Chapter 38

The air suddenly tasted of minerals and wet stone. I was back in the Between.

I could hear the rush of the waterfall to my left. Calamité had brought me right to the rocky opening leading into Merrick's domain.

I took a deep breath, mustering my courage, then opened myeyes.

Instantly I shut them, balling my fists into their sockets.

The godsight showed me everything.

Each droplet of water hung suspended in the air; lacy patterns of lichens on the stone were magnified, impossibly large. I could see each ray of light as it shot through the gaps in the waterfall's spill. Just one second of sight stretched into millennia as I noticed the detail of everything around me.

It was too much.

Mortals weren't meant to see this much.

My stomach recoiled, and I felt as though I was going to be sick.

How would I make it to the cavern? How would I be able to look at the hundreds of thousands of candles, the multitudes of flames? I wanted to retch imagining it.

Sightless and unseeing, I tried to move toward the back wall to find the opening, aiming myself where I remembered it had been. I only made it three steps before stumbling over the uneven ground. I pitched forward and landed on my knees with a terrible crack.

Eyes scrunched tight, I reached out with trembling fingers, feeling the ground before me, noting the dips and rises in it, and began to crawl. I prayed I was going in the right direction, prayed I wasn't about to go right over the edge.

I ran straight into the wall, bumping my head. Stars flashed behind my eyelids as I searched for the entrance. I'd have to open my eyes once inside. There were too many chasms, too many bridges. I'd have to be able to see where I was going, see where exactly my feet needed to step.

"Maybe it won't be as bad inside," I whispered, coaching myself. "There's not as much light, not as much to see."

Tentatively, I opened my eyes, squinting through the fringe of lashes.

It was so much worse.

There were things in this darkness better left unknown, ancient living things that regarded me with too many eyes, that salivated over my flesh with too many tongues. I remembered when Merrick had first brought me here. I'd felt so uneasy in this darkness. Now I knew why.

"Focus on the path," I said aloud. "They're not there if you're not looking at them."

Even with my eyes fixed on the ground, I saw too much. Every speck of dirt, the shape and texture of each tiny pebble. It all seemed vitally important, demanding to be registered. Squinting didn't help. I was able to see each and every one of my eyelashes, noting the angle of their curves, the slight variation of their colors.

Catching my foot on another dip in the terrain, I stumbled on the hem of my dress and saw the way each individual thread had been woven to make the cloth.

"Stop taking in the details and just walk, " I hissed to myself. An impossible order.

My eyes felt the size of dinner plates. My mind was stuffed too full, holding on to each detail and giving it equal weight and importance. How did the gods live like this?

With my new sight, I could easily see the path I needed to take before me. I could see the candles' glow, see the way they lit the darkness, even around corners and turns in the labyrinthine puzzle. I could see the heat they threw, watching the temperature rise around me in colors I'd never seen before, colors I wasn't sure any mortal was meant to see, ever.

It took me ages to make my way to the cavern.

At its entrance, I braced myself for the agonies to come.

Each candle burned my eyes like a fiery poker, white-hot and blazing, leaving pinpoints of light lingering on my eyelids every time I blinked.

I threw my hands over my eyes, shielding myself from the worst of it. I careened down the stone steps, caught in a dizzy stupor, drunk on details, the way the flames leapt and danced, the way every dust mote was limned by their light.

Above me, the gods' orbs burned with impossible luster, luminous as a lilac morning sky, riddled with swirls of gold, flecks of silver. They were so beautiful, so pure and dazzling, I wanted to cry. I wanted to watch them forever, hypnotized by their power, beguiled by their radiance.

Time stopped as I drank in their wonder. I didn't want to move. I didn't even want to blink lest I miss a millisecond of their splendor.

"Just a minute more," I promised myself. "Just a minute…"

I paused, suddenly aware that it no longer hurt to look at the lights. The candles were not burning across my mind, blinding my vision.

My dose of the godsight was already beginning to soften and fade, and I'd not yet found Marnaigne's candle.

With a curse, I pulled my gaze from the gods' orbs and wandered the cavern until I found the plinth holding my candles.

My flame looked just as strong and cheery as before. The taper was tall and proud. It didn't look as though any of the wax had melted in the years since I'd last seen it. My other two tapers lay beside it, waiting to be called into service, their wicks pristine and white. I reached out for one but my stomach lurched, reeling against what I was about to do.

"This is a bad idea," I murmured. "This is a very, very bad idea." I dropped my hand and sank to the ground, feeling despair claw at my throat.

I wasn't going to do it. I would close my eyes against this horrible gift and wait until the Divided Ones pulled me back.

If they pulled me back.

I dreaded the thought of going back.

Back to the palace, back to the king's chambers, back to where I was expected to kill him.

I opened my mind, and a new idea suddenly occurred to me: I didn't have to return to the palace to kill the king. I could kill him here, with one errant breath, and no one could ever think it had been my fault.

The king would have passed away while I was working in the greenhouse. No one would blame me. Countless other physicians and soothsayers hadn't been able to save him. No one had yet found a cure for the Shivers. I could return to my cottage without fear of punishment. My life, my stupidly long life, could go on as it alwayshad.

"I need to find the king's candle," I whispered, jumping into action. "I need to blow it out."

I stood up, brushing off my skirts, and felt something inside one of my pockets crunch.

Euphemia's note.

I pulled it out, guilt needling me in my middle. I thought of her tiny little face, so bright and hopeful. This was the last note she'd ever write to her father, and I'd not delivered it.

Curious, I unfolded the parchment. I would read it once, then set it to burn upon my candle's flame. I'd kill the king, and in time, I would forget this moment. I would forget the guilt.

I smoothed out the paper. It was a picture, drawn in a talented but childish hand, showing the king and Euphemia out in the court gardens, a blanket spread beneath them as they picnicked. You're my everything, Papa, she'd scrawled at the top of the page, beneath a showering rainbow. All my love, Euphemia.

My fingers traced her words. Inside me, the guilt grew.

Without a mother and with her older siblings drinking and dancing themselves into stupors, the king was her everything, I realized. Killing him would be orphaning her. She'd be left without either parent, just like my nieces.

Not just like, the voice in my head argued. She's a princess. She has resources beyond comprehension.

But the little girl who'd made this picture hadn't drawn her wealthy trappings, her privilege and resources. She hadn't drawn their crowns. She'd simply drawn her father.

Marnaigne's death would sentence her to a future full of heartache. I held her happiness in my hands now. I held…

I blinked in surprise.

My hands did hold something.

Without thinking, I'd picked up one of my spare tapers. Without reasoning and fretting, I'd known what I was supposed to do.

This was the right answer. This was the only answer.

I only needed to find the king's candle.

I roamed the aisles, my eyes darting over each flame. There was enough godsight left to let me see the life each one represented, see the world each person was a part of. I saw wedding days and first kisses, smiles given and hands shook. I saw arguments and deep conversations, tears and embraces, laughter and music, and so many moments of inconsequential ordinariness. I saw how thousands of lives were playing out at that exact moment and wanted to cry, struck dumb by how beautiful these perfectly normal lives were.

Calamité had said Merrick arranged the candles by the circles mortals kept in their real lives, so when I spotted a glimpse of Aloysius chastising an errant footman, I knew I was close.

Marnaigne's candle was in the center of his table, surrounded by tapers that looked identical to his. Without the godsight I never would have known who he was, what power he held. His was just a simple white taper, nothing more and nothing less than any of the other millions of candles in the cavern.

In his flame, I watched him as he sat slumped over in the bathtub, utterly motionless. It was a wonder he'd not yet drowned.

I plucked up his candle, then knelt, placing it upon the most level patch of ground I could find.

"Bless me with good fortune, Félicité," I prayed before raising my taper. I kept my free hand ready, poised to snuff out the king's old wick just as the new flame caught. It danced and writhed in the still air of the cavern, looking very much like a living thing.

Suddenly the risk of everything felt too great, impossible to take on. Could I really do this? I would be going against Merrick's orders, against the deathshead, against everything I'd ever been taught. My hand trembled so badly I dropped my candle, and the taper rolled beneath the nearest table.

"You're doing the right thing," I whispered. "You're doing this for Chatellerault, for peace, for the whole country, for even the world, maybe. You're doing this for Euphemia."

I let out a quick breath and retrieved the fallen candle before my guilty conscience could stop me.

The new wick caught.

The old wick twisted out.

I had just enough of the godsight left to watch Marnaigne's new candle, to see him give a strange little shudder, as if a sudden chill had crept over him while in the bath. The water around him jostled and I saw his chest rise and fall.

I breathed a sigh of relief and placed the new taper in the center of the table, leaving the old one behind.

From the far side of the cavern came a terrible clattering crash, like the crack of thunder on a muggy summer afternoon, heralding the storm that would rip the sky apart.

The black smudge of Merrick loomed tall, unfurling in the cavern like a bat spreading its wings. He was bigger than I'd ever seen him, a dark, smoldering shadow vibrating with rage and retribution.

He crossed the cavern with single-minded fury, faster than my eyes could take in, skittering directly toward me.

When he spoke, it was in the voice of my worst nightmares, the voice of hot embers, of brimstone and sulfur, molten tar and venom. "What have you done?"