Chapter Twenty-Four
Roze leaves with the promise to return with research materials for me.
“And that’s all you’ll be doing while you’re gone? Finding the books I need?” I ask with a raised eyebrow.
“No,” he says, his tone clipped as he straps his knives to his arm.
“And what else does this little excursion entail?”
He dons his jacket and straightens his lapels before simply answering, “Hunting.”
And then he’s gone. And I’m left feeling utterly useless while I wait for his return, hopefully with an armful of research.
Every hour, every minute feels unfathomably precious now.
But with the whole castle confined to personal quarters, all the guards searching for meigas, for me, there isn’t much that can be done about it.
I can try to sleep, even if it isn’t dark yet. I’ve been restless all week, and I may as well catch up now and spend the night researching when Roze returns. I approach Roze’s bed, spreading a palm over the thick coverlet, and imagine the Prince sleeping there in comfort and luxury.
He said he doesn’t sleep much. With a life like his, I suppose no one would.
But … to sleep on Roze’s bed … I don’t know if I can bring myself to lie under his covers, to wrap myself in the sheets that he sleeps in.
I’m not sure if it’s even advisable for my health.
Will they have traces of the poison that leaches from his skin on them?
Will I fall into death in the night and simply not wake up?
I climb on top of the coverlet and force myself to lie down, stiff as a board at first. But whether by poison or exhaustion or the scent of winter and apples on the fabric, I soon close my eyes and let the darkness take me.
But my sleep is fitful, and my dreams are full of my baby brother’s face.
I see hands around his neck and then feel them around my own.
And for the first time in years, along with the ever-constant feeling of guilt, grief crawls its way inside my chest, and I dream of my brother’s hand in mine and the way he smiled while we played.
I wake gasping with a coil of nausea in my gut, covered in cool sweat.
I reach up to wipe it from my face and realize that there are tears there too.
I pull my legs in tightly and wrap my arms around my knees.
The naked truth is that I’m trapped, and I hate it.
I’ve never felt more exposed for what I am.
A danger.
A menace.
Isn’t that my fear? That this is why the Queen wants me dead? Because she knows what I’m capable of. Because I’m a threat—to the Prince, to the royal family, to everyone.
I will always be a threat.
It’s not lost on me how similar my shadows and Roze’s curse are. But unlike me, he has control of his curse. He wears those gloves and touches no one. He might be trapped, but at least he hasn’t killed anyone without intending to.
I cannot just sit here and let my mind wander down dark paths while I wait for Roze to return. I need to do something. With a frustrated huff, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and cross to the bookshelf.
The titles are surprising. Art and poetry.
Tragic plays. Epic poems. I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked—as a member of Berlaise House, Roze’s studies focus on the arts.
I always thought it strange that a person who seemed so …
inhuman … loved the humanities. I used to wonder if he’d chosen Berlaise because he didn’t quite understand people and thought that maybe some time in the arts would help him figure out how to be human—wrap his cold mind around things like empathy, friendship, love.
Now I know better. I’ve seen behind his mask.
My eye catches on a small black book. It looks familiar—its spine is worn and free of markings. I pull it from the shelf and flip it open. Inside I find poetry—precise, complex sonnets on each page—the book of poetry that Roze took from the library.
I flip through the pages, and the book falls open to a page marked with a black silk ribbon.
A ribbon that looks hauntingly familiar.
I hold it between two fingers, my mouth falling open. Immediately I know the truth, but my heart somehow can’t believe it. This is my ribbon—the one I lost that day Roze introduced me to his family and took my hair down in the hall. He kept it.
I stare at it, at the frayed edge that I know well. He kept it … and hid it in a book of poetry.
I think I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.
A strange mixture of hope and anxiety wells within me. I look down at the page that he has left the ribbon in as a marker.
I nearly drop the book.
Because I recognize this sonnet, particularly the first line.
The heart is the dominion of evil.
My hand is shaking. Like I’m in a dream, I replace the ribbon and return the book to the shelf, as though I can unsee what I have seen.
That sentence was the one that appeared in the book when Cerise and I took it to the laboratory, the sentence that Professor Borges said I’d mistranslated in a way that was too wooden just before sending me to be executed.
Roze knows something that I don’t. Now I am sure of it.
And there’s another thing I am sure of—I need answers. I can’t stay in this tower a moment longer. If Roze wanted to keep me safe and sequestered in his tower … Well, he shouldn’t have hidden information from me. So I will use my shadows in the only way they’ve ever served me—to keep me hidden.
It’s ridiculous, really. My life and Roze’s are threatened, and yet I’m most afraid of running into my parents.
But I can’t let fear hold me back any longer—I need to find Professor Borges.
She may be aligned with Castelle, but I won’t know until I can speak with her myself.
If Roze finds her, he’ll show no mercy to the person he thinks is responsible for his father’s death—which is why I need to reach her first.
I’ve already tried searching her office. The next logical step is to look for her where the Queen and her guard are least likely to venture—the caverns. It’s also, unfortunately, the last place I want to be. But if finding her means risking seeing my parents, then so be it.
I follow Roze’s secret passages with Waffles at my feet, running my hands along the dusty stone wall, looking for one of his exit points.
The air is cold, and it seeps through my socks and my sweater.
Winter is particularly harsh this year, and it feels like an omen.
I nearly sigh with relief when my fingers touch the canvas.
I push on the painting and it opens for me, revealing a dark hall on the other side.
No light illuminates the gallery. I allow my shadows to shroud me as I creep through the halls, pausing before each corner, listening for the footsteps of soldiers.
There are close calls—a guard turns a corner, and I almost think he sees me before I dash into an alcove and cover myself in shadows.
Near the entrance to the servants’ quarters, several guards are on patrol, but Waffles is able to make a commotion down an opposite hall—it sounds like he might’ve attacked a suit of armor—sending them all running toward the noise and away from me, and I slip into the kitchens.
The way into the caverns is odd—a result of a hurried, makeshift solution to thousands of people being stuck together in a castle that was never meant to hold so many.
Off the kitchen are storerooms, dark and cool places for keeping vegetables and the rare portions of meat we eat, and these wind into dripping, dark passageways.
Stone and mortar give way to the irregular texture of rock—I have to run my hand along the way and tread lightly to keep from stumbling.
I should’ve stolen a candle before coming.
Waffles bounds up behind me, having shaken off the guards, just as the passage widens into a great cavern, a massive open space with stalactites littering the ceiling.
Gas lamps are hung from hooks along the wall, and tables are arranged around the room—a sort of common area for the hundreds living in the mountain.
I take a deep breath, inhaling the familiar taste of cool, coppery air, and I realize that it has been years since I last came this way. I have no reason to revisit the orphanage or my parents.
I pull my sweater tightly around myself and head toward the first of many halls leading to residences. I have no idea where the professor might be, but I don’t have much time. The whole castle is looking for me, and it won’t be long before the guards search for me here.
The first hall leads to nothing, except the pale faces of common folk scowling at me when I knock on their doors. Some of them I recognize from childhood.
They know me. They know the guards are searching for me, and they could turn me in. I suppose it depends on whether they still think of me as one of them even while I’m wearing Roze’s ring.
In the second hall I round a corner and hear the echo of a child’s laughter.
A girl no taller than my waist runs past me, a fistful of small bones in her hand.
I smile, remembering the games we would play with chicken bones in the orphanage—drop them in a pile and see if you can pull one free without moving the others. We made do just fine without real toys.
“Come back, you!” a familiar voice shouts, and my heart skips a beat.
A moment later, Kole jogs around a corner, face flushed, and his eyes land on me.
“Viola,” he says breathlessly.
He’s manipulating you, whispers Roze’s voice in my head.
“Hi,” I say. “What are you doing here?”
He looks to the right and left and steps close to me, almost like he’s trying to hide me from sight.
“I should ask you that. When they locked down the castle, I decided I’d rather be here with my family than shut up in Marquet-Blanc.
” He points to the little girl now clambering over a rock formation. “That’s my niece.”
“Oh.”