Chapter 61
“ S o you’ve bested me in a match,” says my Sister, her voice a snarl.
“You’ve chained me. But to what end? You cannot kill me.
None of us can be killed. It is only a battle that you’ve won, my Youngest Sister.
But I will never stop hunting you and your family.
You can chain me up, but I have servants you do not know about.
And besides, as much as our Eldest Sister and I hate each other, we have, in our malice, found one common enemy that binds us together.
“She will free me. And I will not be entertained until I am hunting you again. You will live in exile, and even then, I will hunt you down and take everything from you. You could have been happy, you know. You could have raised your son. I would have allowed it. You could have even had Peter. But no, you had to have everything. You cannot even bind me in mortal form. Not without the help of our Sister. And we both know that no matter what enmity is placed between us, she will always side with me. You might be angry with me, but anger is nothing compared to envy. It does not root quite so deep.”
I stare into the shadowed face of my Middle Sister, the cruelest of all of us, and while anger flares in my heart, something else does too—pity.
Pity for her sad, awful, eternal existence, one without a glimmer of peace.
She does not understand that, even now, she cares more than I do, that whatever pain she wishes to inflict upon me died when the body of Wendy Darling was lost to my shadows.
“You have had a difficult task,” I say to her.
“I saw the tapestries. My Sister, constantly on a mission to keep evil from corrupting this world. Tasked with stopping the vile. And you have failed time and time again, though it is not your fault. These evil ones—some of them are just too stubborn, too clever, too set in their abominable ways. But failing them has hurt you. It’s why your bedroom contains no tapestries.
It’s where you are kept safe not only from the evil of the mortal world, but your inability to save it. ”
My Middle Sister scoffs. “Is this your strategy, then? Convince me that somewhere within me, there is good?”
“No,” I say. “That would not be worthwhile. While I do believe that there is good within you, it is useless so long as you cling to this miserable curse.”
She lets out a dry laugh.
“I didn’t curse myself, dear Youngest. That was our Eldest’s doing. I did not ask to have my heart crushed. I did not ask to suffer rejection, year after year, century after century.”
“It is like you said,” I reply. “I cannot bind you permanently. Not without the help of another Sister. I cannot free you either.”
“And what? You expect our Eldest Sister to have a change of heart? I assure you, if she hasn’t considered freeing me after all these centuries, it won’t be you who convinces her.”
“No,” I say. “We don’t have to convince her. We can do it together.”
My Middle Sister, for once, goes silent, but only for a moment. “I do not possess the power to break my own curse.”
“No,” I say. “But the two of us, our power combined, well, that could be extraordinary, don’t you think?”
My Sister pauses, as if she can’t help pondering this option, even if she despises it all the same. “The curse is too strong.”
“But we could try.”
She laughs, her voice wry and cruel. “You always did think too highly of your own ability.”
“There is a part of you, I believe,” I say, “that does not want your curse to be broken.”
Laughter reverberates around me, emphasizing my Sister’s amusement. “You really are as foolish as I’ve always believed. Why would I relish being cursed?”
“The same reason we all do,” I say. “Because there is something about enduring unmet anticipation that turns pain into an addiction. Something about that which we cannot have that causes us to believe that, if only we could finally grasp it, we would possess a thrill that would last forever.
“As much pain as the curse causes you, to let your mind, your hope, your cravings linger on that desire being fulfilled—it consumes your waking bones. It provides you a thrill like no other. You are afraid, Sister,” I say.
“Afraid that if the curse is taken away, you will no longer feel that thrill. That there is nothing else that will provide it for you. Your desire is so strong, the desire itself has become what you feed yourself with—even if you can’t attain its fulfillment. ”
“You sound as though you’re speaking from experience,” says my Sister, and not kindly.
“Yes,” I say. “So let me help you.”
“I do not need your help,” says my Sister.
“No,” I say. “That’s not true. You need it. You simply don’t want it.”
“You foolish, proud little girl,” she says, her shadows rearing up. But they can do nothing against me as long as she’s shackled in the adamant.
“Listen to me,” I say. “Look around. Look at the mortal.”
It is not out of compliance that my Sister turns her head. It is because she cannot help it—a chance to glance upon the man she so desires.
“What do you see in his face?” I ask.
She does not answer, but I know what she sees. She sees disgust for her, and wonder at me.
“Dear Sister, which Descendant has ever loved you? Has ever desired you back? Has ever cared for you or wanted good for you?”
My Sister goes silent.
“Your hope is cancerous,” I say. “You’ve been attempting to pick a lock for so long, you’ve forgotten there’s nothing behind the door.
There is happiness, there is peace, there is contentment somewhere out there, waiting for you.
But you cannot attain it. You cannot even feel it, or note that its existence is worthy.
“You cannot feel the depth of it because you are so set on remaining in the shallows. You would rather chase the waves that spill upon the beach to wet your toes, only to recess back into the water away from your grasp, than you would swim in the ocean. You are chasing something fleeting, my dear Sister. And it will never be yours.”
My Sister’s shadows begin to tremble.
“Let me help you,” I whisper.
She snaps at me. “I don’t need your help.”
I keep my voice calm. “Stop clinging to that which wraps its fingers around your throat and throttles you. Stop loving that which does not love you. Stop feeding a desire that does not wish to be filled.”
My Sister again goes quiet.
“How long will you hate?” I say. “How long will you be miserable? How long will you be alone?”
“I did not choose this curse for myself,” she says again, though more to herself than to me.
“No,” I say. “It was cruel of our Sister, an act of retribution. You did not deserve to have this curse placed upon you. But I am offering you a way out. And if you deny my help, you will have no one but yourself to blame for your coming misery.”
My Sister can’t seem to help herself. She glances again at the mortal man, as if waiting for some last-minute confession—a moment she’s probably played in her head a million times through the faces and voices of dozens of different men, all wearing similar features.
And then she stops. As if she catches herself in what she’s doing—the foolish desperation of it—as the mortal stares at her in disgust.
“Make it fast,” she says, her restraint evident.
The mortal calls out to me. “Darling, are you sure about that? I do not trust her.”
“I do not either,” I say. “But neither do I fear her.”
I snap open the adamant restraints, and they clank as they hit the ground. Anxiety wells up in me—that my Sister will make the wrong decision, that she will betray me.
Instead, she reaches out her hands, her shadows joining with mine. The power that thrums through me, I assume thrums through her as well, by the way she gasps.
A third of that power is still missing, and I wonder what our father had in store when he created us. What he had in mind that will never be completely fulfilled.
She tenses at first, then releases, surrendering to our power.
Inside her, I can feel the curse. It is darker than a shadow. More solid. It is a disease, multiplying and growing, a parasite that has made itself necessary for the survival of the host. It tastes of faerie dust, like the high I used to get from it back when I was only mortal.
That is what she feels when she looks at the mortal man. But there is a bite at the end—one I am all too familiar with as well.
My Sister cannot shed true tears. None of us can. It is not the sort of thing shadows do. But she does let out a sob.
I reach deep within her, yank at the curse, at the design. I feel her let me in. Feel her allow the walls to crumble—not entirely; she doesn’t seem to have the strength for that.
But she does have enough strength to show me the path forward.
I can see now why it would have been difficult for her to release it on her own. It is wrapped around her soul. It infuses her very being. It is a cancer, and when I remove it, it will take part of the organ with it.
But if souls are like kidneys, it will regrow with time.
I whisper as much to her, though she has so decoupled her mind and body in an effort to resist clinging to the curse that she does not seem to hear me.
Its slick tendrils wrap around her soul, and I pry at them with shadows like greedy fingers until there is only one left. But I find I do not have enough shadows to grasp that one. It is too strong, too desperate.
“You have to help me,” I say into the darkness.
I receive no answer.
“Sister, you have to help me if you want to be free.”
There is a great cry—a shriek—one I have only ever heard from a mortal’s mouth. With one last strained tug, with the help of my Sister, we drag the curse away from her heart.
Light pours around me, and we are back in the room, the two of us heaving as we stare at the blotch, the illness. The curse.
It is revolting, a bulbous growth the color and consistency of tar, its spider-like legs clawing at the slick ground, trying and failing to find traction there.