Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Please,” I beg Roze. “I didn’t mean to—I’m so sorry.”
He stares at me. His arms are still around my waist, but I get the feeling that he’s hardly aware of them.
A hand creeps onto his shoulder. I startle—I hadn’t even seen Belladonna approach. She glowers down at me.
“I am sorry, Roze,” she says in the Queen’s voice. Her words are comforting, but her voice is cold. “You cannot really be to blame for being drawn in by her. She has dark magic, after all. The darkest—a true daughter of Castelle. Your father recognized it, and she killed him.”
“I didn’t mean to.” I nearly scream it, taking a step back from Roze. It’s the cry that I’ve been desperate to make since it happened, since I’ve been hiding from the truth.
“Is that the same excuse you use for the trail of bodies you’ve left in your path?” the Queen sneers through Oleandra. The sisters are closing us in.
I shake my head, desperate. “It’s not like that.” I look at Roze pleadingly. “Roze, our fathers … they loved each other. They wanted to end the war—”
A hand strikes my face, Belladonna’s talon-like nails biting into my skin, and I yelp in pain, crumpling to the ground more from shame than anything.
“Be silent!” she roars. “You are a murderer, a liar, and a traitor. You have brought a blight of death on our Kingdom, and I will hear no more of the poison that comes from your lips.”
Tears fall freely now—my shame exposed in front of Roze and his cruel family. The sisters come closer and the briars around us thicken. “You have destroyed lives, Viola Sinclair. You have murdered and deceived since you came to this Kingdom,” she sneers.
“It was an accident,” I plead weakly, even as darkness creeps into my heart. Even as the shame becomes nearly unbearable.
“It’s what you are,” the dead Queen’s voice spits. “Deplorable, depraved thing. You can’t help but murder. It’s in your nature.”
She turns toward Roze. “She’d have killed you too, Prince. Eventually. She destroys everyone around her.”
He doesn’t say anything to his mother. He only stares at me, his face still frozen in shock, white as bone. “All this time … You said you were helping me find who killed my father.”
Hot tears are still spilling down my cheeks. “I hoped … hoped I could find some other explanation.” I think of Professor Borges. “Without anyone else being killed.”
“You lied to me,” he croaks.
“No,” I say, my heart aching. “I didn’t lie. But I couldn’t tell you the truth.”
“I loved him,” the Queen screams. “I loved Alexandre, and your father is the reason he never returned that love. Never loved our daughters. And you are the reason he’s dead.” There is genuine grief on Belladonna’s face, screwed into the expression of her mother’s spirit.
Anguish, real and visceral, burns on her face. I caused that pain. I am the cause of so much pain. Kole. My brother. The King.
The Queen is right.
I am the villain of this story.
I am the monster.
I screw my eyes shut.
But I hear Roze approach. He’s no longer paying attention to his mother.
Instead, his eyes are on me, where I’m crumpled like a coward on the ground.
Slowly, he kneels before me. He lifts his hand as though he wants to touch my face before he realizes that his hands are still bare. Instead, he grips my shoulders.
“Viola,” he whispers. His face is so broken, so determined. I choke on a sob. His voice is tender, and I don’t deserve it.
Roze heaves a breath, his own voice cracking with emotion.
“Viola Sinclair, there is nothing wrong with you,” he says.
“I know your darkness. From the moment I saw it, I couldn’t get enough of it.
I wanted to wrap myself in it. Get drunk on it every night.
” He leans closer, his cool, poisoned breath brushing my lips.
“You’re a thing to be feared. And you need not apologize. ”
Staring back into Roze’s eyes, I remember the words of my father.
Then be dangerous.
I am done keeping my shadows tethered. I am done with fear.
Shadows drip from my hands. Not a rush this time, just a slow unfurling.
It’s like breathing for the first time, not a gulp of air, but a clear, true breath.
Soon, shadows surround me. They wrap me in a tight shell, a cocoon of black, filling every pore, baptizing every inch of me until they are me and I am them.
I let them fall away until they form a cape, a crown, and two swords of pure darkness.
There is belonging in the shadows.
There is salvation in death.
And something lovely and steady in pain.
And I realize, with sudden, breathtaking clarity—This is who I am, who I was always meant to be.
A thing of darkness. A true child of my kingdom.
To be free of the Queen’s darkness, I will embrace my own.
I stand, and Roze stands with me. My chin is tilted high, proud and unafraid of myself for the first time. And his face is spread in a wicked grin.
“What have you done, Roze?” the Queen whispers through Belladonna’s mouth. “You are a traitor. Your father—if your father saw this—” Her voice is strained and hysterical. All the princesses’ eyes are wide with fury. “Castelle has brought our Kingdom to its knees.”
Roze advances on Belladonna. My stomach twists in fear as he comes within an inch of her face. “It was you, Mother dearest, who taught me to love no one and nothing.” He sneers. “You raised me on destruction and hatred, so that I could only be drawn to someone like her.”
A sour expression crosses the Princess’s face. “You still choose her—after what she’s done, what she could do to you?”
His grin broadens. “You made me this twisted thing. It’s because of her darkness that I find her irresistible. Besides, what evil of hers could ever come close to the destruction that your”—he eyes the overgrown brambles—“goodness has wrought?”
Belladonna’s face twists in rage. “Traitor. I should have taken back my power sooner.” Suddenly her eyes flare bright white.
She opens her mouth unnaturally wide and shrieks—a sound so inhuman that it sends a chill through the room.
She launches herself at Roze, levitating off the ground and flying through the air with her white gown billowing around her.
She stretches out her hand, and great thorny vines whip toward us from every direction.
I don’t think. I act. On instinct. On fear. On love.
Shadows erupt from me, colliding like a tidal wave with the vines, with Belladonna. Her screech is immediately silenced. The vines fall flat and dead to the ground while Roze and I remain safe in a cocoon of night.
I let my shadows flow freely from me, relishing them. They feel different than ever before—moldable, submissive. They don’t overcome me. I overcome them.
I hold my hands out at my sides, moving my fingers, feeling my power.
I clench my fists, and the shadows back toward me.
When they clear, Roze stands beside me, unharmed, staring at me with a look of admiration and delight.
Belladonna lies on the ground, her face white and trembling.
When her eyes meet mine, I know I’m looking at Roze’s sister, not the possessing spirit of the dead Queen.
“Is she gone?” I ask Belladonna.
Her lip trembles. She looks more frightened than I’ve ever seen her. “What have you done?” she rasps.
Suddenly pools of water form around the feet of the other princesses, billowing up around the hems of their dresses. They sink into the floor.
And then they are gone.
Roze looks back at me, the expression on his face a question. I stare back at him, holding my breath. My skin prickles. It’s too silent, the disappearance of the princesses too quick.
There’s a clap of thunder, and every lamp in the room flickers out at once. The Queen’s voice is suddenly everywhere, and Roze and I turn our backs to each other, searching for the source of it.
“What have you done to my magic?” the Queen’s voice cries from the walls, the ceiling, the air around us.
“I’ve broken your Mirror,” I call out, steeling my spine, holding my shadows like whips in my hands. “If you want to destroy us, you’ll have to do it on equal footing, with magic as untethered and unpredictable as mine.”
For a moment, the darkness is quiet. Then the Queen’s voice whispers in my ear, “So be it.”
Lightning flashes, piercing the darkness of the room. And in the silhouette of the tall windows, I see a spindly, hulking shape, tall enough to reach the ceiling of the hall, standing over us.
“Roze,” I whisper.
He turns toward it, and I grab hold of his sleeve. It lifts one massive leg toward us and screeches, a sound halfway between a bird of prey and the roar of a lion, so loud that the chandeliers that hang overhead rattle.
Oh Saints.
“Roze!”
He grabs me and pulls me away just as a massive leg slices down on us, piercing the marble.
Roze grabs for me, taking my arm in his hand, and pulls me toward the door.
“Wait!” I scream. “Waffles!” I release Roze’s hand and fly toward where I can still see his little stony form beside the stage. I have no idea if he can be fixed, if what’s been done can be reversed, but I know I’m not going to leave him here.
“Viola!” Roze shouts, and I hear a shriek as the monster jabs a leg into the stone near him.
I reach Waffles just as the creature notices me again. I scoop him into my arms and am met by the broad side of a vine, swept into my back by the monster. I cry out as thorns pierce me, and I stumble to the ground.
I hear a low moan, not far away. Belladonna is still on the ground, shielding herself with her arms and curled into a ball. I rush toward her, clambering over briars.
“Belladonna,” I call as I reach her.
She lifts her head, and my stomach twists. Her face is stained with tears and blood.
“Go,” I urge her, lifting her to her feet.
“What?” She looks at me dazedly. “Why are you helping me?”
“Because Aragoa needs its Queen.”
She stares at me, something piercing and meaningful passing between us. Then her eyes fall to Waffles in my arms.
“Give me your gargoyle.”
“What?”