Iron Hearted Violet (24 page)

Demetrius struggled to keep moving, feeling the walls of the tunnel become more and more narrow with each passing moment. “Nearly where?” he asked, noticing that his voice, so muffled in the close space, had become suddenly echoed and expansive. He wiggled through the tightening corridor toward the thin light of Auntie’s lantern.

“Here,” Auntie’s voice echoed back to him. She stood at the side of a precipice, her toes curling over the edge. Beyond, Demetrius could see only darkness. A cold wind swept upward from the pit, smelling of moss and damp stone. He shivered.

“What is this?” Demetrius asked. Somewhere in the tunnel behind him, Moth patted him on the leg.

“You’ll probably want to close your eyes, boy.”

Auntie pressed her fingers to her mouth. “This is the entrance to the core of the castle. This is where we leap. It’s the only way to get down there. We’re pretty sure that there’ll be something at the bottom there to break our fall.”

“WHAT?” Demetrius roared. “
Pretty sure?
You mean you’ve never even been—”

“Nod,” Moth called. “Grab the boy’s belt. Now, on three.”

“If you’ve never even been there, how do we know we’re not just falling to our deaths?”

“ONE!” Moth shouted. His voice echoed, cold and lonely, in the dark pit. It certainly
sounded
as though they were headed for their deaths.

“It’s not how it works,” Auntie said desperately, grabbing the shoulder of Demetrius’s shirt and bracing her body to heave. “The Old Gods wanted our kind and your kind to work together in the face of—”

“TWO!” Moth shouted.

“Catastrophe,” Auntie finished.

“But how do you know that’s even true? That sounds
like a story. A myth!” Demetrius braced his foot and hand against the sides of the wall, but the three small creatures were much stronger than they appeared, and his grip was slowly slipping.

“My dear boy. We have faith.”

“But I
don’t
!” Demetrius said.

“Except that you
do
,” Auntie said kindly. “Because you’re here, and we’re here, and that should be impossible. And if we don’t do something, then there is no hope. And how can we go on without hope?”

“THREE!” Moth shouted, and with the three small creatures clinging to his clothing, Demetrius launched into the darkness and fell into the pit.

I stood in the darkness of my quarters, breathing heavily. It was cold in there—the fire had been out for some time, it seemed—and though I shivered and shook, I knew it was not from the cold. “The candles are out,” I said at last. “Let me call someone to get them lit.”

“We have no need for light.” Violet’s voice cut the dark. “I am not interested, beloved Cassian, in the
looks
of things. I am far more interested in the way things
are
.” She paused. I could hear her breathing.

“My heart leaps, Princess,” I said, my voice catching in
my chest, “at the sound of your voice. Please. Let me see your dear face.”

“You are wearing my father’s crown,” Violet said, ignoring my request. “How dreadfully sneaky of you.”

“Sneaky?” I cried.
“Sneaky?”
My voice rose to a sickening whine that shamed me. Still, I carried on. “Princess—”

“Don’t call me
Princess
,” she said. “It’s a term of little use to me anymore. My name is
Violet
. Call me that.”

And oh! My dears! The ice in her voice. The glint of forged iron and sharp blades in each word. I pressed my hands to my heart and continued. “Of course. Violet. Your father has left the castle in a time of war to find
you
. He has turned his back on his people all because you decided to play a game of hide-and-seek. Where have you
been
, child?”

A cowardly question.
For I knew where she’d been. I saw her in the mirror. I heard her voice. But I couldn’t bear the weight of knowing. And so I ignored. I… obfuscated. I told myself I had imagined her face, that it was a trick of the light and the result of an overactive imagination. I lowered my head, letting the weight of my shame pull me down.

Violet sighed. “I have been of late in the dungeon, as neither my father nor
you
, Cassian, were able to recognize me. You sent me away.”

“Violet, I—”

“You recognized my voice, Cassian. I could
tell
.” She took a deep breath, and I could hear the repressed sobs rattling in the cold, cold room. “Soldiers—
my soldiers
—ripped me away. And you! You
knew
! You knew it was me.”

“No!” I cried in shock.
“No.”
But my voice was weak.

Violet pressed.

“Did you know about the Nybbas?”

I fell silent.

“
Did you know, Cassian?
” Violet shouted.

“The Nybbas isn’t real.” I forced a whisper. “It’s just a tale that old men tell old men in the hours before their deaths.”

“You’re lying,” she said.

I slumped, removed the crown from my head, and set it on the table. “You’re right.” I walked toward Violet’s voice and sat down on a stool, pressing my forehead to my knees. “The Nybbas is as real as you or I. But it’s been trapped for two thousand years, since the Old Gods last saw fit to come to this world and set things right. Would that they would come today!”

“Not entirely right. They kept the Nybbas alive, didn’t they?”

“I didn’t want to believe it, Violet, I truly didn’t. There are many who believed that the return of the Nybbas would signal the end of the world. Or the end of every world. Or the enslavement of every universe to the whims of a creature bloated by desire and selfishness and indolence. I just wanted to—”

“I do not care what you wanted,” Violet snapped. “I just want to know how to kill it. This…
thing
. It invaded my mind. It changed my
body
and my
face
. It’s invading my country. It’s spreading madness in my people like a cancer. And I
want it dead
, Cassian. Can you help me or not?”

I shook my head. “The Nybbas is one of the Old Gods. A lesser god, to be sure. Weak. Unschooled. Never bothered much with learning how to better itself. Still, killing a god is tricky business. If the gods themselves couldn’t do it…”

“You don’t know how.”

“No,” I said sadly. In truth, dears, I had a few ideas. But I was
afraid
to fight. I was afraid to
die
. And part of me—the sniveling, cowardly part of me—felt certain that should a thing like the Nybbas take control, it would have use for a teller such as myself. It always did. I would survive—and possibly thrive in—such a transition. My dears, it pains me
to admit these thoughts—indeed, I am sick unto my very soul to even consider that I once
had
them. But I did.

“Then you are useless. I intend to find out, and I intend to kill it, no matter what it takes. But first, as long as there are mirrors, every person is at risk, and every person becomes a threat. Every time it connects with someone, it grows stronger. Look at this castle. Look at the cracks! It’s getting stronger this minute. You’re the regent. Order the guards to smash the mirrors. We need to buy some time.”

“But I can’t!” I cried. “They’ll think me mad! My control over things since your father left is tenuous at best, Violet. If they reject me, the nation will be leaderless.”

“That will happen regardless, beloved Cassian,” Violet said.

Though she was still shadowed, I could see the glint of a knife being unsheathed on the other side of the room. Violet held it shakily, away from her body. Still, her voice was resolute. And in my experience, it is the people pushed to the edge of reason who are more likely to—well, as I said before, I was afraid to die.

“Cassian,” she said, “you know I love you, and I do not want to hurt you. But if you don’t help me—if you refuse to assist me as I defend my people—I shall be forced to take
action.” She swallowed. “It will break my heart and shatter my soul to kill you, my beloved. But my love for my people is greater than my broken heart. And I will do what is necessary.”

She spoke like a queen. She
was
a queen.

“Yes, lady,” I whispered.

I stood, tore open the doors, and hailed the guards.

“The mirrors have been cursed,” I cried out. “Don’t look at them! Remove every mirror from the walls, lay them facedown on the floor, and smash them to bits. As regent appointed this day by King Randall the Bold, this is my first decree. So ordered.” I ducked right back into my quarters to spare myself the incredulous stares that followed.

Time slowed, then stopped. Demetrius felt his body in the darkness—he
knew
he still existed. He flexed his fingers, wiggled his toes, shut his eyes tight before opening them wide.

What is this place?
he tried to say, but the winds from the pit swirled from below to above and back below, ripping away all sound before it could leave his mouth.
I am dying
, Demetrius thought.
Or I am dead.
He tried to focus his mind on the life he had—on his father, the memory of his mother, his friendship with Violet—and they all felt strangely far away. Like the memory of a dream.

He felt a pair of small, strong hands and nimble legs crawl up his back and hang tightly on to his collar and ear.

“Don’t worry,” he heard Auntie say—or not so much
heard
but
felt
her say. “We should reach the bottom soon.” Demetrius noticed that she didn’t sound all that hopeful.

Will we die when we land?
He had no idea how long they had been falling, but it
felt
long.

“You won’t. You’re the one the Old Gods are supposed to talk to.
We
might. We’re supposed to bring you to the heart of the castle, but the stories don’t say anything about us surviving.”

Well, why didn’t you say that before?
Demetrius thought, aghast.
You could have stayed up top!

“Would you have jumped without us, son?” Auntie said—or thought, or transmitted, or however else she managed to press her words into Demetrius’s brain. From the way her tiny body clung to his neck, Demetrius could feel her fear and sadness and panic that this moment might well be her last.

Well, gods or not, I won’t let anything bad happen to you.
Frankly, his sudden need to protect these small creatures (who had, after all, frightened him, then hit him with a shovel and kidnapped him into a network of underground
tunnels, then heaved him into a pit) surprised Demetrius. Still, he knew it was true. He wouldn’t let anything happen to them.

They didn’t land with a thud, or even a splat. Instead, the pit just suddenly
wasn’t
—like those odd transitions in a dream when one is sailing on a ship and then is suddenly sitting in a library, with no movement between space or time to shift from one place to another.

Auntie, Moth, and Nod rolled away from Demetrius and leaped to their feet, staring around the dim space with wonder. It was a hallway with a high, curved stone ceiling and smooth stone floors. Lining the walls were what looked like an infinite succession of doors, each made from polished wood and with a curved top and an iron handle.

“What is this place?” Demetrius asked, rising to his feet.

Moth shrugged. “It’s supposed to be the heart of the castle, but it doesn’t look much like the rest of the castle. The stone’s all wrong.” It was true, too. Most of the castle was built from dark stones with rounded edges, each slightly pockmarked with age. These stones were several shades lighter, with a smooth, shiny surface and sharp, tight edges fitted neatly together.