Page 15 of To Dance with Death

The bed is piled with quilts. I opt not to draw the curtains despite the moonlight reflecting off the snow, and pace to the basin beside the bed. The water is cold when I pour it out, but I splash it over my face to cleanse it. When I finish, water beads down the planes of my cheeks, and I reach for the small hand towel hanging next to the mirror.

A face, ghostly pale, flashes across its surface.

Black curls.

A slice of jaw.

Cruel lips, twisted in a smile—

I stumble backward and grasp for the bedpost—only for myhand to slip right through it, as if this, too, is a reflection. My hip slams against the bed frame, a shock of pain rippling through my lower back. A groan slips through my teeth, and then I glance back to the mirror again—

He’s gone.

I stay there, panting, my hand wrapped around the now-solid bedpost, forcing the breath back into my chest.

I am hallucinating—again.

Yet it seemed soreal.

And I died, came back from death…

No.He hasn’t returned. He is a mere aberration of my imagination, a phantom sequestered in the broken cavities of my mind. And one does not see the dead; ghosts are a thing of myth from before Mercy’s time. Souls are now bound to the Lair of Morta.

Even so, the chill that skates across my skin is so cold it burns, my pulse a hammer against my skull. I won’t be able to sleep for a long time yet.

While the journey was taxing, I long to return to our time on the merchant’s ship. At night, Copelan mostly stayed in his cabin and read while Sundar and I tried to best each other in chess, despite the game board missing several pieces; he, the sneak that he is, stole it from a neighboring cabin. We’d stay up for hours when neither of us could sleep, and for the first time in a while, I hadn’t felt alone.

Shivering from my head to my toes, I peel back the covers and slide between the sheets.

It takes too many minutes for my heart to slow. I lie there, listening to the rhythmic shifting of branches outside, the occasional punctuation of an icicle dropping. The timber creaking within the tower itself.

The pressure in the room thins.

Then the fire goes out, as if doused by a pail of water, and I know I am not alone.

Chapter Five

I feel his presence like a shadow blocking the sun—cold, like the creeping of frost.

Slowly, I inch up.

I find Illian cast upon the windowpane, just as I’d seen him in the mirror, clear as a crisp winter’s sky.

“You are not here,” I breathe.

My Jewel.

My bones turn to ice. His voice is a breath on the back of my neck. A whisper of wind across the surface of a moonlit pond—

My hand closes around the candlestick holder I’d hidden underneath my pillow. Without thinking, I fling it toward the window—shattering the glass and Illian’s phantom both.

The commotion sends two guards crashing into my room. Amid my heaving breath, I force out that I merely had a nightmare and mistook it for someone breaking into my room. Thankfully, the senior guard introduces himself as Silas, the one Sofya told me about. He observes the shattered glass—only the lower windowpane, luckily—and tells me he will send someone to repair the window in the morning. For now, we keep the double-lined curtains drawn. He arranges them for me, using the back of the chair tokeep them in place—a too-flimsy barrier against the cold. At least the hearth is lit.

But I can’t seem to stop shaking. Can’t catch a full breath.

The moment the guards leave, Copelan and Sundar skid into my room.

It’s the first time Copelan has met my gaze in weeks.