Chapter Thirty-Two
I let Cerise do the digging around in Kole’s room in Marquet-Blanc House while I stand guard outside with Waffles.
I can’t stand to be in his bedroom, to see his things, smell his scent.
I have to keep going, and if I face those things, the guilt might make me vomit.
After a few minutes, she returns smiling, holding the little golden key.
We stop by Professor Borges’s office in the halls by the library, and Cerise doesn’t question me when I take the silver stake with the crest of Castelle. Afterward we’re silent as we cross the glass bridge and sneak past the guards into the main castle.
My heart thumps wildly, but I feel strangely disconnected from my body as we descend into the dungeons, like all this is just a nightmare.
The dungeons are deep beneath the castle, down that horrible, unlit staircase that Roze and I passed in the catacombs.
The walls are cave-like, stalactites dripping cold water from the ceiling, all of it cast in the dim light of a candelabra Cerise snatched from the main castle on our way down.
Waffles has gone very quiet, his little head lowered like he expects danger around every corner.
As we poke our heads around the corner of a hall, there’s a guard sitting on a stool by the entrance to those dungeons.
“How are we going to get past him?” I ask.
“What did you bring me for?” Cerise says, offering a grin. She’s trying to break the tension, pull me back to earth. I’m too far gone for that. She draws a little vial out of her bag.
“Don’t poison him,” I say.
“I’m just going to drug him. Calm down,” she says, ripping the tail of her shirt and dousing it with the liquid. Without another word she saunters around the corner. The guard looks up, the surly old face of someone who doesn’t like his quiet to be interrupted.
“Morning,” Cerise says in a singsong voice.
“Who—”
Swift as wind, she kicks his stool out from under him and he tumbles to the floor.
She grabs him by the collar before he can react and shoves the cloth over his mouth.
He coughs and struggles, but she holds his head steady.
In moments, his eyes are lolling. Cerise drops him unceremoniously onto the floor, and his head cracks sickeningly.
Saints below. I really hope he wakes up with nothing worse than a concussion.
“I should have been much more frightened of you before now,” I say, coming around the corner.
Cerise chuckles as we enter the dungeon halls. “Never trust a chemist.”
The natural alcoves of the cave have been utilized for cells. Bars sometimes cover openings barely wide enough for a human to crawl through. I hear the dripping of water and the echoes of weeping throughout the space, so hauntingly distant that I’m not sure if they’re human or ghost.
All the cells are occupied. All of them. I don’t stop to make eye contact with a single prisoner. How many of them are suspected of being meigas? If I look at them, I might break, and right now, I need to be unbreakable.
Finally, we see a huddled figure with long, bushy hair in one of the cells.
“Professor?”
The professor’s salt-and-pepper head pops up. No longer is she the pillar of authority and intelligence that I know. She looks frail and small, like she’s been in the prison for several days.
“Miss Sinclair,” she says, her voice wispy and deep. “I would ask what you’re doing here, but I’m no fool.” She stumbles to her feet, and her legs shake. I wonder if they’ve fed her, or at least given her water. Her face looks waxen, like she might have been sweating through a fever.
“You know, don’t you?” she says.
“I’m more interested in what you know. I want to get you out of here, but we don’t have a lot of time right now. I know you’ve been keeping secrets, and I need to know what they are.”
She frowns, emphasizing the lines around her mouth and eyes. The candlelight casts strange shadows across her face.
“I know that you are the daughter of King León and Queen Isabel of Castelle.” She approaches the bars, and her spindly fingers curl around them. Her eyes are looking at me with an odd intensity, a glow in her irises.
Cerise’s eyes go wide, looking between Borges and me, but my gaze is set on the professor.
“But you kept that from me. Weren’t you supposed to train me to use my power years ago?”
The professor’s eyes narrow. “You were always cared for. Kept alive.”
I swallow thickly. “You had orders, and you failed to fulfill them. Why?”
“It would have put your life in unnecessary danger. We’re in an enemy kingdom, dear.”
“Unnecessary danger,” I repeat. “I was already in danger. The Queen tried to have me killed, and if I knew what I was—” I want to say that she doesn’t know what it would have meant to me, to know that I wasn’t an outcast, that I was different for a reason.
Someone somewhere loved me. “If I’d known what I was, I could have been prepared. ”
I could’ve stopped all of it. I could’ve prevented so many deaths. I could’ve caged the monster.
The professor purses her lips. “I did what I could. When I suspected that you might be in danger from the Queen, I stole that book from the King’s personal library. I gave you all the information you needed to discover who you were.”
“You could have simply told me what the book was and how it worked,” I retort. “Instead, you left me to figure it out on my own. Did you know they planned to kill me? Were you just going to let it happen?”
Her face hardens as she takes a step back from the bars. “There wasn’t time. We had minutes. You wanted me to tell you that you were the heir to the Castellian throne just before handing you off to the guard? I know what your shadows can do when you can’t control your emotions, Viola.”
“Hold on. The heir to the—” Cerise starts. But I interrupt her.
“So you hid your treachery from me because you were afraid of what I’d do to you?”
Rage burns within me. The same shadows she feared press at my fingertips. I hate them, and the more I hate them, the more they come.
“Whoa, breathe, Viola,” Cerise whispers.
She’s right. I close my eyes.
Calm.
Control.
I open my eyes, set them on the professor, and see that she’s nearly as furious as I am—face white and shaking.
“The King asked too much of me. I served in a war—I saw my friends die by my side. And then he asks me to come here, to enemy territory, while the Mists were closing in, because he wants his daughter kept away from court. As though I didn’t have a home. As though I didn’t have family.
“But then I took the job at Vandenberghe, and I found a new life, one that was, for once, peaceful. So no, when the time came, I did not want to tell you the truth or train you. I wanted things to stay as they were. I much preferred for you to grow up naive about your identity, to study language and contribute with your mind, not your power …” She tips her head forward.
“And I think you did as well. Tell me you wouldn’t have been content, absorbed in books and runes for the rest of your life. ”
“It wasn’t your choice,” I growl, my voice rising above a whisper. “I deserved the truth.”
“I was imprisoned for your sake,” she hisses.
“We all make sacrifices,” I retort bitterly.
“I fought for your father for years. Now you’re going to accuse me of disloyalty when you’re gallivanting around with the Roquelart boy?
I’ve heard what’s been happening between you two while I’ve been wasting in his father’s dungeons.
” Her eyes fall to the ring still on my finger.
“Roque trash.” She says it with a sneer on her face, and I recognize the hate for Aragoa and all it represents in her mind.
This is exactly what my father and King Alexandre were trying to end.
“The Prince isn’t my enemy,” I say. “I haven’t made up my mind about you, though. I’m going to try to let you out, but only so you can help us. Maybe my father will be more forgiving if you make the right choice now.”
I finally break eye contact with her and examine the lock on the cell—these locks are notoriously impossible to pick.
I’ve never seen anything like it—a round orb without markings or any discernable keyhole.
I’d never be able to pick it, and it was pure luck that we were able to find Kole’s key.
I turn it over and over in my hand until I finally feel a slight catch beneath the pad of my finger.
“Cerise, can you bring the light closer?”
She does, the flames flickering prettily on the metal. And then I spot it—the smallest of holes in the very bottom, hardly bigger than a speck.
“Hold this still,” I say, letting Cerise cradle the lock while I finagle Kole’s key. It has a number of bars that expand from the center, all in various sizes. I find the smallest one and insert it into the hole—it barely fits.
I twist it, the lock clicks loose, and I release a breath.
The door whines as I pull it open, and Professor Borges steps stoically out of her cell. I intentionally do not turn my back to her.
“What do you require of me?” she says, holding her chin high.
“Queen Maria has a mirror. You’re going to help us destroy it,” I say. “The Queen is using her power to terrorize us. But you know more about her magic than anyone, don’t you?”
“I’ve taken a special interest in the powers of the Queen, yes.” She folds her arms in front of her imperiously. “But I can’t just wave and make her terrors go away. I’ll need certain things—”
“Certain things like this?” I reach into my pocket and withdraw the small silver stake.
She gapes. “How on earth did you get into my office?”
“I’m good with locks.”
The professor huffs. “Yes, you’ll need that to destroy the mirror and break her connection to her magic. It cannot withstand contact with pure silver. Now, I would thank you for releasing me, but since your existence is the reason I was arrested to begin with—”
“Good,” I say, cutting her off. “Then let’s go.”
I push the professor ahead, letting her lead the way. Every moment we waste is a moment closer to sunup, when Roze will be out of time.
As we pass by the cells leading to the entrance, I glance sideways at Cerise and notice she’s giving me a strange, bewildered look.
“What?”
“Vi … you’re some sort of princess?”
I shrug.
Her face is a little awed, a little amused. “Well. I’ll have to practice my curtsy.”
“Shut up.”