ANMELDENEMBER’S POV“And none of that matters if you go back in there, set the room on fucking fire, pass out, bleed from your eye again, or, I don’t know, die.”“I am not planning to die.”“Nobody ever plans it, Ember. That is why death remains such an inconvenience.”“I’m serious.”“So am I.”I grab her arm and make her stop; this is the first thing all morning that feels like something I can actually do, instead of another question I have to carry around until it eats me alive.“We cannot save Marjorie with what I saw in Hale’s room. Hale looking old proves nothing. For all the Council knows, she has some horrible illness, and Hale is such a good sweet-talker she could probably stand beside seven bodies and convince everyone she was there to arrange the flowers. The journal proves nothing if nobody else can read it. I can tell Knox every word, and I know he’ll believe me, but the Council doesn’t have to.” I tighten my hand around Queenie’s arm. “To them, I’m the King’s new lover trying to
EMBER’S POVQueenie slows beside me. “What does that even mean?”“That’s the question, isn’t it? What failed?” I rub at my forehead. “What could have failed because Celeste died? Why did her death affect anything Hale was doing? And she dies on the night of Greenvale, and Greenvale sits right there in Hale’s journal, too. What the hell could have been that important to Hale all those years ago? Did she know something about that night? About Knox? About the sixty-three? Or did whatever this was only start mattering after Celeste died?”Queenie takes a few more steps, then shakes her head.“But none of that proves Celeste was part of Hale’s big scheme. She could have been another victim. Hale could have been using her, studying something about her, doing something around her without Celeste knowing a damn thing.”“I know, and I hate that you’re right.” The frustration under my skin is getting worse. “Because I feel like I’m close to something. So close I can almost taste the foul thing,
EMBER’S POVQueenie’s smile is gone now. She walks beside me in silence for a few seconds, rubbing the sore spot at the back of her head again, but this time she looks distracted rather than annoyed.“Maybe because there is nothing a doctor can do. If she really has to take something from other people to keep herself functioning, then maybe the maids were the treatment.” Her mouth tightens. “She can heal everybody else because everybody else gets sick in ways she understands. Whatever is happening to her might be something completely different.”I look at her, and the unease that has been crawling under my skin suddenly sharpens.“Something that isn’t natural.”Queenie slows with me.For a second, neither of us says anything, because saying it aloud makes the whole thing worse.Hale has spent years surrounded by herbs, healers, money and every resource Knox could possibly give her, yet somewhere along the way the answer she settled on was seven living women.Queenie’s voice is quieter
EMBER’S POVI can’t breathe.I’m standing in the corridor with my back against the wall, my thumb bleeding and my chest so tight that every breath feels too small.The Caelora bitch.Hale said it so easily. Like the words were already familiar to her. Like she had known exactly what I was long before I ever learned the name myself.My stomach drops.She knows what Caelora is.She knows what I am.And she has known for a very long time.“Ember!”Queenie comes round the corner at a run, white to the lips.“I couldn’t stop her, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t-” She’s got hold of both my arms. “Are you alright? Did she touch you? Ember, are you-”“How did she get past you?”“She ran!” Queenie’s shaking. “The girl said she’d been in with Rayana and it was going fine, and then Rayana started coming round. Hale stood up and told everyone to get out because she needed a minute with her, so they did. About a minute later, she came flying out of that room and took off down the corridor, Ember. I mean,
EMBER’S POVHer voice makes the sight of her even more disturbing. It is still Hale’s usual calm, level voice, except now it is coming from a face that looks decades older than the one I saw downstairs.“Hale—”“What are you doing in my room!” Her eyes drop to my hands, and her whole expression changes. “Put that down!”“What the fuck happened to you?”“Put it down!”She crosses the room so quickly that I barely have time to pull the book back.She tears it out of my hands hard enough to scrape the skin from my thumb, then clutches it against her chest with both arms. By the time she steps away from me, she is breathing hard.“Get out of my room!” she shouts. “Get out! Get out!”“Hale, look at yourself-”“Don’t you dare!”“Look at your hands!”“Get out!”She screams it, and the sound tears straight out of her chest.In weeks, I have never heard Hale raise her voice above that soft, controlled murmur of hers, and now she is standing in front of me shrieking, both arms locked around the
EMBER’S POVQueenie slips inside before I can even turn around.“Ember, you need to be quick—”“Look at this!”“What?”“Look!” I’m pointing at the page with my whole hand flat. “That’s my name! She’s got my name circled, and she’s written special child, and she knows about Caelora, and she’s asking whether her grandmother’s alive, and here, look, this is the tunnels, she’s drawn the service tunnels, all of them, she’s drawn the one where I found-”Queenie is staring at me now, her eyes shifting from the book to my face and back again, her brows pulling together in confusion.“Ember,” she says carefully. “What am I looking at?”“The book!”“It’s blank.”For a second, I can only stare at her.“It’s not blank.”“Ember, it is.” Queenie takes the book from me and turns it toward herself, frowning as she looks over the page. Then she flips to the next one, and the next, her confusion slowly giving way to something much more uneasy. “There’s nothing here. These pages are completely blank.”“







