Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
- Sylvia Plath
...frisch weht der wind der heimat zu mein krähenmädchen
What was he thinking of?
She had done it again.
Kasha had done it again.
One year in every ten
She managed it—
What was that noise?
The wind under the door.
What was that noise now?
Ash, ash—
He poked and stirred.
...gde ty?
Flesh, bone, there was nothing there—
She never knew what he was thinking.
What was the wind doing?
Nothing again nothing.
Think. Think. Think.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
Dry bones can harm no one.
The prince had said
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
...adelaide caro adelaide sei perso
Yegor's dreams were rarely coherent, and dreams about Jaana never were.
This night had been worse than most.
He saw crowned men with jewels for eyes, dark-haired women with gaping wounds on their faces bleeding golden moths into the clear grey air, little girls with snakes wrapped around their waists, their arms, their throats. Silhouettes moved to embrace and lost their heads, crumpling into ash that was pulled skyward by a hiemal wind; pale porcelain figures turned on strings of thin glass, reaching with hands encased in silver; crows tore their way from the mouths of every person dream-Yegor passed, their claws scoring deep crimson lines into lips, their wings pressing against hollow eyes, feathers spilling.
And in the centre of it all, a girl with dark hair drowning, wolf-eyes wide.
He did not believe that arising from such dreams could hardly be called awakening, for Yegor could not deny that he had left a large part of himself stranded in those dreams, among those crows and those lost girls.
So Yegor did not awake, but he did return, and in returning he felt the vulnerability of sleep lift from his eyes and his limbs even as he turned slowly on the futon and glanced lazily over at the desk to find that scarcely an hour had passed. The sun was still low, painting market stalls cluttering the beaches burnt sienna and drowning the horizon in umber tones of dying embers; the stars were still veiled and reluctant, as though waiting for a cue to take the places that had been chosen for them. The lights on the street had flickered into life in anticipation of the coming dark; from the window, Yegor could see that someone was in the kitchen; pale light spilled across the balcony, a shadow moving across it, a strange façade of domesticity. He could not deny that he had grown rather fond of this odd rickety house almost despite himself, in all of its phantasmic hush and cramped secrecy.
But fondness, detached and strained as it was, would have to sit aside. The plan was all. When he and Taja crossed this threshold tomorrow, it would be for the final time – and there would be no looking back. There was no point carelessly stranding bits of yourself here and there when you lived the life of a revolutionary. If Kasha was still about, Yegor would have let her and her matches loose on the verdigris building and all of its strange beauty. If there was one thing Yegor detested, it was the idea of putting down roots.
And yet, even as he rose reluctantly and wandered languorously to the window, the smallest part of Yegor Corbeau, the part that was the least Yegor, the part that was less Corbeau than the rest, wanted to pretend that something so simple as staying was a feasible option – or at least, for a moment, indulge the idea that he might want it to be. Here, lost in the tangled back alleys of a Honduraguan bowery, somewhere girls like Taja and monsters like Yegor could wear masks day and night and not draw the eye. Here, in a little ramshackle house on the edge of the roil and the revels, with a stack of books and a pile of papers and a bundle of notes to busy the mind and the hand, and maybe the rebels could fade just as Cappie did and allow mere boys and girls to step into their worn boots to walk a path and live a life free of bones and smoke and lies.
Warped floorboards creaking underfoot, amber fireflies floating lazily in cliques about the cracked window, laughter rising in muffled bouquets from the street below, the pervasive scent of old parchment and lily-of-the-valley and warm golden light spilling almost carelessly from candles strewn about the cramped space – it could not but remind Yegor of earlier, less revolutionary days, of those long ago hours he had spent in dusty attics and old libraries, of that ancient time before he had known what being a Corbeau meant, before he fully understood the word xisuthros, before he had begun to lay the foundation of the crow's crusade.
Those memories were distant, and they twisted and dissipated like mist grasped in bare fingers even as Yegor's thoughts moved in their direction, but the strange sensation of hiraeth could not be eluded. In the quiet of the dusk, the strangest kind of nostalgia flourished without roots. And yet, Yegor knew it was liminal. It could not, would not, last beyond this single, fleeting moment. Even as he turned towards the clothes he had laid out on the desk, and caught sight of his sinews and his scars in the dark surface of the window, he knew that he would rather tear out his own veins by the handful rather than sway from his path against the false king.
Besides, he thought wryly as he shrugged on his shirt, in whatever sleepy dwam after sleep had aroused this asininity, he had failed to adequately account for the fact that holding onto this moment – holding onto this odd diegesis that had formed within the sparse perimeter of an ersatz haven – would mean maintaining around him all of these wolves and ghosts and liars and killers. Revolutionary bed-fellows typically did not domestic roommates make. Yegor could pull their strings, force their hands, push them down these paths, but once the king was in the ground and the dynasty had fallen, he would be happy to leave them behind and cast forward alone.
Although it occurred to him as he fastened his cuff-links that when he thought alone it was with the silent oxymoronic suffix -with-Taja.
After all, what was a general without his lieutenant?
He cast a critical eye over himself in the mirror and cocked an eyebrow. He was dressed, as he was always dressed, flawlessly, with the formal, decorous mien of a man who intended someday to be king. Old-fashioned black braces over a starched white shirt that had either been tailored or stolen, so expensive the fabric. His cane hung on the back of the chair.
He looked like his brother. He knew he looked like his brother. He looked like a Corbeau.
And secure in this knowledge, Yegor adjusted his collar and went out into the kitchen, where Taja was cutting meat with a mutinous expression on her face. Her pale arms were bare, and bleeding; long scratches ran perpendicular to her veins, given no particular shape, crafted to no particular pattern. Drops of red spackled the tabletop, but Taja's green eyes dared him to say a word about it as she glanced up to catch sight of him in the doorway.
Yegor did not, as it turned out, say a word about it.
"Time to go, Taja, darling," he said instead, turning his head slightly to look at little Charity Martinez, who was sitting on the edge of a wooden chair in the corner of the room with a book open on her lap. Oliver had bought it for her, haggled for it over a market stall groaning with the weight of all sorts of trite trinkets, and he had presented it to Charity without much ceremony before he and Levi had taken to the night. It was an old book, Yegor thought, about playing cards and magic and tyrants. The pages shone with bright colour. Strange of Oliver Tyrell to be sentimental.
Taja's voice was low. "Right now?"
A bad day. She had them, sometimes, though sometimes seemed to be becoming often. Like a veil was being drawn down on the girl Yegor had grown to know and almost like, the impulsive girl who knew the name of every herb they passed on the road, the empathetic archer who had never heard a bad joke she didn't love, the only person who didn't believe making Yegor smile was a lost cause. On days like these, she fell so deep into her memories and her misery that Yegor wondered each time if she would manage to surface again or if she would drown, full-clothed, in unshed tears.
She never drowned. Taja Sweeney was as strong as she was stubborn, and that was very.
It was the first word that had come to his mind the first time he had thought of her, standing in the ruins of the cabin she had shared with her family, and looking at the strewn corpses of her family, who had been abandoned where they lay. Her father, the butcher, her mother, the apothecary, her two little brothers… but not the girl herself, the famed Sweeney daughter, the Rapunzel whose story had reached Yegor's general many miles away, and one of the rebels with Yegor had turned to him and said, "she'll be dead as well" and Yegor had only shook his head and a voice in the back of his mind whispered, she's stronger than that.
He hadn't known then how right he was.
He had realised it quickly enough, of course.
He met Taja's gaze and nodded. "Right now."
It was as close as Yegor could come to an apology.
the air was still around her as night fell about her the cold penetrating deep into her bones but for all she seemed to acknowledge it gaëlle sidonie might have been a statue carved from the most indefectible of marble as she stood as though in uffish thought her teal eyes staring staring staring her thin lips parted as though eternally on the verge of speaking if anyone around her was inclined to notice they might have asked her if she was alright if anyone around her was inclined to know her they might have known the answer was almost always no no no.
(birds all a-song footsteps crunching wind in the grass her own heartbeat heartbeat heart beatheartbeat thump thump thump who would not recognise such a simple sound)
but she was silent as the clouds split to permit the final rays of sunshine to leak into the atmosphere and dye crimson the softly moving grasses and gently rustling leaves of the estate's garden gaëlle made the first movement she had made in perhaps an hour and took a single simple step and then a second and then a third and now she was walking up the long sloping driveway to the collins home her dirty blonde hair lank around her pale face she paused and raised a slender hand and curled her thin fingers to gesture the men and women assembled around her to follow in her wake as though with each step she took on the gravel drive a yellow brick bloomed from the heel of her shoe.
(very soft breaths servants speaking softly the hinge craved oil a grandfather clock lost and plaintive in the bowels of the house tick tick tick tick tick tick tickticktickticktick)
her followers fanned out behind her she hadn't paid much attention to their faces to their features they might have been utterly featureless for all she cared for all she had noticed these followers too were lost in thought much like gaëlle herself though these thoughts in which they were mired were not their own gaëlle knew too well the feeling of having your skull cracked open and seeds planted within it seeds which birthed thorns thorns which choked and strangled any coherent thought or cognizance that threatened to flourish in her mind now that she was walking her eyes moved though to the outsider it would have seemed she found no material thing upon which to fix her gaze her thin lips twitched into a mirthless smile and the blue-green of her eyes seemed to shine a little brighter.
(or was that a heart under the floorboards that ticked such, screaming agony in lieu of justice for the bloody butchery made of it)
and now gaëlle thought she had followed well her steps into the house but now she found herself in the kitchen and could not quite understand how or when she had found her way here did not recall the steps she had taken to this point was utterly unable to recount the faces she had passed and the minds into which she had reached her talons to curl tightly around their hopes and dreams and fears and losses to weave nightmares out of the air imperceptible to all but those they tormented.
(shadows writhed just out of sight in the edges of her eyeline they could have been innocent shapes domesticated rabbits twitching as though in the thralls of torture)
gaëlle's bones still ached her blood still lay ill at ease in her veins she knew that by rights she should have died on that day shackled to the carriage when the wolf of bonita stood over her with a knife in his hand and buried steel in her sternum and drew iron across her throat and watched her and waited for her to die by rights she should have she wondered why she hadn't wouldn't it have made more sense if she had wouldn't she be happier if she had wouldn't it save some many lives if she had.
(footsteps upstairs footsteps in the hall kettle shrieked crockery clattered soft words spoken softly knife on plate knife on glass knife on bone)
the shackles on her wrists were gold and studded with the most beautiful rubies amethysts emeralds sapphire diamonds bright shining jewels she had no name for and oh they made her hands heavy but oh she knew wearing blood was heavier still and it was with that knowledge that she raised her heavy hands here now and wove the air into a tableau of horror painted blood on the walls with the panache of a true artist and tore apart the furnishings with a creative ferocity that made her wonder whether she was recreating a scene she had glimpsed as a child or perhaps in some forgotten dream she couldn't deny she savoured the idea that in creating the illusion of a massacre she could incite her followers into atrocities in the belief of justice.
(apemios collins was a good man a kind man a good father a kind father these days his sort was few and fewer couldn't survive long in this kind of world with that kind of heart)
now the servants of the collins family swarmed forth eyes blank faces blank tongues heavy in their heads fear as chains around their limbs nothing to do nothing to see except the horrors gaëlle crafted right before them various in their shapes creative in their number of teeth and talons now they descended on the collins family before they even had a chance to rise from their dining table now they fixed their hands and began to tear the anger borne of panic was unbearable the violence an indefatigable force apemios collins didn't even have time to call for help although if he had gaëlle knew he would not be able to rouse any help from the servants the guards the other members of his family for they were all lost in trances without hope of surfacing and before he could run they had broken his legs and he fell beneath their hands though to gaëlle's irritation he denied her the pleasure of a scream only set his jaw as the people he trusted and loved tore him to shreds
(someone had lit a fire smoke rose flames crackled floor underfoot blazed stone cracked windows swelled glass burst the grandfather clock kept ticking ticktickticktickticktick)
gaëlle stood over the bodies of the collins family they were she thought barely recognisable as men and women and children now and even as she stood the servants turned on one another leave no evidence leave no evidence leave no evidence she knew the prince calau heir to the dynasty had wanted her to bring soldiers with her men of war but who needed protection from those whose minds were not even their own hadn't she walked straight into this estate and captured every servant and met no resistance met none of the crows where were the crows where were the crows where
were the
crows
(tickticktickticktickti)
and gaëlle understood
the gin had been baited
the trap had been sprung.
oh yegor was a clever one when he wanted to be.
the flames behind gaëlle parted and now the beastly beauty andromeda sprang forward with a spear in her hand and hatred in her eyes.
Cappie and James had stolen these clothes from a man much taller than Oliver himself, and to his irritation the rogue found himself rolling the cuffs of the shirt up three or four times just to allow him to move his hands freely. And yet, despite the irritation, Oliver knew he would look comfortable in another man's clothes. It was business as usual for a liar like him, even if tying the ugly white cravat took him more tries than he was willing to admit. He managed well enough, and a quick glance in the window confirmed that the illusion, if not perfect, was at least complete.
And yet, he was nervous. Was he nervous? There was a cold hand of apprehension tightening around his heart, but Oliver could not call it nervousness. It was excitement, maybe, or anticipation. This was the end-game now. Five years ago, he had come to this country as a naïve young boy, grieving and angry, his entire life packed into a single small trunk and his heart worn on his sleeve. He had promised his sister justice. He did not indeed to break his promise. And yet, Oliver could not deny that a part of him had begun to doubt Yegor in his long days and weeks observing the palace and the Selected girls agonising within. A part of him had feared the revolutionary fire would flicker and fade, and then he would be left alone again in his apartment full of plans with no path to vengeance except to cut his way into the palace person by person, and yes, meet his end if he must.
No need for that now, he supposed. Yegor's methods were complicated to be sure, but perhaps a little more guaranteed to succeed. He couldn't say he was comfortable in the garb of a teratoid aristocrat, but Oliver was more than willing to put up with a little discomfort if it meant seeing blood.
Cappie and James had broken into an old library to put the final touches on the plans, the air heavy with dust, the light speckled and mottled where it filtered through ancient stained-glass window. As he pulled the short fur cloak into its place over his shoulder, Oliver stepped out from behind the shelf and caught sight of Levi, looking similarly comfortable in a gaudy tailored waistcoat and a short dinner jacket made of a fabric in a shade of pink that was more than vaguely garish. Oliver supposed the soldier would typically have gutted anyone who suggested he dress in such a fashion, but Levi Fallon was a consummate professional. He inclined his head towards Oliver, his expression ambivalent. "Shall we?" The motion sent light rippling across the ring he still wore on a chain around his neck, resting gently in the hollow of his throat, the one imperfection in his otherwise flawless transformation from wolf to grandee.
"I suppose we shall."
Cappie was sitting cross-legged on an upturned shelf, leafing lazily through an abandoned dog-eared tome of human anatomy. She shot Oliver a sly smile as she saw him. "That's a good look for you," she said wryly, gesturing to the red coat and fur cape James and Cappie had pilfered from the unconscious form of an Illean optimate. They had, Oliver was grateful to see, kept it rather bloodless; only the black collar of the shirt showed a few dark stains, and that was rather easily hidden with a creative turn of the fabric. Certainly it was far from the least comfortable thing the Britannian man had ever worn, and despite Cappie's pointed words, very far indeed from the least attractive he had ever looked.
James was leaning against the wall, observing the blood and broken skin on his hands and rather pointedly not looking at Levi, so it was left to Oliver to say, "everyone knows their places?"
"We're not amateurs," Cappie said lightly, turning another page. "Relax, Tyrell. All'll be well." She shot a look at the three men, and cocked an eyebrow. "Have a little faith."
"A pound of flesh for all," Levi remarked, his voice low.
James smirked. "Provided you all keep your shit together."
Oliver's expression mirrored his, though there was, perhaps, a little more derision in his lips. "I'm fairly sure we'll manage comfortably."
Cappie nodded and shut the book decisively. She tossed it to the side, and hopped down from the shelf, interlinking her fingers and stretching her arms theatrically in front of her. Standing in the shadows of the high vaulted ceiling of the library, each of the men around her about a head taller, Oliver thought there was something very delicate about her. Cappie was small and somehow perpetually seemed smaller, as though each time she faded from this world she came back somewhat incomplete, having lost something intangible between whatever was here and wherever there was. Her blonde hair fell in wild curlicues about her face; despite her casual manner, her heart-shaped face was etched deeply with tiredness, the skin around her cobalt eyes scarred with perse shadows. She looked as though she hadn't slept or eaten in days; Oliver wondered just how ragged Yegor was running her, forcing her to evanesce like this. It almost seemed as though the colour was being slowly and permanently drained from her, leaving her anemic and achromatic.
He almost regretted asking her to become a ghost again now.
"Well, boys," Cappie said cockily. She extended her hands to Levi and Oliver, tilting her head so that light and shadow played Picasso on the hollows and planes of her pale, pinched face. "Shall we fade?"
Oliver restrained a smile. There was, he thought, something infectious about the girl's daring demeanour. She was difficult to dislike. He thought it strange someone so bright could disappear into nothing so easily. He thought Adelaide might have seemed a little like this if life hadn't eroded the ebullience of her youth into cynicism and worldly-weary dubiety.
"I suppose we shall," he said again, pulling one hand from his pocket to link pinkies with the smiling not-quite-ghost. Her hand was bare, her fingernails uneven and speckled with chipped pastel polish in revolutionary colours, a rich reddish purple approximating the deep visceral hue of hypostasis.
Levi's expression did not change, but he did move towards Cappie to touch her sleeve very lightly. The last words Oliver heard him utter before the world faded, colour by colour, were, "I hope you're wearing your dancing shoes, Tyrell."
The poison gardens of the false king were beautiful. Crimson had known they would be so, of course, but she had not realized that they would be perhaps one of the most perfect sights she had ever had the fortune to glimpse.
Flowers grew higher than the tallest of men, and lazily dripped petals in the most gorgeous jewel tones of flame-of-burnt-brandy and drunk-tank-pink, falu and gingerline, amaranth and kelly. Plants leaned together, as though to share whispered secrets, their leaves tangled so closely and tightly around one another that no light escaped from the neighbouring avenue, isolating Crimson within the single tight path of blossoms upon which she found herself. Even underfoot, the tiniest little flowers sprouted and grew, the most pygmy of camellia and verbena, tansy and heliotrope, zinnia and peony. So many aposematic venoms, Crimson thought, so many poisonous things desperate to declare their nature. If only the whole world played by the same rules.
Here in one of the clearings, there existed a gargantuan tree, old, its canopies dripping star-shaped leaves. Gold, green, tipped in stark white. It was heavy with a crop of yasakmeyve fruits on the cusp of maturity and independence from the bough. Crimson had seen many such trees on her travels, but never one of such sheer size; they didn't grow just anywhere, resisted every vain attempt at concerted cultivation. Only at the liminal edges did they flourish, where another, more ethereal world hovered and seeped into city, black loam making sludge of asphalt, green radiance splattering traffic signs and sidewalks. Where birds flew too close to that border they disappeared, the dirt-crusted pigeons and smoke-stained crows. To create and cultivate it here, in the caged opulence of the palace, was nothing less than a miracle.
Accordingly there were no birds here or butterflies, no ants or amphibians. All was clean. Not a blade of grass was too long; no weeds or infestation of fungi touched the earth, no mark of worm or insect hunger on petals. Crimson rather felt as though she might be the only living, breathing, moving thing in the entire world. Not even the wind stirred the leaves. As she walked down the path, she paused at intervals to listen for other footsteps, for anything overhead, for a single hint she was not entirely alone in the universe in this moment. Even her extraordinary senses revealed nothing. Around the trees, frangipani, lotuses—either the king favored those, or no other flower would grow. Symbols of passing on and peace, respectively. Cruelly ironic, perhaps.
Myth and legend told that yasakmeyve fruits were alluring and sweetly scented. Reality was less glamorous. Their scent was faintly vegetal rather than like palm sugar, jasmines, or some heavenly blossom. On the ground one of them lay fallen and premature, ivory skin bruised from impact and seeping blue sap. Crimson stooped and turned it in her palm, tracing the contours of a pareidolic face in the bruised surface - rough, a work in progress, but there was already a nose and mouth defined, eye sockets deepening. The ones on the bough were shaped similarly. All yasakmeyve fruits from the same tree looked alike, replicated over and over in some internal mold, the way dolls emerge as identical strangers from a factory.
The branches dripped with paper folded into delicate origami shapes, stars and snowflakes hanging from every bough like cherry blossoms. Crimson stepped forward and plucked one - out of curiosity or malice, she could not quite say. Unfolding it revealed a splintered fragment of a recipe… or was it a broken snippet of poetry? She could not imagine the false king inclined to sentiment regarding either.
"For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by the cankerworm of truth," a voice said behind her, intoning in deep baritone, and Crimson tightened her fingers around the paper and turned to meet the gaze of the false king, the immortal tyrant. "And no hand can gather up the fallen withered petals of the rose of youth." He was not an old man: with pale white-blonde hair and a long, leonine face, he was a strangely perfect facsimile of a beautiful man, cold and strangely bloodless in that perfection. "Good evening, your ladyship. How does the day find you?" His pale eyes met Crimson's, but there was no smile in it. His eyes may as well have been crafted from steel and iron, so much warmth did they display.
How did the day find her? Lost. Angry. Forsaken. Crimson paused for what seemed an interminably long moment, twisting the pale paper flower between her bejewelled hands into a tortured convulsion of smeared ink and scattered words. Perhaps it had been poetry after all. She could not say that she had ever imagined the false king to have even a passing interest in the more ethereal and beautiful elements of this world – true beauty, not this sterile perfection. At last, she spoke. "Yet I am not sorry that I loved you -ah! what else had I a boy to do?"
"For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the silent-footed years pursue." The false king moved further into the clearing and tilted his head. "I did not take you for a connoisseur of the arts, Lady."
Crimson looked down at her shoes and tucked a few stray strands of hair behind her ear. It was all she could do to keep herself from lunging forward and fixing her hands about his throat; she was so close to the tyrant that she should have been able to hear his heartbeat. She hoped the shaking in her fingers could be interpreted as fear rather than the restrained urge for violence. "Oh," she said, and forced herself to remember that she was not, in this moment, truly Crimson Martinez. She had another name, another role, another purpose. "I wouldn't quite say that, your…. Your Highness."
"No? Well." The king moved around her as a predator might move around prey. "Then you feign fluency with aplomb." His eyes did not move from her for a single instant. "Although I confess - though youth is gone in wasted days, I have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than the poet's crown of bays." I rather fancied myself a poet in my youth," the false king continued mildly. "I cannot say whether my prose was competent, but what can I say. It was a hobby." He reached out a long-fingered hand to touch the poison flowers as he passed. "Her royal highness prefers gardening, I think."
"I…" Crimson set her jaw. Power radiated from this man like something palpable pouring from his pores. It was enough to turn her tongue to lead, to fill her bones with iron, make her blood jump as though spiders were dancing in her veins.
"I don't suppose you've ever heard the story of Mithridates." The king's voice brooked no questions. Crimson interlaced and twisted her fingers. "A paranoiac king. He saw conspiracies in his own shadow, heard assassins in his own footsteps, tasted venom in every morsel of food." He plucked a single blossom, and crushed it between his fingers, staining his fingers red and yellow. "So he took poison. The tiniest bit, day by day. A mere drop." He turned his hand over, as though admiring the way the acid ate away at his skin, leaving tiny curlicues of smoke drifting into the air. "Building a tolerance. A resistance. Now, when the conspiracy was crafted and the assassins came and the food was tainted… what happened, do you think?"
"I…" No, she thought, something darker than power. Yegor seemed powerful. This man – if she could truly call him a man - seemed like a force of unnature.
"They simply used a different poison." The false king shrugged. "I am told he died in agony."
"I…" Her words were lost; she could not force the consonants from her lips, the vowels from her tongue. Her teeth chattered as though she were standing in a snowstorm; her skin crawled like she had been scorched.
The king raised a hand, his lip curling in a cruel approximation of a half-smile, and Crimson shut her mouth. "I will leave you to your walk, your ladyship. I do hope you are finding the Selection to be an… interesting process." He did not smile. His movements were fluid but restrained, as though performed by rote. "My son likes to take his time… but the hourglass runs without restraint. The deadline approaches.
Crimson's hands were fists now, utterly crushing the poetry in her hand.
"Best of luck, your ladyship." The false king moved around her, still utterly silent but for his words. Crimson did not pretend to know why the king so obviously did not use her name; the thought occurred to her that he knew it was a false alias, designed to obfuscate her true purpose. "Enjoy the ball tonight, won't you?"
And he was gone before she could reply.
Crimson's hand relaxed, letting the piece of paper flutter gently to the ground. She exhaled for a very long moment, a breath she hadn't fully realised she had trapped behind her ribs, and set her shaking hands to smoothing down her skirts.
So that… that was Xisuthros.
She did not move for a long moment, for fear of encountering him on one of the paths that snaked through the poison gardens, but at last she moved forward and plucked another paper flower from the yasakmeyve tree – its colour, she noticed, was minutely different from the rest. Unfolding it, she found Yegor's characteristic handwriting, written in the tight scrawl of haste:
"I hope you remember how to waltz."
Minette was more glad than she could fully articulate to see that Acacia had saved her a seat in the parlor. By the time she descended from her room, her movements stiff with tiredness and her dress blossoming into tiny white embroidered bouquets, the room was quietly busy with human activity; the other Selected girls did not seem so interested in idle chatter, but busied themselves in quiet tasks that kept their hands busy and their minds from the situation in which they found themselves. Only Acacia, beautiful fool that she was, seemed alive with some kind of delight; she bounced in her seat slightly to wave Minette over. "Venus!" she called lightly, her skirts swaying with her movement, changing colour like the sea. "Over here, lovely."
The room reminded Minette of an aviary, all these girls in beautiful rich jewel colors flitting about in captivity, their distress subsumed, their unease palpable but unspoken. They gathered in tight little groups here or there, and cast distrustful glances at one another and at their own reflections, their gaze flitting for fear of meeting the eyes of another. They were lit only by artificial sources, dim oil-lamps affixed to the wall throwing rich white-yellow light across the pallid faces of the beautiful girls below; the windows here, as in Minette's room, did not look out onto the world but onto the intricate and almost convincing lie of a quaint mountain town, the kind you might find in the Tuscan mountains, all tight cobblestone alleys and ivy-strangled stone walls and rivers running downhill. Something about it reminded Minette of home – not the little home by the ocean that she had shared with her father the politician, and her mother the Fabulist, an eon ago, before… everything. No, it reminded her of a home she had never seen, a home that had never been, the abstract sense of a lost place of her past to which she could never return and yet the strange impression of a future that she had yet to craft.
Minette did not look at the window for long.
Instead, she slipped through the chairs to perch on the edge of the loveseat Acacia had indicated, hoping desperately that her absence had not been noted. Glancing up at the room through her eyelashes, she noticed in surprise that she had been followed through the door by Kgetha, the tall dark-haired girl with the fiery eyes. But, Minette noticed, on this instance, Kgetha did not seem quite as hardened and fierce as she had appeared that morning at breakfast; her hands shook, ever so slightly. Acacia must have noticed the direction of Minette's gaze, for she leaned closer and breathed, ever so softly, "I heard she had a date with the prince today." To Minette's surprise, she perceived that Acacia, despite her floral name, wore no scent; unlike the other Selected girls, who wore dizzying quantities of perfume, Acacia seemed to have no perceptible fragrance. "In the gardens."
"Oh," Minette said faintly, because that was the only word that came to mind, so suddenly and so abruptly was she filled with sympathy for the other girl. Even the scarce few moments she had spent in his company in the rose-girl's crypt beneath the palace had been enough to give her long sleepless nights and a tight knot in her throat whenever she thought of him. She flicked her gaze in Kgetha's direction, but was otherwise silent for a long moment as Acacia relaxed back into her seat and turned to whisper to the girl beside her.
Kgetha's face had paled; she looked as though she had aged a hundred years in the past two hours.
Minette had never been so enormously glad to wear a mask.
"Oh!" Acacia leaned forward again; her pale, delicate hand rested very lightly on Minette's shoulder, as though the dark-haired girl feared she might react violently to the physical contact. "Did you hear?" She flashed a smile, broad and sweet, and Minette wondered how on earth a girl so clearly in the jaws of a monster could appear so entirely and so delightedly oblivious. "There's going to be a ball. Isn't that just joyous?" She patted the shoulder of Minette's dress gingerly, turning to the girl next to her as she spoke. "Galdua said she'd do our hair, but I was wondering, Venus, if you'd help us with our makeup?"
Galdua was a small brown-skinned girl with chestnut hair bound into an intricate braid along the base of her skull, looking nervous and twisted her hands in her lap. She had a pale white scar running the line of her cheekbone, very faint, as though she had put a knife to her face like a Fabulist but had lacked the heart to go through with the butchery. It was the barest sliver of a wound, almost like a strange mockery of Kasha's mutilation, of her mother's own scarring. Minette didn't like the faintest sense of derision that rose in her stomach, the thoughts that stirred in the corner of her mind that Galdua hadn't quite been strong enough to do what had to be done.
It wasn't a part of herself that she liked.
It was a part of her that sounded a lot like Yegor.
"Your makeup?" Minette said at last. If there was one thing for which she was enormously grateful, it was that Venus Collins was so quiet and so diffident that Minette's hesitation, her unmastered spycraft, her incomplete lies, were not easily discernible. In this Selection, she imagined everyone measured their words, considered their truths and untruths with caution, said or did nothing without delay.
"You always look so perfect," Acacia said, her voice sweet as jam, and Minette did not have the heart to explain that perfection was a product of her glamour – that her lips were not truly so rich and red, her skin so smooth, her features so crisply defined and expertly shadowed. Beauty was easy to achieve with a mask, Minette thought, and restrained a smile at the idea of showing Acacia the burned iron mask that was her before to this beautiful after. "You must show us… provided you're not afraid to help out the competition a little." She fluttered a wink in Minette's direction.
"That's so sweet," Minette said softly. "Of course, I'd be happy to help you guys."
Galdua offered her a slightly watery smile. Where her nails had dug into her palms, little red crescents rose on the skin. Minette wondered how long she had been in the Selection. She wondered how long she would last from here on out. "Thank you, Lady Collins."
Minette raised a hand as though to wave away the praise. "Glad I can help," she said, and tried a smile.
Acacia leaned in close again, and it did not escape Minette's notice that her gaze was fixed firmly in Kgetha's direction. "Apparently there's going to be all sort of distinguished guests. Aristocrats, plutocrats, oligarchs and tycoons… you know. Backup plans."
Her nonchalance was almost contagious, and for a moment Minette wondered what kind of a world and what kind of a Selection Acacia believed herself to be participating in if she thought going home in a runner's up position was, or ever had been, an option.
"Backup plans," she echoed, and was rewarded with another one of Acacia's beauteous smiles.
It wasn't hard to see why she was in the Selection with a smile like that. Not even a scar like Kasha's would have saved her.
Blood.
Blood, blossoming into tiny flowers on James' shirt. Little curlicues of crimson spreading into florets. Red, Cappie thought dazedly. Lots and lots of red. And it was red that returned to her vision first, all the red in the world shining visceral and violent: the blood on James' shirt, the paint on her nails, the bricks on the walls beside her. Red returned first, but the return of colour did little for Cappie, because she could see now that the girl who had shot James was grey, grey, grey – her skin, her clothes, her eyes. Only her lips, parted slightly with concentration, shone scarlet.
Blue returned next for Cappie, but she struggled to keep the colour at bay, to push it away and force herself into fading again – but what good would it do? She had been a ghost. James had been a ghost. But the grey girl had sniped him nonetheless, had made it look casual, pinned the young rebel like a butterfly behind glass. James had dropped her hand, staggered back with a hand to his heart where the arrow had pierced deep, and the grey girl was moving forward now, and Cappie pushed back the colour as fiercely as she could, tried to drown the world in grey, held up her hands to watch them fade. And yet the grey girl's eyes followed her, even as the world was painted over in charcoal.
Crimson had called the grey girl Mrtvola, the living corpse. It was a good name, Cappie thought, for a girl so grey.
"Achterkamp," James breathed. Cappie could only be grateful that they had been caught now, after Levi and Oliver had slipped into the palace unnoticed. The wolf and the rogue were gone, disappearing into the crowds that had assembled for the ball, and Cappie and James had been on the way out, retracing their steps back through the avenues towards the old library. Even Cappie's ghostliness was not enough to get her into the palace; that was to be left for Oliver's natural charm and magnetism. And yet, even though they had only lingered at the edge of the property… this grey girl must have seen them, even faded as they had been, and followed them, and caught them here, in a dark street, the kind that usually felt safe for Cappie the invisible girl.
She was panicking. She knew she was panicking. Panicking, because James' blood was on the wrong side of her skin, and because the grey girl's eyes were fixed on her even as the entire world faded, and because she knew that if she fell, here and now, there were very few people that would mourn, and even fewer that would mourn for long. At best, Yegor would send out Kasha and her gasoline to burn both of the bodies so that questions weren't asked.
Both of the bodies?
The grey girl's bow rose, and the arrow flashed, rippling like so much molten silver.
Both?
Cappie reached for her knives.
If she was going down, she thought determinedly, there was going to be three bodies to burn.
"Achterkamp." James' body was wracked in pain, his voice a tight maelstrom of pain. It was not a plea, but a warning, and yet Cappie only tightened her hands over her blades and moved forward as quickly and violently as she could muster the energy to do. She was still a ghost, she told herself. She was still as quick and as silent as one.
If she was a ghost, let her be a ghost.
And yet, the grey girl's arrows found her anyway.
The first arrow tore through her throat. Cappie thought she would have gasped if she had the breath to do so.
It was okay, she thought. Levi and Oliver had made it into the palace. Maybe their blades, unlike her own, would find purchase. And if theirs did not, then Crimson and Minette would follow them; and after that would come Andromeda and Taja, Yegor, Kasha if she must. And after their little crusade would and could come others – the ranks of the rebels could not be numbered, and Cappie knew, thought, hoped that they would not stop, would never stop.
Revolution was not something you could kill.
The second arrow hit her just above the heart, just as her knees hit the ground.
James didn't seem to be capable of speaking intelligibly at the moment, his chest heaving, saying only a single name again and again, Annabelle, he said, Annabelle. It sounded like a prayer. Cappie wondered whose name she should be whispering. If she was angled towards the good place, she thought she should ask for her mother, for her father. Again the image came to her – a sky of cornflower, her father spinning her in his arms, her mother looking on with a smile that radiated love. She had still been Diantha then. She had yet to fade.
This, Cappie thought, was a good image to die with.
The third arrow hit her in the gut.
The memory faded, and Cappie was left again in this little dirty alley, maybe the only street that was little or dirty in this city. One hand to her throat and one hand to her heart, and she raised her head to meet the grey girl's eyes with hatred in her gaze.
"Annabelle," James said quietly, and then again, "Achterkamp."
Cappie's stare did not stir from the archer. She could not speak, but the grey girl seemed to understand.
"The king sends his regards," the grey girl said softly. Her voice was flute, the tone behind it crisp and cold, a thing of beauty detached from its source, snowflakes in a grey sky.
"Long live the king," Cappie wanted to say, that usual mocking salutation of the crows, but before the words had even completely filled her mind, the grey girl had notched another fletched arrow and fired it straight into the ghost's face.
For the final time, all her breath evaporating in her lungs, her bones shuddering, all of the colour bled from the world, and the girl who had been called Cappie faded.
Andromeda lunged with the spear and the wraith that was Gaëlle Sidonie shattered into a thousand glass fragments and every fragment burst into ash and there was nothing left, an empty room but for the corpses of the Collins family lying broken and bleeding on the floor. She spun on her heel and spun the spear in her hand and spun her eyes about the room, and found nothing upon which to pin her gaze, nothing, for a very long moment. She paused, and a braid of fire flicked about her face as she narrowed her eyes and fired glances back and forth, searching for some fault-line in the illusion.
Yegor had been very clear with his instructions: kill the illusionist. The Corbeau boy was playing an elaborate game of chess with thieves and killers as his pawns, and for his strategy to have any hope of succeeding, certain opposing pieces had to be removed from the board.
Gaëlle Sidonie could not be permitted to survive the night.
And for that reason, Yegor had let the Collins family unprotected and vulnerable, and for that reason Mara Morasova had tracked Gaëlle Sidonie from the moment her entourage crossed the Honduraguan border, and for that reason Andromeda had held back from the shackled illusionist, waiting for her to exhaust herself enchanting the servants of the household. Andromeda could not deny the slight swell of self-satisfaction that rose under her ribs at the thought that Yegor trusted her to have the heart – or the lack thereof – for the task. Certainly the bleeding-heart Taja would not have had the iron strength of will to stand back and watch the bewitched servants tear Apemios and his wife into shreds. Certainly the good-natured Cappie would not have been callous enough to allow the Collins family to be used as bait. Certainly the delicate Minette would not have the resolve to eviscerate the illusionist, as Andromeda planned to do now.
She didn't intend to let Yegor down now. And yet she could perceive nothing.
Nothing, for a long moment, and then the walls began to shudder and come across as though separating at seams. Not coming apart, Andromeda realised with an unpleasant sinking sensation in her stomach, but opening – the wall was composed of eyes, eyes stacked upon eyes stacked upon eyes, all of them flicking open now slowly in a long, languid sequence, hundreds of grey eyes gazing at her from the walls, just staring and staring and staring. There was only the slightest light behind those eyes, only the smallest hint of life, like sunshine glowing behind clouds on a sunny day.
Andromeda recognised those eyes.
They were Demetrios' eyes.
Her brother's.
Staring, staring, staring.
Something flashed behind her, and she spun, and found she was too slow to defend herself against the foxes that coalesced forth from the air to leap at her, to snap and snarl. She swung her spear in a tight arc that spoke of long mastery, but found that the weapon merely collapsed into mist and fog against the fur of the monstrous beasts and left her hands empty and her entire body defenceless, and where the foxes hit her they burned and scorched her skin and her hair.
Andromeda had forgotten what burning felt like. She had not burned for years, not since she was a child, not since her parents had been burned in front of her and her brother had waded through cinders to pull her from the pyre. Andromeda and the fire were old friends; she had learned not to fear its embrace. And yet. Where these foxes (not real, she told herself, they aren't real, they can't be real) touched her, they burst into flames and the fire caught and clung to her and every single one of her nerve endings seemed to be ablaze with agony and the terror of sensation.
Her hair was aflame, and yet so intense was the pain she could not quite enjoy this particular bit of poetic irony.
Cool air came flooding back and she reeled backwards, tightening her hand over her spear, gasping to find the fire doused. Gaëlle Sidonie stood in front of her, shackled hands held upwards, fingers moving as though conducting an invisible orchestra, but her eyes were faraway – very faraway indeed. Andromeda propped herself up on her knee, taking deep breaths of cool air, and tightened her hand on her spear, but found that the wood was rotting beneath her hand, splintering and blistering where she touched it, faltering into nothing.
She swore under her breath, and Gaëlle narrowed her eyes, and Andromeda swore again, for what use was she without her spear?
…no, that wasn't right, she was Andromeda Valour, she was a soldier of the highest order…
What need had she for her spear, anyway? Andromeda's mind reeled. She couldn't quite remember. She thought the smoke might have driven every coherent idea from her mind, so difficult was it to fix upon concrete truth. She couldn't remember why she had come here.
…no that wasn't right, she had come here to kill her, to kill the illusionist standing before her…
She needed her spear, Andromeda knew. She felt unsafe without it – oh, she knew she could fight well enough. But she had to defend Demetrios. All of her life, her older brother had been her stalwart, her guardian and her mentor. Wasn't it time she paid him back?
After so long without him, it was an enormous relief to see Demetrios standing in front of her, gold shackles on his wrists.
"Brother," Andromeda said softly, and Demetrios' silhouette rippled for a moment before her, his face splitting into a smile, one of the smiles with which he would reward her as a child when she managed to kill her first buck, when her spear flew true, when she managed to flip him in a sparring match. It was pride and it was viciousness and it was totally, purely Demetrios. "Brother."
"Andie," Demetrios said, his voice reverberating. "I've been waiting for you."
Andromeda stood. "Waiting?"
Demetrios tilted his hand, and his smile faded slightly. "It's time to go hunting, little sister."
Taja hadn't realised quite how much she had missed Lysander and Roman, or how much she had appreciated having a hollow replacement for their company, until she and Yegor were walking away from the old Seguro household, leaving the little Martinez girl behind in the reluctant custody of Nithya Lilavati. The pixie-haired girl did not mention the deaths – the murders – of Aaron Hale and his men, although Taja knew that it must have been pressing on her mind. Lilavati only took tiny Charity by the hand and looked at Taja with apprehension in her eyes; the wolf-girl could not but exactly what kind of threat Yegor had unleashed on the young medic to impress upon her the importance of keeping Charity Martinez very safe and very secret. It didn't surprise her that Nithya was in the habit of regarding her suspiciously. Taja didn't blame her. Beautiful girls, such as Taja was, were always regarded with abject chariness around the time of the Selection, as the world and its mother tried to discern exactly which devil they had dealt with to avoid being chosen.
Well, Taja stood beside hers.
She did not ask Yegor with what ultimatum he had negotiated the terms with Nithya, but kept his company in silence as they walked towards the old Hale warehouses in which they had concealed the body of Adelaide Tyrell. In the dim light of the evening, Yegor's sharp face was all mercury-and-silver, his grey, grey eyes and his dark, dark hair conspiring to render him a vague phantom with a faraway gaze. Taja knew when Yegor was lost in plots and plans, and she also knew when to leave him to his thoughts. She could not entirely deny that his distraction gave her an opportunity to study the pale angles of his face, the sharp corners of his bones, the tight angles of his eyes. He looked tired, she thought. He looked very tired. The collar of his coat was speckled with dust; his hands were stained with ink.
The docks of Honduragua were arranged in a tangled writhe of shipping containers and tight avenues between decrepit abandoned garnerhouses, a tableau that might have been grim if not for the bright colours of the doors and gates on every building. The streets wound around the warehouses, doubled back upon themselves, spanned little bridges over murky polluted water in which Taja imagined she could see bodies floating. Historically, each quay and harbour belonged to a particular merchant family; Taja couldn't say she knew what a prestigious family name might feel like, though she imagined Yegor couldn't quite say the same.
Being a Sweeney was an entire world away from being a Corbeau.
Sometimes she thought Yegor forgot she had heartstrings of her own, a reason of her own to fight, a private vendetta against the king. She could see it on his face, clear as day, when he thought she wasn't looking. He thought she followed him like a dog, moved only out of loyalty, desired blood because he asked it of her.
Yegor was wrong about very few things, but he was wrong about this.
This quay had belonged to the Lester family, once upon a time, but it had been Aaron Hale's antecedents who had owned the warehouse Yegor and Taja now approached. She took a deep breath of harbour air as they walked – salt-tinged and seaweed-scented. Taja had grown up in a forest; she had never glimpsed the ocean until she found herself between the devil and the deep blue sea. She didn't think this would ever get old – looking right across the flat water at the distant line of the horizon, seeing the whole world laid out unfolded in front of her.
No sign of rebellion here; an imperial flag, pale yellow like an immature sun, hung ragged and un-moving from the roof, bleached at the corners from long age and neglect. The steel door was rusted, the stone wall eroded, the path leading to the entrance overgrown with grass… it did not, Taja had to admit, look like very much. Better to hide in plain sight like this, she thought. There was a heavy iron chain on the door, the kind she thought you might find attached to an anchor, and a complicated lock affixed to it that she suspected would take her more than a few seconds to pick.
Of course, there were simpler solutions. Yegor, Taja noticed now, had brought a crowbar - she shouldn't have expected anything else. He offered it to her, the corner of his mouth lifting in a charming smile. "My lady," he said softly and Taja could only roll her eyes and try not to laugh out loud as she took it from him. The steel edges were sharp, the iron hinges were strong, but Yegor's smile was sharper and Taja was stronger and soon the door was pried half-open to allow a narrow entrance and the two revolutionaries slipped into the warehouse as silent as ghosts.
As Yegor moved to the west-facing wall to light a lamp by which they could work, Taja moved over to the worktable and pulled away the old, stained paint-sheet that obscured the prone form of Adelaide Tyrell's corpse. It was as perfect and unchanged as it had been that day they pulled the carcass from the depths of its royal grave, lacking even a single indication of decomposition, of rot, of natural processes; she couldn't deny that it was unnerving to see something so totally and irreparably detached from ordinary materiality. Taja could not help but stare at the still, dead face of Adelaide and search for a likeness with Oliver, some link between brother and sister, something that would transform a mere hollowed shell into a real girl with dreams and hopes and fears who had been lost to the cruel machinery and machinations of a tyrant.
In times gone by, she wouldn't have had to try so hard to care.
The room was bathed in rich amber light; Yegor moved to join Taja by the workbench, his eyes skating across Adelaide's hair as though he expected to find some clues tangled there. He set his jaw as though he were about to speak, and then paused and turned his head to glance at the stairs at the far end of the cavernous space, according Taja a clear view of his throat where the skin was thinnest, a pale vein keeping time with the always-steady tick-tick of his pulse. The steps led to what had probably once been the office of a foreman or cartographer; a dark shape, tall and thin, moved within.
Yegor said, "He's a theatrical one."
Taja bit back a smile. She should have guessed the devil would be a hypocrite.
The iron stairs clanged loudly with every step despite Taja's attempts to remain quiet. For one of the first and only times in their long, strange partnership, she took, and was permitted to take, the lead; Yegor trailed in her wake, almost reluctant, though Taja wasn't sure if she had imagined the half-smile on his face at her verve. When she glanced over her shoulder to take in his expression, she was unsurprised to see that he was again lost in thought, his brow furrowed as though he was attempting to prepare to rationalise every step and every decision he had made over the past ten years.
It was so strange to see Yegor impuissant.
She knocked on the door to the office, a rapid tappa-tappa-tappa that belied her slightly wolfishe energy, but she nonetheless pushed open the rotting wooden door without waiting for a response. The entire room had been thoroughly ransacked, as though overturned by main force in an overwhelming typhoon. The man had his black boots propped up on the overturned desk and his hands interlaced behind his head, his grey eyes faintly amused at nothing in particular. He was tall and thin, wearing the kind of waistcoat you could hide a gun in; the gold and silver and white coat of a Selection watchman hung on the back of his chair. Mourning colours. They shone, despite the dim light.
"Evening, Iliya," Taja said. Any other day she might have been a little more reticent, more withdrawn - but she was still shaking off the last clinging vestiges of her bad day, and Yegor was tired, so tired, and really, what was the tiniest bit of disrespect to a man of such quiet leverage when they were in this late stage of the endgame and so very close to killing the king. "How goes the quiet watch?" It did not escape her notice that the man's lips twitched in a slight smirk, even as his eyes flashed with a hint of annoyance.
"It goes," Iliya Corbeau replied. "How goes the crow's crusade?"
"It goes," Taja replied.
Iliya's mouth curled into an actual smile; it was strange to see such a sweet expression on someone who looked so much like Yegor. "Ah, well."
Yegor had followed her silently into the room, and exchanged only the slightest nod with Illiya before he reclined against the wall and folded her arms. "Were you in such a hurry to leave your post?"
"The cold doesn't suit me," Iliya replied with a shrug. "And now you have four rebels within the Selection. I felt… redundant."
A ghost of a smile from Yegor. "Unnecessary?"
"One might say."
Iliya stood. It always surprised Taja how similar the two men were; seeing them in the same room was like gazing at mirror images. Yegor was slightly shorter, Illiya slightly more world-worn, but they both were unmistakeably, undeniably, undoubtedly Corbeaus.
"You're sure you can trust Fallon?" Iliya said softly. His voice was raspier than Yegor's, still slightly tinged with the accent of their youth where Yegor had shed it entirely.
"He hasn't given me a reason to doubt." Yegor arched an eyebrow masterfully. "I imagine some fraternal wisdom is imminent?"
Iliya angled his body to implicitly include Taja in the conversation, a gesture for which she was quietly and deeply grateful. Yegor was the youngest of the Corbeau brothers, and yet known for often appearing the more intense; Taja had often found that his older siblings appeared more affable in their ruthlessness, more sugared in their speech, more open in their deceit. Yegor never hesitated when he lied, but he held his cards much closer to his chest. He held his cards very close to his chest now, his expression utterly unchanging as Iliya said, "they've got the crooked girl."
"Kasha," Taja said softly, and Iliya nodded. Yegor's eyes were very dark and very focused. The air seemed entirely still, without even the faintest aspiration of air.
"The arsonist's daughter is spitting her venom," Iliya said, his voice bored. "And the queen is parched enough to drink it." The brothers exchanged dark looks. "I hope you didn't tell her any secrets?"
Yegor's eyes glimmered in the faint light. "You think she will tell them anything?"
"No will about it. You're exposed, little crow. If your men aren't dead right now, it's only because the king wants to have his fun with them first."
Taja saw now that Yegor was smiling his typical diabolic half-smile, the curve of it akin to a wickedly sharp sickle.
"Yegor," she said softly. "Is this part of the plan?"
He looked at her with those devil's eyes and she almost bit her tongue for having asked the question.
"What do you take me for," Yegor replied. "A fool?"
The queen spoke with a thousand voices, splintering, her eyes haunted.
"The prince gets into your head. Devours your thoughts, spews nightmare into the spaces left behind."
"But the queen. The queen will rip your heart out."
Kasha did not need to be broken. She was a coward; she would have told them anything to save her own skin.
The queen ripped her heart out anyway.
Wow, so - really can't believe how long ago I started this story, and how long it's been since I last updated. I really can't apologise enough for the enormously long hiatus, but real life has a very nasty habit of getting in the way. I totally understand people have probably moved on from this story/the characters they submitted to it, but I remain very fond of the entire crow's crusade, so I'm going to put out a few more chapters because the story I wanted to tell is still clinging to me somewhat and won't leave me alone til this is done, I reckon!
Until next time.
