The Devil's Last Wife

, and Elowen Marrow

den in the heel of her boot, and the ninth, the one that mattered, in a glass vial no longe

eady. Her grandmother liked to say that Marrow women were born knowing how to be afraid in silence, an

my lady," sai

ndow, like a man watching the edge of a cliff. In nine days of travel he

d afraid,

e swallowed. "Of what

othed her grey skirt. "They die. Marrow wome

e if they thought her cold. Then she opened the door herself,

plain of cold ash like

r of old coins. No smoke rose from its chimneys. No birds crossed its sky. The wind carried t

tatues of women, their faces worn smooth by wind until they had no fe

thought. It is

e road and climbed back up to the carriage at something very c

his voice. "If there

Elowen. "I read th

not add that she had

o the slaughter, because her ten-year-old brother Tobias was kept at Marrow Hall as a guarantee of her good behaviour. The clause granting

other had. Her aunts had. The six brides sent to Ashfall before her had, one in each generation, and the

in twelve months, on the anniv

wenty-nine days, sh

come back," he had said. He was ten years old, and he heard the dead, and he had told her that the whole h

w archives could be trusted, was the only reco

Ashfall to die. Sh

," said a voi

ldier's black coat and a jester's grin, and a thin scar ran from his brow to his jaw.

" he

your

clearly insincere ceremony, and held out a hand she did not take. "Dorian Vale. General of the Ashen Leg

a

ed the crying. It's quieter." He looked her over again, longer this

uld

ed the apple core over his shoulder.

l usually gree

hundred years." For the first time, Dor

d without a han

the walls hung six portraits in tall silver frames, each of a woman in a grey bridal veil. None of them smiled. None of them

missing tooth, and she did not yet

cessors,"

orian named them as if they were comrades fallen in battle. "He n

y n

use. "Actually,

she heard a second set of steps beneath her own, light and quick, then silent

t had nothing to do with winter. The lamps along the walls dimmed one by one, as if bowing. The vial agains

mber," he murmured. "He'll lo

pens if I

at's the wor

f the stairs

who needed to be believed. He was younger than she had expected and older than anyone had a right to be: a face of hard, beautiful lines,

ndred and forty years old, and said to have bu

herself stand still. Ten steps. Five. Thre

lifted to her face,

neath her feet frosted white from her shoes outward, and the hand he had been lifting to

, very quietly. "

s, my lord.

tempers. They do not send me-" He stopped. When his voice ca

had survived three centuries was looking at her the way a man

ght her that you curtsy to the thing that might en

my enemy