Page 16 of To Dance with Death

Through a haze I can make out that he’s asking me what happened, yet I can’t seem to shape words let alone put voice to them, hysteria rattling deep into my diaphragm—

He encloses me in his arms, and I bury my face into his chest, allowing him to be my shield.

“I don’t believe for a second that your own reflection scared you into doingthat,” Copelan says, his arms folded as he sits on the edge of my bed.

It was the first thing I’d uttered when I could finally talk, but I should have known Copelan wouldn’t buy it. Yet with such familiar disbelief scrunching the hard lines of his face, a pressing need—or perhaps a lingering spite—has me wanting to prove that he won’t believe me the same way he didn’t believe me at the Gathering. So I blurt, “I saw him. Illian.”

Copelan’s brows furrow, and I scoff. “And you wonder why I wasn’t going to tell you the truth,” I say.

“Vasalie,” Copelan says, coming to kneel before me. It brings me back to that moment when I first saw him dance. When he’d slid across the floor, blindfold on, then removed it once he landed before me on his knees like a man about to propose. And though I don’t feel for him now the way I did then, the sight makes me realize just how much both of us have changed.

“You died,” Copelan says. “I watched you. I saw your body. Then he saved you—snatched you back from Morta’s Lair. Do you really think I wouldn’t believe you if you told me you saw a spirit?”

I swallow, absorbing his words.

Hebelievesme.

Perhaps because he didn’t before, when it mattered most.

“I’d like to think it was just a hallucination.” I shake my head, a headache emerging. “But I didn’t just see him. Hespoketo me.” My breathing picks up. “Perhaps I am going mad, but—I don’t think so.”

I describe then what I saw before—the glimpses in the carriage, the mirror. I expect Sundar’s skepticism. Instead he sits next to me on the bed.

“Do you know much about our beliefs, Vasalie?” Sundar says. Despite its heat, I rub warmth into my arms. A bitter cold still leaks through the curtains.

“Not much,” I admit. “Only that your priests were the first to prophesize.” The first to claim to have contact from the Fates, when the rest of the world felt abandoned by them.

They were the ones who learned to translate from the stars.

He nods. “That, yes. But we also pass tales down by word of mouth rather than scrolls or tomes.”

That makes sense, considering a word is more binding than a signature or seal in Razam.

“When it comes to tales of Morta, many across the north don’t acknowledge our stories, dismissing them as folklore muddied by years of shifting translation. But that’s the thing: We are taught to memorize a tale line by line. If we cannot recite something to absolute perfection, we don’t recite it at all. I think that’s perhaps why the Fates communicated with us first—we are a trustworthy vessel.”

Some of the books Emilia collected were from Razam. She believed them.

“Soul sightings are a rare thing,” Sundar continues. “Before Mercy became the Fate of Morta, many souls would cling to life by lingering near their corpse or their killer, holding tight to the connection until they inevitably faded away.”

“But they are ushered into Morta’s Lair now,” I say. “How could they escape it?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “But spirit and body are two sides of the same coin. And perhaps Illian’s soul is somehow connected to yours. You died, Vasalie, and I think we don’t understand the repercussions of that yet.”

I wonder if Anton saw things like this. He died, just as I did. The only difference is that I took Moranya’s hand. I was well and truly a resident of Morta’s Lair before he carried my soul out and reunited it with my body.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I say to Sundar, easing up to retrieve the candlestick holder. I slide it beneath my pillow once more. “That I will never escape Illian because of it. That I will live my life being haunted by him—and perhaps the others, too.”

“If it were me, I’d find a way to torture him back. Make him regret being around you,” Sundar says resolutely. As if it were simple.

“That’s something Anton would say,” I whisper, a small, sad smile making its way to my lips even as I feel the sting of unshed tears.

“He isn’t yet lost, Vasalie,” Sundar says. “And because of that, there is hope.”

All I can manage is a solitary nod.

Chapter Six

The next morning, following a breakfast porridge, an attendant informs me that I am to get dressed and join the king. Immediately, the food rises in my gut.