He raps one finger as the dancers dip and twirl, their dizzy circle so like the sculpture in the study, the single push that sent it spinning.
The man who is not a man looks somehow ancient but not old. His skin is not creased, yet here and there it peels away, the polished bone beneath showing through like stone under thinning ivy. And that is how she sees that there are pieces of him missing—not lost to shadow, like the ghouls, but carved away.
The joint of one finger. The edge of one cheek. A collarbone splintered at the neck of his shirt. The skin has been flayed back around each injury, and yet, he does not seem to be in pain.
Just . . . bored.
A twitch of movement on the platform, and Olivia tears her gaze from the stranger in the high-backed chair and sees that he is not alone.
Three figures stand about him, as gray as the dancers, but rendered darker, a draftsman’s hand pressed harder to the page, and dressed not like revelers but knights, a suit of armor shared between them.
The first is built like a brick, sturdy and stout, a steel pauldron bound across his shoulder.
The second is built like a whisper, willow thin, a plate of metal on their chest.
The third is built like a wolf, short and strong, a gauntlet gleaming on her hand.
They range around the high-backed chair, the stout one grim-faced behind the throne, the thin one just beside it, the short one on her haunches against the wall. And even though they are fully there, even though they have garments and faces, they remind her of nothing so much as shadows cast at different times of day.
They watch the dance without watching, the faraway look of the weary and the tired and the unimpressed as their master taps, keeping time with a music only he can hear.
And then, with a sudden jerk, he rises.
Unfolds from his chair and steps down among the dancers. They part and twirl, and as he moves between them, one by one, they die. It is not a human death—there is no blood, no scream. They simply crumble, like petals dropping from long dead flowers, bodies breaking into ash as they hit the floor.
The master of the house does not seem to notice.
Does not seem to care.
His dead-white eyes only watch as they fall to every side, collapsing in a silent, terrible tide, until there is only one dancer left. Her partner has just crumbled, and she looks down at the dust covering her dress and blinks, as if waking from a spell. She sees the ruins of the ball, the creature moving toward her, and her face, which had until now been a mask of calm, begins to break into confusion, into fear. Her mouth opens in a silent gasp, a plea. He reaches for her hand, and she shuffles back, but it is not enough. He catches her wrist and draws her close.
“Now, now,” he says, and his voice isn’t loud, but there is nothing for it to overcome, and so it carries like a crack of thunder through the hollow room. “I would never hurt you.”
The dancer doesn’t believe him, not at first. But then the master sweeps her back into the motions of the dance, the two of them turning in elegant circles through the ashes of the fallen, and with each step, she relaxes a little more into her role, letting him lead, until the fear ebbs from her face, the steady calm resumes.
And then he stops dancing and lifts her chin and says, “See?”
And she is just beginning to smile when he says, “Enough,” and the word is as swift and violent as a breath on a candle, snuffing it out.
The dancer crumbles against him, her body sagging into ash, and he sighs.
“Honestly,” he says, brushing the dust from his front, as if annoyed that it might stain. A pale white fragment shines on the wooden floor where the dancer stood, and at first Olivia thinks it is a slip of paper or a seed. But then it rises and tucks itself against the tear along his jaw, and she realizes it was a shard of bone.
A sound fills the room, like rattling, like rain, as more bones skitter over the floor. They rise from the ashes of each fallen body, fragments no bigger than a knuckle, a thumbnail, a tooth. The master stands at the center of it all, waiting as the slivers shudder and draw toward him, fitting themselves back into the places where his skin had peeled away.
It is like a cup breaking in reverse. A hundred brittle shards returning to their porcelain surface, rebuilding the pattern, erasing the cracks. Olivia watches, half in horror, half in awe, as paper-white skin closes over the bones, watches as the man who is not a man rolls his head on his shoulders as if working out a kink, watches as he spins on his heel, turning toward the armor-clad soldiers on the platform, the only ones still there.
“Anyone care for a dance?” he asks with a flourish.