As Delphine guided him deep into the throngs of people on the other side of the ballroom, the orchestra began playing another waltz.
I waited until Floquart was out of sight, then pulled out my hand and uncurled my fingers.
Genevie snuck back over to me. “What did he say?” she asked.
I inhaled a sharp breath. “I’ll tell you later. We have to act quickly. Delphine isn’t coming with us.” I prayed she could detain Floquart for as long as possible. We needed enough time to meet with Madame Perle.
“How do you know she isn’t?”
I showed Genevie what was in my hand. “Because she gave me a key.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“WAIT, SONYA!” GENEVIE HISSED. SHE CAUGHT MY ARM AND pulled me behind a thick pillar. “Auras are close. Probably guards.”
“How many?” I crouched beside her.
“Two, I think.”
Candles on a brass stand flickered from a draft wending its way through the corridor that led to the king’s apartments. The guards must have been stationed outside his doors.
A distant bell chimed the quarter hour. “Five more minutes,” I whispered, unrolling the small strip of paper in my hand. It was a note Delphine had wrapped around the teeth of the key.
Don’t go inside until twenty minutes after the hour.
We didn’t know why Delphine had warned us to delay. Maybe at that designated time the guards Genevie was sensing would change patrol, and we’d have an opportunity to slip inside.
As we settled into more comfortable positions, Genevie asked, “So you do not think Floquart suspects me?”
I shook my head. “Whatever you felt from his aura must have been directed at me.” I’d filled her in on my unsettling conversation with him during the several minutes it took us to arrive in this wing of the castle proper.
“I am not sure.” Genevie bit down on her lip. “When he looked at me, his aura made my throat squeeze like he was wrapping a chain around my neck.”
A chill branched up my spine as I remembered Valko’s dark possessiveness. “I know that feeling.”
“Do not underestimate him, Sonya. He is more dangerous than you think.” Hesitantly, she touched the end of her flared sleeve. With a quick breath, she ripped it back.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to show you something.” She leaned out from the shadows and into the candlelight and angled her upper arm to me. There, on the pale underside of her flesh, she revealed a rash of angry scratches, some sharp, some ragged. They were old, healed over to some extent, but never faded. In various places, the skin puckered where certain wounds must have been reopened and sliced over again.
I couldn’t remove my shocked gaze. “Floquart did this to you?”
“Can’t you see his mark?”
In the pit of her arm, where it would have hurt most to be nicked by a knife, I found the small, sharp lines of a letter F.
My hand pressed over my nose and mouth. “Oh, Genevie . . .” She’d suffered even more than I’d imagined.
“This was just him toying with me. He has done much worse. If we are caught, Floquart will make sure you pay with your life.”
Footsteps pounded toward us from the corridor. We shrank back behind the pillar. The two guards ran past us, shouting in Esten. My brow wrinkled as I watched them race down the nearest flight of stairs. What was that about?
“We must hurry!” Genevie grabbed my arm.
We sprinted for the king’s chambers. As we approached the doors, Genevie and I halted at the corridor window. A bright orange light drew our gaze—a pair of curtains were on fire in the tower directly across from us. It must have been Delphine’s doing. Perhaps she’d bribed a servant to commit arson. Knowing something of the complex castle layout, I was sure it would take the servants several minutes just to reach the fire.
“Go inside, Sonya.” Genevie nudged me. “I will keep watch here and warn you when the fire is put out.”
Warmth radiated through my chest as I took in her face, framed by undulating amber light. In that moment, I realized I’d come to love Genevie as deeply as I’d loved Pia and Yuliya. I wanted her to have happiness and true freedom. I wanted her friends to have the same. I would do anything to help her gain that peace. “Thank you.” I embraced her. “I won’t fail you.”
She squeezed me back, then gave me a gentle shove. “Go!”
I nodded and spun for the doors. Fit the key in the lock. Turned it over. Placed my hand on the latch.
My heart danced across my rib cage. All my anticipation over the last long weeks culminated. Every nerve was on end.
Madame Perle was finally within reach.
I shut the door behind me, and the abundant coral-red silk of my gown swished at my ankles. I could barely see into the darkened room, but it must have been vast from the way my footsteps echoed off the walls and ceiling. Moonlight bled through the seams and edges of the curtains at the windows, and my eyes adjusted to the dimness just in time to prevent me from colliding into a small table.
Turning around, I spied a four-poster bed with a tall canopy along with other expected furnishings, but not what—or whom—I was looking for. “Hello?” I said, my voice breathy. Why was I being so tentative? I didn’t have time to be skittish. “Hello?” I called again.
“You’re Riaznian,” she said.
I yelped and spun toward the left wall. Another door was there. Open, but not lit from within. A woman faced me. The shape of her trailing dress was all I could make out of her in the darkness. “Madame Perle?”
“What is Genevie doing outside the door?” she asked, continuing to speak my language. “She was one of the few who succeeded in escaping Alaise.” Her voice sounded papery and gnarled with age, but also sharp with authority. My skin prickled in gooseflesh. “Genevie brought me here so I could meet with you and help the other Auraseers,” I replied.
The scrape and soft whooshing of a match strike sounded just before its tiny flame pierced my vision. It cast a faint ring of illumination around Madame Perle as she lit a candle. My heart pounded as she closed the twenty feet between us. Why did all my instincts scream to run? Then I realized—I’m afraid she won’t be able to help me.
We sized each other up. She wore a velvet robe over a linen nightgown. Her hair was unbound and abundantly gray with streaks of brown and blond. Her eyebrows had a strong arch, which made her look severe, but something about her eyes and the many careworn lines of her face reminded me of Sestra Mirna.
“La grande seer?” Madame Perle said, her mouth creased in a deep frown. “Why are you drawn behind a veil?”
Powerful yearning throbbed at the back of my throat. “Can you even feel it? My aura?”
She tilted her head, regarding me intently.
And nodded.
A sob broke from my chest. My legs buckled. I fell to my knees, and my dress bloomed wide. Tears burned down my face.
Up until this moment, I’d feared my aura was lost forever. That somehow I lived while it was dead. But now relief took such fierce hold of me I began to quake.
I have aura.
The sacred breath of energy inside me still existed. The cradle of my emotions. The force that pulsed them from my body.
Madame Perle knelt before me, the light of her candle dancing beneath the bones of her cheeks and brows.
“Make me feel again,” I pleaded. “I can’t help anyone like this. You sense me, but I don’t emit aura to any other Auraseer. I’ve been blind to my awareness since I was shot.”
Lines branched from the corners of her eyes. I couldn’t discern her expression. Pity? Worry? Helplessness? “What did Genevie tell you I can do?” she asked.
“Release my suppressed memories through the emotions that evoke them,” I said in a rush, swiping away the last of my tears. “I was separated from my family as a child, you see. But I don’t remember them. I can’t even recall my parents’ faces. I might have shut away my memories to protect my heart. And
if that’s true, maybe I shut away my abilities in order to guard my aura when I almost died. So Genevie thinks—I think—well, I hope, that is . . .” Heat flooded my cheeks. Was any of this rambling making sense? Relax, Sonya. Breathe. “I hope there’s a connection between the two—that my buried memories and my trapped abilities are stuck in the same place inside me—and when you free one, you will free the other.” I pressed my mouth together and gnawed at the corner of my lip. Saying all this aloud made my postulating and my plan to become whole again suddenly seem ridiculous.
Madame Perle gave a long sigh that rattled through her chest. My muscles bunched. Was she reluctant or overwhelmed? Or was I asking something impossible?
“You can help me . . . can’t you?”
“Remember things, yes. But your Auraseer abilities . . .” She rubbed her fingers over her mouth. “How long do we have until the guards return?”
“Twenty minutes maybe. Thirty, if we’re lucky.”
She set her jaw. “Then we must make haste.”
Relief poured out of me on a heavy breath. I pushed to my feet and helped her up, leading her toward the outer door.
“No.” She pulled back. “We will do this in my room.”
“But this is your chance to escape.”
“I am not running away. I’m an old woman. I would not survive the journey.”
“But—”
“The Auraseers still need me in Alaise. Not all of them are brave enough to leave here.” I stared at her, amazed she would choose to stay. “I am like a mother to them,” she added, her somber voice reflecting the weight of that responsibility.
I finally understood. She was like Sestra Mirna, who wouldn’t abandon the convent while there were girls left to care for, even during wartime. Even if those girls were only Nadia and me. My eyes burned with a surprising rush of gratitude . . . and loss. I wished I’d appreciated the sestra more. Recognized what she’d sacrificed for me. For all of us.
“Come quickly,” Madame Perle said, motioning to her room.
I followed her, and she shut her door behind us. She set her candle on a tea table and lit two sconces on the wall. I joined her on a small divan, and she positioned me so I sat facing her.
“We have only just met,” she said, “but you must place your complete trust in me in order for this to work. There can be no resistance on your part.”
“All right.” I rolled back my shoulders. Resistance was in my nature, but I needed to surrender myself. A difficult task when I didn’t know exactly what she was about to do. “Genevie says you’ll feel my aura so deeply that you’ll fall into a trance.”
“And you will, too.”
My brows shot up. “I will?”
“As long as you don’t resist me. Your trance is necessary for you to recall your memories. All I can do is guide you by relaying how they feel. Your mind must do the rest.”
I rubbed my palms against my skirt, suddenly feeling unprepared.
“You must trust yourself, too, grande voyant. You are capable. I feel your strength. When I speak to you during the trance, you will not hear my words, but you must follow what you feel.”
I had no idea how to do this. “All right.”
“Give me your hand,” she said. I obliged. She clasped it so her fingers stretched over my inner wrist and rested against my beating pulse. She shook my arm back and forth, then pursed her lips. “You are resisting me. You must relax.” I loosened, letting her movements jostle my upper body. Next, with her free hand, she pressed a tender spot behind my shoulder. “Are you ready?”
My gut squirmed. “Yes.”
“Your buried memories may be beautiful or harrowing.” Madame Perle’s gaze trapped me with its intensity, yet her voice exuded calm. “Are you willing to face them?”
The words Sestra Mirna had once lovingly spoken to me rang through my mind: Be careful with your heart, child. But I couldn’t be. Not this time. I only had this one chance with King Léopold’s Auraseer. Surrender, Sonya. My words now. My conviction. “Yes.”
She swiftly pulled my arm. My head rocked forward. “Sleep,” she said.
A great whoosh of darkness swooped over my vision.
Bitterness filled my mouth, and my chest flowered in pain. The blackness around me took form, shadow separating from shadow. Images surfaced, first transparent then opaque. They fanned over each other in rapid succession. The letter F scarred onto flesh. Anton and Delphine dancing in the ballroom. Two Auraseers hanging from nooses. Kira weeping inconsolably.
I wanted to look away. My body jerked. A soothing hand patted my back.
Surrender, surrender, surrender.
The pain clawed deeper inside me, burrowing for my heart. More images unfolded.
Freshly turned earth. A new grave. Sestra Mirna slumping in a chair. Blood on her handkerchief and blood on my dress, a wide bloom across my belly. A crack of gunfire. Valko’s triumphant face. Dasha’s hands in my hands. One hundred violent auras trapped inside her shaking body. The deepest look of hurt in Anton’s eyes. A crystal dagger dragged across Terezia Dyomin’s throat. Nadia’s hood cast back, revealing the burn scars I gave her. My hand on top of Valko’s hand. Driving a blade into an assassin’s chest. Pia’s heart-shaped face, bruised and bleeding. Yuliya, pale and lifeless. The convent on fire.
Shame bled through every space of my body. I tasted salty tears, but didn’t hear myself crying.
The images flickered faster. All I could see now were faces. Each convent girl who hated me. Romska tribespeople. Sestra Mirna. Another woman. Sestra Mirna. The woman again, her eyes hazel. Sestra Mirna. The woman.
Dizziness seized me. Tension pounded through my head. Everything—everyone—came at me too fast. It was too much to take in. Too hard to breathe. To feel. It had to stop.
Stop!
“Shh, Sonya. Relax. Trust yourself.” Madame Perle’s voice. Distant. Tinny. I felt her hand on my back again, a gentle but steadying pressure. “We’ve caught a loop in your emotions. An important memory is trapped here. Now open your mind. What is waiting for you? Would you like to . . . ?” Her words faded and the last image I saw—the image of the woman—appeared again.
She held still, like I’d painted her on canvas. Her hair was tied back in a kerchief, but a long, dark-blond braid spilled out from beneath it and trailed over the front of her shoulder.
My body flashed hot and cold. Air trickled inside me, then out again.
Who was this woman?
Did I want to know?
I had a choice, I realized. My eyelids fluttered. The woman would bring me more pain, that was certain. I could wake up now. End this. But warmth skipped across my chest. Maybe she could offer me something more.
I took a step toward her, and our surroundings transformed. We were in a small house with a tile stove. Herbs dried from the rafters above us. Hazy sunlight filtered in through a window.
As I drew closer, shame and sorrow bled into me. “Oh, Sonya.” The woman cradled my cheek in her hand. “Will you ever understand why I had to let you go?”
It was like staring into a mirror, both of us the same height, though she looked a few years older. Her chin was shorter, her nose thinner. “Mama?” I asked.
I shrank smaller, my hands slight in size as they clutched her apron. I was a child now, gazing up at her, my anguish raw and suffocating. Why did I feel so sad? Papa had told me I was going on a journey with the Romska. We would see the endless Ilvinov Ocean, the grassy plains near Grishina, and the great ice caps of the Bayac Mountains. “Why can’t you come with me?” I asked.
Mama sat on her rocking chair and pulled me into her lap. “I wish I could, dear heart.”
Racking pain wove into my bones and threatened to break them. “Did I do something bad? Is that why Papa is making me leave?”
“Hush, hush. You can’t help what you are.”
I was bad, then. Always losing control. But my brother provoked me. He got me into trouble on purpose. “If I have to go, why does Domi
nik get to stay?”
“Oh, child, don’t you see? Dominik doesn’t have to hide like you do.”
My shoulders drooped. My parents were ashamed of me. I’d always known it. I never got to go with Papa to the crowded market or with Mama to do her washing at the well with the other village women. My brother said I was spoiled, guarded like a princess. But Dominik had friends. He could go wherever he pleased.
I tucked closer against my mother, anchored in her arms. She smelled like sage and apples from our kitchen. “Maybe after I’m gone for a while, I can come back,” I said hopefully.
She crushed me tighter against her chest. Tears slipped down the bridge of my nose. None of this made sense, except one truth: it was my fault I had to leave. “No,” she replied. “You must never come back. Wicked people will try to put you in a cage.”
What did that matter? I already lived in a cage. “Then I’ll break free and find you.”
My mother’s sigh split down me like a jagged knife. “My stubborn little girl. What can I say to make you mind your mama?” She smoothed my hair. “If you ever come back here, Papa and I will suffer, too. The wicked people will kill us.”
“What?” I gasped, drawing away to stare at her large eyes.
“You wouldn’t want that, would you, dear heart?”
“Of course not. Don’t talk about such things.” I buried my head against her chest.
She patted my back and rocked me back and forth. “Then forget me, Sonya. Forget my love, if it saves you.”
“How can I?”
“What more could I have done for you? How was it possible to teach you anything?”
I turned around, frowning at my mother’s stern and altered voice. But she was gone. The house, too. I stood in the convent infirmary, looking into Sestra Mirna’s weary eyes. Lines of concern bridged between her brows. Her remorse made my bones ache. The scent of acrid ashes filled my nostrils. The lingering smell of the convent fire.
“I prayed for you, Sonya, after you left the convent and were taken to the palace,” she said, though now I was lying in the infirmary and the light coming from the windows was no longer bleary with winter and smoke. My gut throbbed from my gunshot wound. The stitches under my bandages pulled tight. “I prayed for you, even after I buried what was left of your sister Auraseers. You were obstinate and wild, but I never gave up hope that you might find yourself.”
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