Hermessi moved back to the side, without saying another word.
Air moved his hand in a subtle motion, enough to pull the screen doors apart, revealing the next room. I found myself breathless before it—it was massive, a giant hall with tall ceilings made of a single mirror which reflected the black marble floor. This place seemed unrelated to the rest of the palace, the only binding element present in the walls, made entirely from paper screens with black wooden frames. All across the silk paper, an insanely skilled artist had managed to depict a cherry orchard in full blossom, with long-beaked birds flying from one branch to another. It seemed to go on forever, as the hall was in the shape of a perfect circle.
Smack in the middle, lazily resting in an elegant throne with mother-of-pearl inlays and gilded details, was… Death. By the stars, she was beautiful and eerie and terrifying, all at once. The images we’d seen of her didn’t do her justice. Death’s humanoid manifestation was stunning—the artists had gotten the long black hair, the red lips, and the pale skin right, but they had failed to blend them into their true harmony.
Her eyes were big and round, perfectly black and filled with stars which twinkled as we walked toward her. There was a pile of ancient scrolls in her lap, and she’d been reading through them, from the looks of it. The dress she wore was voluminous and long and fluttering, made of white silk. It stretched over parts of the throne, cascading toward the black marble floor and spreading outward like pearl-colored quicksilver. It seemed to be alive, every thread in its fabric moving gently with each breath that she took.
She watched us, half smiling, as we crossed the circular hall. I caught movement in the corner of my eye and turned to see what it was. I heard myself gasp as I saw that the painted cranes were very much alive, moving across the paper canvas as they flew from one cherry tree to another. Pink petals fell like cotton-candy snowflakes, scattered in the soft winds. The walls vibrated with a strange energy, one which set the art in motion, and it was spectacular.
“It took you a while,” Death said, her long and delicate fingers rolling a scroll back up and tying the silk ribbon around its stem. She scooped them all from her lap and tossed them to the side. They vanished in a puff of white dust as soon as they hit the black marble floor. We stopped, confused by what we’d just seen, and Death shrugged. “They’re back in storage.”
Despite her diaphanous appearance and the peculiar behavior of her silken dress, Death’s voice was deep and strong and downright bewildering. For a moment, I was under the impression that all this was merely an elaborate dream. That I was back on Calliope, wrapped up in my woolen blankets… that none of this was real. But her voice was my anchor to reality. This was happening.
Taeral inhaled sharply. “Telluris, Viola,” he whispered.
Death snapped her fingers, and Taeral grunted, a pained look settling beneath his eyebrows. “No need to let your friends know where you are or what you’re doing,” Death said, a smirk trying the corner of her mouth. “While you’re here, I would appreciate your full attention.”
I had to admit, this was scary. I had never been in this position before. I’d never thought I would ever stand in a place like this, with Death looking at me. Amazingly, I couldn’t even take my eyes off her. She was entrancing, not only through her appearance but through the titanic energy that rippled out of her in tidal waves, each of them hitting me harder as the distance between us shortened. It didn’t hurt, but it rattled me on the inside—and the Word seemed extremely reactive to it, as well, buzzing through my veins.
“I apologize,” Taeral said. “It’s just that our friends, our worlds, depend on us finding you. I simply thought they should know.”
“There’s a saying on Earth,” Death replied. “I like it a lot. It goes, ‘Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.’ Do you understand what it means?”
Taeral nodded.
“Forgive us for dropping by unannoun—” I started, but she abruptly cut me off.
“Oh, honey. You were anything but that,” she replied, clearly amused. “The Hermessi may not have felt you because of that Devil’s Weed on you, but I… I knew the moment your pretty little heads pierced the pink