by Amy Ewing
The rifles go off almost in unison, filling the room with sharp pops.
You can do this, Lucien whispers in my ear. I believe in you.
I feel every single bullet slicing through the air in this room and I sweep them upward, circling them around the ceiling like a swarm of flies.
Hazel slams her foot down on the Duchess’s instep, causing the Duchess to let out a strangled howl and release her. The dagger falls off the dais.
I raise my hands. The Regimentals are all staring at the bullets in a daze of wonder and confusion. Slicing my hands through the air, I send the bullets flying back toward their owners, dropping the Regimentals one by one. One I send through the chain binding my sister to the Duchess—it snaps in two.
I sense, rather than see, the ugly Regimental fire at me. I hear Ash cry out, and then there’s a crunch behind me, and I send the bullet shooting away from me, not caring where it lands, as Hazel plummets into my arms.
“You’re safe now,” I say as she sobs against my shoulder. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
“NO!” The scream that issues from the Duchess’s throat is wild, guttural, like the cry of a dying animal. And I see why—the last bullet I sent astray went right through the Exetor’s chest.
She gathers him up in her arms, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Onyx, no, no, please . . .”
Blood trickles from his mouth. “Pearl,” he says, reaching up to touch her cheek. Then his hand falls, limp and lifeless, and his head rolls to one side. The Duchess falls over him, clutching his body. Then her head whips up.
“I will kill you slowly for this,” she says. She lays the Exetor gently on the floor and rises to face me. I push Hazel behind my back and prepare to join with Earth, to open up the ground beneath her feet. “Do you understand me? I will ki—”
Then she gasps, her back arching. A horrible, choking sound comes out of her throat. Red begins to seep through her blue dress, staining it, changing its color like an Augury.
Carnelian stands behind her. In one swift movement, she pulls the dagger out of the Duchess’s back and holds it up triumphantly. She must have picked it up when the Duchess dropped it.
“You’re such a disappointment, Carnelian,” Carnelian hisses in a mockery of the Duchess’s voice, stabbing the dagger into her back again. “No one cares what you have to say, Carnelian.” The dagger hits its mark for a third time. “No one loves you, no one loves you . . .” She stabs the Duchess again and again and I can only watch, stunned and horrified.
The Duchess falls to the floor beside the Exetor. Carnelian looks like she’s about to keep stabbing her, when Ash rushes over. He holds her wrist gently. Carnelian is shaking.
“It’s all right,” he murmurs. “You can let it go now. She’s gone. It’s all right.”
She blinks and looks at him. “She . . . she was so . . . I had to . . .”
“I know,” he says. The dagger clatters to the floor. She falls into him, sobbing, and he holds her tight. Our eyes meet over the crown of her head. The scene does not make me jealous as it once would.
Hazel is gripping my arm and I turn to face her.
“Let’s get this stuff off of you,” I say. Raven helps me with the leash and I rip the veil off her face. Garnet has gone over to help Cora. Hazel steps out of her high heels so she is her normal height again and together we unstrap the fake belly from over her stomach. She kicks it away viciously.
“Is it over?” she asks.
“It’s over,” I say. She collapses into me and we hold each other tight.
“All those things you did,” she says, pulling away to look up at me. “With the wind and the bullets and . . .” She gazes around the room, dazed. “You told me you could do things but . . .”
“You can do those things, too,” I say.
Hazel blinks. “I can?”
I smile. “This is Raven,” I say. “She’s my best friend. She can show you, if you want.”
“You want me to take her to the cliff now?” Raven asks.
“What?” Hazel asks.
“Maybe not right this second,” I say. “Maybe it’s too soon. Hazel needs to rest. She—”
“I’ve been doing nothing but rest for months,” Hazel says, stepping back and crossing her arms over her chest. “Show me whatever it is. I can handle it.”
My chest swells with pride. “I know you can,” I say. “Come on.”
We leave the throne room and exit out into a garden filled with butterflies and rosebushes. The sun is molten gold in a perfect blue sky. I feel an overwhelming sense of exuberance. We did it.
Raven grips my hand as I take Hazel’s.
“What are we doing?” she asks.
“We’re going to show you who you really are,” I say. I’ve said it so many times before, at Southgate, Westgate, at all the holding facilities. I’ve given girls something to believe in, showed them what they were capable of.
But it’s never meant as much to me as it does now.
The cliff is perfect when we arrive.
The sky mirrors our sky, cloudless and bright blue. The air is warm and bees buzz lazily around the monument. The trees are lush and green, and the gentle roar of the ocean is soothing below. How I long to see the true ocean.
I turn to my sister. She stares around, captivated by the beauty and wonder of this place. Her violet eyes are filled with awe.
I sigh.
Change her back, I whisper silently to this space, to my ancestors who linger just beyond, in a place between living and dead. Please.
Change her back, Raven whispers beside me. Our pleas drift into the air and swirl around the silvery blue monument and it’s as if I can hear a hundred voices taking up the cry.
Change her back, change her back . . .
Hazel has run to the edge of the cliff, gazing out across the ocean. Suddenly, she grabs her face, dropping to her knees. I start to run toward her but Raven stops me, keeping a tight grip on my hand. Hazel rocks back and forth for a few moments, then goes still.
When she turns back to me, my heart leaps to my throat, and if I could make a sound, cry out in this place, I would.
The magic of this cliff has worked. The Paladin have returned her to who she once was. Whatever the doctor did was no match for the power that exists here.
Hazel’s face is the one I remember, the one I grew up with. Her eyes are back to their original color, her nose and mouth and cheeks all the same as they used to be. She stares the same wide-eyed stare I’ve seen on the faces of so many girls now. Raven and I join her at the edge of the cliff. We look out at the ocean, letting the salty tang fill our nostrils, and I feel a sense of wonder, of curiosity. I feel as if I am a very small part of something so large, it cannot be contained in one island, one city.
I wonder what is out there.
Me too, Raven thinks. Want to find out?
Yes, I think back. But there is something I have to do first.
Twenty-Eight
WHEN WE RETURN FROM THE CLIFF, WE FIND THAT Hazel’s flowers are white, like mine were.
She bends down and they grow taller, reaching toward her fingertips, their cheery faces brushing her skin before withering to die, even as new ones grow to take their place.
“What do you feel?” I ask, wondering which elements she can connect with.
“Everything,” she whispers. “I can feel the grass growing and hear the wind whispering and there’s something shimmery and flowy, like . . . like water.”
I clasp her shoulders in my hands. “Stay out here for a little while. Everything is going to be different from now on. Enjoy this moment. It’s the beginning of your new life.”
In so many ways, I think. It’s a new city. It’s a new world.
I don’t want to leave my sister but there’s something I have to do. Or, more accurately, a place I need to visit.
I turn to Raven, but she’s a step ahead of me. The benefit of having a best friend who can sometimes read your thoughts.
“Garnet and I will stay with her,” she says. “Go.”
I wonder if she knows where I’m going, or just that I need to go. Either way, I smile and embrace her, squeezing her tight. “We did it,” I whisper.
“We did,” she whispers back. Hazel has sunk down to the grass and is staring at a rosebush with a look of wonder on her face. A bud blossoms suddenly, a swirl of color unfolding as its petals grow. I leave her to the awe of nature and head inside.
Garnet and Cora have moved the Duchess’s and Exetor’s bodies aside and are stacking the rifles up in a pile in the center of the room. Carnelian sits on the edge of the dais beside Ash, still looking shell-shocked.
Ash stands as I enter.
I sway a little on my feet, suddenly overwhelmingly tired. But this day isn’t over yet.
“Hazel?” he says, coming over to grip my elbow.
“She’s fine.” I keep my eyes on his, not wanting to look at the bodies on the floor. “I have to . . . I have to go someplace. In this palace. A secret place. I have to . . .”
I don’t know what I have to do. All I know is that I want to go back to Lucien’s workshop. I don’t need to destroy it anymore, now that the Society has won. But I want to see that there is still some piece of him left in this world.
Ash’s arm snakes around my waist, as his lips press against my temple.
“Wherever you need to go,” he says. “I’ll be with you.”
We leave the throne room and walk back down the empty halls to the front doors, hand in hand. I take a right and am about to lead him to the antechamber when I stop.
“I want you to see,” I say to him, the guilt surging up in a hot wave inside my chest. “I want you to see the awful thing I did.”
I open the door to the room of mirrors. Ash gasps and steps inside, his face alight with astonishment, fractured in the broken mirrors. Some have been removed so there are blank spaces, as if servants stopped cleaning up halfway through. But there are still plenty of keys lining these walls.
“You did this?” he asks.
“The night before the Auction. There was a royal dinner and I came with Carnelian. I was . . . I was mad, frustrated, ready for this to be over. I didn’t think anyone would see it. There are hundreds of rooms in this palace. I thought I was being so clever.”
My throat swells up and I stop talking. I wasn’t being clever. I was being foolish and Lucien lost his life because of it.
Ash looks at me as though he can read my thoughts, my guilt printed clearly on my face. “So what should your punishment be?”
“I don’t know,” I murmur. I stare at myself in an oval mirror. One of my eyes is fractured, my mouth a diagonal slash.
Ash tucks a stray lock of hair behind my ear and cups my face in his hands. “Do you really think Lucien would want you punished for this? Don’t you think he’d be proud? You made his mark on the place where he was enslaved for most of his life.”
“I killed him,” I croak.
“No,” Ash says firmly. “The royalty killed him.” I can see he knows I don’t believe him. “You made a choice, Violet, one that had consequences. Like saving me. Like saving Raven. Not all choices result in what we want, or even what we expect. But what you’ve done, what Lucien has done, what me and Raven and Garnet and everyone at the White Rose and everyone in the Society has been trying to do, is give everybody, no matter their station or their status, a chance at making choices for themselves. Some things are bigger than just one person.” He enfolds me in his arms and whispers into my ear. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. To lose him. To feel pain. And that’s okay. Just . . . don’t hate yourself for it.”
A fat tears drips down my cheek and bleeds into the fabric of his shirt.
“Come with me,” I whisper.
I open the picture of the dog in the antechamber and climb through the hole to the staircase. Ash doesn’t ask any questions, he just follows after me, and we climb the stairs. Lucien has left markings, as he said, white Xs that tell me where to turn and which halls to take. After what feels like an hour, we are standing outside the door to his room.
I open it with trembling hands. Lucien’s bedroom is a mess. This must have been where he was when he was arrested. Blankets and clothes are scattered about and the dresser has been knocked over. But the closet is untouched, hiding the workshop behind it.
It’s only a few feet away, but it may as well be a mile. It may as well be on another planet.
My legs have turned to stone and melted into the floor. I can’t move. I can barely breathe.
Ash has no idea what this place is, what it could mean, and yet he threads his fingers through mine, not hesitating to stand by my side. And in that moment, I know that while I may have lost Lucien, the effects he has had, on me, on my life, on my friends and the people I love, will last forever.
Keeping Ash’s hand firmly in my grasp, I take a step forward. Then another. Then I’m walking—no, almost running to the closet. I throw the doors open, push aside the lady-in-waiting gowns, and pull the arcana out of my hair. I press it into the indentation in the door’s center.
It opens with a click. I stand on the threshold, my skin tingling. The lights flicker on inside.
“Violet?” Ash asks again.
“Wait here,” I say. “Please.”
I open the door wide and leave Ash behind, knowing he’ll listen to me, knowing that even if he doesn’t understand why, he trusts that I’m asking him for what I need.
I step into Lucien’s workroom and the memory hits me like a blow to the stomach. The clocks on the wall tick casually, unaware that their owner is never returning. The books, the papers, the beakers . . . all of it is as it was that day Lucien showed this place to me, back when I was Imogen and Coral was still alive.
My gaze lands on the easel in the corner and I let out a tiny cry, somewhere between a gasp and a sob. The picture Lucien was painting, the one that was just the outline of a girl. The one I thought was of Azalea.
It’s me.
Lucien has drawn my face in perfect detail, right down to the little point of my chin. I’m looking slightly to the left, smiling in a way that is at once sweet and mischievous, like perhaps I’m about to do something reckless. My hair tumbles over my shoulders, and my eyes . . . he got their color just right. I see tubes of various shades of purple scattered across his worktable.
I gaze at it, guilt and grief and love warring inside me. The tears are falling thick and fast and I don’t bother to wipe them away. My head spins and my legs weaken, so that the room swirls in my vision and I know I’m about to collapse.
A pair of strong arms grabs me, pulling me upright. Ash’s familiar scent is like its own embrace, but it only makes me cry harder. The weight of this whole day crushes me and I sob until there is nothing left to cry. Ash doesn’t say a word. He just lets me get it out.
Finally, I straighten up, gulping for air. I smile at him blearily and he wipes the tears from my cheeks.
“This place is . . . incredible,” he says. “And so very him.”
I swallow hard. My hands snake down his arms, gripping his wrists. I look around the room one more time. “He told me to destroy it. If we lost. He made me promise.”
“Well,” Ash says. “I’m glad that’s one promise you don’t have to keep.”
The exhaustion hits me again, and suddenly all I want is to be with my sister.
“Let’s go,” I say. But as we turn to leave, my eye lands on something shiny. The copper spring that Lucien was toying with when he talked to me about his wall of clocks, the one he unwound and tossed aside on the table. I pick it up and slip it into my pocket.
Then I take my arcana out of the door, and Ash and I and walk back to join our friends and my family.
Twenty-Nine
WE BURY OUR DEAD THE NEXT DAY.
The Royal Palace has become the new headquarters for the Society of the Black Key. People started filtering in yesterday at sunset—servants, Society
members, friendly Regimentals, Paladin. Sil came with her group after “making neat work of that damned wall,” as she put it. Sienna followed later, and I was so relieved to see her I hugged her tight and she actually hugged me back.
Ochre arrives in the morning with a group of boys around his age, and Hazel and I tackle him, falling to the ground in a mess of hugs and laughter and tears.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the Society?” Hazel asks, punching him in the arm.
“I did!” Ochre protests, holding up his hands to block her. “You didn’t believe me.”
“Wait till you see what I can do,” Hazel brags.
“Is it like what Violet can do with water and stuff?”
“When did you see that?”
“I’ve been part of the Society for ages, Hazel,” he says importantly.
“Stop it, you two,” I say with a wide grin, wrapping my arms around both their shoulders. “I’m just happy we’re all together again.”
There is a meeting that night about what to do with the remaining royals. Many, as Lucien had said, want executions across the board. Others, like Sil, insist the royals should pay with hard labor.
Finally, an agreement is reached. A tribunal will be set up, with representatives from each circle present, and the royalty will be judged for their crimes.
I sit apart from the main crowd, with Ash, Raven, Garnet, Ochre, and Hazel, an idea chewing at the edges of my mind.
I get up and motion to Sil to follow me. She does, without question, and I take her to Lucien’s workshop.
“Well,” she says after several long moments of silence. She shakes her head. “If anyone were to have a place like this, it would be him.”
“I think maybe there are things here that could help the Society. Or the new government, whatever it will be called.” I run my fingers across the prototype of Annabelle’s slate. When I glance up, Sil is looking at me strangely.
“You know,” she says, walking over to the bookshelves and peering at the various titles. “I’ve known Lucien for almost five years. The first day I met him, I blew him off my porch with Air.”
