Page 117 of Into the Heartless Wood
The scent of decay chokes me.
I turn to face the Soul Eater. I cannot feel the beat of my heart.
He looms above me, tall, thin. His soul is fading, it’s true, there’s barely any spark to it. But his power is ancient and strong. Stronger than mine. Maybe even stronger than my mother’s.
I forgot he was once human. But though we both of us now wear human forms, these bodies are not our own.
He lets go of my arm. I can feel every place his fingers touched me, like patches of rot on a fallen branch.
He frowns. “I don’t understand. You’re just a scrawny girl. Why did my instruments lead me to you?”
I stand frozen, terror flooding my veins. Every instinct urges me to turn, to run. But if I do, he will know what I am. If I do, he will destroy me.
“Answer me, girl!”
I jump at the sharpness in his voice. “I do not know.”
He eyes me with distrust. With disdain. “Something ofhershas crept into my palace. Past my defenses. Past my wards. It shouldn’t be possible, and yet—”
He circles me, studying every piece of me with his muddy green eyes. “My instruments are never wrong.” He taps the medallion hanging about his neck. Its components are incomprehensible to me: some dark magic of metal and gears. It hums against his breastbone. “You are of the wood,” he says. “Aren’t you?”
“I am a humble servant, Your Majesty.” I bow.
He catches my wrist, jerks me up again. “Youstinkof her, you know that? Of the wood. Of her devilish magic. Whatareyou?”
I force myself not to tremble before him. “I am my own being. I am none of hers.”
He shakes his head. He tugs the medallion from his neck with his free hand. For one brief, agonizing moment, he presses the medallion against my chest. There is a flash of white pain. A sear of heat.
He lets go of me and I fall back from him, landing in a tangle of limbs on a moss-green rug.
The Soul Eater consults his device. He shakes his head in amazement. Amusement? I do not know which. “You haven’t any soul! How do you manage that? No soul at all. Not even a trace.”
I push myself to my feet. I dart toward the door.
Once more, he seizes my wrist. He holds me back from my escape. I look down the corridor, where small ash trees grow in clay pots, prisoners to his will.
“Are you a spy? An assassin?”
My heart screams inside of me.
“Rather ineffective, if you are.”
“Your Majesty?”
I turn my head. A servant bows in the corridor. He straightens again, his eyes traveling uneasily from the Soul Eater’s hand on my wrist to the Soul Eater himself.
“What is it?” snaps the Eater.
“Your pardon, Majesty, but your guests await you to lead the evening’s last dance.”
I am aware, belatedly, of the Soul Eater’s rich clothing: deep velvet embroidered in gold, studded with flashing jewels. He left his party to come find me. If he had come any sooner, if he had come into the courtyard looking for me, he would have found Owen, too.
The Soul Eater lets go of my wrist.
I don’t wait for him to notice the tiny seedling that has pushed its way up through the carpet at my feet, and realize what I am.
I bolt down the hall like a deer with a wolf at my heels.
