Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
“I can fix him. I’m a light meiga. I can undo whatever my mother did to him.” At the look of shock on my face, she adds, “Didn’t you wonder how I knew what was going on between you and my brother? I have the power of insight.”
I shake my head and shove Waffles into her arms. There’s little time to take in this information. “Take care of him,” I urge her. “And … Cerise.”
She looks at me sharply and nods. Then I nearly shove her in front of me toward the door. I don’t watch to see if she makes it through—I run, instead, toward Roze.
He leaps over the seats of Moody Hall, dodging the great monster’s legs, while it spins and spits at him. He looks up just as I reach him, and he grabs hold of my arm.
“We need to let the Mists inside,” I shout at him.
He heaves down lungfuls of air, stumbling over seats. “What?”
“The Mirror showed me the Book of Odds. The Mists are the only thing that will stop your mother.”
“But they’ll kill everyone.”
I shove him just in time to spare us both from being skewered by a massive, hairy leg.
We scramble back toward each other, and I take hold of his arm.
“The Book of Odds said that last time the Mists came, ‘the devastation undid itself.’ Your mother’s magic is like an Ouroboros—it can only destroy itself.
” I grab his arm and run down the steps toward the stage as the monster swipes a huge leg past us.
“The Mists can destroy her,” I pant, “because they’re her magic.
We keep the Mists contained to this room, and once she’s gone, they’ll be gone. ”
“You’re sure?”
“Well, no, but it’s my working hypothesis—”
We spring away from the monster as another clap of thunder and lightning bursts outside.
I don’t see Belladonna, and I hope she made it through.
Another leg, black and covered in spines, crashes down in front of us, ripping through the old stones of Vandenberghe, and we crash to the ground.
I barely notice the fresh tears in the skin of my knees and arms.
“We need more than a hypothesis right now, Sinclair,” Roze shouts.
“You’ll just have to make do, because that’s all I’ve got.”
We sprint in the other direction, tearing down the stairs, crawling over vines toward the stage. I can’t even see the shape of the thing overhead—the room is too dark. But I can hear it turning in place, tracking us. Its body is so big that it can hardly move in the room without bumping the walls.
It hisses, the sound of it crawling across my skin.
Roze grabs my arm and pulls me back just as another leg comes down in front of me. The marble cracks, and I fall on the shattered stone, crying out as rubble slices into my calf.
“Up!” Roze yells. “Keep moving!”
I grab his elbow, and we run down an aisle of chairs.
“Why can’t you use your shadows?” he shouts over the roar of the monster.
“I can, but I told you—her magic has to destroy itself. That’s what the book said.”
“You killed those vines—”
“But not her.”
The Mists have turned black outside; the wind is howling. Thunder rattles the buttresses, and lightning flashes again—
I get a glimpse of the monster. Its head is black and hairy with eight massive eye sockets each filled with serrated teeth.
The mouths gnash at us, spit spilling from the lids. A cry of terror escapes me, and Roze grips me tighter.
It stabs at us again, one leg after the other as we skip over chairs, trying not to lose each other in the darkness.
There is no running from it.
“Then how do we get to the Mists?” Roze hollers.
“Hold on—”
I glance up at the thing as we run. I let my shadows free, and they rage from me. The fear of everything I have seen since the moment the King attacked me bursts from me, pouring out of me, emptying me of every ounce of bitterness and spite …
My shadows bite at the spider’s legs, wrapping around them. It hisses angrily, tumbling backward and crashing into the stone wall of the hall. The wall crumples, ancient stones flying into the night.
I strike.
A spear of solid shadow flies from my outstretched hand—pure, controlled fear and fury.
It flies through the hole in the castle wall, pierces the invisible magical barrier created by light meigas so long ago, and in a spray of starlight, an enormous gash opens to the night air that allows the Mists to flood through.
In a twisted waterfall, the poison seizes everything it can reach.
It finds the monster first, curling around it, choking it.
The spider struggles, its long legs flailing so that Roze and I have to duck, flattening ourselves to the floor.
The vines and briars grow black and brittle, the roses withering and dying.
“Come help me with the Grimmstones!” I shout, turning away from the threat overhead.
Even as the Mists billow toward us, we rush for Ed, Fletcher, and the rest. The boys blink awake as the Queen’s power weakens. Roze and I tear the vines from them and push them toward the great doors of Moody Hall, still dodging the thrashing legs of the spider.
“Come on,” I shout, grabbing Fletcher by the wrist and coaxing him to move faster as he stumbles sluggishly over dead branches.
I reach the doors and push the boys through one by one. Roze has Sculler by the collar and practically throws him through the doorway. “Now you!” he shouts.
“What?”
“Go, Viola!” His hand is on the great wooden door, ready to slam it shut.
“You—” A stone of dread drops in my stomach. “You’re not coming?”
His eyes are dark and steely as he says through panting breaths, “If you’re right, I am my mother’s creation. Her power lies within me. While I live, so does she.”
With a feeling like ice in my veins, I realize—Roze plans to die.
I look up—I can no longer see the ceiling at all. It’s full of the dark haze of the Mists. They’re now sweeping down the walls, crawling across the floor.
“Viola, go!”
But I’m not listening to him. Instead, my mind is whirring, trying to find any way out of this for him, because I can’t—I can’t—leave him to die. I watch the Mists twist and crawl, my hands absentmindedly fiddling with my locket—my locket. Of course.
I look back at him. “You’re not doing this alone.” I charge toward him and slam the door shut behind me, closing both of us in the hall with the Mists and the spirit of the Queen.
Horror fills Roze’s face. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me responsible for—”
“Roze.” I grab his arm and yank him aside, just as a great, hairy leg strikes out of the cloud of Mists, crashing into the stone archway around us.
We bolt as stone falls over our heads. I aim for the corner of the room, still free of the Mists. I’m nearly there when my foot catches on a vine. My ankle twists painfully, and I tumble to the floor.
“Viola!”
The Mists are filling the hall, black as death, coming toward us like a great, malevolent cloud.
There is nowhere left to run.
Roze crawls toward me on his elbows. His face is sweaty, his eyes tired and wild, and he throws himself on top of me. He grips my shoulders, head bent and buried in my shoulder. He’s trying to protect me from the Mists … but also from himself, from the poison on his skin.
And it is that moment that I realize what has been staring me in the face all along.
“Roze,” I whisper in his ear, and gently, I move my fingers closer to the collar of his shirt.
The cloud of Mists undulates closer. Gently, still fearfully, I let my fingers brush the warm skin of his neck, and I immediately feel weightless and foggy.
I hear him hiss—a sound of protest and pleasure.
He pulls back enough to look at me. “Viola …”
He thinks I have given up. That I beg for death.
He’s right.
But not in the way he thinks.
I release my shadows from my fingers. They wrap around Roze’s neck like a collar, daring to creep up into his snow-white hair, beneath the collar of his shirt.
They are an extension of me, and somehow I can almost feel the muscles of his back, the strength of his shoulders.
It’s like I’m melting, and I can’t tell if it’s from the poison or because I want to wrap myself up in him, bury myself in him like a coffin, let him take my mind, my body, my soul, straight to the grave.
“Roze,” I answer him, lacing my voice with meaning, looking at him with confidence—the same confidence as the day that I punched him—so that he will know to trust me. “Kill me,” I whisper.
Roze’s eyes narrow as he thinks.
“Trust me, and kill me,” I plead. The Mists are nearly on top of us now, ready to swallow us whole.
And then the corner of his lips lifts, his eyes glinting with affection. “Always,” he mutters. And he kisses me.