Content Warning: Villain doing very bad things in this chapter. Heroines in definite distress. I'm sorry.

X

Flower bulbs cut to force them to grow.

The words went round and round in Rhosyn's mind as the man bound her to the cold stone.

Could she have run? Could she have escaped rather than hand herself over?

Don't think that.

She wanted to scream, to run, to fight, to beg them not to do this to her. If she let herself believe there'd been another way, her mind really would break. Her whole soul would shatter into fragments.

No, she'd done what had to be done. If she'd run, tired, cold, barefoot in the snow, she wouldn't have gotten far. But, in the time she took, Hastings' men might have killed Mr. Swan (he'd been alive, she told herself. He had to be alive). They'd have killed the housekeeper, the servants, Miss Upright and Bae, just to get to her.

She thought—she believed—Mr. Swan had lived, that they'd all lived. She had to believe that, that the gift she had, even without Hastings' poisons to strengthen it, hadn't completely deserted her. This feeling Rhosyn had that this wasn't all for nothing had to be true.

Then, Dr. Hastings made her drink.

It wasn't the force feeding tube, at least there was that. The funnel was a half-step up from that, meant to force her cooperation (treating her, she thought, as if she were nothing more than a mixing bowl for the doctor to pour ingredients), but not as risky or as painful as the tube forced down her throat.

Then, the doctor made her drink blood, and the darkness entered into her.

It wasn't what he used to give her sight. That just happened when the power touched her. She saw it as a seed, this time, a dark seed planting deep within her, sending out tendrils that slithered through her, racing towards her eyes. Cold roots in winter, she thought as she felt them tangle around her vision. The image of a lake freezing in the cold came to her. Fish slumbering in ice. Water plants, deep in the shadows, preserved in a frozen world. Trapped, kept alive by the cold instead of killed.

Her vision woke further. The stone, the stone cold as a grave beneath her, it smelled of blood and pain and rotting corpses. She heard the screams of the dying and those who could not die—not till every last measure of their pain and suffering had been drawn out.

The manacled woman, she burned like the sun. Across from her, in the cage, was a monster of darkness with a man hidden in its heart. A bright fire burned beside him, shielded by his shadow.

Not the woman. The woman's light was being taken away. Cold light burned on the bright flame's hand. A key, Rhosyn thought. If he only knew it. The only key to open all these doors. Silver turned in blood.

She saw the white blade in the doctor's hand, pulsing with darkness, with death and life. Blood and shadow swirled around him. It had almost eaten him entirely, she thought. But, no. He had fed it his heart willingly, torn each shred out with his own fingers and let the darkness eat from his hand.

It wants to be free, Rhosyn thought.

Soon, in one shape or another, it would be.

The white blade flashed. Rhosyn screamed.

X

Emma had to do something, bad as three on one odds were.

But, the local serial killer told his pet good to get her out of there. He wasn't stupid enough to just march her out of there (sure, why make her life easy?), but his goons were stupid enough not to know some basic tricks about handcuffs. Neal had had thing about stage magicians and escape artists when she met him. He'd loved finding out how the tricks were done. At the time, she'd thought it was the cons and, well, the stuff about locks (really useful in their old profession). Now, she figured it had something to do with having a dad whose hobbies were casting curses and spinning straw into gold. Reading over and over again how magic was just a trick and not real had been like a comforting bedtime story.

One day, not long after Emma had gotten out of jail, she came across a battered copy of Handcuff Secrets Handcuff Secrets by Harry Houdini (the real one, although you had to wonder when you saw that on a cover). She'd bought it and read (and told herself about a thousand times it was for no particular reason and didn't have anything to do with anyone else she'd ever known and she was bored and it just looked interesting, all right?). It hadn't been that useful. They made handcuffs a lot trickier these days.

Or they did in her world.

And some tricks always worked, no matter where you were. Like tightening your wrist muscles to make them as big as possible. That was basic. Back home, it gave you more room to work with. Here, with a couple of other tricks—and hands that weren't too much bigger than her wrists—Emma was actually able to slip the lock and get out of them before her guardian goon even noticed.

If Harry Houdini were alive, she'd write him a letter and tell him he could quote it in his advertising. Too bad he died. During an escape attempt. Involving handcuffs.

Moral: Don't get cocky.

Step one: Handcuffs off.

Step two: SING—solar plexus, instep, nose, and groin. Just because Sandra Bullock used it in a movie didn't make it a bad idea.

Step three (because the guy only looked dazed and Emma had to make sure he was down for the count) was to bring out the wire she's hidden up her sleeve and get it around the guy's neck. She hoped she could pull the wire hard enough without it breaking. Normally, she'd also hope she'd judge things right and just knock goon out without killing him. But, after seeing what Hastings was up to back there, she wasn't sure she cared.

Or the wire would have been step three. The guy had other ideas. He must have a high pain threshold, Emma thought as she found herself knocked down. Most guys couldn't manage a blow like that after the way she'd hit him. She kicked upwards to see how he dealt with two blows in a delicate area. Or she tried to. The human boulder was standing on her skirt.

She really hated these long dresses, Emma thought as he drew a gun on her.

"Stop," he said. His voice was dull and flat, like a kid reading off of a card who didn't really know what the word meant.

Not that Emma cared. There were more important things going on. "Hey," she said. "That's my gun."

The man stared at her, confused. "Dr. Hastings gave it to me," he said in that same, slow voice.

Classic mistake, Emma thought. I went for a direct attack when I should have been going after his vulnerable spot, his brain.

"He took it from me," Emma said. "It's my gun."

The man frowned, trying to work this out. No one, outside of a bad comedy, should be this stupid.

It's not stupidity, Emma thought. It's a spell. She saw the scar along his head. Had he already been brain damaged when he was brought into the hospital? And was Dr. Hastings controlling him with magic?

The guy talked like a little kid. Did he even understand what he was doing? Being pinned down with a gun aimed at you is a bad time to start developing sympathy for the enemy, but Emma suddenly pictured the man standing over her as nothing more than a large child, a child who was being used to help kill and torture people without understanding what he was doing.

Yeah, Dr. Hastings was not making her favorite people's list.

"You've been confused," Emma said, trying to push at whatever spell was on him with her magic—trying to figure out if what she was pushing at him with was her magic and not just a lot of wishful thinking; she had trouble telling the two apart most days—and disrupt the spell. "A lot of orders, a lot of running around. I bet it makes it hard."

"Noise," the man said. "Everything people say. It's noise. Then, the doctor came. Sounds were words again. I have to do what the doctor says or the words will go away."

"I—I think the doctor would say to give me my gun. He'd want you to do the right thing, wouldn't he? It doesn't belong to you. He wouldn't want you to keep it." Which had to be the biggest lie she'd told a child since she hadn't told Henry the truth about Neal (although Neal hadn't told the truth about Neal. Not that it had made that big a difference to Henry when he found out).

It looked like it was actually working. The man started to lower the gun.

Then, Emma felt the spell around him snap. As it broke—maybe because it broke—she saw what the spell did.

Noise, he'd said. The doctor made it so sounds were words.

The spell snapped. Emma saw him shake his head as if he were trying to remember something. He'd forgotten what she'd just said to him. He remembered sound, noise—not words. She could see the argument she'd made—the one he'd actually believed—slipping away. Words didn't mean anything anymore.

He lifted the gun and aimed.

As a water pitcher crashed against his head and he fell down.

He was still standing on Emma's skirt. She only managed to get partly out of the way before he landed on her, pinning her legs.

Wendy Beaton, beaming brightly, stood in front of her. "Hello," she said cheerfully. "I'm here to rescue you." Her smile managed to grow even brighter. "Do you know, I've always wanted to say that to someone?"

Neal stood a bit behind her along with Clara. "Hey, Emma, hope we're not interrupting, but we're on a rescue mission. Or a prison break. You want to sign in?"