The Devil's Debt: A Kiss That Binds the Damned

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: The Captain's Promise

Kael did not sleep.

He lay on the hearth rug with his eyes open, listening to two women breathe, and every time he closed them, he saw the Devil's question hanging in the dark. The kingdom, or the woman you love? At two in the morning he gave up, rose, and put on his coat.

Seraphine was awake at once. "Where?"

"Nowhere. Walking."

"I will walk with you."

"The Collector's Clause?"

"Is a convenient excuse." She did not look at him. "Come."

They went out into the sleeping palace, and Kael took the east passage without deciding to, as though his feet knew the way. The great hall lay dark below them, and at the head of the east stair, exactly where a seventeen-year-old boy had once stood, a lone figure leaned on the balustrade with his arms folded.

"Captain," said Kael.

Rowan did not startle. He turned, slowly. In the thin light, he looked ten years older than he had a week ago, gaunt and hollow-eyed, the red rims of his eyes bright as embers. "Sire. You should be abed."

"So should you."

"I do not sleep, sire." A tired, crooked smile. "You know that."

Seraphine withdrew exactly an arm's length, to the shadow of a pillar, and became still. Kael came and stood at the rail beside his friend. Below them, the marble of the hall was silver and empty.

"Dray said something," said Kael. "Before he died."

"I heard it." Rowan's voice was quiet. "Ask who never sleeps."

"Then I am asking."

The Captain was silent for a long time. His hands, on the balustrade, tightened until the knuckles went white.

"Do you remember the night your mother died?" he said.

Kael did not answer. He found that he could not.

"I was fourteen. A page, the lowest in the house. She sent for me at midnight. I thought I had done something wrong." Rowan's mouth twisted. "She was lying in that great bed with the curtains open, and she was so thin, sir. She took my hand, and she said, Rowan, you are a good boy. I need you to promise me something."

"What?"

"Promise me you will never let him out of your sight." His voice cracked on the last word. "You were asleep in the next room. You were twelve. And I swore. On my life, on my name, with my hand in hers. I swore I would never take my eyes off you." He gave a small, broken laugh. "I have kept it for seventeen years. I stand outside your door every night. I do not sleep, because the moment I close my eyes I see her face, and she is asking me whether I have kept my word."

Kael's throat had closed.

"And the last few nights," Rowan whispered, "it has been worse. I hear things when I try to rest. I hear a voice. It sounds like her." He pressed the heel of his hand against one eye. "I am afraid I am going mad, Kael."

Kael put a hand on his shoulder. Beneath the coat, the bone was sharp, and the muscle taut as wire. "You are not going mad."

"How would you know?"

"Because I hear it too." Kael looked down at the empty hall. "She sings, doesn't she? A song with no words."

The Captain went very still.

Then, slowly, he lifted his head, and in his red-rimmed eyes Kael saw a flicker of something he could not name. Wonder. Terror. Hope. And, very faintly, beneath them, something that looked almost like fear of himself.

"I know the words," Rowan said.

"You cannot."

"She taught me. That night. Because she said you would never remember them, and someone should." He drew a breath, and, very softly, in a rough baritone that had never been meant for singing, he began.

It was a small song, plain and tender. A lullaby about a boy who lived at the top of a tower, and a lantern that burned all night, and a mother who would never let it go out. When he reached the third verse, Kael realized that he was weeping, silently, like rain.

Rowan finished the last line and stopped.

Neither man spoke. In the shadow of the pillar, Seraphine had turned her head away, and her shoulders were not quite steady.

"Thank you," said Kael, when he could.

"It was hers." Rowan wiped his face roughly with the back of his glove. "I will not let anything take you, sire. Not Hell, not the Devil. Not if it takes my last breath."

Kael held his friend's gaze.

He wanted to believe it. He did believe it. He had known this man since he was a boy, and he had never once seen him lie.

Ask who never sleeps.

He squeezed the Captain's shoulder and turned away.

---

There was someone in his chair.

They saw it from the door, he and Seraphine, as the wards fell open. The chamber was lit by a single candle. The bride sat on the bed, awake, her hands folded in her lap. And in his father's great chair by the dying fire, with her back very straight, sat a woman in gray, veiled from crown to throat in a cloud of silvery crepe.

The envoy of Sorrow.

"Forgive the intrusion, Majesty." Her voice was low and soft, with an ache beneath it like a hand pressed on an old bruise. "I did not wish to be seen. I come at Sorrow's bidding, and not at Hell's."

Seraphine moved in front of him.

"Do not fear me, child," said the envoy gently. "I have no power to harm you. I have only one thing to give."

She lifted her gloved hand from her lap and held it out, palm up.

On it lay a small, flat, gray river stone.

Kael's heart stopped.

He knew it before he could think. His fingers had found his pocket on their own and drawn out his own stone, the one he had carried since he was nine. He laid it beside hers. They were the same size, the same worn gray, with the same small, careful groove carved down the center of each, so that, set side by side, they made a single shape.

"There were two," said the envoy. "She carved them herself. One for you, and one for her. So that when you were afraid, and she was not beside you, you could each hold a stone and know the other was holding its twin."

"Who are you?"

"I am only Sorrow's envoy."

"Where did you get this?"

"It was given to me." Her gloved fingers closed gently around the stone and set it in his palm. "To give to you, when the time came."

She rose. Seraphine did not move to stop her, and Kael noticed it with a strange, distant clarity: the Collector, who had stood between him and every danger for a week, stood aside.

At the door, the envoy paused. She did not turn.

"Eat something, Kael," she said. "You are too thin."

The words struck him like a hand across the face.

He had not heard them in seventeen years. He had heard them every night of his childhood, at the end of every long day, in that exact weary, tender tone, from a woman whose face he could no longer see.

By the time he found his voice, the door had closed. In his palm, the two stones lay side by side, and for the first time in seventeen years, they were warm.