Page 14 of The Devil In Blue
The count gave everyone a few moments to take another swig of the wine before he took a sip of his and set the glass aside.
“Now, I am sure you are wondering what else I have in store for you tonight.” The crowd expressed their excitement with more nods and words of anticipation. “But that will come soon. For now, eat, dance, and enjoy yourselves for the spirits, good and evil, that are lurking about. Do not deprive them of their entertainment. They only come out for one week a year, after all.”
It took a while for the attendees to reengage in the celebrations. It wasn’t until the orchestra started playing again that people began to disperse and the count stepped off the dais, disappearing into the crowd.
I looked for him. I tried not to seem like I was searching, but I was. His figure had dissolved into the clusters of costumed patrons. I told myself our encounter was simply by chance. That he thought me a joke. I was someone to dance with and taunt for a small moment. There was no other reason he even would have noticed me among so many other extravagant fashions and flashy masks.
The music felt louder now. People clustered on the dance floor with new enthusiasm, their wine glasses in hand and their drinks trickling over onto the stone floors. I was suddenly overwhelmed by the mixed odor of drinks, food, and perfumes and felt like I couldn’t breathe.
Walking off the dance floor to the side of the room, I found a hallway leading away from the main festivities. I knew hallways in catacombs were just passages filled with more dead, but the dead were silent at least.
Why was I suddenly uneasy anyway? I’d been doing fine until that moment. I was quite proud of myself actually, especially since Lucien and I had been separated all night.
Coming to the hall, I realized it was dimly lit with a few half-melted candles. That was alright. The darkness didn’t bother me. The noise was growing more distant and the passage opened up into a circular chamber, the walls lined with more plaques. In the center of the room was a small platform, on top of which was a stone casquet with the top removed and propped up against the side. I eyed it curiously before starting a slow circle around the outside of the chamber. My heels clicked softly on the stone floor, echoing in the mostly open space and reminding me how alone I was.
It felt good.
I was often alone in my tower, but not like this. The catacombs were a graveyard and as I lost myself reading the names on the plaques, I wondered what, if anything, the dead could hear. Perhaps they heard nothing, but if they did, it would be distant music and voices. Perhaps it made them feel less alone. Or perhaps they hated the ruckus and longed for everlasting peace.
I glanced at the casquet again once I reached a halfway point along the wall. There was an oil torch lit on one of the pillars which made that portion of the room a bit brighter. The plaques seemed a little older there. The faces were not as pristine and some of the etching was worn and illegible. I reached out a gloved hand and ran my fingers along the stone as I continued to walk. Ten steps later, my eyes were on the casquet again and I unconsciously veered away from the wall to approach it.
My heart thumped a bit at the idea of seeing a body inside. I’d never seen a body. At least, none that I could remember. I couldn’t imagine they’d leave one in the open, though.
Unless it was far beyond decomposition and just bones.
Which was exactly what I saw when I peered over the edge of the casquet and set my eyes on a skeleton. It was a woman by the look of her elegant, embroidered gown. Once it was a deep red with silvery trim, but now it was practically brown, red only showing in the least stained places. Strings of gray hair fanned out around her skull and her skeleton hands were crossed over her stomach, a bouquet of long-dead flowers crushed beneath her bony fingers.
She was beautiful.
Agony couldn’t show on the face of a skeleton with no expression. She seemed so peaceful. So finished. I canted my head at her remains, reaching slowly into the oversized casquet to touch some of the beautiful jewelry and keepsakes that had been left with her remains. When I found a gold necklace, I pinched the oval locket on the end of it and brought it to my face, glimpsing the name on the back of the dusty trinket.
Lady Edenholm
Looking down at the small carving on the edge of her casquet, I read her full name.
Lady Ellee Edenholm, High Priestess of the Orkivian Order.
I was a reader. I knew what the Orkivian Order was. It was an organization sworn and trained to kill half-worlders during the war. Monsters. Mages. Shifters. Anything that did not fit had a target on its back. I thought it was a cruel and hateful concept, to kill things simply because they were different, but wars had been fought many times and the supernatural always seemed to be in the middle. Even after the war, there were stories that the half-worlders left behind were captured and sold in underground markets.
But I wasn’t there during the war. I had not seen the horrors. Perhaps it was natural to try and eliminate the dangers, even if it was cruel.
Like putting the insane in a place where they cannot touch or harm people…
The battles between classes, species, and beliefs were one of the many consistencies in the world and Lucien always tried to protect me from it all since he took me as his ward. But historical struggles always intrigued me.
I kept staring at the woman in the casquet, placing her necklace neatly back in its place. She must have fought many battles. Seen a lot of death. But now she was silent. A state I often longed for.
Unsure how much time had passed, I felt fatigue creeping up on me. I was tempted to remove my mask and breathe, despite what Lucien said about taking it off. I nearly did, but decided against it when I glanced at the woman’s face again. With no skin and no features to make her different from every other skeleton in the world, she was wearing a mask, too. Without the etching on the casquet, she was no one.
And with no real memories, I felt I was no one, too. It was a horrifying idea but one I had lived with for a long time.
I squeezed my skirts, taking a deep breath of the stale, dusty air of the room. Slowly, I hiked up the layers of fabric and found myself stepping over into the roomy casquet, careful not to break any of Ellee’s bones. When I stretched out alongside her, I laid back and stared up at the domed ceiling where the light of the candles just barely reached.
It was dark. Raw. No fancy tiles or mosaics. No pretty paintings. Just stone. I put my hands on my stomach and tried to imagine which flowers I’d be holding if I were dead.
Definitely not carnations.
I let the faint music from the main hall fade from my mind until there was silence. Silence like a grave. My grave. A place where lost memories no longer mattered. Where my identity didn’t need to be known. Where pain no longer existed.
