The Rose Bargain

Chapter Fourteen

Emmy springs to her feet first, then hauls Marion up after her.

“That bitch,”

Marion snaps. She hugs her arms tight around her middle to keep from shivering.

“Shh,”

Greer replies, gesturing across the clearing where the queen sits in an elevated chair like some kind of tennis referee. She’s draped in furs to protect against the biting night air, and she has a pair of delicate gold opera glasses pressed to her face.

She’s surrounded by her footmen, who are holding trays of steaming drinks and draping blankets across her lap.

“Where the hell are we? And how did we get here?”

Emmy asks.

Olive pushes herself up onto her hands blearily. Her ginger hair is loose around her shoulders, and her eerie fingernail-less hands are covered in what looks like flour. “A sleeping tincture, I think,”

she says. “A footman accosted me in the kitchens and poured something vile down my throat.”

That explains the bitter taste in my mouth. The idea of someone looming over my bed in the dark to knock me out makes me want to vomit.

The lights of Kensington Palace flicker in the distance. We’re still on palace grounds, but the darkness around us is complete. In front of us is a solid wall of trees, their leaves rustling like phantoms in the dark.

We all jump at the sound of snapping twigs.

A footman appears, holding a lantern. In his other hand is a silver tray and a folded square of parchment. He stares at us, unnervingly still, until Emmy takes the paper from him.

She unfolds it gingerly and reads out, “‘The prize is in the middle. Good luck.’”

“A prize in the—”

Greer questions, but she’s cut off by the groan of something.

I stretch my hand out in front of me and feel a wall of small, waxy leaves. I wheel around and feel the same on the other side.

“It’s the hedge maze.”

Marion puts it together at the same time I do.

Relief courses through me. We’ve already done the maze in the light of day. I remember the way well enough.

We can no longer see the queen, but I am certain she’s watching us through her opera glasses.

Greer takes off running, disappearing into the depths of the maze, her white nightdress trailing behind her like a ghost.

Olive bursts into tears.

Seeing her in such distress stokes the fires of my hatred for the queen. “It’ll be all right,”

I tell her. “Please don’t cry.”

I take a step toward her, but then the ground shakes again and more hedges spring from the ground, growing up, up, up, until I’ve been cut off from the others completely. My blood runs cold as I realize that this isn’t going to be anything like this afternoon’s maze.

“Ivy?”

Olive shrieks.

“Olive? Emmy? Ivy?”

Marion calls back. The hedges have separated us all.

“Who’s there?”

Emmy shouts.

Then Olive starts screaming.

That’s when I run.

I whip around. In front of me is a fork, the hedges at least ten feet tall.

I cut to the left, another fork, left again.

Olive’s frantic screaming is getting fainter.

I look up to the sky and try to get my bearings. What was it the footman’s note said? The prize is in the middle.

I take the right fork this time, distracted by the rough soil biting into the soft soles of my bare feet, when a body slams into mine.

Just like earlier today, Greer is stuck, spinning in a circle in an attempt to go left.

“Good luck, Greer!”

I take the path to the left and leave her alone, cursing in frustration.

I’m sprinting toward what I hope is the center of the maze when a hedge springs up from the ground, throwing me flat on my back.

The wind is knocked from my lungs. I push myself up to find my nightdress ripped and the palms of my hands shredded and bloody.

I slowly rise to my feet, faltering as blinding pain shoots through my body. It’s like pure fire is running up the column of my spine and down my limbs. In the space of a heartbeat it is gone, but it leaves me shaking in the aftermath.

I take off again, more careful this time. Something white flashes in my peripheral vision, and I pause, thinking it’s another girl in her nightdress, but it’s charging at me in a flash.

Not a girl—a . . . goose? I nearly laugh, but then it expands its massive wings and flaps at me until my back is flush against the sharp edges of the maze.

No, not a goose—a swan. The biggest swan I’ve ever seen. It lunges at me and bites my ankle hard enough to draw blood. I cry out.

It lunges again, its sharp beak connecting with the soft skin below my knee. I swear and kick at it, but that only makes it angrier.

There’s a clatter of metal next to me, and I look down to see a sword, a full-blown sword with a ruby-encrusted handle, spit out by the maze.

I scoop it up off the ground, and the wretched swan takes the opportunity to bite onto a lock of my hair and yank me to the dirt. I kick and kick, but it just keeps pulling, so I lift the sword and behead the creature in one fell swoop.

It dies with a honk, a splatter of blood, and a storm of white feathers. Then its body crumbles to dust, like it was never real at all, but its blood remains splashed across my face.

I’m panting desperately. It’s getting darker by the moment, as if the moon is being dimmed.

Every minute or two I hear screams from other sections of the maze. I think I hear a low laugh too, but that could be my imagination.

I round a corner and find nothing but a solid hedge in front of me. I turn back to see the passage I came from knit together, trapping me in a box.

Do I climb like Emmy did earlier today?

I slash at one wall with my sword, but it doesn’t make so much as a dent. I cry out in frustration.

Suddenly, glowing script appears on one wall, as if an invisible hand is writing it in front of me.

I’m always running but have no feet; I have a bed but do not sleep.

A riddle? Somewhere to my right someone is screaming. They sound close.

“Who’s there?” I call.

The walls of the hedge inch closer, closing me in. I try to steady my breathing. It’s no good if I panic. I wish I’d paid attention during lessons today instead of copying Marion’s answers.

I read the riddle once more: I’m always running but have no feet; I have a bed but do not sleep.

“A river!”

I shout, and a hole opens up in the hedge in front of me, barely large enough to step through.

The hedge closes behind me the moment I’m on the other side, and I’m faced with yet another blocked path, boxed in between hedges in a space so small I can’t extend my arms.

What breaks but never falls, what falls but never breaks.

More screaming. “Olive?”

I call. “Emmy?”

I shouldn’t have left Greer alone, spinning in circles.

From over the hedge comes the sound of footsteps getting closer, steady and persistent. Or is that a heartbeat? The ticking of a clock? I cover my ears to find that the sound is coming from inside my own head.

Tick, tick, tick.

I need to focus. I squeeze my eyes shut and do my best to tune it out.

“Day and night!”

I answer the riddle, and the hedge splits open, revealing yet another closed chamber.

The incessant pounding in my ears is tearing me apart from the inside out, thrumming through my bones with a force strong enough to splinter them.

What three numbers, none of which is zero, give the same result whether they’re added or multiplied?

Shit. I’ve always been rotten at maths.

“Anyone there?”

I call. No answer.

The walls inch inward. “Help!”

Still nothing.

If I don’t move, I’ll soon be crushed. I do the only thing I can think of and begin to climb.

The hedges are covered in razor-sharp thorns, and it is nearly impossible to get a firm hold on them. My hands and feet are slick with blood; it drips all over the leaves and into the dirt below.

I’m halfway up the hedge when a vine lashes out and snakes around my ankle like the loop of a lasso. It yanks me hard, and I fall to the ground, sputtering, wheezing as I crawl my way back upright.

The riddle has disappeared and in its place are the words Tell me a secret.

I think of all the secrets I am keeping, so many they may burst out of me at any moment. Emmett’s face pops into my mind, but not the night alone in his room, the particular way he chewed on his bottom lip at the ball.

I think of my sister and all the stinging, awful ways I still resent her.

I think of the queen and how I hate her.

I think of Emmett’s rebel father.

I look down at my blood-soaked nightdress and say the truest words I can think of, the words I wouldn’t say to anyone.

“I am afraid.”

The hedge opens, and I sprint down the corridor. A snake slithers in front of me with a hiss, and I drive my sword into the top of its head and try to not vomit at the crunch.

I turn and find another dead end. The hedge behind me knits together, and I’m trapped once more.

In front of me sits a table with seven glass jars atop it. Six of the jars are marked with our names, Ivy, Olive, Greer, Emmy, Marion, Faith. The seventh is full of sea glass marbles.

There are a few scattered marbles already in the other jars. One in mine. Two in Faith’s. One in Marion’s.

I don’t know what it means, but I have a vague notion of what I’m meant to do. I pick a marble from the jar and run my fingers over the smooth glass surface. I plink it into Olive’s jar at random, and as soon as it hits the bottom, there is a shrieking scream of pure pain from somewhere in the maze.

My blood turns to ice, and I think of the blinding pain I experienced minutes ago, seemingly from nowhere.

Steeling myself, too curious to resist, I pick up another marble and drop it into my own jar.

The pain is so complete I can’t hold myself upright. It runs down each of my limbs like I’m being stabbed in a thousand places at once. My knees hit the ground as I collapse in on myself like a dying star.

Then, as soon as it started, it is over, and I can breathe again.

I look at the jars in horror, then pick up the jar of marbles and shatter it on the ground. They roll everywhere, and I step over them and the broken glass and continue on my way.

The blood, both mine and the swan’s, has dried in big, sticky patches, and I’m shivering under the thin fabric of my ruined nightdress. My knuckles are white around the hilt of the sword.

Then, like a miracle, I round another corner and see a perfectly square crossroad and, in the middle, a golden goblet on a mirror-glass table.

I sprint for it, more desperate for this to be over than to win. My feet, having gone numb ages ago, slide in the spring-damp earth.

From the corner of my eye comes a flash of white. Emmy emerges, running, from the opposite hedge. She’s faster than I am, closer too.

Greer is there too, but she’s come out on the wrong side and has to turn in a full circle to face the direction of the goblet.

I’m so focused on her, I don’t even see Faith until I collide with her. Both of us topple to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Our skulls crash together, making my head spin.

“Yes!”

Emmy exclaims in victory. She snatches the goblet from its perch and reaches inside, producing a small roll of parchment and reading out in confusion: “‘You win.’”

“What?”

Faith half moans from where we’re both splayed out on the dirt.

“That’s what it says. You win.”

“Damn you, Ivy!”

Faith shoves me hard in the shoulder, rolling me off of her.

“You ran into me!”

I shout back.

Our bickering is stopped by a deep rumble. The three of us freeze as the hedge maze sinks back down into the earth, swallowed by the soil as if it were never here at all.

What was once the maze is now a large dirt field. The only evidence it ever existed are the cuts and scrapes all over our bodies.

Marion is a few yards away, but it takes me a minute to locate Olive. She’s nothing but a lump, curled on the ground in the fetal position at the place we all started.

“Olive, honey!”

Marion shouts, and runs for her. “Are you all right?”

Olive doesn’t move. We all run for her.

Faith’s dark hair is in knots around her shoulders. The silk scarf tied around Marion’s curls has been torn, and clutched in her hand is a pearl-handled switchblade. A cut across Greer’s eyebrow drips blood down her cheek. The hems of our nightdresses are caked in mud up to our knees. Emmy holds a kitchen knife in one hand and the golden goblet in another.

As if on cue, the weapons turn to dust, dissolving in our hands in a shower of ash, just like the swan.

Across the lawn, the queen is still high up on her referee’s chair, the opera glasses pressed to her face and trained on us.

The other girls seem to have forgotten she’s even there, but I can feel her watching us. I can’t help myself. I paste a big, fake smile on my face and wave.

Marion makes it to Olive first and turns her on her back gingerly.

Her eyes are squeezed tight, and she’s crying softly.

Marion has to unwind her arms from around her middle to haul her to her feet. “Darling, shh, it’s all right,”

she soothes. It takes Olive a few moments to come back to herself. She blinks her wide eyes and wipes away her tears with one of her smooth fingers.

She sniffles. “I hate the dark.”

“It’s all over now.”

Marion comforts her, but there’s an edge to her voice that makes me wonder if she believes that’s true. We’ve still got twelve weeks of this.

We all startle at the sound of footsteps in the dark. Queen Mor has come down from her chair, still wrapped in furs, a tiara on her head. No mud stains her shoes; she’s as pristine as always, her expression like ice.

“Well done, ladies,”

she says as she approaches us. “I do love a game.”

We stare at her, our breathing ragged.

“Congratulations, Lady Emmy. You’ve won a favor: time with Bram. He’s all yours for dinner, evening after next. The rest of you will see him at the Grosvenor Cup Regatta tomorrow. Carriages at eight a.m. Get yourselves cleaned up.”

She walks away, but turns back and adds, as if it’s an afterthought, “And remember, let’s keep our little games between us, yes?”