hold this for a moment,” he said, trying to pass me Grosbeak’s severed head.
I shook my head violently. I was not going to carry the head!
The door shattered and fell into the room with a boom. I jumped, squeaking in an embarrassing way in my surprise.
Little bits of wood and straw rained into the room like a sandstorm. I backed up until my head hit the thatch roof above and Bluebeard threw the head back at me as if he expected me to catch it. I dodged out of the way, letting it hit the ground with a dull thump. I had my limits. I was not going to cart around a dead head for him – especially not one that was scowling up at me from the floor. Just the thought of it made me ill.
But there was no time for being ill.
Two men leapt into the room, and Bluebeard’s curved swords appeared in his hands as if by magic. He was so fast! One of them was his own bronze sword and the other was the one the King had offered for me to give him, inlaid in silver and sharp as winter. He spun the swords on either side of his body, as if he were a performer for the King’s court and not a man in the room of an inn.
The men brandished their own swords, not bothering to be dramatic. They were human just like me. Dressed like minor nobility – just like me. They were both breathing heavily, as if they wanted to be there as little as I did. The younger of the two – barely older than my own brothers – caught sight of me and cursed vehemently.
“He has already taken another.”
“This has never been what you thought it was,” Bluebeard said silkily. “You still have time to leave. I don’t want to kill anyone.”
The other man – this one older and bearded – spat. “We don’t believe your lies, kidnapper.”
“I keep trying to tell you all that I’m not a kidnapper,” Bluebeard said through gritted teeth, but there was no time to say more. Both men attacked as one and his swords whirled in his defense. He fought like he was dancing, a quick step back and then another to the side. The blade in his left hand came up and twisted just so, flinging the man on the left backward. Then a step forward, a pivot, and he knelt with precision, sword up just in time to block the double-handed swing from the other opponent. He stepped forward twice, still on his knees – knee to foot, knee to foot, sword up like the thrust of a horn. He tossed the inlaid silver sword up in the air in a way that made it spin and then caught it by the grip so that it curved back along his forearm. He lunged to his feet, his first sword blocking a fresh blow, followed quickly by a back-handed slash from the sword now facing the wrong way. Blood sprayed across the room, coating our bed.
My hands found my face, my breath coming out in a rush. I didn’t even think of the sword or knives on my belts. I wasn’t thinking at all.
Hands seized my shoulders, covering my mouth. I barely bit back a scream and then I was yanked up through a hole torn in the thatch and pulled onto the roof by Vireo. He threw me in one motion onto the blue elk stamping and huffing on the thatch. In front of him, Sparrow sat her elk, and there was one other elk with a long, dark bundle slung over its back.
Vireo ducked through the thatch again, came back with the severed head of Grosbeak, and strapped it behind my saddle. I didn’t move to stop him. I could hardly keep myself from shaking head to foot already. I didn’t know if it was the searing cold or the shock of another attack – of more bloodshed. Vireo took my saddlebag from me with care, as if he thought I might bite at any moment, and attached it to the side of the saddle where it belonged.
“There was one more of you,” I said through chattering teeth.
He nodded his head to the bundle tied to the saddle of the riderless elk. “The Brotherhood of Stolen Sisters killed Ibis on our way here. They took us a bit by surprise tonight.”
“I thought you were immortal. I thought you didn’t die.”
“We die neither by age nor by disease, but violence and poisons may end our lives like a string of pearls severed. Who would have thought they could guess we’d be here on this of all nights?” Vireo said with a savage grin. “Never a dull moment when you ride with the Arrow. Always an adventure.”
“You consider death an adventure?” I asked. My tongue was thick between my frozen lips. The lace nightie was not warm enough for a winter’s night.
Vireo cocked his head to the side, brow furrowing. “What else would you call it, then? Is it not the great adventure? The sea each must one day sail?”
He’d just finished with me when Bluebeard vaulted up onto the roof, flicking the blood from the tips of his swords and then wiping them on the thatch.
“Thatch
shouldn’t hold something as heavy as an elk,” I said, my teeth still chattering. Hysterics didn’t make sense. I needed to stop them at once.
“It’s magic, wife of the Arrow,” Vireo said, winking this time. “Get used to it.”
Bluebeard sheathed his swords and threw something at Vireo, who caught it and examined it. He was close enough that I could see it, too. It was an iron medallion with the words “Forever the Faithful” etched on the back and a pair of crossed swords on the front.
“Brotherhood,” Vireo said with a nod, as if he’d been expecting it. He glanced at Bluebeard as my husband mounted behind me, his hot breath gusting across my neck. “Dead?”
Bluebeard didn’t answer directly. He made a whooping sound, both Sparrow and Vireo replied with the same as Vireo hurried to mount his elk, and then we were leaping into the sky. I bit back a scream, but we did not plummet to the ground outside the inn. Instead, we disappeared once more into the thick mist, the elk seeming to run through it as if they were running on a well-packed road.
The frosty air bit through my lace nightgown until my skin smarted all over like little needles were being jabbed into every inch of my skin. The night sky above us was crystal clear, the stars spilling across it like a spray of water on a hot summer day – glittering, bright and sharp in beauty. Our elk’s breath gusted into the air, almost tinkling from the cold. My breath gusted with his, like a silver chain hanging from my mouth and nose. My eyelashes froze together a little and I had to wiggle my nostrils to keep them from freezing.
Bluebeard reached around my throat, and I froze, terrified that he might strangle me right here, drain me of days, and put me in that room with all his other wives.
He tossed my long braid over my shoulder and I felt the lightest brush of something warm on the back of my neck before my cloak fell, pooling between us. I grabbed for it frantically, but already he was slipping a dress over my head – I reached my arms through the woolen sleeves, greedily grasping for warmth, and as I tugged it around my hips and under my bottom, he already had the cloak back up and was clasping it around my shoulders. It was a narrow warmth, but more than nothing.
Fly with the Arrow: A Bluebeard Inspired Fantasy (Bluebeard's Secret Book 1) Page 9
