"Charlotte. Charlotte, wake up."
She felt a pinch of pressure at her shoulder. A soft caress across her cheek.
"Can you hear me, Charlotte? There isn't much time."
She heard herself groan, felt the weight of humanity return to her limbs, but her eyes refused to open. Had they been sealed by some sort of spell or did they simply prefer a darkness of their own making over one that'd been forced upon them?
Maybe it was the dreams she'd had, sprinkled with remnants of her former life and loved ones she wasn't ready to give up.
A few mumbled curses and a jolt to the chest and Charlotte sat up, gasping. It took a few seconds to adjust to her surroundings. Align herself with her present reality. She was not in her sister's room at their parents' palace. Nor was she in her client's apartment having breakfast with Killian. She was not in a sunlit garden, rejecting the man she loved. She wasn't in an enchanted forest, wishing away all the mistakes she'd made. She was in a facility, gray and cold, seated on a metal slab like a reanimated corpse, massaging her chest as she looked to the one who'd brought her back.
"Charlotte, thank the gods—I wasn't sure I'd be able to get you out." Noah smiled and reached forward to touch her face.
Charlotte slapped his hand away. "Out of what? Where am I? What did you do to me?"
"I didn't do anything." Noah frowned. If he expected her to take pity on his wounded expression, he was about to be sorely disappointed. "The council—well, the Director put you into a deep sleep so she could extract answers from your unconscious mind."
Charlotte didn't know if it was this statement, spoken in the same manner as one might describe an everyday inconvenience, like rain on the first day of a long journey, or if it was whatever magic-induced sleep she'd been wrenched out of, but she was going to be sick.
There was a tray, the same metal as the slab beneath her, that was home to silver instruments. Some sharpened to narrow points, others flat and round. All of them used as tools of extraction. There were potion bottles as well, fashioned from clear glass, with printed text too fine for Charlotte to make out. Needles and restraints and cuts of square cloth.
"What answers?" She asked, if only to distract herself from more unsettling questions. "I thought you told them everything."
"About your heart, Charlotte. They want to know what you did to it."
She ran her fingertips in slow circles across the left of her chest, where it felt like she'd been ripped open and sewn back together, but the skin was unbroken. "You mean the heart you stole?"
Noah rolled his eyes and it took every ounce of strength Charlotte possessed—which in her current state, wasn't much—not to punch him in the face. "Relax, it's back where it belongs. They figured if you were asleep, your guard would be down, but you kept fighting. No matter what memory they twisted, you were aware of the slightest change. I'm not sure they'd ever met with such resistance before."
"No," said Charlotte.
"No?"
"No. They weren't in my mind. You were. I saw you."
Noah averted his eyes, ran his hand along the base of his neck. "See what I mean? It's uncanny."
She felt the bile rise in her throat. Not only had he taken her heart—her heart—and given it to the Director, he'd broken into her mind. Trespassed across her memories.
What else had he seen? What else had he shown the council?
"How did you do it, Charlotte?"
"Do what?"
"It's just us. You can say."
Charlotte dangled her legs over the side of the metal table as she felt parts of her body come back to life. Were her limbs strong enough to carry her to the only door in that sterile room? If she made a run for it, how far might she get before they succumbed to fatigue? "I don't know what you're talking about."
"She couldn't crush it."
Shock tore her thoughts from escape, if only momentarily, and she studied Noah's face for signs of deception. She found none.
"Your heart," he said. "She couldn't figure out what spell you'd cast on it that it was able to withstand her magic. So what was it?"
Charlotte was reeling. She hadn't died. Hadn't been sent to some tortured afterlife where everything was off, but only slightly. She hadn't been pulled back from the cusp of some proverbial void. Her heart hadn't been crushed to dust like the others she'd seen. Suddenly, the pain in her chest made sense. The jolt she'd experienced just before waking must've been from Noah shoving it back in.
She was in possession of an uncrushable heart and a mind that couldn't be supernaturally wiped. And, by the fire rippling under the surface of her skin, drawing nearer the tips of her fingers, magic they hadn't thought to take back. Would it sustain her long enough to break free of that place?
She was in the midst of remembering how she'd tried for months to find a way out, and had failed miserably when she felt the brush of Noah's fingers on her cheek. She looked up to see him wearing a familiar expression. Sweet. Affectionate.
"You're quite something, you know that?" He said it reverently, as though he were beholding a masterpiece. Charlotte might've fallen for that look once upon too recent a time, but she was not the same person he'd taken advantage of. She was not the same naïve girl who'd fallen for his lies. It may have been magically done, but something inside her had been irrevocably altered. And there was no going back.
Noah gasped, eyes wide, as he looked down at his chest, where Charlotte's hand now gripped his heart. She gave it a gentle squeeze and relished the horrified sound that escaped him, gloried in the power the position gave her. She couldn't deny the part of her that was tempted to close her fist and watch him crumble. A lifeless heap of flesh where the semblance of a man once had stood.
Instead, she pulled him forward to whisper in his ear, "Touch me again and I'll turn it to ash," then released him. He stumbled back with a hand to his heart, rubbing, as Charlotte had done, with a look of stunned relief on his face. "Now tell me how to get the hell out of here."
"Where will you go?" His voice was weak and shaky as it forced the words out. "Back to your quarters as though nothing's happened? You really think the Director will let you be a guide after this?"
"Out of the facility, Noah Or do you even know?"
He looked down at his feet for a minute. Charlotte counted the seconds. She couldn't stand to wait any longer—how soon before the Director came back from wherever it was the Director so often disappeared to and found Charlotte not only awake but aware of everything that'd been done to her? Full of outrage and vengeance and a newfound will to survive just to spite her.
"I didn't," said Noah, and Charlotte released her hold on the edge of the table. She hadn't realized how tight her grip had become until his voice cut through her thoughts. "Until you showed me."
"How could I have showed you something I don't know?"
Noah's forming response was interrupted by the sound of a nearby door opening and then closing. Then another. Followed by the sound of authoritative steps.
"Lie back down," Noah commanded Charlotte. He moved to make her before something flashed in his eyes.
Touch me again …
"No."
He looked over his shoulder and back again, losing the battle with his own panic. "Charlotte, please—if they find out I woke you—"
"Not until you tell me where the exit is."
"So you can what? Escape? Run for the rest of your life? Do you really think they won't find you?"
"They haven't found Alistair."
With each echo of advancing steps, a fresh bead of sweat collected on Noah's forehead. "They'll kill you," he said.
"And what did you think would happen when the Director crushed my heart?"
"I didn't know she would do that. I didn't think…" he shook his head as his words trailed off.
"Did you think she wanted it for a paperweight?"
"I don't know—I thought…I thought she only wanted to control you. Make you more compliant."
Charlotte glared at him. "I think I'd rather be dead."
"Don't say that."
His earnestness might've made Charlotte laugh if she weren't so disgusted. How had she not seen it before? How afraid he was. How cowardly. Quivering at the idea of being caught.
Some small voice in the back of Charlotte's mind called her a hypocrite. Had she not been terrified of that very thing? To the degree that she'd gotten sick in a room not far from Noah's? The idea that the council, the Director most especially, would find out what she'd done was once the most frightening thing she could've imagined, second only to the fear of never seeing her sister again. Never undoing her mistake.
She couldn't say for sure what it was that'd changed. That'd awakened a sense of reckless determination unlike any she'd felt before. Suddenly, and perhaps foolishly, she was unafraid. Of the council and its laws. Of the Director.
Something about being taken to the brink of death and not dying had revived her. She'd thought all was lost. But now she'd been given the second chance her wish was meant to have been. And she wasn't about to waste it.
"Tell me."
Noah hesitated.
"I'll make it look like you resisted."
He looked at the door then back at Charlotte and said, "I'm sorry."
He was on her in a flash, pinning her down. The cold metal nipped at her bare shoulders. She wrestled against his hold, clawed at the hand closing like a vise around her neck. She almost didn't see the syringe he carried in the other.
"I'm sorry, Charlotte. I can't let you leave. You don't know what they'd do to you if they ever found you again."
"Noah…" she choked out between short breaths. "Please." Her lids grew heavy, her arms so weak she let them collapse. "I thought…you…loved me."
"I do, Charlotte. Can't you see? That's why I have to do this." Something small and cold tapped her arm, but the needle didn't break the skin. Yet. "Remember this when you go to sleep. Just tell us what you did and everything will be okay." He released a shaky breath and braced himself. "We'll be okay."
The edges of the world started to blur, and Charlotte knew it would get dark again soon. She fought for every bit of air she took in and willed her body to work. Willed strength into her every fiber. She wouldn't go back to the place where they could manipulate her. Twist her memories to suit their experiment. They hadn't been easy to live through, but they were hers. Her life. Her family. Her mistakes.
"There…is no…we."
She could never quite say for certain what happened next. Only that she put every ounce of resolve she had into one thought, and that some force inside brought it to fruition. Like making a wish and seeing it granted. Perhaps it was the same force that'd kept her heart from being crushed, even by an entity as powerful as the Director. Maybe she'd finally tapped into the deepest fathoms of magic the council had so benevolently bestowed. Maybe it was sheer stubbornness. Her mother always said Charlotte had it in spades.
Maybe she was simply tired of losing.
But one minute Noah was towering over her, intent to sentence her to whatever torment the Director had in store. And the next, he was on the floor, prostrate, hand extended toward the syringe that'd skittered just out of reach.
Charlotte caught her breath, each shuddering one punctuated by a cough as she massaged the soreness from her neck. She jumped down from the table and stepped over Noah, took up the syringe and jabbed it into his arm. His body went immediately still.
"Pleasant dreams," she said into his ear.
She turned to leave when she saw them. Impressions in the metal slab. She took a step nearer and traced the shapes with her fingers. Two separate marks, hips-width apart, rounded edges.
Palmprints.
She heard the door open and close but didn't move. Didn't start. She knew who it was without looking. And she knew there would be no quick, easy escape.