Did it matter? Everything was falling away, drying up. The things the Queen couldn’t take would go with the Nameless into darkness, and maybe the space in the world Above would be filled by something else. Someone else.
Another thought rose through layers of smoky sponge. How did she find me?
The mirror, maybe. Or, like any charmer, through blood. Had the wooden man been looking for her too? Had he whispered in the Queen’s ear, she’s alive, I saw her? Had he regretted giving his heart in the Nameless’s stead?
It wasn’t like it mattered now.
“A fine heart. A fiery heart. And he will give it to Me!”
“Give it, give it!”
Behind her, Tor stumbled out of the dark hole. He looked even worse, if that were possible—bruised all over, one of his eyes almost puffed shut. He was in leather, like the wooden man, but it didn’t fit him. The fringe quivered as he moved, his soft glove-shoes scraping, and his black eyes were wide and wild.
A faint faraway anger pressed through the girl’s dry-trickling veins. I thought she would leave Tor alone!
Something inside her dilated. Just as she’d seen the Strep beating on Ellie, she caught a glimpse of Torin struggling against the Queen’s control—and the consequences. He had fought, and fought hard.
And the Nameless was suddenly very sure he hadn’t known the pin and the shawl were the Queen’s poisoned gifts. He had tried to escape, just like she had.
It’s all right, she wanted to tell him. We couldn’t get away. But She can’t take everything. She can’t eat everything.
In his left hand, the glass knife glittered. Wicked-sharp and curving, its twisted hilt patterned on a horn of a creature long extinct before the Age of Iron, a thread of crimson pulsing in its heart.
The Nameless’s anger fluttered away, a bird’s heart. Maybe more was needed to make the Queen leave everyone alone. To make Her happy, to make everyone happy.
I hope it won’t hurt much. Her entire body was numb, and cold. Book. Candle. Nico. The old charm, worn and threadbare, soothed the last remaining ache inside her. At least, once this was over, she wouldn’t have any scars.
The White Queen’s arms dropped. The Biel’y chanted and shuffled, their chorus exhausted, as they gasped through the smoke.
“Now.” Her teeth gritted, Her fingers flexing, the old woman in her motheaten white, her parchment hair falling and unraveling, fixed Tor with a piercing blue gaze. “Cut out the nameless heart. Renew Me.”
Tor stepped forward. He blinked, his jaw working. The mirror beside him held his reflection and hers, and the Queen’s, another shape rippling behind the shrinking old woman. She was fading fast, impatient, Her power recklessly spent to bring Her victim here, to force this new Okhotnik to Her ancient, hungry will. The new shape would be slender and tall and young, heartbreakingly lovely, and the Biel’y would resurge, calling those who wished dark surcease down into the tunnels and dripping darkness.
On the altar, the Nameless stared at her own reflection. Long tangled black hair, her eyes half-lidded, her bruised face slack and peaceful, Tor’s trembling evident even in the mirror.
I thought he wouldn’t be hurt anymore. The thought rose, slow as bubbles in the sticky caramel Marya made every Dead Harvest to dip apples into. Red, crunching, juicy apples, and the nuts she would roll them in too, golden and luscious. The smell of the sugar, and Marya smoothing her hair.
My little sidhe, Marya breathed in her memory, and the girl’s heart gave a leap.
The new Okhotnik’s mouth opened. He cried a word that had lost all meaning, and the Biel’y screamed.
“CAMI!”
The glass knife flashed. It sliced, and there was a shattering of glass and a wail.
The world exploded.
THIRTY-FOUR
LOUD BOOMING NOISES. YELLS. FAMILIAR, SOME OF them—Nico, hoarsely screaming one word over and over, Ruby swearing as if they were in gym class and running the fourmile again, Ellie chanting low and sonorous, Trig’s familiar drill-the-security-team tone sharply slicing the chaos, close it up, take them down, find our girl!
She lay, her eyelids heavy, strangely peaceful. The mirror heaved, great cracks spidering across its surface, Tor stumbling back with a horrified cry.
He had driven the knife straight into the mirror, pinning the Queen’s reflection like a butterfly.
The White Queen screamed again, a dry wall of noise impossible from such a small throat. Runnels of decay crawled through her reflection, each echoed by a streak of darkness on the staggering old woman herself. The small skulls atop the mirrors exploding in puffs of white sighing powder, each a small weeping voice lost in the storm, the other glass shattering over and over as the warcries of enraged Family bravos and the chatter of gunfire swallowed the Queen’s cry.
The White Queen went to her knees, her painted claws grasping at empty air, then swiping a stripe of fire across the girl’s thigh. The drugged body on the altar twitched before the black-haired boy grabbed her, yanking her free of the cracking, heaving stone. The crone hauled herself up, scrabbling across the crusted filthy obscenity as it split, its edges grinding. They fell, girl and boy tangled with each other, rolling down the sharp steps away from the thrashing monster as it broke into shards of bleached bone grinding itself finer and finer into caustic dust.
The Biel’y fought, but they were unarmed and weak, and the death of the brooding hungry goddess who had promised them an end to living’s pain made them witless. It was Ellen Sinder and Ruby de Varre who reached the foot of the dais first, Ruby snarling, her coppery hair full of dark dust, Ellen’s chant fading as the charm-chain looped around her slim fingers tugged sharply downward, indicating it had found what she sought. Potential flashed, and Underneath rumbled.
The Family boys, led by Nico Vultusino and a gaunt fierce Trigger Vane with a heavily bandaged head, pushed forward to the dais, the last of the Biel’y shrieking as they found a different oblivion than the one they were promised. They closed around the girls and the wounded boy, and the last thing the drugged nameless girl heard as she spiraled down into the dark was nothing but a dead collection of syllables, repeated over and over from different throats.
Cami? Cami, wake up! Camille, say something! Get her out of here—Cami, can you hear me?
It is comforting. There are soft beeps and boops as machines monitor respiration and heart rate, a cold weight on her throat. Her pulse is sluggish, murmuring instead of thundering. Slow and sleepy, a healing whisper.
I am. I am.
“What do they say?” Ruby, hushed and subdued.
“The drugs, maybe.” Nico. He sounded awful—hoarse, and flatly furious. As if something had gone wrong but he couldn’t fix it, the dull rage of unwanted helplessness. “We don’t know what they dosed her with. Nobody left to ask, either—the Family’s scouring the city, but they can’t find him. How’s Ellie?”
“Dealing, I guess. Her stepmother’s evil.”
“Well, I tried.” Nico sighed. There was a faint noise—was he scrubbing his hands through his hair?
I am, her heart said, slowly. But she was cold, and she couldn’t move. Who am I?