Cruel Beauty

“Yes, and more,” said Astraia, grim again.

“I wasn’t wavering,” I said. “I was thinking. Remember how I told you that darkness burns him? I think it might do the same to me since the ring lets me share his power. Shade said that monsters are afraid of the dark because it reminds them of what they are. Ignifex said that he hears a voice in the darkness and he only survives because he forgets.” I met her eyes. “I want to know what truth it is that tries to eat him alive every night.”

21

We needed a room where we could light candles—in case the darkness started actually killing me—and that meant not the library.

Which meant I had to see Father again. I dithered my way through checking the books in the library for a bit longer than I needed, because I was trying to gather up my courage. I didn’t want to scream hatred at him again, and I didn’t want him to look at me with loathing as Astraia did, and I didn’t want either of us to pretend anything was all right. Most of all I wanted him to kiss my feet, beg forgiveness, and reveal he had loved me all along, but I knew that was the most impossible thing in all possible worlds.

It turned out he was waiting for us right outside the door. My skin crawled again as I considered what he might have overheard, but I met his gaze with my shoulders squared and my chin up.

“Nyx, I—” he began.

“Father,” I broke in. I meant to say something short and dignified that would establish I was beyond caring about him, but instead the words clattered out on top of one another. “We have almost found a way to destroy the Gentle Lord. It will require some experimenting tonight, so I hope you will lend us a box of candles. Tomorrow I will be on my way and if all goes well I should have accomplished my task by evening. Of course, it is likely that I will not return, so I hope you understand that I am proud to die for my family and I regret the words I said hastily before.”

Then I managed to stop. Every word had been pronounced with cheerful precision, but in my ears every one had screamed, Please love me just once, and I wanted to writhe.

Father closed his mouth, his gaze flickering from me to Astraia and back again. “I meant to ask if you’d come down to dinner,” he said finally. “But of course you can have all the candles you wish.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling like an idiot.

“Will you come?” he asked.

My eyes prickled with tears, and I felt like a greater idiot still. “Of course,” I muttered between my teeth.

It was an excruciating meal. The dining room portrait of Mother stared at me over Father’s head. The roasted lamb and figs were like ashes in my mouth. The servants were terrified of me, tiptoeing in and out of the room with wide eyes. Aunt Telomache was not there. “She is feeling unwell,” said Father, with a sidelong glance at me. We did our best to make conversation, but we were all under silent agreement not to mention the Gentle Lord and my doom, and there was little else to be said. As the silences pooled and spread, I realized how many of our dinners had consisted of Aunt Telomache expounding upon some improving subject and Astraia babbling about her day.

For the second course they brought apples; I remembered the silly apple tower Ignifex had tried to build, doomed always to fall, and I couldn’t speak. Suddenly that unguarded moment seemed like a greater act of trust than giving me the ring, and one thought keened through my mind: He trusts me, and I am going to betray him.

Astraia laid her hand over mine. She gave me a wan, wide-eyed smile that was comfort or threat, I couldn’t tell.

Father reached into the fruit bowl and picked up an apple. “The symmetry of an apple is a curious thing,” he said. “Have I told you about the monograph that was published just last week?”

No, I was too busy kissing the man who killed your wife, I thought, but there were still some things I refused to say, so I raised my chin and said, “No. Do tell.”

For the rest of the meal, Father kept up the conversation. He did not apologize. Did not beg me to stay, did not say that he loved me, or even ask if I thought I could bear my fate. He talked of the latest Hermetic research and related anecdotes of his colleagues, all without ever alluding to the central mission of the Resurgandi. They might have been a harmless society of researchers with no secret goal beyond pure knowledge.

When we finished, the sun was gone, only a simple glow left on the horizon; my skin prickled every time I looked at a shadow, but for all I knew it was simple fear.

And then it was time to go upstairs to the attic where we would perform our experiment, about which we’d told Father nothing except that we needed candles. One of the maids had already been dispatched with a great box of beeswax tapers; as Astraia started up the stairs, a lantern glowing in her hands, I hesitated at the bottom. I didn’t want to leave but I also didn’t want to stay here with the awkward silences and unacknowledged, unbearable truths.

“Good night, Father,” I said, turning away.

“Nyx,” he said softly, and I turned back without thinking. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

My heart thudded. For an instant I felt like I was floating, because this was more than he had ever said to me—then the silence crushed me down again, because he had said nothing more and I knew with bone-deep certainty that he never would.

“It doesn’t matter.” The words dropped out of me like a stone. Then I forced myself to smile and speak more softly. “It doesn’t matter what any of us wish. The Gentle Lord must be stopped, and I’m the one who has to do it.”

It was not exactly forgiveness, but he had not exactly made an apology.

He nodded, his mouth tightening; then he laid a hand on my forehead and whispered, “Go with the blessings of Hermes, lord of going and return.”

It was a standard blessing, such as might be used by anyone in authority: a father, a teacher, a governor.

I forced myself to smile. “Ave atque vale,” I said, the traditional farewell of the Resurgandi before undertaking a dangerous Hermetic experiment.

Then I turned and ran up the stairs after Astraia. I didn’t think he was really sorry for what he’d done, but I couldn’t entirely blame him. I loved the Gentle Lord, and I wasn’t really sorry for that, either.

“Only if it looks like I’m dying,” I reminded Astraia.

“I know!” She looked back at me, lips tight. “Do you think I’m too silly to remember, or too weak to watch?”

I leaned forward on my hands, letting out a slow breath. “Neither,” I said. Staring at the floorboards, I could admit to myself that I was actually afraid she wouldn’t ever light the candles at all, that she would sit and watch me suffer with that hard little smile she had learnt in my absence. I supposed I couldn’t complain if she did: I’d done as much to Ignifex already, and I was planning to do far worse.