by Lana Popovic
When the time came, she went early to the clearing, while twilight’s waxen peel fell away to reveal the darker pith of night. As she built a sacred circle of powders, dried flowers, and cutting stones, the winter winds wrapped around her like icy cloth, sinking into the deep fount of her warmth.
When her own blood dripped onto the powders and clotted into streaked whorls on her belly, breasts, and cheeks—when the beings that had died by her hand coated her skin from limb to limb—she felt the abrupt shift of pressure that heralded an arrival. A feral, ancient darkening, tunneling down around her body and expanding in her head. She fought the urge to scrabble away from it; to flee from the essence of endings, the aching solitude, the sense of terminal descent.
But as Death bore down on her, she dug deep and found the strength to first whisper fretfully to it, and then to sing. Wooing it with all the love in her blood, molding it a shape with her glowing hands.
“I call on you, I summon you, master of night, and change, and all that ends!” she bellowed at the ground below her feet, the air around her, the snow-feathered sky above, flinging out her arms. “My first name is Mara, and I entreat you for your help. Something brutal and grotesque has slunk into this mortal realm, an evil that I would lay to rest!”
Death had taken a shadow of a shape by then, a dark column of air in the vague outline of a man. She could sense nascent curiosity, the slow, precise unfurling of an akin-to-human mind. One that attended to her and wished to know more, to deal with her in kind.
What would you ask of me, Witch Mara, sorceress who walks in her own shed light? She felt the words more than she heard them, an echo in her breastbone. You are not fully of this realm yourself, with your blood that smells of fruits and sacred herbs, your heart like a swallowed sun. Why would you need my help?
“This evil is like a death that walks,” she said. “And makes more of itself. It is beyond even me to quench.”
She could feel Death’s intrigue rise, the oppression of its dark regard. Go on, it almost-said.
“He will not die,” she replied, gritting her teeth. “He lives in death, for all that no one deserves life less than he. What sustains him is stronger than anything in this realm; he evades your touch, even when dealt mortal blows by mortal hands. So I would ask you to kill him for me yourself—for what could wreak a greater death than Death?”
So you would use me as your assassin, lady of the light? Wry amusement colored the not-quite-voice. A lofty demand. And what would you offer me in return?
Of course, she thought bitterly. Nothing but love was ever free, and often not even that.
“What would you have from me?” she asked.
I am alone, and lonely, it mused. As I have always been. My nature is of solitude, and yet, why does it have to be? Perhaps one such as you could withstand being by my side. You could come away with me and see such things, Witch Mara. Become my sunlit bride.
She stirred in surprise at that. She would not have thought that even Death itself balked against its fated lot.
“I . . .” She steeled herself, railing silently at whatever cruel hand had shaped her and this place. Why could she never guard herself, or her own, from the demands and whims of men? “Yes, I will do it, then. If you kill him for me, I will leave my life behind to stand by your side.”
He—for now he felt distinctly male—fell into contemplation. Perhaps this would suffice, he mused. But only perhaps.
Desperation hatched and crawled inside her like spiders. “If you do not see the need for it yet, I bid you to wait and see him for yourself. You will know him for what he is, something that should never have come here. A thing passed beyond redemption.”
As if she had summoned him, Herron emerged from the snow-shrouded pines. Wisps of black trailed him like floating serpents, darker than tree trunk or night, the same oily iridescence teeming in his eyes. Even after everything, a sliver of her still leaped with foolish joy at the sight of him. Plumes of breath streamed from between his fine-cut lips, and his long, dark braid and muscled shoulders sparkled with melting snow. Because he was as warm as she was, warm enough to melt the frostbit night.
The slice of his smile flashed white against the dark. Though Death hovered so close to her that she could feel its withering presence with every inch of skin, Herron did not sense it—maybe could not, girded as he was by tainted black. He still thought she was doing what he asked.
He thought that she was his.
She had loved him so much, so ardently. And he had taken everything, and would never cease to take.
“My savage sun,” he called out to her, hands lifted in beckoning. “My midnight queen. Come to me, close the distance between us. Let us begin.”
Death rose in subdued outrage behind her, a rustling like old bones shifting against each other. A living death, just as you said. A former mortal who dares thieve from me. You have the right of it, Witch Mara; he cannot be permitted to abide. I accept your terms as they bind us to each other. Consider the pact between us sealed, and proceed as you will.
“Thank you,” she said under her breath. “For attending to me, and for your help.” Even if the help came at the steepest price a mother could have paid. One daughter dead, the others lost to her.
But at least they would be safe.
She made her way to Herron, moving like a lover shedding veil after veil. The gleam roared inside her, building into something truly like a fire, until she burned the snow beneath her feet with each slow, deliberate step.
Then she began focusing her power, drawing a cloak of love around her, calling on the strength of her many names. Mara was the first, her given cradle-name, but there were others already. And in years to come, when she became legend, there would be many others still. Already she could hear them, whispered by the voices of the ages caught in the wind.
“Mara,” she crooned as she advanced on Herron. He waited for her, trusting, eager and open-armed. Unsuspecting, even as Death followed in her footsteps, dogging at her heels.
Once she reached Herron, she gave him one last, sweet smile, the kind that she had woken him with every morning by the dawn. “Marzanna. More. Moréna,” she whispered, almost against his lips. She laid her fingertips on his cheeks, lightly, but still he hissed in a breath at their heat. Then she undid his plait and wound her fingers through his hair, stroking the strands from root to tip. Gentling him with the full force of her love, until she knew all he wanted was to chain himself to her, to drown willingly in the pool of her perfume.
That was when the moment came.
She let herself fall back and plunge wholly into Death, such that it both enveloped and leached fully into her. It felt wrong, so wrong, and far beyond terrible, to make herself into its shell. It thrashed and bucked like tigers trapped within her, alien past all reckoning. Nothing that should ever have been allowed to share her skin.
But she needed it inside her, to do what must be done. To allow Death to do her killing in her stead.
She caught Herron’s face between hands grown heavy as mountains, and the fear that finally breached the surface chased the black out of his eyes. For a few moments they were fern-green and bright, just as they had been when she first loved them and him.
“Mara,” he gasped, straining against the vise of her grasp, finding nowhere to escape. “What are you—”
“I am Maržena,” she hissed through gritted teeth, “and Morana, and Mora, and MARMORA!”
And with the last invocation of her own name, she plunged the hand she shared with Death into Herron’s chest, the howling wind that rose around them almost drowning out his shriek.
The thing that she drew out from between his ribs was not quite his heart. It wound like silvery filament around her bloody hand, pulsing like a dying star. The last dregs of his human soul.
The part with which he had loved her.
And even that was tainted by darkness. With the hands she shared with Death, she lifted it up to their shared eyes. Black threads wis
ped through it, the silver honeycombed with coal. It brought sick bubbling up her throat.
Stripping Herron of it had brought him wailing to his knees. He knelt hunched around his chest, but the gaping wound had already begun to seal itself. He gazed up at her, swaying, eyes blazing with pitch-black hatred that ran down his cheeks in inky rivulets. Even stripped of his soul, he would not die. He was weakened—she could see him struggle to gain his feet, only to collapse back down each time—but still very much alive.
“Do it,” she choked out, speaking to Death inside her. “Snuff him fully. Kill his soul.”
That lies beyond even my domain, sorceress, Death whispered back to her, bristling with outrage. I snuff bodies, but cannot snuff a soul. Such is not my mandate. If ripping out his blighted soul does not kill him, then even I will not be his death.
Helpless fury threatened to choke her. She couldn’t fail, not now. Not after everything she’d already given up to right her wrongs.
“Then build a prison for the soul instead,” she pleaded. “A lockbox world set between the worlds to hold it captive, while I imprison the rest of him here. And pass me by when you come to cull. Avert your eyes from me and from the remnants of my line, so that we may keep watch over him.”
That is not what we agreed on, Witch Mara. She could feel Death begin to withdraw from her, and relief though it was, she clung harder to him. She couldn’t let him leave her, not now. Not yet. You swore that you would be my bride. I have upheld my end as best I could—why should I do anything further, if you will not come be mine?
“You cannot have me, for I will be needed here, as a living anchor for this spell.” She took a deep, shuddering breath, through lungs compressed by his presence inside her. “But in my stead, I would offer you the daughters of my line. Gleaming beauties of your choosing to hold you by the hand, to serve as your consorts and your brides. To line the lockbox world with beauty, make it more than just a jail.”
She could feel his excitement as if it were her own. Not just one bride, but many. All bright and lovely as she was.
Yes, he murmured, a susurrus of dead leaves scraping over each other. Yes, I accept. I will dance with your daughters in your stead.
The relief that swept through her was rivaled only by the deeper loss.
“Then take it, and go quickly,” she ordered Death, stifling a scream as he wrenched loose and shucked off her body, the silvery tangle cupped carefully between the shadowed outlines of his hands. “Build the lockbox we agreed on. The rest of him, I will seal away.”
She felt a surprising, momentary flare of something before Death left with Herron’s soul, a warmth like a shoulder-clasp of respect. I know what you are doing, Witch Mara, and I know all it cost you, he rasped in parting. And I will always know it, even if no one else understands how much you gave of yourself.
With that, he and the soul were gone.
She looked back down at Herron, still writhing on the ground and watching her with murderous eyes. “How dare you do this to me, you faithless, envious bitch?” he spat at her. “I know how you loathe weakness in all things, and what is this treachery but weak? You may have left me soul-gutted, but I will rise again and hunt you, I will hound you, I will never let you steal even a measure of peace—”
“I do not need peace, if it means setting you free,” she broke in softly, laying a hand atop his head. “And whether I deserve it or not, I will surely know none after this.”
Then she began spooling in Winter itself as if it were icy wool, and wrapping it around the bright spindle of her core. Just as she had needed Death to do what must be done, she would need Winter’s spirit for what was to come.
If anything, this was worse than hosting Death had been; the spike of Winter that would dwell inside her like a pillar wouldn’t melt an inch over the centuries. The only way she would survive it was through the sustenance of the gleam, coursing through her with its loving mimicry of warmth.
When she’d gathered enough inside herself, she lifted Herron up with Winter’s own hands, like a whirlwind of chains forged from links of snow and ice. As he hung splayed and suspended, his scream stolen by the frozen bridle caught between his teeth, she began to weave the web of roses that would knit them all together.
Herron and Mara, Death and Winter, bound by an infinite tapestry woven into the fabric of the world. Her own will-knotted pattern of petals, stems, and thorns.
But it was Herron who would be trapped most of all, flung into the sea that sat just beyond her mountain’s feet. Plunged into its dark depths, pinned down by a pylon of will-forged ice. Winter itself would staunch him with its colossal weight, for as long as her spell maintained. As long as her daughters danced with Death, and the line of her blood remained.
And when it was fully wrought, her knotwork of ice prisons and black roses, she finally allowed herself to sink into despair for all that she had lost.
Even as her eyes lost their own dark luster and frosted over into gray.
Thirteen
Malina
MARA FINALLY SANK BACK DOWN, SWEAT POURING FROM her hairline and pooling in the hollow above her heaving chest. About half the candles had actually gone out, from the force of the air swept over them by her movement.
Then the Great Hall erupted into sound. Though no one moved even to let out a long-held breath, their feelings were a grating din, all rusted tin and broken glass.
And Mara’s guilt was worst of all. It boomed from her, the huge, raucous cacophony of it. Even with all the amends she’d tried to make, I could hear how she held herself accountable for a thousand sins. For not recognizing Herron sooner for what he was, or finding a way to stop him before he stole her people. For Amsherra’s death—her murder—and for saddling her line with the constant curse of loss to keep Herron imprisoned.
And even for letting Mama go. For giving in just enough to let me and Riss taste freedom, thinking it wouldn’t bring everything tumbling down so hard.
How could she even stand upright, I wondered, with all that weight on her shoulders? No wonder she kept her spine stiff like a steel rod. Even the slightest bit of give would break her back.
I couldn’t bear to hear another second of it. Leaning on Niko’s shoulder, I stumbled up.
“Lina, where are you going?” she whispered, doe eyes wide. Even her concern, loving as it was, sawed painfully at me.
“I have to get out of here,” I forced out. “It’s—it’s so loud. My head’s going to explode.”
She tucked her legs under her, getting ready to rise. “I’ll come with—”
“No,” I snapped. Her face went wounded, and her flight song tucked tight in hurt, like wings folding around her. I sucked in air, breathing in and out steady as a bellows, like Naisha had once taught me to do when the music of the world swelled out of my control. Even my bubble couldn’t help me here, not with everything so horribly loud. “I just need to be alone for a bit, princess, okay?” I finished, more gently. “I’ll come back and find you once things settle down.”
My neck prickled as I turned to leave. Beyond the tumult, I thought I heard something faint but familiar—the crashing of rain on sea that I’d only ever heard from my sister. The sound she made when something took her by surprise.
Wheeling around, I caught a flicker of light high up on the third balcony. And for a split second I thought I saw Riss, the air broken up into a herringbone pattern, each of the diamonds holding a flash of her face.
Then it vanished into the nothing it must have already been. Just a trick of the light. My heart lurched with loss, and I fled outside, where at least I hopefully wouldn’t see any ghosts.
I THRASHED MY way through the forest that slanted up behind the chalet, until I came across a sweet spot between a boulder and a rill. Just enough space between for me to tuck myself in, and dabble my fingers in the trickle of freezing mountain water. Under my back the ground had the perfect give to it, thick with a crisscrossed mat of pine needles and sod. The dapple of the
sun that filtered through the pine boughs striped my face with warmth.
Here, all I heard were ruffling feathers and trills of birdsong high above me, and the rustle of little things in the brush, chirping bugs somewhere below. The air smelled sharp and green, a little metallic from the clean water wending over rocks. I couldn’t think about everything, or even anything. It was all too much, without Riss to split the burden with me.
I’d been drifting for nearly an hour when a shadow fell over me. I resolutely tamped down my gleam, but a snatch of familiar, fluting melody stubbornly wove its way through the chinks. And now I could hear the vast gale of cold behind it, like wind pounding against wooden shutters bolted tight.
I scrunched my eyes shut tighter. “Not now, Mama. Please.”
“I’d just like to sit with you for a bit, if you’ll let me, my cherry girl. And I brought you something.”
I opened my eyes reluctantly. Mama loomed above me like a giantess bound by a rope of flowers. In broad daylight, her skin was even paler than it had been before she died-but-didn’t-die. The veins that ran beneath the delicate angles of her chin were threads of sapphire blue and emerald green, like rivers in winter.
I sat up and scooted away from her, my back pressed against the boulder. In the gauzy light of the forest, she seemed even more like something that could have grown naturally from the ground. A bowl cradled in her hands, she crouched easily in front of me, bringing us eye to eye. A simple, natural curl of chestnut hair sprang above her two-tone irises.
Looking closely, I could see that nearly a quarter of her gray eye had shifted to spring green. My heart turned over at the size of the slice. We still had time, like Mara had said. But it was running out. Winter was receding.
And when it was gone, he would come for us.
“May I sit with you?” she said again, tipping her head to the side. Even her lips were pale, like a marble madonna’s.
