When I flinch, she laughs. “For almost five hundred years, my power has been locked in your heart. I used to think I could release it by killing you. It took dispatching you four or five times before I realized that wasn’t enough.” She taps her own chest with one finger. “I had to break your heart first.”

“Then you’re out of luck,” I hiss. I take a step backward, reaching subtly behind me in hopes of finding something on the nightstand I can use as a weapon, but my fingers meet with nothing. “My father is dead. My mother is dead. I’ve watched friends starve—my heart’s already broken.”

But Caro is shaking her head impatiently. “No,” she says. “You do not know brokenness. Not until the person you love most in the world dies in your arms.” The smile she gives me now is twisted and terrifying. “Now, if you don’t mind company,” she says as though I have any choice, “there’s someone I think you’ll be happy to see.”

She moves to the door, her stride buoyant, and opens it. Ivan is there in the doorway, along with Roan Gerling, his hands bound.





30




At first, I don’t understand what I’m seeing—Roan pale and wide-eyed, with his shoulders bent awkwardly and his hands tied in front of him. He takes another two steps into the Queen’s suite, Ivan pushing him forward. The traitorous captain is holding a knife, its tip hovering a finger’s width away from the base of Roan’s spine. Ivan keeps his eyes determinedly forward, but Roan sees the Queen’s broken form on the floor, and his mouth drops open.

I want to scream at Roan to run, to fight, but find that I cannot speak—I’m not sure whether it’s Caro’s magic or the fear of her that seals my mouth shut. Caro’s lips curl into a pleased smile. Ivan glances at her, and answers her smile with his own.

How long did it take her, I wonder, to get him under her control? What else has he done for her? Under his smile, in his eyes, I see a glint of fear, though the knife in his hand doesn’t waver. He fears Caro. That frightens me as much as seeing the Queen collapse like a rag doll.

“Thank you for your assistance, Captain,” Caro purrs. “Remember—five minutes.”

Ivan blinks, lingering. Her strange command fills me with a dread I’ve never known.

For an instant, Caro’s face transforms into an expression of pure wrath, her eyes flying wide and her lips peeling back to bare her teeth. “Go,” she snarls, “and leave the knife.” Ivan takes a step back. He glances at Roan briefly, then turns to leave the room. Before the door shuts, Ivan twists around and tosses the blade. It arcs through the air, a flash of silver, then skitters to Caro’s feet. I freeze.

She picks it up and turns to Roan. “On your knees.” Her face is pleasant again, but a current of menace runs below the surface of her voice. Roan obeys, his face utterly afraid, like an animal brought to slaughter. I imagine it’s the same look in my own eyes.

You do not know brokenness. Not until the person you love most in the world dies in your arms.

All at once, I know what Caro’s planning. Forgetting all caution, I dash across the room and throw myself between Roan’s frozen form and Caro. Facing her with my hands up, I have an eerie sense that I’m acting out one of my nightmares.

She laughs.

“You won’t get away with it,” I tell her, trying to keep my voice even. “He’s a Gerling. Practically a prince.”

“What’s a prince to a goddess?” Caro says. “In fact,” she says, turning from me and bending down to the Queen, who’s still crumpled on the floor, “What’s a queen to a goddess?”

Caro reaches out, making a fist in the fabric of the Queen’s gown, and pulls the taller woman upright with unnatural, easy strength.

A terrible rasping sound emits from the Queen’s throat—I hadn’t been sure she was even still alive. Her head rocks back, and dark red blood trickles from one nostril. She opens her eyes and sees Caro.

The Queen lunges, lurching forward off-balance, her hands claws at the end of wildly swinging arms.

Caro is ready. As I watch in horror, she sidesteps the Queen and embraces her from behind, wrapping one arm around the Queen’s waist. With her other hand she plunges her knife into the Queen’s chest—one motion and it’s over—and then shoves the gasping woman toward me.

My own scream fills the room. I stumble back, but there’s nowhere to go. The Queen is on top of me, falling, and I automatically raise my arms to catch her. I snatch a glimpse of her wide, pale eyes, her chest drenched with blood—blood that’s spilling onto me, my face, my hands. My scream sounds separate from me, like it’s coming from someone else. All I can process is the warmth of the blood and the broken weight of the Queen in my arms, and the sight of her pale eyes as the life drains from them. A terrible emptiness spreads through me. All along, she was just a puppet for the real monster.

Somehow I lower her body to the floor and fall back, hitting the ground on my hands and knees and retching. The smell of blood surrounds me, a red haze.

Until the sound of Roan’s cry cuts through it.

I raise my head. Past the body of the Queen, Roan is moving, his chest heaving as he stares at the Queen’s disarranged form. And Caro stands behind him. In one swift motion, she twines one hand in his hair, tipping his head back, and holds her bloodied knife to his throat. I freeze where I’m kneeling over the Queen, afraid that even a blink will provoke her to use it again.

“You’ve made it so easy for me, Jules,” she says. “Everyone’s seen the way Lord Gerling looks at you. No one will doubt my story: you’re a traitor who seduced him. You convinced him to let you into the Queen’s chambers. And then you murdered them both.”

Roan’s eyes dart to me, then helplessly to the side—he can’t turn to look at Caro, not without cutting himself on her blade. What Caro’s saying must make no sense, but he understands the danger he’s in. “Caro, please,” he croaks.

“And you.” Caro presses the knife in slightly, drawing a trickle of Roan’s blood to mix with the Queen’s on the blade. “You beautiful fool. You brought the real Alchemist right to my feet.” My whole body tenses. “You made a mistake coming back here, Jules,” she says, the hint of a laugh in her voice. “If you’d stayed in Crofton, been content to love Roan Gerling from a distance, I might never have found you.”

But I scarcely hear her. My eyes are locked on Roan’s as his frantic gaze shifts between the Queen’s corpse and me. Memories crash over me—memories of sun filtered through the leaves of an oak tree, of breathless fights with wooden swords, of untamed laughter with never a thought of being lesser than. Roan today might be a coward and a fool, but he doesn’t deserve to die like this.

“Please,” Roan says quietly. He swallows, his skin moving against the knife, and blood trickles down onto his collarbone. “Please, Caro, I’ll do anything.”

I cut him off. “I don’t love him.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Roan blink. “And he doesn’t love me.” I stare at Caro, hoping with everything I have that she’ll believe me, see this one truth. Please—