I crack the door open and slip through—only to nearly stumble at the force of the reek. The room stinks of frankincense, such that I am first reminded of my village church. Though our holy house never smelled of charnel like this, as though it had been ransacked by janissaries. It is so dark I can barely discern the outlines of Elizabeth’s deep copper tub, illuminated by the faint light from a circle of candles ringed around it. They are rendered from black tallow, something I have never seen before. The darkness of their bases somehow dims the light even as it’s cast.
Elizabeth lounges in the tub, with Thorko behind her where I once used to kneel, his face shrouded by a heavy cowl. Her head rests against the rim, tipped back to let him paint her face and chest with his fingertips, leaving strange, angular markings like chicken scratch. The sigils seem to dance unsettlingly in the dim light, blurring and doubling when I peer at them too hard. The air above her coils with wreaths of incense smoke like dragon’s breath, and the dark water in the tub glistens with an oily sheen.
With a stuttering heart, I abruptly realize what it really is—followed by the even more sickening thought of how many people she must have killed in order to fill it to the brim. I have not seen Margareta or Judit in days; they both must have fallen to her blade.
“Elizabeth,” I manage to whisper, swallowing a ragged whimper, my hand floating to my mouth like a ghost. “Oh, Elizabeth, what have you done?”
Elizabeth smiles beatifically at me, reaching up to smear more blood through her hair. “I should think it obvious to you, of all people,” she croons, turning to cast a conspiratorial look at Thorko. “I am working witchcraft, of course. Making magic with Thorko’s help. He is a teacher, a renowned priest of the occult. And a longtime family friend as well.”
“You flatter me, my lady,” Thorko says with false modesty, inclining his cowled head. His voice is low and dulcet, jarringly pleasant in comparison to his face, grotesque and striped by flickering shadow. “I am merely a guide. Any accomplishment is entirely your own.”
My heart shudders in revolt. Everything she’s done so far has been depraved enough, but this?
This is a transgression on an unfathomable scale.
“But—Elizabeth, this is Lucifer’s own work!” I force through quivering lips. My voice is high and hysterical, sure to madden her, but I cannot help myself. “How can you do this, entreat the adversary himself—”
She rolls her eyes, pursing blood-smeared lips. “Hardly the devil,” she replies airily. “We are calling upon the maiden Szepassony to bless me with beauty to match her own. Just as my mother used to do when I was young, with Thorko’s guidance. I thought it foolish at the time, but now that sciences and ciphers have failed me . . .” She shrugs a shoulder, pulling a helpless face. “My mother was a beauty until the day she died. What harm is there in trying, if it worked for her?”
“What harm?” I repeat, incredulous, crossing myself. How can she toy so casually with the profane, the forbidden and obscene? When she shied away from me as if terrified of possession, of specters lurking behind my eyes? “Szepassony is a demon herself! She is the white lady, seducer of men, abjured by the church! She lures children away and feeds them frozen death at her breast. She . . . She is wicked, Elizabeth—and you have killed for her!”
“Oh, what does wicked even mean, other than that she knew her mind? And the church,” Elizabeth scoffs, turning and spitting demonstratively over one shoulder. “That is what I think of the church and its mealymouthed priests, yet more sanctimonious men breathing down my neck. Long before Szepassony was named a demon, she was a goddess of beauty, a deity of storms, a wild maiden dancing in the rain. Does that sound like something to loathe or fear?”
“If that is true,” I counter, keeping my eyes trained on her, unable to bear Thorko’s smirk twitching under the candles’ writhing light, “why would she demand the blood of innocents from you?”
“Everything has a price,” she concedes with another infuriating shrug. As if that is all those women’s lives are worth, a heedless flick of the shoulders. “Especially a goddess’s favor. And blood is worth more than the finest gem.”
“Elizabeth, please,” I attempt desperately, one last time. “This is wrong, do you not see? Worse than wrong. This is infernal.”
“So you will not join me, then,” she murmurs with a furrowed brow and a pout, sighing gustily. “A terrible pity, though I’m afraid I suspected as much. I see that I have misjudged you badly, Anna, just as Thorko says.” Of course he does, I think with a surge of pure terror, catching the smug glint in his eye as he turns away from us to refresh the censer. He craves her favor entirely for himself, and what better way to secure it than by ensuring the demise of the lady’s disgraced former favorite? “You are merely clay where I thought you to be stone. And what is clay but something to be molded by another’s hand, with no native shape of its own?”
With that she turns away from me, shifting in that awful crimson tide to receive a goblet from Thorko’s hands. When she drinks, it overflows her lips, cascading down her chest as if her own throat has been slit.
“What is that, Elizabeth?” I ask in a warbling voice that does not even sound like my own. “What are you drinking?”
A blade-edged grin splits her face, revealing teeth streaked with glistening red. “My new elixir, of course,” she replies. “We had the crucial ingredient wrong after all, you and I. How could we both have been so blind? What better to maintain one’s own blood than the blood of the freshly dead, mingled with the finest of life-giving herbs? And that is where you come in. For whatever else has broken between us, you are still my little sage—and if anyone can marry magic and medicine, even if reluctantly, I have faith that it is you.”
I stumble back a step, awash with disgust that she should enlist my help with this obscene alchemy. “No,” I manage. “Never. I will not help you, not in this travesty.”
Her smile somehow widens, whetting itself, sharpening at the edges. “No?” she repeats delicately, savoring the word. “And what if I should send for your mother, your sweet sister, your fat little brothers? Do not forget that I know where they may be found, nor should you doubt my resolve. From a certain angle, it would almost be a kindness to you. As you have told me, your brothers may be little louts, but just think—would they not be veritable fonts of lifeblood for my use? I would merely be repurposing them!”
She blinks at me, self-satisfied as a fox with a sparrow in its jaws. I stand petrified, my heart more trembling than beating, my mind churning like a maelstrom. She will do it, I know better than to doubt her. Refusing her means certain death for my family—and I cannot bring myself to condemn them, not even if it means that many others must die in their place.
But perhaps there is another, subtler way to resist. For too long I truly have been nothing but her clay, warmed easily between her hands—but even clay hardens when exposed to too much heat.
And I am no stranger to poisons.
“Very well, my lady,” I say, inclining my head to hide the intention in my eyes. “I will assist in your endeavor as best I may.”
“Oh, I am so pleased to hear it,” she purrs, drawing her lip slowly between her teeth. “And should you think to perhaps offer me some sharper medicine, as you did my husband, do not forget that I have Thorko with me.” She arches her back and flings her arms above her head, allowing Thorko to paint her throat with more bloody sigils when he returns to kneel behind her. When she squirms under his trailing touch, I swallow another gout of disgust. How can she not see the lust playing in his gaze, nor divine his true intent? “Be assured that he is quite equipped to carry out my vengeance, should any ill befall me from your brews.”