Page 82 of The Scarlet Ball

I forced myself to close my eyes against what I was seeing, to breathe. I had been in the demon lords’ world but not of it for months now, and it was time to see as they saw. There would be no palace, there would be no hell, but there must be something else—

I opened my eyes slowly, and I let them see what they saw, no force, no expectation. I traced great curving white lines, extending so far into the spangled night sky that there might have been no end to them. I saw the empty spaces between the white pillars that gave them shape and form, and how the emptiness defined it as much as the rest.

I allowed myself to see it whole, and behind me, Mielle let out a soft breath.

It was a rib cage of enormous size, large enough to hold the island of Manhattan comfortably within. You could trace the buried spine with a railroad line if you liked, you could stretch telephone wire from rib to rib, sending your voice along the coated copper to ask, Where are you? Are you there? Is anyone there?

“What was it?” I asked.

“Some believe it is the mother of us all,” she responded, her voice small. “Some believe it is the ruler of the race that came before us, and someday, they will awake again, devouring us as we devour you.”

“And what do you think it is?”

“A terrible place.”

She directed me to a stone court without the rib cage, and the mare alighted with a delicate tap of her hooves. She whickered anxiously as we dismounted, and nodding, I turned to Mielle.

“Do you have a knife?” I asked, and mutely, she handed one to me, the blade no longer than my forefinger.

“All right, darling,” I murmured to the mare. “We’ll get you where you’re going.”

Sebastian would bring me back, or I would not return at all.

I went to work on the mare, using the knife to pick the bridle out of her flesh. She bore it, her hide shivering and twitching as if there was something under it, her head down to accommodate me. When I was done, pink trenches gouged across her cheeks and over her nose, but she arched her neck high, tossing her head back and forth.

“You’re free.” I laughed. “Go on.”

She turned and disappeared into the darkness beyond the glow of the bones. I wondered if she would mate with the darkness, and what colts might come of it, if they’d bear her old marks of servitude across their faces or if they would be star-pocked instead.

She’d won her new life, whatever it was, and now it was time to go win mine. I took Mielle’s arm, and together we crossed under the arches of bone.

As we walked, a palace grew up around us. The bare sterile dirt under our feet took on the sheen and then the actuality of marble, and suddenly it was hard to see the distant curves of bone for the thick stone walls. High overhead, I could glimpse the rib vaults, arches supporting the ceiling, mimicking what I knew was there. Our steps echoed like they hadn’t before, and then I heard music, the bright incongruous strains of a waltz, and the sound of laughter.

“Here, wait,” said Mielle, and obediently, I stood still.

The scene faded in around us, a ballroom with three couples dancing as the crowd watched. I looked closer, and I saw Martha Webster whirling magnificently in the arms of her wildfire, a triumphant look on her face. There was Hugette, more subdued no doubt because her left eye was gone, a neat cavern left in its wake. Soon, I thought, she would go to Kendricks, choose the eye of an eagle or a lion or some girl who had sold hers. Third and last was Tilly Manchester, her face stormy, her step stiff. I did not know her lord, but I saw how tightly she held his hand, as if now that she had found him, she would not let him go so easily.

Of Eliza Gelder, the fifth and final girl chosen at the Rose Ball, there was no sign, and I knew that somewhere in the darkness, there was a demon lord well-fed. He would return to the family that had given him his name; he was now their business, but if they did not bury him beneath the desert sands or sink him beneath the sea, he would have the Gelders to deal with.

The music swelled, and then cut off, the girls sweeping into low curtsies, their lords bowing even lower. I strode forward. Martha wore velvet so dark a red that it shone, Tilly’s skirts were embroidered with serpents in scarlet silk thread, and Hugette’s satin dress dripped red lace like blood. Then there was me, bloodied, my dress half in shreds, and my face bare for the first time in this assembly, and I felt the shock of awareness—uneasy, exciting, and wholly pleasurable—that now they knew exactly what I was.

Mrs. de Lange came to meet me, first and last a hostess, ready to deal with the new threat to the party.

“I do not know what this is about,” she began in her reasonable way, and she got no farther because I laughed at her.

“Of course not. No one does. Not yet. But you know me, don’t you?”

The soft lines of her face went hard. Her eyes flickered up toward the sky, and then past me to see only Mielle there waiting for me.

“I am not sure I do,” she said deliberately. “Who speaks for you? I do not see anyone here I recognize, no lord, no patroness. Where is Atalanta Howard?”

“She’s dead,” I said flatly. “She let her lord grow hungry, and now he is hungry no more.”

She could not entirely hide her shock. “If that is true, I have only your word—”

“I’ve come to dance,” I told her, pitching my voice to carry. “I bled at the White Ball, I was chosen at the Rose Ball, and now I am here. I will dance.”

I cocked my head to the side, gazing out over the women who lay down with floods and fires in the shapes of men. I didn’t blame them anymore for choosing this over mortal marriage. I’d lain with Sebastian in a palace of ice. I’d seen Mrs. Howard fall to ash. I knew the beginning and the end of it, and I had still come.