Poisoned, p.26
Poisoned, page 26
From deep inside, a voice answered. They’re here. You must keep searching. He wants you to quit. Don’t do it.
Sophie listened to the voice. She stood up and kept going. Up stairways. Down hallways. In and out of a ballroom, a billiards room. Until, hours after she’d entered the King of Crows’s castle, she finally came to a pair of soaring black doors, with painted panels of snakes, scorpions, and apples.
Sophie felt, she knew, as soon as she touched those doors, that this was the room she was seeking. She grasped the handles, her hands trembling, and turned them.
The doors swept open on silent hinges.
The chamber was magnificent.
Its coffered ceiling was two stories high. Moonlight pouring in through arched windows fell across an ebony dining table and glinted off crystal goblets and gilt-edged plates. Tapers burned in silver candelabra at either end of the table; high-backed chairs surrounded it. Heavy carvings of gargoyles adorned its thick legs. Across the room, flames leapt in a black-marble fireplace.
But Sophie saw none of that. Her eyes were glued to the shelves that soared from the floor to the ceiling. Each contained glass boxes. So many glass boxes. More than anyone could count in a lifetime. And inside every one of them was a human heart, as red and alive as the day it had been taken.
Some were large, and some were so, so small. Looking at them all, Sophie felt her clockwork heart stutter and wheeze as it filled with grief.
“All stolen,” she murmured. “Men’s hearts … women’s … children’s.”
She walked up to a shelf and ran her fingers along the boxes. Each had a paper label affixed to its front with a name written on it. Some of the labels were bright and new; others were so old that their ink was faded and their edges curled.
“Mine is here, too. Somewhere,” she said, overwhelmed. “But how will I ever find it?”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult,” said a voice from behind her, a voice as cold as the winter wind. “I have it right here.”
Sophie slowly turned around and faced him.
The King of Crows had been standing by the fireplace, in the shadows, but he walked out into the moonlight now. He was carrying a glass box.
His face was as pale as a gravestone, his eyes as dark as a murderer’s heart. His long black hair flowed down his back. A fitted jacket, embroidered with crows, hung from his narrow shoulders.
Some part of Sophie knew that this meeting was no accident. He’d been here all along, waiting, knowing she would come to him. As she watched, he set the glass box on the table.
“My heart,” she whispered, mesmerized.
“Indeed.”
Sophie walked closer to it.
“It’s smaller than you thought, no?”
She nodded.
“That’s what every human says. The ones who make it this far, that is. The small, pretty, perfect hearts are the easiest to take. The bigger ones, full of breaks and cracks, hatched with scars, those are more challenging.”
“Why did you take my heart?” Sophie demanded. “What are you going to do with it?”
Corvus’s gaze drifted down to the table, to the porcelain plates, the linen and silver. Frowning, he nudged a knife into place, his talons clicking softly against the silver. Then his eyes met Sophie’s again. With a smile, he said, “I’m going to devour it.”
The room and everything in it seemed to spin together like a child’s pinwheel, then break apart in a jangle of fractured shapes and colors.
Sophie felt wildly dizzy. She couldn’t keep her balance. Inside her chest, the clockwork heart slowed noisily.
“It sounds like you haven’t got much longer,” Corvus said. “Why those meddling brothers bothered to save you, I’ll never understand.”
Sophie pulled a chair away from the table and eased herself into it. She fought down the dizziness, the weakness. She could not give in to it.
Don’t you quit on me. Not now. Don’t you dare, she warned her knocking, banging heart. Little by little, the ticking in her chest quickened, and the spinning inside her head cleared.
“You … you devour hearts …” she said to Corvus when she could find her voice again.
“Yes, there’s nothing more delicious to feed upon than a human heart,” he responded, walking out from behind the table. “And I’ve been saving yours for a special treat. It looks as if it will be exceptionally sweet and tender.”
She forced herself to meet his gaze. His eyes frightened her. They pulled at her, like a bottomless chasm pulls at a person standing on its edge. “I’ll die if I don’t get my heart back,” she said.
Corvus tilted his head, crow-like. “But I thought you wanted it this way? You wanted to put your heart in a box.”
Sophie remembered standing in her stepmother’s chamber, listening to Adelaide tell her that kindness was dangerous, that a soft heart would only bring her trouble. She remembered thinking that it would be better to feel nothing than to feel so much pain. In her mind’s eye, she saw Haakon standing with her on the balcony, urging her to let him keep her heart.
“I did once, yes,” Sophie admitted. “I don’t anymore.”
Gathering her strength, she broke his gaze and rose, determined to get her heart. My people need me, she reminded herself. They have no one else.
But as Sophie reached for it, ugly little faces with sharp teeth and bulging eyes appeared from under the table and heaved themselves on top of it. What Sophie had thought were merely carved gargoyles were real. The creatures gibbered and hissed and swiped at her with their sharp claws, blocking her from the glass box.
The King of Crows wagged a long finger at her. “My pets know you wish to rob me of my prize,” he said.
Sophie tried again to get to the box, but one of the creatures flapped its leathery wings and flew at her, screeching. Its sharp claws raked her head, driving her back.
“I wouldn’t touch that box if I were you,” Corvus cautioned, calling the creatures off. “The heart is still alive, untouched by time or decay. But if you open the box, you’ll break the spell, and the heart will wither and rot.”
Sophie’s forehead was wet where the gargoyle had scratched her. She wiped the blood away, then said, “There’s magic. To restore the heart to me. I know there is. The brothers said so.”
Corvus laughed. His eyes pulled at her again. “And people say I’m cruel. Nothing is crueler than hope. There’s no magic to restore a heart once I’ve taken hold of it.”
“That’s a lie,” Sophie insisted, but dread gripped her. What if he was telling the truth? How could she know, when she didn’t even know him?
Summoning all her courage, Sophie walked up to him. “Corvus … the King of Crows … These are just names,” she said. “Who are you? Who are you really?”
And then she looked deeply into those terrible eyes and knew.
He was the creak on the stairs. A cold breath on your neck. Footsteps in the dark.
He was the figure who stood in the corner of your room at night, whispering to you all the things you were not and never would be.
He was the eater of hearts.
He was Fear itself.
Fear placed a sharp talon on the soft underside of Sophie’s chin and raised it.
“You’ve finally figured it out,” he said. “And now you also know that your quest to retrieve your heart is futile. No mere human can defeat me. Look at what happens when you try.” His eyes moved up and down Sophie, lingering on her shabby trousers; her dirty, ripped shirt; the scar under her collarbone; her spiky hair. He removed his hand, laughing. “Look at you, reduced to a ragamuffin from the princess you used to be. Look at your friend, wandering to his death in my tunnels, calling for a child who isn’t there. And the other one … He’s even more pathetic …”
“What other one?” Sophie asked. And then the blood in her veins turned to ice. Will, she thought.
After Tom had knocked the coffin over and she’d woken, she’d asked Arno about him. His words drifted back to her … He said something about hunting birds …
With a jolt of terror, Sophie realized Will had meant crows. He had come here, to Nimmermehr, to search for her heart. He’d probably hoped that if he could get it, he could bring her back to life.
“My kobold servants taught the foolish boy to think twice about trespassing,” said Fear. “My gargoyles were just finishing him off when you arrived.”
“Where is he? Where?” Sophie shouted.
Fear pointed to the fireplace.
Sophie skirted around him. A cry escaped her as the fireplace came into full view. Crumpled on the floor in front of it was the body of a boy.
It was motionless.
It was bruised and bloodied.
It was Will.
“No!” Sophie cried. “Will! Will!”
She fell to her knees beside him and cradled his head in her lap. “Please don’t be dead,” she whispered. “Please, Will … Wake up. Wake up …”
His eyelashes fluttered. A small groan escaped him.
“You’re alive!” she said, squeezing his hand.
“Is he?” Fear asked with a frown of disappointment. “Well, not for much longer.”
A woman entered the room in a swirl of black. Blood welled at the corner of her mouth. She had a tooth, its roots crimson, pinched between her thumb and forefinger.
Sophie looked up. She recognized the woman. She’d talked with her in a graveyard. She’d seen her in a fever dream.
“My sister, Crucia. Pain to her friends,” Fear said to Sophie. “I believe you’ve met.”
Sophie didn’t answer him. Terrified for Will, she patted his cheeks, shook him, and tugged on his wrists, trying anything and everything to get him to wake up.
Pain dropped her tooth into a skirt pocket; then she looked at Sophie, her face streaked with tears; at Will, half-dead. Wincing, she turned to Fear. “All of this started with a mirror,” she said with a sigh. “A piece of silvered glass.”
“Do wipe your chin.”
Sophie heard them. She looked up again. “What mirror? What does it have to do with me? With my heart?”
Pain palmed away the blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth. “Queen Adelaide has a magic mirror. She speaks to it. Or so my brother says. You can’t trust him, though. He’s a liar.”
Sophie looked at Fear. “Is it true? My stepmother really has a magic mirror? She speaks to it?”
A smug smile curled Fear’s lips. “It’s not magic. Not at all. But Adelaide does speak to it. She asks it who will bring about her fall. But the mirror only shows her what she already knows,” he explained. “She is smart, bold, wily. Life taught her to be. She herself set up her network of spies. She places informants in the courts, halls, and bedchambers of her fellow rulers. She knows of every plot against her as it’s being hatched, and she ends them—and those involved in them—long before they ever take wing. She was, for a time, one of the best rulers the world had ever seen.”
“But you helped her, brother,” Pain said accusingly. “Whispering to her. Advising her.”
“Oh, yes. I helped her,” Fear allowed. “I helped her when no one else would.” His expression darkened. “And then once, just once, I asked her to help me. But she failed.”
“It was you, wasn’t it? You told my stepmother to kill me,” said Sophie. “That was the help you asked of her.”
Fear nodded.
“Why did you need the queen’s help?” Sophie asked. “Why couldn’t you kill me yourself?”
“It’s damned hard to kill a princess,” Fear replied, with an airy wave of his hand. “Royals have an annoying habit of surrounding themselves with guards.”
His answer was too careless, too flippant, and Sophie saw right through it. “No, that’s not it. You can’t kill, can you? You need someone else to do it for you.” This knowledge strengthened her; it made her brave. More questions came to her lips, the same ones she’d been asking herself since the huntsman had cut out her heart. “Why do you want me dead? Why am I your enemy?”
Fear arched an eyebrow. “You surprise me. You came here to face me. Most humans never do.”
“Answer my questions,” Sophie demanded.
But Fear was silent. Pain tapped the glass box that contained Sophie’s heart with a filthy fingernail. “Do you know how your father died?”
“The king died in battle,” Sophie replied. She turned back to Fear. “Answer my questions.”
But Fear, adjusting the silverware again, still would not speak.
So his sister did. “Your father didn’t simply die in battle. He sacrificed himself,” she said. “Two of his generals had been cut off from their battalions. They, and a handful of their men, were under attack and greatly outnumbered. Your father was watching from a place of safety, high up on a hill. Without hesitation, he rode out onto the field, knowing that the enemy soldiers would leave the generals and pursue him, for he was the king, the greatest prize. His action allowed his generals to break free and return to their troops. Because of your father, the Greenlands’s armies won the day. He gave his life for his people.”
Sophie’s anger grew. She didn’t need Pain to tell her these things; she knew them. “Why won’t you answer me?” she shouted at Fear.
As Corvus maintained his silence, another voice was heard. It was deep and rumbling; it sounded like the stone door of a tomb rolling open.
“Your father was one of the bravest men who ever lived. He had the heart of a lion. But bravery isn’t fearlessness. Only a fool feels no fear. Bravery is being afraid but doing what you must anyway. And there is only one thing that allows mortals to do that. Your father possessed great reserves of it, and you do, too. That’s why you are my son’s greatest enemy. That’s why he wants you dead.”
Sophie turned toward the voice.
It belonged to a man. He was standing in front of the high windows at the farthest end of the study, his back to her.
Like Fear and Pain, he was tall and dressed in black. His shoulders were broad, his arms and legs powerfully built. He wore leather britches tucked into high boots, and a tunic of chain mail. A rippling mane of steel-gray hair flowed down his back. A sword hung at his hip.
“Fear rightly sensed that you were just like your father and that you would rule your realm wisely and well, with mercy and justice. He knew that you had something powerful inside you, something that could best him, and that once you were on the throne, you would drive him from the land. He could not have that. I cannot have that. If a mere girl conquers Fear, the strongest of my children, what message will that send to the world?”
The man turned around then, and Sophie drew a sharp breath. His face was a skull. His hands were bleached white bones.
“May I introduce my father?” Fear said. “His name is Death.”
The gears of Sophie’s heart spun wildly. They slipped, faltered, and then caught again.
Death started toward her, his footsteps echoing in the room. Sophie was paralyzed by the sight of his ghastly face.
“My son has tried to kill you—and failed—several times,” said Death. “It’s my turn now, and I never fail.”
Closer and closer he came, and as he did, he drew his sword. The blade glinted in the candlelight. Sophie saw a word etched down the length of it: Aeternitas. Everything inside her, flesh and bone and blood, told her to get up and run, but her faulty heart told her to stay, to protect Will.
Death’s words echoed in her head. He knew that you had something powerful inside you, something that could best him …
What is it? she desperately asked herself. What thing can best Fear? She needed the answer now.
“Dispatch the boy first, Papa,” Pain said with a sigh. “Put him out of his misery. And mine.”
“You always were a softhearted girl,” said Death, stopping in front of Sophie and Will.
Pain smiled, showing her rotten teeth. Fear adjusted a crystal goblet.
And Death loomed tall, gripping the hilt of his terrible sword tightly.
“No,” Sophie cried, crossing her arms over Will’s chest. “Please.”
Time seemed to slow down, yet everything that happened next happened in the space of a heartbeat. Death raised his sword, then thrust the blade straight at Will’s heart.
Sophie screamed.
And threw herself in front of it.
The blade of Death’s sword, a blade so sharp it could cut stars from the sky, pierced Sophie’s skin and the muscle beneath it. It slid between two of her ribs, severing cartilage.
Had it hit the soft red creature that used to lie under Sophie’s ribs but now lay in a glass box on Fear’s table, it would have killed her.
But it didn’t.
It hit a heart built from metal scraps and crooked gears and old springs, a heart that was faulty and flawed, noisy and troublesome.
Death’s sword hit Sophie’s clockwork heart.
And shattered into a million pieces.
Death stared in disbelief at his sword, in pieces on the floor.
Pain ripped a hank of hair out of her scalp.
Fear snarled.
And Sophie looked down at her chest. Blood seeped from the wound over her heart and soaked into her tunic. But it wasn’t much. It wouldn’t kill her. She’d suffered far worse.
Grabbing an iron poker from a stand near the fireplace, Sophie stood up, placing herself between Will and Death. She would not give the gray-haired killer a second chance.
Holding the poker out before her like a sword, she said, “You can’t have him.”
Sophie looked straight at Death as she spoke. She gazed into his hollow eye sockets, into the eternal darkness inside them, and though she was more afraid than she had ever been in her life, she thought of Will and held her ground.
Death looked at Sophie, at this thin, dirty, tear-stained girl. Her hand was shaking so hard she could barely hold the poker.
He laughed and took a step toward her, his chain mail clanking. “I am Death, you foolish girl,” he said. “I have the abyss and all its terrors at my command.”
