Page 7 of Mistress of Bones
I can’t wait to see you again, Azulita. There is so much I wish to tell you about. Curse these single sheets of paper! Why can’t they give us more to write home? Know that you are in my heart, and I miss youdearly, and once I am done with this place, you and I shall never be apart again!!
Love, Isadora
Azul folded the letter and held it close to her chest. One day they would be free to do as they wished, travel where they wanted, meet the rest of the world. Valanje, with its Anchor peaks, and Bremón with its red lakes. The cities painted inside the frames in the parlor, and the ones her tutor had described to her. Faraway places too scary to visit alone, but the trip of a lifetime with Isadora by her side.
Until then, she’d have to be content with seeing Isadora during her yearly school break.
She couldn’t wait.
THE PRESENT
There was a knock on the door, and Azul almost leaped out of her skin at the unfamiliar sound. None of the servants had knocked. Nereida hadn’t knocked. And here it came again, the sound, repeating. Whoever was behind the door wanted her to think she was in control. And so, the time had come to face either Serunje or the Valanjian emissary, Azul guessed, tugging at the folds of her plain shirt.
The third knock came, with no change in cadence or strength, and this put her on edge more than the knocking itself.
“Come in,” she said.
The door opened, and a large man stepped into the room. Azul couldn’t help but take a step back. His height was his own, but the breadth had been aided by a massive dull-white breastplate made of bone, topped on each shoulder by equally bulky shoulder plates. Not the small ornamental ones those like De Guzmán and other nobles wore, but giant things meant to send a message, meant to impress. Meant to frighten.
And frighten they did—she had never seen the like. A man like this would barrel into you, and you would never stand back up. He would unsheathe the long sword hanging from his hip and run you through without a second thought. But it was his face that struck her the most.
A marquetry of animal and human bone pieces had been fitted into the shape of a mask that covered the upper half of his face, long fangs running down his cheeks. Were he to smile wide, they would dig into his flesh. But someone like this did not own that kind of smile. Blond hair hung in long, loose waves around his face and down to his chest, seemingly snagging on the thorns and tiny spikes of the armor only to flow like water instead as he moved deeper into the room.
When she found his eyes through the two holes in the mask, she saw deep violet rings framing golden irises.
Death, here to claim her. This was no shriveled shell of a person too consumed with tasting death to live, as the scary tales described emissaries. This man wasdifferent. Magnificent. This man took her breath away and sent her heart tumbling inside her chest.
This man was worth serving gods.
His eyes widened the moment they fell on her, and she was glad she had caught the tiny movement in this controlled, self-assured man. He had probably expected something else. A grander presence. Not Azul del Arroyo, a nineteen-year-old countryface who couldn’t even fight with a rapier, because all she had been taught was how to use a dagger.
But Azul had met Death before. At the inn, at Agunción, at the docks of Diel. For Isadora, she would gather her courage and face it again.
“So, you’ve come to kill me,” she stated. She didn’t know what to focus on: the mask, the eyes, the hair. The spikes on the breastplate.
The emissary stared back, eyes unfathomable, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. He made no movement, said nothing. He didn’t even seem to breathe.
Azul finally settled for looking into his eyes. “If so, go ahead and end this waiting. Leave this room with an innocent soul added to your collection of bones.”
His mouth lifted slightly on one side, and Azul knew she had said something wrong.
And still, he wouldn’t talk.
And still, she fought not to squirm under his stare.
She reached for the chair. A way to hide the increasing trembling of her limbs.
“Is it ‘killing’ when you can never escape Death?” the emissary asked. The voice fit the man: deep, not quite smooth; silk snagging on roughness, like his hair. It tumbled inside her head and crawled down her throat.
She turned slowly, dragging the chair between them. “It is when you deal it without reason.”
“I am Virel Enjul, Emissary of the Lord Death.” He lifted his hands. Big, with long fingers ending in blunt nails blackened at the ends. “My hands are his hands. My reasons, his reasons.” The mask’s fangs did dig into his skin when he smiled wide, a mocking slash in a pale face surrounded by white bone and golden threads of loose hair. “The gods do not murder, Miss Del Arroyo. They impart divine will.”
Azul’s hands clenched around the back of the chair.Courage.This was only the Lord Death’s messenger, and she had fooled Death before. Still, her throat felt like grinding stones as she forced it to work. “Without justification, it will always be murder.”
“How human of you to assume the gods need justification.”
“They gave us will and morals—they must abide by their own rules.”
