Chapter Twenty
The catacombs snake beneath the castle for what feels like miles below the earth. It’s damp and cold, and the chill eats at my skin through my Vandenberghe sweater. There are no gas lamps either—our path is lit by a single candle, carried by Belladonna.
I don’t know why Roze wanted to speak with her alone. Perhaps he was just delaying my condemnation as a meiga. It hadn’t occurred to me that having Belladonna as Queen might speed up my execution, not delay it.
We pass a tunnel leading farther downward, its stairs spiraling into black. An echoing scream breaks through the air from that void—the sound of a man being tortured. I jump back, and Roze grabs hold of my arm as I do.
“Dungeons,” he whispers to me, and my stomach roils.
We approach a grate at the end of our tunnel. A man sits on a stool, his cloak wrapped around him, hood up so we can’t see his face—like a wraith. When Belladonna steps forward, he bows his head slightly.
“Take me to the late Queen,” she orders. The tomb keeper silently stands, retrieves a torch from the wall, and unlocks a latticed door. Belladonna turns her head back to us and smiles. I can’t help but feel like we’re walking into a trap.
The air beyond the gate is cold and thick and the walls leak with a substance too dark to be purely water.
It’s so damp that we must be passing beneath the lake that chokes the castle walls.
I wrap myself tightly in my sweater and move subconsciously closer to Roze.
We pass a threshold into a larger chamber, and Belladonna stops.
“This,” she says coldly, “is where Mother dumped the bodies of the meigas.”
My mouth parts. “I thought they were thrown into the lake.”
That was how the Crown handled all traitors. Most corpses are burned since the Mists came—it’s the cleanest way to say farewell when we can’t keep graveyards. They are not kept here in the belly of the Castle.
Belladonna’s eyes darken. “She had use of them.”
For what?
As we enter the chamber, the distinct presence of death hangs in the air. The ceilings are several stories high, the walls piled with bodies. Some are old, clearly from the first purge of meigas eighteen years ago. Others are clearly not.
Roze curses beside me, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. Saints—he must’ve been the one to kill most of these people. I grab his elbow, clenching reassuringly. We just need to make it through the chamber. But Belladonna is moving painstakingly slow.
The whole room has a strange, sick smell—bodies being left to rot and grow ripe with bacteria in the humid air. One on the wall closest to me is just bones, but there’s still a lance through its chest cavity, broken off at the ends and left in the corpse’s chest.
Another is newer—some of its naked flesh remains, hanging from a rib cage in strips. But the way its abdomen is shaped is strange.
I squint my eyes, peer closer …
And yelp as a rat’s nose pokes out of the folds of stomach. I cover my mouth, nausea burning my throat. Something cool touches my wrist.
I jerk, thinking of the rat’s tail, before I realize that it’s Roze’s gloved hand. He squeezes my wrist and gives me an unreadable look—either he means it to be comforting, or he’s warning me to keep my composure. Maybe it’s both.
When we’re through the chamber, the tension in my chest barely eases. We cross through several more halls before Belladonna halts before a black iron gate. Above it on the wall, the royal family crest—the same that is on my ring—glimmers in the torchlight. The royal crypt.
Belladonna glances back, her red gown like a strange beacon in the dark. “I’ll take it from here, keeper.”
He gives her a swift nod, the hood of his cloak obscuring his face. “Yes, Majesty.” He gives Roze and me a look of pure loathing as he passes. And then he’s gone.
We’re alone with Belladonna now.
“Just a little farther,” the new Queen says.
We follow her through the gate and into the chamber—the darkest part of the catacombs yet. The light is so meager that I can only see into the alcoves where bodies lie an arm’s length away. These are wrapped in grave clothes, mummified with dignity, unlike the meigas in the other chamber.
“Our mother is dead,” Belladonna says without looking at either of us. “The Queen was murdered. You both understand that such a thing can’t take place without consequences.”
“Viola doesn’t need to be involved,” Roze says.
Belladonna whirls around, charging at Roze, her face lit fiendishly by the light of the torch—and there are tears staining her face. “I know it was you,” she bites. “You and her, and if I thought I could get away with having your head severed from your body, Roze, I would do it.”
Roze’s nose wrinkles as he stares down at his sister. “Tears, Bella? Really? I’d have thought you’d be glad to finally get out from under Mother’s thumb.”
“She’s our mother.”
“She was a monster, and you know it.” His familiar cruel smile appears. “You hated her. Just admit it—you loathed her for what she did to you. What she made you into.”
Belladonna pales.
“You think I didn’t notice? That I was so self-involved I wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing? She relished torturing you, keeping you under her thumb until you were so broken from fear and rage that you were just like her—”
Fast as an asp, Belladonna strikes. At first, I think she’s struck Roze with her bare palm—a deadly act—but when he groans and turns his face back toward her, there’s a bloody slash across his cheek. I glance down at her hand—she’s hidden a thin, sharp pin between her fingers.
“She’s the Queen,” Belladonna hisses, full of rage.
“She was the Queen,” Roze corrects, his face stolid.
Belladonna laughs—manic and humorless, and the sound of it raises gooseflesh along my arms. “You idiot. You think this is over because you destroyed her body? She made sure something tethered her magic to the waking world in case something like this should happen. Without a body, her magic doesn’t dissipate—she’s simply no longer restrained by a corporeal form.
Don’t you see? You’ve only set her free.
” A deep frown sets on Roze’s face as Belladonna continues.
“There is no end to this, Roze, not until she has everything she wants. You can’t escape her—her will, her power.
What she wants, she gets.” She shakes her head. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
She turns away and continues down the hall.
Finally, she halts before an alcove. There, in the rectangular space carved from the ancient stone walls, is a body covered in a thick shroud.
A mortsafe encases it; Belladonna draws a little silver key from her pocket, and the iron cage groans as she unlocks it.
Why would she need to cage the body?
She turns to us, the light of the candle distorting her face. The Book of Castelle is in my pocket, and suddenly I’m very aware of its presence, like it’s calling to me.
“Brace yourselves,” Belladonna says, slow and wicked. “She’s quite gruesome.” She sets the candle on the ledge of the stone box and reaches for the shroud, peeling it back to reveal the face of the dead Queen.
The breath is sucked from my lungs. This is nothing, nothing like what the guard looked like when Roze and I killed him.
Saints below.
Her once lovely face is mostly intact, but the rest of her is mutilated.
A pile of meat. A few recognizable pieces litter the mound of red-and-black flesh.
A fingernail. A spindly foot, several of the toes broken at odd angles.
Her chest is an open cavity, the organs completely missing as though she was mauled, consumed.
Bile climbs my throat as I stare at the body. I think if I try to speak, I’ll surely vomit. Beside me, Roze is stiff, and I’m afraid of what I’ll see if I look at his face.
Could Roze have done this? I had struggled to accept that he’d killed his mother in cold blood, had excused it as necessary—an act meant to protect me. But this. This is the work of a monster.
“Roze,” I whisper.
Belladonna takes a step toward me, and Roze doesn’t move—he seems frozen in the spot, his eyes glued to the husk of his mother’s body.
I back up a step, and Belladonna stalks toward me, a new rage lighting her eyes. I feel sluggish. My limbs are numb and heavy. She reaches out a delicate hand and lifts my chin so that I’m looking her in the eyes.
Her irises are the same color as Roze’s, but they’re also altogether different. I see in them a deep hunger, something feral and dark and inhuman. I think she would eat my heart out if I gave her a chance.
“Let’s be clear,” she says. She’s no longer speaking like a queen; she speaks like a fiend. “I know what you are, and I hold you responsible not only for the death of your Queen, but the King as well.”
“Viola didn’t do this,” Roze argues, stepping in front of me.
“Then tell me, brother dear,” Belladonna hisses. “How it is that she became this.” She thrusts a pointer finger toward the corpse, untempered rage in her eyes as she glares at Roze.
I suck in a shallow breath. There’s such a look of hatred and knowing on her face. This isn’t really about accusing me—Belladonna believes Roze did this. She’s goading him into a confession by blaming me.
He narrows his eyes at his sister. “You know the strength of our mother’s powers. You don’t think it’s beyond her to mutilate her own flesh to strengthen hatred of meigas?”
“You’re suggesting our Queen was killed by her own hand?”
“I’m suggesting death benefits her more than life ever did.”
Belladonna’s eyes coldly scan Roze’s as I hold a breath. That piercing gaze of hers seems to discern everything, and I don’t believe for a moment that she thinks Roze is blameless.
“There will need to be a scapegoat for her death,” the new Queen whispers.
“Already the nobles are crying out for justice. They’re testing me—seeing if I’ll be as merciless with meigas as Mother was.
They want a Queen with a heart of iron and a fist of fire.
” Her eyes flash to mine. “The people will have their vengeance for their lost Queen, or they will rebel. And I will not let the throne fall because of the inconvenience of sentiment or truth.”
Roze’s hand shoots out, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me behind his body, as though he can protect me from Belladonna’s wrath by blocking me from her sight. “If you grant her clemency, I’ll continue to work as your assassin, just as I did for Mother.”
I can only see the side of his face from where I stand—his jaw set and his eyes steely. My heart beats erratically.
Belladonna’s glare sharpens. “If you want to save your bride, Roze, you’ll have to offer something better than promises you don’t intend to keep.”
“I’ll do it,” he says. “You know I’m useful. I’ll kill whoever you want.”
“And if I want you dead?” she sneers, but it sounds less like malice and more like resentment.
He laughs. “Then I wish you luck. Who exactly do you think would be able to handle such a task?”
Belladonna glares at her brother and he meets the steel in her stare with his own.
“You cannot hide her forever.” Belladonna turns to me. “You should know, meiga, that I will defend my sisters and my Kingdom against any threat. Whether she’s betrothed to my brother or not.”
“Bella, please,” Roze pleads.
Her eyes set on him, and I can see, for just a flash, the desperation, the sadness, the fear in them.
“You have no idea what we’re up against, Roze,” she whispers.
“For years, I’ve … done my best to shield our sisters, you, the Kingdom.
But our mother …” Her shoulders suddenly jerk strangely, and her eyes fly around the room, glancing into the shadows.
She turns back to Roze and leans close. “Listen carefully, you damned idiot, or we’ll all be forfeit.
Abandon this ridiculous quest with her”—she motions toward me—“and use whatever wretched magic is in that awful skin of yours to hide—”
A strange scraping sound fills the chamber, coming from all directions—and then I hear a low groan, like an animal in pain.
Belladonna’s face pales. “No,” she whispers. “No, no, no—”
“What have you done, Bella?” Roze says, gripping me harder by the arm.
Bones fall from the alcoves, tumbling into piles on the stone floor. Half-decayed bodies crash downward, some bloated with marbled flesh, others with ancient leathery skin stretched taut over skeletons. They crash into heaps on the ground.
And then the heaps move.
They stand, one by one, the royal dead. Partially eaten torsos, skulls with half the skin still attached, entrails dragging on the dirt behind them. They all stalk toward us, the vengeful dead, the royals who want me to join them in the afterlife.
“Bella, stop this,” Roze yells. His face is bloodless. I imagine that his poison doesn’t work on those already dead.
Belladonna is on her knees now, her eyes full of terror. “I can’t.”
Behind her, the mound of gore that was once the Queen’s body moves.
It wriggles, wet spots illuminated by the flicker of candlelight.
Coalescing, rearranging, smearing blood over stone in dark streaks, the Queen lifts herself from her resting place.
There’s not enough of her body left for her to stand on, so instead she floats like a specter.
Bones and flesh hang in shreds from her half-broken rib cage.
What must’ve once been her heart dangles on strings of viscera.
Her breasts are naked and lashed open, blood and yellowish nerves hanging loosely from her chest.
Bile rises in my throat. Trembling head to toe, I want to scream, I want to cry.
Calm!
Control!
Her face is lovely and bloodless white. She opens her eyes with difficulty, like they’ve been dried shut, but when she does, her gaze finds mine immediately.
“Shadow girl,” she snarls.
The dead Queen lunges for my face, mouth open wide, teeth bared.
Her bony fingers latch onto my head, digging in painfully, knocking us both backward as my eyes lock with her bloodshot ones.
And when they do, just as Belladonna’s did in the throne room, her pupils grow and consume the rest of her eyes until they are all black, and she is pulling me in, in, in to that darkness.
“Viola!” Roze bellows.
Before the world turns black, I catch a glimpse of the little gray ghost boy standing over me, watching with cold eyes.
Bloody Annie.
Bloody Annie.
Bloody Annie.