Chapter Twenty-One
This is what swimming must be like.
A strange floating sensation rocks my entire body.
A dull roar fills my ears. I force my eyes open, and I’m not in water at all.
I’m in a forest, though I’ve only ever seen one in paintings.
Oak trees, tall and dark, tower over me, and the air smells wild and foreign, full of pollen and earth and all things alive.
There are no such smells in the castle of Aragoa.
I blink and sit up. I’m lying on a patch of earth beneath a towering oak, and I can see moonlight through the branches overhead.
Moonlight.
I’ve never seen the moon—only its dim luminescence through the Mists.
Everything here is dreamlike, sleepy. But if this is a dream, it’s more vivid than any I’ve ever had. How do I feel the chill of the December air? How do I hear the chirp of crickets and the distant call of owls?
I look back down from the moon, and ahead there’s a clearing in the trees.
And in the middle stands a figure, covered in a white cloth. It’s completely still, like it just snapped into existence moments ago. I clamber to my feet and take a step toward it. I’m startled at the realness of the slight squash of the earth, the feel of twigs breaking beneath my feet.
The figure doesn’t move.
The shroud is old—its edges are tattered and gray, like a white sheet that has been washed too many times.
I should turn back, but the rational, self-preserving part of my brain is asleep. And the part that thrives on darkness? That part is wide awake.
I take a step into the clearing, and all sound ceases—the whisper of the breeze and the vibrato of insects have gone completely silent.
My insides twist, but my feet move as if controlled by some higher force. I take another step closer, blades of grass brushing feather-light against my legs. I can see the cover moving slightly, as though blown by a breeze that isn’t there. The figure hasn’t moved.
I’m meant to remove that cover. I know it in my bones. Like I know my shadows. Like I know my own darkness.
And yet, I know that when I do, something in me will fracture. There is no going back. This is the final breath.
Finally, I’m within reach. I stretch out a trembling hand, and my fingertips brush the fabric …
The figure moves, and I jerk my hand back.
It’s just a small blooming movement, like whatever is beneath it has taken a deep breath.
I reach out again. Fear has me by the throat.
This is inevitable.
It always has been.
I curl my fingers around the cover. I pull, and it flutters to the ground.
I have only a moment to take in the face before me, the face that I knew, somewhere deep inside me, I would see. The frightened and pale face of the little boy, the ghost that has haunted my every step for weeks. My brother.
And he whispers, his voice more real than ever, “Bloody Annie. Bloody Annie. Bloody Annie.”
Tears burn in my eyes as I look into his deep brown ones. Without knowing exactly what I mean, I beg, “Please.”
His face contorts, a look of consuming rage taking over his small features. There’s not even time to take a breath—he leaps at me. I gasp and fall back as he latches on to my face with sharp fingernails. We topple to the ground as he tears at my hair, my face, my neck with jagged nails.
I’m screaming.
I’m crying.
No, those aren’t my cries. I force my eyes open. My brother is crying. The sound of it is like listening to my own soul crack open. My heart is breaking—it’s breaking, and I know I will never recover even as he shreds my skin with nails like knives, and I try in vain to shove him off me.
Tears slip free from my eyes.
End me. I would deserve it.
And I stop fighting. My arms fall back on the grass, and I let my baby brother tear into me as I look up at the moon.
What a lovely way to die. Under the moon with the grass beneath my back.
More tears spill down my cheeks. No, that’s blood. It won’t be long.
But then two hands wrap around my baby brother’s throat.
“No!” I scream. But his eyes bulge as the hands wrap tighter, cutting off his oxygen.
“Let him go! ”
For the first time in my life, when I call on my shadows, beg them to come forth, they don’t. Now they fail me. When I need them most.
It’s not Roze I hate. It’s not Queen Maria or Belladonna or the princesses—it’s my shadows. The disease that is my lifeblood, that I can’t cut away. No cure, save death.
The hands grip harder, pressing into my brother’s trachea, and I watch the life drain from his face for the second time. And then I see—those hands are covered in black leather gloves.
Night edges my vision.
The last thing I see before surrendering to the darkness is my brother’s face, sad and betrayed—my final accusation. But then it twists, the skin moving around the skull like liquid flesh, bubbling and re-forming until the face I’m staring at is completely different.
The dead Queen.
And she’s laughing.
“Hello, Annie.”