Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(29)

He would raise her head with skilled hands and help her to drink the wine spiced with medicines and poppy. Then as she began to drift, he would unlace her stiff leather corset and open it wide. He would part the edges of the deep, jagged wound that ran from collarbone to pelvis. Abdominal organs lay exposed to his intent scrutiny. After probing the wound he would sprinkle magical powders into the crevices of her body and whisper words, or prayers, or incantations.

The sum of her existence had come down to this irreducible place. He knew her with a greater intimacy than did any of her family. She should have long since died from the wound, but his powers kept her alive.

As she endured the unendurable, he whispered to her how her family had abandoned hope. They had stopped searching for a miracle cure for her mysterious wound that would not heal. He whispered other dark things, a corrupt and insidious councilor sowing anxiety and fear at kingdom’s fall. All the while he laced her tight in a perpetual bondage that held her torn body together and kept her spirit leashed to his hand.

Then he would leave and she would dream again, a bloodred petal drifting in twilight.

* * *

CRAMPED IN HER awkward position, her body aching, Mary surfaced from the black pit. She had a blurred impression of her car’s interior, the edge of the steering wheel that dug into her hip, the lush purple and green of the dark forest. Her mouth was dry and her heart hammered, a rapid, skittish feeling. She groaned and struggled to find a better position.

Then she slid into another space.

She stood up, away from her body and out of the car, into the cool velvety colors of the forest at night. She felt light and airy. Looking back in the car, she pitied the young woman in the driver’s seat whose abandoned body lay in an awkward huddle.

Mary held up her hands. She saw the shadow of tangled underbrush through her fingers.

She was like crystal.

She looked down at herself, or at least where her body should have been. She saw a transparent version of the woman that lay in the car, except in this version a jagged crack ran down the length of her torso. Light blazed like lava from the crack, illuminating the Toyota, the line of a tree, the gravel road. The crack didn’t hurt. She almost poked curious fingers inside it, but an instinctive aversion made her stop.

A delicate cloud of lavender mist came to settle around her torso.

She caught her breath. Daemon? Is that you?

Yes. The lavender cloud swirled around her. You must stop.

Stop what? I don’t know what you mean. She stretched, or perhaps she just pretended to, for her body was back in the car. Whatever she did, it felt as pleasurable and as expanding as a full-bodied stretch. She felt as if it was the first pain-free movement she’d had in days.

You are burning up. Her spirit companion turned in circles.

Am I? She glanced down at herself, at the crack in her torso that blazed like a sun. I don’t mean to be.

Agitation. You must find a way to stop.

I don’t know what I’m doing. Do you?

You’re dying.

Goodness. She looked around. She didn’t feel like she was dying. She had no idea dying could be so beautiful. Okay, she said. What do I do to stop?

The spirit wouldn’t or couldn’t answer. It twisted into endless, agitated knots.

She felt sorry for all the trouble she had caused it and started to apologize, but then it shot into the forest, disappearing so fast she couldn’t tell where it had gone.

Saddened, she wondered if that was the last she would see of it, but then she realized that if she were dying, it wouldn’t matter. She hoped her actual moment of death would be as painless and as pleasant as this. She experimented with walking, or pretending to walk. She loved the sensation of lightness and freedom.

Afrit.

The word popped into her mind, along with the memory of a mythology class she’d taken in high school.

Or was it afreet? She couldn’t remember. Djinn. They were Middle Eastern mythological spirits of air, immortal, unpredictable, often mischievous and amoral, and not to be confused with angels or demons. That didn’t seem like a fair way to describe her companion, which, if anything, seemed like an anxious, kind little thing. She preferred to think of it as a daemon, a supernatural being somewhere between a god and a human.

She heard a whisper of noise, a sound so slight that her physical ears would not have detected it.

She whirled. A wolf came out of the forest and took mincing steps toward her. Its head was lowered and its yellow eyes fixed on her—the crystalline, ethereal her and not the abandoned battered body in the car.

Oh, she said, or pretended to say, aren’t you gorgeous?

Lady, the wolf said. You called.

Did I? She blinked. I don’t remember.

Another wolf stepped out of the forest, then another, and then three more. Overcome with astonishment, she stared. What a lovely but incomprehensible dream. More wolves poured onto the gravel road. Soon her car was surrounded.

The one that had spoken was the largest and most powerfully built. It approached and sat near her transparent leg. It said, You asked for help. We have come. We will do what we can to protect you.

She flashed back to the cloud of hawks that had attacked her abductors. Some had fallen and hadn’t risen again. You mustn’t try to help me, she said. She looked around at the pack of wolves. They were so beautiful. Don’t risk yourselves. It isn’t worth it. Apparently I’m already dying.