by Rosalyn Eves
“You must pay the forfeit,” she said before turning away into the blackness.
Her partner spoke, soundless words that curled in my head, intangible as smoke. You must set us free.
The clawed hand jerked me forward again. In the dim light from the elk creature, I glimpsed an almost-human monster, all long shanks and bones with scabbed skin stretched taut across a misshapen spine. Something crowded past us, a confusion of fur and scales against my palm and fingers. It hissed and I yanked my free hand back to my chest. A wave of cold washed over me, trickling down my spine, spilling down my throat and freezing my lungs.
My legs, scrambling after my captor, seemed oddly detached from my body. Perhaps the creatures were not real, only illusions cast by the mutated spell, like the illusions in the wake of Catherine’s debutante spells.
But I suspected that illusions could not pull me as my captor did, would not feel as tangible as the fur and scales I’d brushed against. Fear battered at the back of my throat, squeezing stiff fingers around my heart. What could this creature want with me? A blood sacrifice, to continue fueling Countess Báthory’s spell? Worse—a meal? I tried not to imagine the sudden sting and burn of claws against the soft skin of my stomach, my throat. I tried not to picture monsters converging on my broken body, tearing and slurping in that pit of darkness.
I stopped, throwing my entire weight opposite my captor’s forward motion. Whatever the creature meant to do with me, I would not let it happen without a fight.
A star streaked across the space, then coalesced into the form of a man standing before me, smelling of brimstone and brine. My captor released me with a suddenness that sent me reeling back, my arms windmilling. It scuttered away into the darkness, claws clattering along the ground. I caught myself just in time and had a confused impression of multiple faces, sleek and vaguely draconic, and then the light solidified into a single face so beautiful it pained me to look at. Before I could draw back, the man put fingers like brands on my shoulders and set a kiss like a live coal against my forehead.
When I gasped—more out of anger than fear, though the anger might only have been a cover for fear—the creature laughed. The sound of his laugh had a falseness to it—an actor imitating an emotion he doesn’t truly feel. He released me, but I could still feel phantom hands burning against my body. Shackles jangled at his wrists.
“Well met, maiden,” he said.
I wiped my forehead with my hand and hoped he did not notice my trembling.
“Peace, child. We shan’t eat you.”
I wished I believed him. I’d caught a glimpse of fangs among the faces that flashed across his.
“We haven’t much time. Already this spell unravels, and the Binding pulls us back. We need your help.”
I was startled into speech. “Mine?”
“Your magic snagged the edges of Báthory’s spell, tearing it enough so we could catch you through it. And this is not the first time you’ve troubled the barrier of the Binding spell.”
I gripped my shaking hands together. My fingers were like ice. Pictures flickered through my mind: the winged creature at Catherine’s debut, the hollow-eyed Lorelei, the shadows racing across a dark field. “No.”
“We need you to break us free. It’s not enough to tear the boundary—the Binding always pulls us back. You must destroy the spell entirely.”
I shrank away from him. The trembling in my hands spread to my arms. My legs shook beneath me. “Who are you? How are you here?”
He shrugged, the human gesture hanging oddly on his body. “Báthory’s spell created a kind of bubble, a space connecting the Binding spell that holds us and your world. The Binding is thinner here—sometimes we break through, though never for long, and never past this space.” His eyes were gold, gleaming like polished coins.
He did not answer my other question.
A tremor tore through the cavern, and something in me surged upward, carried by a wild, unexpectedly sweet longing. I fought my shadow self back. I could not lose control. Not here. Not now. I gripped my hands tighter.
“Release her,” the creature said, and the hunger in my shadow self became an ache. I trembled under the strain of holding her. “I must go—but we shall meet again. Hold your heart for me. I shall have need of it.” He launched himself into the air, disappearing into the darkness above me. Air gusted into my face, stirred by something sweeping overhead.
Another surge rocketed through the space of the spell. I gasped and opened my hands. At once there was a sense of release, of heat and light and longing and even darkness flooding out of me.
Then nothing.
I heard the voices first, murmuring softly in Hungarian. Sometimes I heard a lullaby, sung in Grandmama’s aging cadences. And once I heard Mátyás declaiming poetry, an incongruous mix of Hungarian, German, and even English poets. I drifted then, colors and lights and sounds flashing at the periphery of my consciousness.
When I finally opened my eyes, it was to the dim light of early morning and the raucous call of birds outside the window. I was in a strange room, in a strange bed, in an unfamiliar csárda. Noémi drowsed in a chair by the empty fireplace, a book tumbled open in her lap.
I tried to speak. My voice croaked like a foghorn, and Noémi jerked upright, the book falling to the floor with a loud slap.
“You’re awake! How do you feel?”
I coughed. “Like a silk gown left out in a rainstorm.”
She made a sympathetic face. “So well?” She crossed the floor to my bedside and laid her hand against my forehead. “Your fever has broken.”
“What happened?”
“You collapsed inside the bathhouse at Sárvár.” She primmed up her lips, as if she were deliberately holding back words. “Mátyás and the Circle guards dragged you out and summoned us.”
“Is Mátyás all right?”
“He’s fine. The spell seems to have broken before he entered, fortunately. You, however, were not so fortunate. It’s been three days, and this is the first time you’ve been lucid.”
I thought of the strange creatures in the bathhouse. Were they only fever dreams, the side effect of being caught in a tainted spell?
Noémi left to tell Grandmama I was awake, and I looked around my room. My eyes caught on a small, dirty mirror mounted against the wall. A glimmer of a twinned reflection, then the two smudged echoes of my face merged into one. I was pale, my dark hair wild around my face. The neckline of my nightdress had slipped down on one side.
Against the skin of my right shoulder, as if branded there, was the faint print of a hand. An indistinct sphere imprinted my forehead, token of that burning kiss.
It had not been a dream. Or an illusion.
The spell had been real. And I had broken it.
Papa would be jubilant. As would William.
I should feel jubilant as well—and vindicated. I had set out to prove what I could do, and I had done it. But I felt neither. My stomach curled tight, and I pressed my arms against my sides, my hands folded protectively before me. It was one thing to be a spell-binder, to shape air and light into illusions, to heal. It was something else entirely to destroy those spells, to turn gifts into curses, to release shadows into daylight.
Grandmama eased into the room. After fussing over me for a moment, she sat down on the bed beside me and brushed a thin hand through my hair. At length, she said, “Will you tell me why you came here?”
When I shook my head, the corners of her eyes drooped. “Mátyás will not say either. But Anna, szívem, I am very much afraid you have started something you will not be able to stop.”
Someone tapped at the door.
“Miss Anna?” Lady Berri opened the door.
I rubbed my forehead, which was beginning to throb. My life wanted only this: conducting social calls in my bedchamber when I was supposed to be convalescing. I wished I was back at Eszterháza, amid the familiarity of my own things.
Lady Berri dragged a chair to my bedside and pl
opped down, a sigh escaping her as she settled. “I have just come from Vienna. You have certainly managed to set a cat among the pigeons, my dear. As soon as word came you had broken the spell at Sárvár…Well. I am sure you can guess at the reaction. The Circle is up in arms, fretting you might break the Binding.”
She shook her head at me. “Did not your Papa tell you I was coming? We could have avoided all this fuss if you had simply waited.”
I flushed. My brave act of defiance seemed foolish in hindsight. “Then why come now, when the spell is already broken?”
Lady Berri fidgeted, her plump hands patting her lap as if she were looking for something. “Do you suppose they serve tea in this abysmal hostelry?” She sighed. “It’s clear, child, that you have a knack for breaking spells, though the Binding Saints alone know why. I want you to break the Binding.”
“Why?” I was not as surprised as I might have been: Papa’s letter had prepared me.
“Because I am a pragmatist. Perhaps you know that Luminate magic is growing weaker. The Binding spell does not hold so much magic as it once did. I believe we weaken it further when we bind it solely to Luminate bloodlines. We need a new infusion of magic, one we can get only if the Binding is broken and magic returned to our world.”
I noticed that she made no mention of fairness, as Papa had done.
“Sárvár is the first spell I have broken after its casting; every other spell has been broken during the casting. You can’t even be sure I can duplicate this, not with a much larger spell.”
“I shall help you.”
The door opened again. It was Ginny, bearing a tray with two teacups and a plate of diós kifli, a crescent-shaped walnut pastry. I accepted the tea gratefully. Ginny grinned at me before dropping a curtsy to Lady Berri and slipping out again.
“Even presuming I can do what you want—why should I? Why should I upset a system that has been in place for a millennium?” No matter what Papa had written, I was not certain I trusted her.
“Your papa wishes it.”
“I love my papa very much, but his wishes do not always dictate my actions.”
Lady Berri’s fluttering hands stilled. “Because I know what you crave: a place in society. Oh, don’t look so disbelieving. I was once a girl much like you. I wanted to shine in society, but like you, I lacked something. Only in my case it was not magic and a certain want of manners, but beauty.”
The teacup in my hand trembled. I set it carefully in its saucer on my bedside table.
Lady Berri continued. “I found my way, with a little help from a generous mentor, and here I am now. A patroness of the arts, a member of the English Circle, the head of the Lucifera order. And I wish to help you. I think with sufficient patronage a place can be found for you in Luminate society. I can introduce you to the right people. Find you a wealthy husband, if that is what you wish.”
“Another Lord Markson Worthing?” I asked, lifting one eyebrow. Lady Berri did not know me nearly as well as she believed.
“If you like.”
“But if I do as you ask—will there be any society to introduce me to?”
She laughed. “You place too much weight on a spell. Do you think society will remake itself so quickly?”
I swallowed the sourness in my throat and took a rather fierce bite of the sweet pastry, the flaky crust melting against my tongue. My pulse pounded in my temples. “May I think it over? You ask a great deal.”
“Of course, child. Rest now, and give me your answer when you are ready.” She smiled brightly. “Your grandmama has invited me to stay for some time. So I shall see the famous Eszterházy estate, and then travel with you to Buda-Pest at summer’s end, where I have some business. It all sounds quite delightful, do you not think?”
Delightful was not precisely the word I would have chosen. As Lady Berri finally waddled from the room, the headache that had been circling as she spoke settled in my skull. My thoughts spun in time with the pounding in my head. Lady Berri promised me everything I had ever wanted. Her arguments were compelling, and Papa sided with her.
All I had to do was break the spell I had been taught to honor since childhood, the spell that made my entire world possible.
I woke from a nap to find Herr Steinberg sitting nearby, scrutinizing me, worry drawing deep lines between his eyes and around his thin lips. His glasses flashed at me in the long afternoon light.
I sat up, clutching the bedclothes to me, alarmed to find we were alone. Not that I believed the good Herr had any designs on my virtue, only somehow his mild demeanor seemed changed—charged with tension. The hairs on my arms lifted.
“What are you?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?” My headache had not entirely vanished, and my skull began to throb, my scalp drawn tight against it.
“There were wards set at Sárvár that ought to have kept you out. Yet you walked through the wards as though they were cobwebs, then broke a spell that has been vexing the Circle for centuries.” Herr Steinberg stood and began pacing, his hands clasped behind his back. “The most powerful Luminates of a dozen generations have thrown their energies at that spell and failed. Yet you broke it easily, without any demonstrable spells or rites. How?”
I wished I knew. What are you? His question rattled around my skull.
Herr Steinberg stopped pacing to look at me, his eyes sad behind his spectacles. “When you broke that spell, did you see anything?”
He had asked me this once before, about the Lorelei maiden. Monsters crowded my thoughts: an inhumanly beautiful face with lips like brands, a spider-woman with a third eye open. I gripped my covers, sure now his question was no accident. “Why are you asking me this? What business is it of yours?”
He breathed out through his nose, clearly attempting to remain calm. “It is my business because I belong to the Austrian Circle. I took an oath to protect the Binding, and I have been tasked with watching you—a task I clearly failed, as you were allowed to steal away to Sárvár.”
I froze. “But you were our majordomo from England. You arranged the details of our trip. I thought—”
“You thought what you were meant to think. That I was nothing more. But Lord Orwell suspected you might be trouble. When you disappeared from London, he sent word to Vienna, and I was selected to deal with you. It was no great difficulty to track you—one of my gifts, if you must know—and pay off the man intended for your escort.”
“You have been watching me this whole time.” Had he seen my meetings with Gábor? My veins ran ice.
“Not, it appears, closely enough. Now I will ask you again: what did you see?”
Nothing. My tongue curled around the word.
“Take care. I shall know if you’re lying. Did you see creatures, somewhat monstrous in aspect?”
“Yes,” I said finally. And they asked me to set them free.
Herr Steinberg closed his eyes, as if my answer pained him. “I feared as much.”
“But what are they? I thought at first they must be illusions.”
His eyes flew open. “They’re real. And ancient. The monsters and demigods of folklore once lived among us. But Charlemagne deemed them too dangerous to humans, and they were bound up with the magic in the Binding. If some of them managed to find their way into the spell at Sárvár, we may all be in very grave peril.”
The Circle keep us safe.
The Binding preserve us.
These were not vague prayers for the future, but injunctions from the past. The prayers of my childhood hid beasts out of legend. “Why have I never heard of them?” Even Papa’s letter had said nothing.
“A decision was made when the creatures were bound not to speak of it. Their existence is better forgotten. Even most members of the Circle do not know they are real. But if you can see the creatures, if they can reach you, then the Binding spell is no longer impermeable. Your ability is perilous, Miss Anna. It’s dangerous to you—and to every Luminate. There are some who would kill you to keep the Binding s
afe.”
My hands against the covers were frozen, my knuckles white. “I don’t even know how I broke the spell.”
“That makes you all the more hazardous. You might break the Binding by accident. Or the heretics might persuade you to aid them. Your father, for one. Lady Berri, for another. I’ve seen her skulking about this inn. You should know she is not to be trusted.”
I pressed my lips together, thinking of Lady Berri and the promises I held like hope in my heart. She had been very persuasive, but I was not at all certain I could break a spell that would unleash monsters on the world, no matter what Papa believed.
“Are you among those who want to kill me?” I had planned to be unmoved, even defiant, but my voice emerged thin and wavering. I was aware of the quiet of the room—and of Herr Steinberg’s hands, with their long, corded fingers.
He shook his head. “I am a pacifist, child. I would like to see you live a long life. But I will protect the Binding before all else. When the spell was first cast, it was designed to keep all Luminate out, to guard against this very possibility. But you—you are something else entirely.”
I shivered.
“Has Lady Berri asked you to break the Binding?”
I did not answer.
His lips compressed. “I do not think you appreciate the gravity of this. No doubt Lady Berri has assured you that nothing serious will happen. Perhaps she has promised you something for your efforts: wealth, a position in society. She cannot guarantee those promises. Would you destroy your entire world on such thin possibilities? Surely you are not so selfish. The lower classes hate us; if you strip us of magic, they will destroy us. And the monsters from the Binding would be free, slaking their blood lust and ravaging our cities.”
I stared at him, chilled by the world he presented.
“Understand this: we are watching you. If you attempt to enter the Binding spell, we will stop you. Kill you if we must. I do not wish to do this.” He stepped closer to me, patted my hand where it lay lax on my thigh.