Curse of the Divine Read online

  “So are you going to come in?” he asked. He smiled, and the movement in his eyes disappeared, the black swirls resting on the greens and browns so they looked like normal eyes again.

  She must have imagined it. A trick of the light.

  Still, she hesitated.

  “Rest easy about your friend, Celia. He’s safe and sound in your room at the inn, but he is in for a mighty frustrating day if he tries to find this place again.”

  Celia exhaled. Nodded.

  And stepped through the door.

  Chapter 6

  As Celia followed Halcyon, no words passed between them. She didn’t know what to say now, but instinct told her to shush and let him lead. She was dealing with a specter, a phantom. His town loved him so much they performed flawlessly . . . as if they really didn’t know what he looked like and weren’t acting at all.

  And here Celia was, following him into the deep recesses of some secret place.

  The brightly lit hallway had rows of closed doors on either side, each a bright cherry color that matched the main door, but these were rimmed with white carved borders. Masterfully crafted wrought iron sconces at the apex of every door were each of a different design: a tangle of ivy, a carnation, a rose, and, of course, wisteria. Celia had never seen such attention to detail, and she knew that whichever blacksmith had been commissioned to make them had devoted the better part of their life to the task. Everything about Halcyon whispered elegance: his clothes, his manner, his surroundings, his appreciation for the beautiful for beauty’s sake. She had a feeling that not many had walked this hall, which meant that every gorgeous detail was for his enjoyment only, as if he couldn’t stand the thought of living alongside anything other than perfection.

  Large paintings hung at regular intervals, each illuminated with its own light angled just so. Many of them featured Halcyon himself, but most were portraits of another person: tall, as elegant and refined as Halcyon in their bearing, and although their clothing and hairstyle changed dramatically between portraits, they always wore the same expression, with sharp, calculating eyes that seemed to bore into Celia as she passed. Whoever that person was, they were important enough to Halcyon that he looked upon their image every few steps. Judging by some of the racier depictions, the two were lovers, but Celia didn’t recognize them as any of the Wisterians she’d encountered over the past few days. Halcyon must have spent a fortune commissioning all those portraits, and Celia was simultaneously creeped out by that devotion and intrigued by it.

  Even the floor was a masterpiece: a complex parquet that somehow muffled footsteps and cushioned her feet, as if she were floating. Like a ghost. Following another ghost.

  Insults burst onto her tongue about pointlessness, wasted money, and arrogance, but each one died before springing out. She stared at Halcyon’s back as they floated along—the nape of his neck where his hair rested, the multiple colors in his tenor, the stiff set of his shoulders—and knew that anything she said would bounce right off of him. He didn’t care for her or anyone else’s opinion, that much was abundantly clear.

  He turned his head, offering his profile. “Are you wondering what’s on the other side of these doors?”

  “I’m guessing”—she pointed to a few as they passed by—“armory, library, aviary, and . . .” She met his eyes and held on. “Bordello?”

  He turned away first. “Amazingly, two out of your four guesses are right.” But he didn’t mention which ones.

  Celia wondered which door Lyric had disappeared behind, because they were nowhere to be seen.

  At the far end of the hallway, double doors stretched all the way to the ceiling and touched both walls. Positive that this was their final destination, Celia had her hand on the doorknob—which was crafted in a sunflower shape that would have matched Lyric’s tattoo perfectly—before realizing that Halcyon was opening a door to their right.

  It swung open wide, and she could see nothing inside but blackness. He turned to face her, the slight smirk on his face falling off completely when he noticed where her hand rested. “Never,” he said as she dropped her grip on the sunflower doorknob. “Never go in there.”

  She laughed off the chill in his tone. “Ah, so that’s the bordello.”

  He gestured for her to go into the open room, and as she passed him, she felt the warmth of his body melting the chill. Almost to the point of burning her. “Your playthings are safe from me,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

  Celia didn’t even register that he moved. Without warning, Halcyon loomed above her. Her back was pressed painfully into the door frame, and her breathing came out in clutching gasps, as if she were emerging from the familiar water torture of the temple. So close, she couldn’t escape the swirling in his eyes, the vortex, the flecks like a dying constellation. The heat was unbearable, all air disappeared, and she would have collapsed to the floor if not for the strong hand pressing her shoulder into the doorjamb and pinning her painfully in place.

  “You’re a guest in my home,” he whispered. The darkness from the open door melted around her, swallowing up the hallway, the bright lights, the cherry and white trimmed doors, until nothing remained but the swirling darkness of his eyes: black on black. “You’d be wise not to forget that.”

  Celia’s eyes bulged from lack of air, her hands clawed at her throat. She didn’t remember the moment Halcyon released her, only that she felt him there and then felt him not-there, a few steps away and beckoning again into the dark room, the hallway as normal around her. She didn’t gasp the air into her screaming lungs, because her lungs weren’t screaming.

  Warily, she eyed him, reaching her hand up to the spot on her shoulder where she’d felt pinned to the doorframe. Had he even touched her, or had that been part of another illusion? No wonder Griffin was impressed—as the plague doctor, he created a special purple and blue fire, he levitated, he seduced like a siren—yet this was another level of performance altogether. But to what end? And why involve the entire town?

  Oh, Celia . . . her mind bees whispered, trying to get her attention again. Where Griffin had opted to believe the rational explanation, Celia’s bees had only gotten louder and more persistent. What if this isn’t a performance at all?

  Halcyon’s lips cocked up—not a smile, maybe a smirk—as if he could understand her thoughts. His eyes still seemed to hold those specks of unnatural darkness, undulating and pulsing, but nothing like the swirling, terrible vortex of moments before.

  She stepped past him and into the dark room.

  It took only seconds for her eyes to adjust. Like emerging from thick fog, the room materialized outward as a series of lamps flickered to life in a circular pattern. First she saw the floor under her feet, the same parquet as the hallway. Then more lamps lit up a few surfaces: tables and desks piled with books; glass containers and vials, some full of various liquids and some empty, many of them with suspended dead creatures inside. Then the sconces on the far walls illuminated lines of bookcases, art supplies—canvases, blocks of marble, and a pottery wheel—and paintings and art of various mediums and with different subject matter: landscapes, sculptures of faces, textile art, more images of the person in the hallway portraits, and bizarre pieces that were more color than substance. The room danced from the light of a dozen different lamps now, each casting a globe of pale, pleasant light around them and meeting so that, while not overly bright, nothing was in darkness.

  It felt as if it should be chaos, so much in one space, but everything was organized with precision. It wasn’t the contents of the studio that struck her as much as the methodical rightness of everything having a place. She knew nothing about what she was actually looking at or what purpose most of those things would serve, but if Halcyon told her to find a flint, or a blue book, or lamp oil, or a thick piece of parchment made from layers of onionskin, she had no doubt she’d be able to find any random thing with little trouble. The space made nothing but sense to her.

  She almost forgot about the door wi
th the sunflower doorknob, Halcyon’s menace when she’d almost opened it, the feeling of drowning.

  Almost.

  Halcyon swept over to a large, puffy lounge chair, looking as soft as feathers, but instead of folding himself into it, he perched on the edge, rested his elbows on his legs, and leaned forward with his hands clasped.

  Whatever peace Celia had felt being surrounded by such a lulling, familiar space disappeared, and she was back in the hallway, pressed up against the doorjamb. From panic to peace back to panic again. But Halcyon was clearly waiting for her in the puffy chair, not choking her, not pressing, the smirk on his face brash and cold, his large, slender hands pressing together slightly in a delicate dance of fingers as he waited.

  She knew with certainty she could not mess this up. There would be no second chance with Halcyon. There would be no take-backs or do-overs. Everything about his bearing showed that he was humoring her, that he didn’t expect anything more from her than a bit of entertainment.

  Certainly not that she would surprise him.

  You know what to do, Celia’s bees whispered. You’ve dealt with big egos and people stuffed with self-importance before.

  There were other seats in the room—stools and another reading chair in the corner—but with steps surer than she felt, Celia floated across the parquet and melted down until she was sitting in front of him, legs crossed, like a child at story time. She knew from her time with the mistico that the best way to approach an inflated sense of self is to pretend to bow to it, so people in positions of power don’t see you as a threat. His eyes widened for a moment, but he patiently waited for her to speak.

  Trouble was, Celia didn’t know what to say. Her tongue stuck on a hundred different questions. How did you survive the Touch? What’s your history with Diavala? Why is Wisteria so strange, and what do you have to do with that? Who, exactly, are you?

  But first and foremost she had to earn Halcyon’s trust.

  Swallowing, beginning to sweat, she looked up at his face and examined every line—the sweep of his eyebrows, the cut of his jaw, his totally normal eyes that he could make look not-normal. Now that she’d seen the vortex he could turn them into, this regular, placid movement within their green depths was almost appealing. Almost attractive.

  Almost.

  There were a lot of almosts about him.

  Almost human, but not quite . . . her bees whispered, and Celia commanded them to stop helping.

  Carefully planning her words, watching his eyes for a reaction, Celia finally settled on, “Why did the tattoo finally get your attention?”

  “Ah,” he said, leaning back, as if that were precisely the question he’d been expecting. He rubbed his face with his hands and sighed dramatically, his poise evaporating into a gesture of melodrama: legs spread under the leather of his skirt, arms flopping down over the armrests, spine curved into the back of the chair. “Now, that is a good question, isn’t it?” Abruptly, he stood and walked around Celia to one of the worktables. On top sat rows of bottles, assembled from tiny to large, each filled with a rainbow of colorful liquids.

  Celia unfolded herself and joined him.

  “Take the contents of this jar, and add two drops to this one.” He handed her the required bottles as she cocked an eyebrow. What did this have to do with anything? Not willing to risk annoying him, she followed his instructions.

  A flat-bottomed translucent jar, ornately decorated with etchings, rimmed with gold, and almost as big as Celia’s head, sat on the table, filled with something that looked like water. Using an eyedropper, she carefully added two drops of a green, slimy substance from a much smaller bottle. Neither had a scent that she could detect, but as soon as the liquids merged, a plume of gray mist rose up, smelling so strongly of rot that Celia gagged and let go of the eyedropper. It clattered to the table as she put her head between her knees and tried not to throw up.

  “Holy hell, that is vile.” She couldn’t stop gagging, the smell crawling up her nostrils and staying there.

  Halcyon laughed—a stormy sound, full of broken branches and vicious wind this time—and she wondered if there was a version of his laugh that didn’t sound like it wanted to kill her. “That it is,” he said. “Lyric once told me they thought it smelled like the devil’s ass, and though I haven’t personally smelled the devil’s ass myself, I bet they’re right.”

  Celia tilted her head toward him without raising it, still not trusting her stomach and not wanting to get another whiff of that stench. It would do her in.

  Halcyon stood, spine straight, shoulders back, chin tilted up, and—with his elegant pianist’s forefinger and thumb—plugging his nose.

  A laugh jumped out of Celia before she could stop it. “I’ve never seen someone so dignified look so undignified.”

  “Well”—he kept his nose plugged so his words came out nasally—“The scent of the devil’s ass makes fools of us all.”

  She laughed harder, not trusting the sound of it and hating how it felt, but unable to stop. Delirium, maybe, from the stench. She followed his lead and plugged her nose before rising. “You should have some spare clothespins lying around.”

  “I wanted to see your reaction.” He inhaled through his mouth, held his breath, and reached under the bench for a thick bandanna, tying it around the lower half of his face. Above the midnight-blue cloth, only his eyes were visible, the swirls in them pulsing in a steady beat, maybe matching his heart. He cocked his head toward where he’d found it, indicating that she could help herself. There was an army of thick bandannas, ready for use.

  “Wow, that was low,” she said.

  He nodded, appreciating her look of outrage. “You have no idea how surprised I am that you didn’t vomit. If I was a gambler, I’d have lost a fortune.” His voice was now muffled slightly, softened.

  As she tied the bandanna around her face, the terrible stench gave way to a new smell: the tender sweetness of wisteria in full bloom, pleasant and subtle, like vanilla or honey. The bandanna wasn’t only a barrier, it was infused with the scent, refusing to let anything else win against it.

  “Better?” he asked. By the way his eyes crinkled in the corners, Celia could tell that his smile was wide under the cloth. It was basic merriment, a shared joke between them.

  Normal enough to startle her.

  She cleared her throat and turned to the infusion on the bench, gesturing with a waving hand. “So? What are we doing here?”

  “You’ve just helped create a poison that will kill a person in less than a minute. All it takes is one drop—on the tongue preferably, but on the skin works as well—and they skitter toward the afterlife like a rat escaping to the sewers.”

  Halcyon said this with such a charming lilt to his voice, the corners of his eyes still crinkled, that it took a long moment before Celia registered the meaning of his words.

  “What?” She backed up a step.

  Still smiling from behind his bandanna, he said, “I simply wanted to let you know I’m no fool. I know why you came, and I won’t allow it.” He gestured toward the poison with his slim fingers, as if she’d missed his threat.

  Celia swallowed, looking from the jar on the counter to Halcyon and back again. He’d said one drop was enough. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What won’t you allow? I came to talk to you about the fall of the Divine—”

  “You said that already,” he said, stepping forward. “But I know what you’re truly after.” And this time, when his slender fingers gestured around the room, they pointed at a gilded box.

  Celia backed up and nudged another table with her hip in her haste, causing some glasses to clink against each other.

  Her eyes wanted to snap back to his, demand an answer, but she couldn’t look away from the box. All that was left was rising panic. Her breathing tempo increased, the pain behind her eyes throbbed, and she was close to running.

  It was the Chest Majestic.

  But that was impossible. They’d smashed it. They
’d destroyed the terrible ink inside.

  Leaving her, Halcyon took three strides and grabbed it, hefting it in his arms as if it weighed nothing. Opening the lid, he all but shoved it under her nose, not letting her recoil the way she wanted to, forcing her to look inside.

  “This isn’t what you came for?” he said. “Are you sure, Celia Sand? Because I know a lot more about you than you think I do.” But his voice was far away, so far away she could barely hear him.

  Inside the Chest Majestic, the substance was dark, sticky, and thick, something resembling molasses. It moved within the chest of its own volition, turning itself over and swirling around. The last time she’d seen Divine ink was when it had stained the stage in Asura, leaking out of Anya’s body along with her blood. Anya lying in a pool of it, Celia trying to soak it up with her dress in a single-minded pursuit to get it as far away from Anya as possible.

  “Where did you get it?” Celia shut her eyes tight, the throbbing in her temple beating to the same tempo as the thick, undulating glob, as if it moved to her pain, danced to her grief. How did he get it?! Her thoughts rose to a shriek, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself on the other side of the room, clutching the back of Halcyon’s puffy armchair and hiding behind it, as if to keep a hefty barrier between her and the substance of her nightmares.

  From above the dark bandanna Halcyon’s now-frowning eyes bore into her, but he’d placed the chest on the workbench beside the jar of poison and had moved to block her view of both with his body. Whether he did it as a kindness or unintentionally, Celia wasn’t sure.

  “The reason the tattoo got my attention, Celia”—he still sounded far away, the chair between them acting like a boundary between reality and nightmare—“is that the ink is my life’s work. And when your life’s work shows up on your arm unannounced, taunting you, demanding answers, when someone has the gall to use it against you, well, let’s just say I took notice.” He loomed bigger, as if his shadow were billowing out behind him like a black cape, blocking out the circles of light as Celia shrank down.