tremendous force—enough to shatter her equilibrium. Her eyes swam, her heart shook, and her knees…well, it would be impolite to mention a noblewoman’s knees in public. Pleading important business, he made a bow and wandered off, disappearing into a crush of dancers. Her eyes ran after him, plucked out every last bit of his hair, his dress, his sword. It would have to last through the long, unhappy years of her marriage (and they would be unhappy, she assured herself).
“Please, signorina , straighten— elegante ,” the painter chided.
Mary nodded and straightened herself. Her eyes shone even brighter now, smiling with the sudden, startling recognition that he loved her. They could never be together, not in this world…but in another? In the Colonies, like he said? Who would know them, their families, their history ? Yes, she thought to herself, I know exactly what I feel about history. That it’s best left in the past.
Chapter Seven
“And that’s the only way?” Leopold gasped. “That’s your great plan, my one way out of this?”
“It may not even be that, ” the sorcerer said, waving his arms. “It may be gloriously ineffective; this is Death we’re talking about! But yes, your one way out of this mess—which is all your doing, I don’t need to remind you—is exactly this: find a blood relation to die in your place. The family resemblance may be enough to temporarily mislead it. Then, when it has appeased its thirst, it can reattach itself and go on at the normal rate…depending, of course, on itsd. appetite and constitution. It may shave off a year or two of your lifespan, but as long as…”
Hildigrim Blackbeard paused to shoo a moth off his beard. Then, having apparently forgotten his point, simply nodded.
“A blood relation?” the prince said, almost laughing. “Who do you suggest, my mother? My aunt—her children? Ask them to die in my place ? Are you mad?”
“Are you ?” the sorcerer spat. “You’re the one who unlocked the wretched box! Or perhaps you’ve forgotten?”
“ Why why why why why ?” he wailed, holding his head as he paced in desperate circles. “Why on earth did he do it? Why didn’t he just leave my death in peace?”
“Only a father could understand,” Blackbeard said, gravely. “You were his life, his one and only son. In your early years, death nearly claimed you twice; once with a terrible fever, and the second—”
“I know, I fell from a ledge,” the Count interrupted. “I was six. I remember it very clearly. He never left my side.”
“Such is love,” he nodded. “When he sent for me, he said, I can’t lose him again. I can’t be one of those men burying his own son. I’ve seen too much of that in my time. I want him to live on, into a better age, far beyond the golden gleams of the horizon, longer than any man on earth . Poetry, perhaps. But when he said it I believed him. And I foolishly agreed to do it.”
As the full realization of his father’s words struck him, Leopold gazed into the heavens; a faint star still twinkled in the morning light. Had he really said those things? Leopold had trouble marrying the words to the man or even hearing his voice. Had he spoken it confidently, in a single breath? Or hesitantly, in fits and starts? He still remembered one evening, when, after several glasses of wine, he said he admired—not loved, but admired—his father’s work. The old man scampered out of his seat and muttered something about “needing to ring the servant.” He never returned. But now this…it said more than a library of love tokens. His father had loved him. So much so that he inadvertently cursed him for the rest of his life. Perhaps that was the reason for secrecy; saying too much can become fatal, especially when couched in the ambiguous tones of magic.
“Peruse your family tree: is there a crotchety great-grandmother or distant relation hiding away somewhere? Someone who won’t survive the