At each room, Rose watched her and waited, but she felt no pain that matched what was being done. No pain beyond a growing misery as she looked at what the people whom she’d thought were her friends had done to other children.
And then, as she put her hand on the knob of the next door, she heard a familiar voice shout, “Jaenelle!”
She rushed into the room, then froze at the sight of a girl with golden hair and blue eyes tied to a bed and a man with maimed hands . . .
Surreal appeared out of the wall and whirled to face the man who kept thrusting into the girl’s too-still body. She grabbed the man’s hair in one hand and slashed a knife across his throat—and the walls turned red.
With her teeth bared, Surreal drove a knife into his heart, lifting him off the bed. Lifting him off the girl. As she pulled out her knife and raised her hand for the final strike, another Rose, more transparent than the one standing beside Jaenelle Saetien, moaned and Surreal glanced at the bed and the blood. So much blood. Too much blood.
“Jaenelle,” Surreal said.
Jaenelle Saetien’s stomach rolled as she watched Surreal, who looked more like one of her older schoolmates than her mother, cut the cords that bound the girl to the bed, wrap that body in the bloody sheet, and pass through the wall, shouting for Daemon Sadi.
Jaenelle Saetien backed out of the room and slumped to the floor.
Rose closed the door and crouched beside her. “Not much farther to go.”
She pushed her hair away from her tear-dampened face and climbed to her feet. Walking to the end of the corridor, she opened the next door.
Surreal pushed out of the chair by the bed when Lucivar walked into Jaenelle Saetien’s bedroom.
“Sadi?” she asked.
Lucivar didn’t reply, just opened his arms and wrapped them around her when she fell against him. She couldn’t cry anymore. Maybe when this was over. Maybe when she knew . . . What?
“How long can she survive this way?” she asked.
“Slow executions usually take three days,” he replied. When she jerked back to look at his face, he added, “I don’t expect this to take longer.”
“She didn’t do . . .” She bit back the rest of the words. Most likely every parent of a girl who had belonged to the coven of malice was saying the same thing. Their daughter hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Didn’t she? From where I’m standing, she did enough to deserve some punishment.”
She pushed away from him. She should have realized his anger was still close to the surface and might never go away. “Why are you here?”
“To help you.”
“Jaenelle Saetien’s father should be here. He’s the one who got her into this by letting her go to that school.” She hurt, and she needed to blame someone for the pain—and right now she couldn’t blame the girl lying in bed.
“She got herself into this, Surreal. She made the choice to be one of Delora’s followers.”
“How could she know what that bitch could do?” Surreal cried. “We kept her safe, Lucivar. We kept her protected and safe so she wouldn’t end up on some bed, torn and bloody and broken!”
“Yeah,” Lucivar said. “You did keep her safe. Maybe she needed some scars in order to appreciate that being safe was a gift not everyone receives.”
Surreal raked her fingers through her hair. “Witch sent her to Briarwood.”
He said nothing.
“And her father—”
“Needed help to find a way to call in the debts without having to kill his daughter.”
“But . . . Briarwood.”
“I know what was there. I listened to enough of Jaenelle’s nightmares over the years.”
As she’d sat here hour after hour, watching an empty shell—guarding an empty shell—a question had formed. Now she faced the Demon Prince and asked, “If Witch, your Queen, told you to walk away from your wife and children to be with her and only her, would you do it?”
“She never asked that of the men who served her when she walked among the living. She wouldn’t ask it now,” he replied.
“But if she did?”
“I would miss Marian and the children every day for the rest of my life and beyond, but if that was my Queen’s command, I would walk away and not look back.”
So. It wasn’t just Daemon’s loyalty to Witch that ran that deep.
“What did you expect?” Lucivar asked. “We waited seventeen hundred years for her. We actively searched for her for seven hundred years because Tersa told us she was coming. We fought to stay alive in order to find her. She was, and is, everything that matters. And she always will be. And one reason why that’s true is she will never ask for a sacrifice from us if she can pay the price herself.” He smiled sadly. “You loved her as friend and sister, and you served the Queen. But you weren’t one of the dreamers, Surreal. You weren’t one of the yearning, desperate hearts that shaped dreams into flesh. I was one of them. So was Saetan. So was Daemon. She is vital to his survival. And his being with her is vital to the survival of the rest of us.”
She knew that. Had known it for decades, centuries. Witch was the only one who could control the Sadist. Without her . . .
“He destroyed the school,” Lucivar said. “There’s nothing left. And he executed the administrator and several senior instructors. The Queens are frozen in fear, waiting for his next move.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. But you don’t want the Sadist here. Not now.”
Not ever. She wouldn’t be that lucky. Everything had a price.
She looked at Jaenelle Saetien lying so still and frowned as Lucivar’s words settled into her mind. “What sort of price is Witch paying in order to help Daemon save some part of Jaenelle Saetien?”
“Well,” Lucivar said, “that’s an interesting question, isn’t it?”
FORTY-SIX
Jaenelle Saetien pressed a fist to her chest and struggled to breathe as excruciating pain ripped through her, making it impossible to move, impossible to think, impossible to feel anything except that perfectly aimed blow. Then the pain faded, leaving a cold, empty spot in her chest where something had been scooped out. Had died.
“Well done!” Rose said, clapping. “Fatal blow to the heart. How does it feel to make your first kill?”
Jaenelle Saetien stared at this frozen image of Surreal, standing there with a deep, jagged wound in her chest, exposing everything beneath. And the handle of a knife sticking out of her heart.
“I didn’t do that.” She rubbed her chest, feeling the echo of pain.
“‘I didn’t, I didn’t,’” Rose mocked. “That’s how you justify everything, isn’t it? Everyone kills her mother, so why shouldn’t you?”
“I didn’t do that!” she shouted. “Surreal SaDiablo is still alive!”
Rose nodded. “Surreal is. But Mother . . .” She looked at the knife’s bone handle and then at the oddly shaped blade—and pointed. “The blade is made from the words ‘not my mother’ and it sliced right through the piece of Surreal’s heart that’s labeled mother. There’s a piece labeled wife, friend, sister, protector. No damage to those bits. But mother?” She shook her head. “You killed that part of her so well, there’s nothing left. Must have hurt when you said those words.”