~ (Continued) Vijfday, 30th of Iovilios, 11831 ~
It was a land of mist and cold. She shivered and crossed her arms, taking hesitant steps forward, not able to see what she walked upon. It felt of frozen earth. The air thinned and Lizzy could make out trees around her, so sparse that it could not yet be called a forest. The sky was black, but there was neither moon nor stars.
She did not feel alone. A presence filled her. That which had called her to the forbidden books. That which she felt when with the odd woman around the château. And that which she felt just now, as her blood had poured out from her.
“Hello?” she called. Silence. It swallowed up her words into darkness without echo or reply.
A few more steps. Ground became stone, she began to hear wind, and her shoes clicked on the path. The mists thinned, and she came upon a gazebo in a clearing. Stars began to sparkle in the sky.
There was a spread on the table, tea and snacks and small sandwiches that would look lovely in the afternoon, but eerie in this nightscape. The woman from her waking-dreams was seated and waiting for her. The maid. The friend of Sabine’s.
Sabine had been a confidante of—
“Bonsoir. I am Mora,” Death introduced herself.
“I have died?” It was silly to say, but Lizzy could think of nothing else.
“Your life was taken from you, oui.”
“Then I am to be judged.”
Mora waved her hand, and a second chair appeared. “No, not yet.”
Elizabeth sat down. Mora poured her tea and handed her the cup, and out of habit Lizzy added sugar and took a sip.
It tasted unlike any tea she had had before, almost of copper in the back of her throat.
“How did I die?”
She remembered screaming, grabbing a knife. Pain. Blood. Renaud?
“Lord Renaud,” Mora confirmed. “He had become a vampire and wished to kill Pierre in an act of revenge. Your illness flared in his presence, and the fresh blood you coughed was too much and he attacked you.”
“Is Pierre—”
“He stabbed Renaud. As did you. The two knives ended the vampire’s life, and he is no longer a threat. Pierre is cradling your body and doing everything in his power to save you.”
“But I am already dead,” Lizzy said. It was a hollow feeling, not one of sadness, but emptiness. She would never see her family, her brother, or even meet her nephew. She would never see Pierre, or marry him, or have children of her own. She wanted to cry, but the tears would not form.
“You are. But that will not stop Pierre.”
“Of course not,” Lizzy said. “He will try, and I am sure Vivien will try, and other doctors may be called, but shortly it will be obvious it is too late and there is nothing to be done.”
“Are you certain?”
“Unless there is another one of your confidantes or suitors in Spadille, and they are known and summoned, then yes.”
Mora smiled.
“You have more?”
“I have many who pledge themselves to me, some more favored than others. There are several in Spadille. And one very close to you.”
Elizabeth paled.
“Pierre… He practices necrocræft?”
It was one thing to discuss it, theorize, and plot out in one’s mind without the idea that it would truly happen. Wishing to have a fancy bauble, and even trying to work out how one might steal it, was entirely different from reaching out to pick it up.
“He does,” Mora confirmed. “And has for years. Tell me, have you been reading the book I placed in your possession?”
“Y-yes. Several times at the library.”
The fable about the dogs. How the magic of this realm worked. How Death’s suitors committed horrible crimes, but the land would have died long ago if not for them. How the fée did not scorn death and violence, but embraced it.
Sometimes you had to amputate a limb to save a life.
“Why am I here?” Lizzy said. She tasted blood. She took another sip of the tea and it only made the taste more prominent. She wanted to gag, and yet she kept drinking.
“He chose you over me, Elizabeth. At first I was angry—furious even. Then I became curious after the spirits decided to let you live when the sanguiosi should have taken you. Your next date of death was just a few months later, and I began to watch you. You make my favorite happy and I knew that if you were to die, he would wish to bring you back. I wanted you to understand fully.”
A warmth wrapped around her. Pierre’s arms, his heartbeat, his sweet words in her ear. A way to return.
“Choose,” Mora said.
~ Hexday, 1st of Agostis, 11831 ~
Elizabeth woke in bed, feeling refreshed, as if after a good night’s sleep and with no trace of illness or injury. But her memories were clear—of the attack, of her losing consciousness, of her death. Of her moments in the afterlife with Mora… Of Pierre returning her soul to her body.
Necrocræft. Her fiancé practiced illegal, immoral magic. It was something she had occasionally heard of, discussed with him even!, but never fully thought to encounter.
(And yet knowing, seeing, what Sabine had done, she had still thought to go see the woman on her last day. To ask and try and understand how such a kind presence at the château could commit such atrocities. That Pierre had as well… had he known? Had he participated?)
Weight pressing down upon her brought her back to the present. Pluta lay on her legs, purring, and Pierre was asleep, half-in a chair beside her bed, draped over her, his arm around her waist. He was still wearing what he had at their engagement party, though it was rumbled, torn, and bloody. Her blood. His?
Her movement must have woken them, because Pluta chirped and jumped off, and Pierre sat up.
“Lizzy, love, how are you? Let me see…” He became a doctor immediately, tilting up her chin and caressed her neck. There was no pain. No taste of blood. He asked how she felt, and if anything hurt. He kissed her brow.
“You saved me,” Lizzy whispered.
“I am a doctor, darling—”
“You returned me to life. You are one of Death’s Suitors.”
He froze and slowly let go of her. He stepped back from her side, hitting the chair he had been sitting in. He reached out to grab the back.
“I am.” No denial, anger, or lies. Elizabeth turned away from him.
“I do not know what to say to you,” she said. “I see you are here before me, not in chains, I assume the others do not know or are… Disposed of. I cannot speak with you right now, Your Grace.”
“Of course, Lady Elizabeth. I am glad you are well. I will have the head doctor return to check on you.” He bowed and left.
Lizzy began to cry.
~ Dvoday, 4th of Agostis, 11831 ~
Three days passed. Elizabeth did not ask for him, but neither did she scorn him. If they passed in the halls, she was polite, wishing him well when she realized the headache that plagued him was the result of him returning her life, and even sent him some tea. But it was not enough to curb his grief.
He was in a waking dream. She knew. As if to further press the blade to him, to show him exactly how fluctuating and uncertain his magic could be, returning Lizzy to life had left her memories intact. What could he do? He cared for her and he loved her; he could not threaten or harm her. There was no misunderstanding to spin in a different way, and he could not look her in the eyes and lie.
But he did not wish to give up his cræft.
If she decided to speak up about this, he would be put in chains and perhaps put to death. The roi might take pity and imprison him for life, but the law was strict on death’s magic. He would not be free.
He would lose everything.
He suddenly understood his père returning to Faery all those years ago. Several times Pierre stared at the Duc’s Forest and felt a calling to go into the woods. At night, he could not sleep. He snapped at his advisors for wanting to know what had happened, and bent several of his playing cards with how he shuffled them in his anxiety. And he was not skilled in enough necromancy to perform his cræft to ask the dead. Lady Veriette would not open her doors to him either.
That first night, waking from a nightmare where he had not been able to save Lizzy (he had not saved Jourdain. He had not saved Sabine), with the reality crushing him that he would be without her even so, and too without his family, without his freedom, he pressed his knife to his neck.
Mora’s hands wrapped around the handle, and she pulled it back from his pulse.
On the fourth day, Elizabeth asked him to enter her room. A simple table was set with tea and small sandwiches, as well as sweets. She poured for both and set beside Pierre a honey-pot for him to sweeten his drink. For several minutes they sat in silence, enjoying it, though Pierre feared what would happen when they began to speak.
“Necrocræft is a misnomer,” Lizzy finally said, placing down her tea. “At least how we use it in Triumphe. If you only practiced that cræft, nekrocræft spelled with a k as it is known in parts of Nubilus, I would be a husk without a soul, alive but only in flesh. Possibly at your command.” At his bewildered expression, no doubt wracking his brain trying to work out how she knew this (for he himself was not aware of it), Elizabeth smiled. “I read, darling, and while you were away learning how to become a duc, there was a book I found in your library. In the far back, on shelves too high to reach for the casual guest, there was an old tome about cræft and Clandestina. Mora made sure I found it. In the last few days I’ve been reading it still, getting to the chapters I’ve not had time to.”
“As I was saying,” she continued. “Those who practice several cræfts and combine them with the help of other beings, arċmagiers, are practicing a magia, not just a cræft.”
“Like the fée,” Pierre said. They had varying magics, often in odd combinations, as did many bestia. It was called magia, though Pierre had never thought to apply the term to his magic.
“Exactly! And you have a special title, no? Suitor of Death, not necromage. In other more magical realms, it would be known that it is several cræfts combined. I think it is called necro-cræft here to hide the fact that blancræft is in this magia. Noircræft too. It is the entwining and weaving of all three that allows you to do what you do. It cannot be demonized as quickly if it were known that healing magic is part of it.”
“How certain are you of this?”
For a moment Elizabeth was silent, staring at her teacup and fidgeting with the handle. Finally she spoke in a whisper, “Without an extreme amount of healing cræft, my soul would not have returned and be mine to control… It was painful to die, Pierre. The wound seemed as if to double in agony in my last moments, when my soul was ripped from me. It was not my time, I think, not really. But when you found me, I felt you holding me.” Her gaze was far away and tears welled in her eyes. “I can only liken it to how I imagine a man is with his wife. You were atop me, beside me… in me.” She shifted in her seat, blushing a deep red he had not seen since their first night dancing months ago. “You lead me to my return with gentle tugs to guide the way, while before I had been pulled and dragged into Akhlys.
“You are a good person, Pierre Salvador,” she continued, finally looking up to meet his eyes. He wished to argue, but held his tongue. Her use of his full name was meant to enthrall him, and it did as she desired, even though the effect was not complete without the fae magic or his true name. “I have seen you go out of your way to heal those that others would leave behind. Speak on behalf of those silenced. I do not doubt you have taken a life, perhaps several, which is far more than I can say I am comfortable with. I know this magic is not all pure and light, but aspects of it that are. And that cannot come from an entirely evil source.
“I love you.”
He said nothing, did not react in any way. Elizabeth placed down her tea and reached out to touch his cheek. “I love you.”
“Elizabeth, I have done terrible things,” he replied, though reached up to place his hand over hers. “Great sins that I cannot atone for if I were to live a thousand years. I was involved with Jourdain’s death. I understand you miss me, but you cannot ignore—”
“I am not ignoring anything. I know what you have done.” She ran a hand through his hair and got up, moving closer. “I know, but do not understand. And I do not wish to understand. I presume if I ask you to stop, you will not?”
“No.” Her caress faltered, but before she could speak up again, he continued, “But I will be more discerning about what I do. There are things I regret and hope to never do again. Not because of you, or for you, but because I myself see the error in it. Though you may have helped to open my eyes.”
He finally let himself look at her. She was smiling, hopeful.
“I love you,” he said, and responded when she closed her eyes and leaned in for a kiss. By the end of it, she was out of her chair and almost sat in his lap.
“I would hope so—I am to be your bride.”
He kissed her again.
