Beyond the Black Door

by A. M. Strickland

  “Also?” I prodded.

  “He said you were his.” I didn’t need to guess whom he meant. Razim. “And they might have let him have you, back then, when I could only communicate through vague intuitions. But you aren’t his. You’re mine.”

  I couldn’t help the disbelieving laugh that burbled out of me. “You’re insane.” Here he was, Darkness Incarnate, a being of incredible power, bound by neither body nor the limitations of a human mind, standing at the center of a place like this, and he was bothering to compete with a mortal man. He was willing to go to such great lengths to keep me away from Razim that he had guided me to the Keepers, his opposition. He had given me dark powers to keep me out of the hands of others. We were definitely playing a game … and maybe I was holding my own, making him take risks with his own cards.

  Maybe I could do this. Maybe I could still win, somehow, discover what he was planning and force him to stop. I tried not to let the hope that flared in my chest shine in my face.

  Vehyn scoffed. “Insane? Your little mundane terms don’t apply to me.”

  I squinted at him. “More and more, I think they do. You’re not only insane, you’re jealous. So is this your grand purpose? Open a doorway to earth to engage in a pissing contest?”

  “Perhaps I am getting a taste for all of this,” he said. His dark eyes were hard, almost resentful. Maybe he didn’t like caring so much about “mundane” things … but he couldn’t help it. “It’s not inconceivable or even unexpected, since I’m both part of the Darkness and part of this”—his own fingers caressed my arm—“flesh.”

  “My body lies asleep in the waking world,” I said, brushing away his hand, “so what you see isn’t corporeal. Neither are you.”

  “Yet.” The word made my mouth dry, my hope dim. “I plan on venturing out someday soon. I’d dearly love to meet you in the flesh. Maybe my taste for it will grow even stronger.”

  Like whenever he was deliberately trying to scare me, I did my best to ignore him, even though my heart stuttered in fear. “Why not just stay here?” I asked, glancing around hopefully.

  “Oh, I love it here,” he said, taking in the massive space with a fan of his arm, “but it’s much too small. I was thinking of finding a home on a grander scale.”

  I couldn’t picture anything grander than this … but I knew what he meant. I made my voice light. I couldn’t show fear, or he would sense it and pounce. “Like that room with the candle?”

  “I simply adore the delicate way you put things. How you cover the truth in softness to make it less sharp. Rose blossoms over thorns.”

  “You spoke of ‘candles’ and ‘rooms’ first.”

  “So I did. Maybe I adore the way I put things, then. In any case, we both now know what we’re talking about, so there’s no use pretending.”

  He wanted to enter the world—Darkness to enter the world. The king to die. The land, destabilized. At least, that was as much as I could guess, and that was likely not the whole of it. The thought was enough to petrify me, but I couldn’t let it. I needed to be moving, acting. Figuring out how to stop him.

  “Did your little priestess tell you about another version of the myth?” Vehyn asked casually. “Why the moon hides her face from the sun and goes dark every month? Because Heshara prefers the night. She hasn’t gone entirely because Tain, knowing Heshara would never leave without her daughter, bound Ranta to a human king. That’s what keeps pulling the moon back, according to this version—the one I prefer. It’s just so much more fascinating, with so many more questions, don’t you think? Who knows whose child Ranta truly is? Whom the earth belongs to? Perhaps not to Tain or any king, but to Darkness.”

  “And so you’ve just been waiting,” I said quickly, angrily, “however long, for someone to open the door?”

  “Waiting for you, in particular,” he said.

  “Why me?”

  “I told you, you are the door.”

  “How? I don’t understand.”

  “As I’ve already indicated, there are many things you don’t understand.”

  “I would if you would just tell me!”

  “Ah, but then that would spoil the game.” His expression grew more serious. “Why did I not show myself to you when you first opened the door? Why did I leave a trail for you to follow, one of soft, sweet-smelling petals and small thorns?” He reached out and took my hand in his, gently pinching the tip of one of my fingers. Then he walked his own fingers up my arm until they reached my collarbone. They slid down the gentle ridge and paused, hovering, right over my heart. “Why do I draw more blood with those thorns only as time goes on?”

  My breath came ragged from a heady mix of fear and dread and maybe even the twisted thrill of him touching me. Some absurd part of me couldn’t help but be flattered that a cosmic force, albeit an evil one, was so interested in me. Or maybe he was only pretending …

  “So I won’t be too afraid to keep going,” I answered. I hated how faint my voice was. I sounded either terrified, or … something else.

  His grin returned. “Exactly.”

  He wanted me to follow him to whatever horrible end. He didn’t want only my spirit, or even my body, to make the journey. He wanted my heart with him, as well.

  I ripped out of his grasp, smacking his hand away from my chest, just like Nikha had taught me. “I’m not going to follow you,” I said, my voice fierce. “I’m going to avenge my mother, save the king, and stop you. I’m going to beat you at your game.”

  Instead of getting angry at my challenge, he laughed. “However you wish to see it.”

  “And I’m not going to give you … give you…” I flushed.

  His predatory eyes caught the color in my cheeks. “Hm?” he said, slipping up to me. His hand slid along my burning cheek and into my hair, cupping the back of my head. “What won’t you give me?”

  My heart. “What you want from me,” I said instead.

  His fingers made slow tiny circles at the nape of my neck. “And what do I want? Tell me.”

  I swallowed, and he didn’t miss the motion of my lips. “I hate you,” I whispered.

  His smile widened, his eyes still focused on my mouth. “As I said, whatever lies you wish to tell yourself.”

  I tried not to look at his mouth and failed. “I didn’t like kissing you, remember?”

  Didn’t I?

  “Didn’t you?” Vehyn echoed. He bent his head until his lips were hovering over my own, his breath warm and soft on my face, his dark eyes filling my vision. “I think you’re lying again.”

  “Maybe,” I whispered, closing my eyes, unable to resist leaning into him. And with that motion, both he and I knew I’d given him permission. “But not about hating yo—”

  He stopped my mouth with his own, his lips parting mine. Before I knew what was happening, both of my arms wound around his back, my fingers dug into his shoulders. As he felt me respond, his kiss deepened, both of his hands threading through my hair to hold me tighter, trapping my face so I couldn’t turn or run. Not that I tried to do either.

  All I could feel were his lips, his tongue in my mouth. Everything else in my head hummed and buzzed and flew away, leaving me empty. I would have staggered had his hands not been holding me up.

  Perhaps I didn’t entirely mind kissing. I still had no desire whatsoever to take my clothes off, but it definitely made me reassess my position on the romantic branch of my soul chart, if only with regard to Vehyn. The crescent might now be more like a quarter moon—a widening grin, teeth bared.

  When Vehyn finally pulled away, I clung to him, gasping for breath. He tucked my hair behind my ear with a trailing finger and lifted my chin in his other hand, ducking his head to meet my eyes almost playfully. “You were saying? You hate…?”

  This is just a game to him, I thought, trying to get my breathing under control. It isn’t real. It’s a game to me too. A game, a game.

  So play it. And don’t lose. You can’t.

  If he thought he hel
d my heart in his hand, then, instead, I would have to steal his. He wanted me, so I would give myself to him, to the extent that I could. But I would take from him at the same time. Somehow, I needed to own him, whether he knew it or not … just as he, however I denied it, maybe owned me.

  If his darkness was tainting me, my humanity seemed to be rubbing off on him. He would have more than a taste for it before I was through with him. He would be addicted to it. He would need it.

  It might be the only way to stop him, whatever he was truly doing.

  I steadied myself and took a step back. My hands slipped from his arms … only to reach up to his face. I leaned in for another kiss. It would have been worth it for the look on his face alone. His eyes widened with more surprise than I’d yet seen. Had he ever been truly surprised?

  In any case, he was now. A small victory, but I would take it.

  I didn’t know how to kiss, but I didn’t let that stop me. I pulled his head down to mine, crushing my lips against his. My ferocity took him off guard. He was used to being the predator, and when he found himself in the opposite position, he didn’t seem to know what to do. That gave me even more confidence, and I bit his bottom lip, hard, simply because I felt like it, but not enough to break the skin. His fingers flexed into my lower back and a groan escaped him, entirely involuntary by the sounds of it, which made hot elation surge through me. Another point for me.

  Wondering if he would like it, if I would like it, I traced the sharp lines of his cheekbones with my thumbs—caressing him. The face of Darkness.

  Had he ever been caressed before? Not likely, if this was his first time in spirit form, his first time venturing out of the darkness of his own unfathomable existence. For a split second, pity streaked through me.

  My touch had its effect. Even more surprising than his groan, his eyes fluttered closed as if he simply couldn’t keep them open, when they were almost always open—always watching, observing, planning. He’d only closed them one other time, when we’d …

  I brought my hands up along his temples, digging my fingers into his hair. I didn’t even know how I did it. But I closed my own eyes, and the fortress fell away.

  We were elsewhere. Together. Unfettered. Unleashed.

  We were flying again, over the rippling darkness, and this time, I took him in my arms first, and we were soaring, my body made of night and wind and freedom. I didn’t let fear touch me. Only excitement, and my willingness to experience it all, with him. His eagerness rose to meet mine.

  No. More than eagerness. Elation. Bliss. With me, careening and dancing through the night, uncontrollable, Vehyn was happy. So was I. For a long, long while, I didn’t know where I ended and he began. We painted the dark sky with our shared passion.

  Passion? Was that what I was feeling? Was what I felt for Vehyn not only hatred but … I couldn’t think the word. That dangerous, dangerous word. The word that was like opening a black door all its own. It only led to pain, to death. At least it had for my mother. I had to be stronger than that.

  This was only a game.

  When I finally opened my eyes again, the lamps in the great entry hall had come alive, throwing whirling shadows like clouds floating all around us. Again, they seemed able to respond to our thoughts—maybe only Vehyn’s, since he was the master of this place. But for a while, our dreams had been fully intertwined. And we were pressed against each other, arms around each other’s backs, fingers clutching for balance.

  For a few moments, Vehyn was as unstable and out of breath as I was. As open and vulnerable. “It … could be like that with us always … Kamai.” His eyes were shut, his words distant, almost drunken. I’d never heard him sound more yearning, not even when he was talking about finally reaching into the waking world.

  He might be eternal, unending Darkness, but this was his first time having anything like a physical body. We weren’t quite flesh here, but this was as close as one could get in this realm. As close to human, for him. And I highly doubted he’d done anything like make love before. Neither of us had, and maybe this was the way we knew how.

  Was that what we’d done? Lenara said that love wasn’t sex, after all. As much as I tried to deny it, I’d only felt this way with one person. One creature. Those who tied love to sex, or even love to romance, didn’t own the emotion itself. I was fully capable of loving. My love for Nikha already proved that.

  It was all just variations on a theme. Sometimes sex didn’t involve love at all; it hadn’t for my mother. It was fine if it did, and fine if it didn’t. Loving only as a friend was fine.

  Although the love that might have been growing inside me for Vehyn wasn’t a friend’s.

  I had to wonder if that was fine, as I took in Vehyn’s soft, unguarded expression—because I knew that something harder, sharper, and more frightening lay beneath it.

  My mother had always said you couldn’t help loving who you loved, even if that person’s soul might be dark. Despite being unable to resist, was I wrong to feel the way I felt about Vehyn? To thrill at his touch, his black fortress, his sinister dreams? I didn’t think so, as long as I knew when to pull away, as if from a fire before it burned me too badly. The question: Was I a good judge of when I had reached that point?

  All I could do was trust myself. I might get burned. But I also might find heat in the darkness like I’d never felt before—my own strange sort of passion.

  And in embracing it, embracing him, I might keep other people from getting hurt at the same time.

  Love didn’t mean this wasn’t a game, and neither did danger. We were just playing with cards of a higher value. With more to lose. “Remember the terms of our old game?” I murmured.

  “Let me guess,” Vehyn said, his eyes opening, the sharp, flinty gleam returning to his gaze, “you’d like to go back on them?”

  “No,” I said, “I’d like to raise the stakes. I want to swear on it. Before, we only shook on our deal, like humans. Now we’re going to wager our spirits.”

  He was silent for a full moment. “Need I remind you, you’d be making an unbreakable vow, entering into a nonreversible contract.” He wasn’t taunting me; he was deadly serious.

  I’d already committed a crime against the gods by opening the black door, so wagering on my spirit with Vehyn wasn’t a big deal, as I saw it. If I lost, it wouldn’t matter if I had to forswear Heshara and let her cast me into darkness. Because I already would have done the job for her—thrown myself into that bottomless abyss. To Vehyn.

  “I know.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You’re still being self-destructive. If you think promising your spirit to me is another way to destroy yourself, you’re wrong. I told you, I take care of what’s mine.”

  “I don’t think I’ll have to worry about that, because you’ll be mine.”

  He held my eyes for a long time. It was disorienting, after what we’d just shared, to not know what lurked in their depths. “I don’t know that I have anything to wager.”

  “You have something like a soul,” I said, glancing around, “just bigger, and you’re here, like this, so you must be some kind of a spirit.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Okay, fine, then I’ll just get you, whatever you are. You promise to serve me, forever.”

  He smiled slightly. “Serve you, hm? You know, I don’t know that that would be the most terrible fate.”

  “Good, get used to the idea.”

  “Not so fast.” His smile grew, sharpened. “But, yes, I swear. Do you?”

  “I do. I swear.”

  Vehyn sealed our vow with one soft, relatively brief kiss on my lips.

  I couldn’t help but think that, in a twisted sort of way—like everything in my life—I had gotten married after all. Only it was to Darkness. To Vehyn.

  And only so I could betray him.

  25

  ROYAL GAMES

  I had done as much as I could, for the moment, to gain the same influence over Vehyn that he had over me, but more w
ould take time—which, unfortunately, I didn’t have much of. The Twilight Guild had given Razim permission to kill the king on his twentieth birthday. I didn’t know why; perhaps it was some curious rite of passage, but in any case, it was soon. Once I woke up the next morning, it was only five days away.

  I needed to talk to Razim himself.

  He was the Twilight Guild’s tool, and by extension Vehyn’s, but he seemed necessary to their plan. Through him, perhaps I could stick a spoke in the wheel of whatever they had in motion. What was more, Razim was human, reachable. And Lenara was right that I already had a strong influence over him. It was time to use it. I had to get close to him, to convince him of his folly.

  I still had a hard time imagining what would happen if I failed. Even so, early that morning, I accepted two vials from Zeniri—Lenara wasn’t risking being seen anywhere near me again—one of mohol, in case I needed to force Razim to sleep so I could try to change his mind for him, and, failing that, one that looked almost identical, except it would send him into a sleep from which he would never awaken.

  But when I visited the various salons and courtiers’ parlors throughout the palace over the next few days, he was nowhere to be found. All I managed to do was drop as many vague, roundabout hints as possible to Zeniri, behind the thick walls of his suite, that all was not right with the high priest Agrir; spend dark and wondrous nights with Vehyn, as if something terrible weren’t heading toward the waking world like a runaway carriage; and play several dozen rounds of Gods and Kings with a dozen different people, all of whom were trying to win their way into my bed. I thoroughly beat every single one of them. Meanwhile, the most useful secrets I learned in three days were that several of my suitors purporting to be single were already married—big surprise—and that a young lord had killed an elderly lady’s small, yappy dog and buried it in one of the palace gardens, simply because it had annoyed him.

  No one had told me that spying could be so boring.

  After a particular game in one of the palace’s larger salons, and as soon as my opponent excused himself from the table, yawning sleepily, I had to resist putting my head in my hands. I had just won, after all; I was supposed to look triumphant.