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“Why?” Joy asked, her voice heavy with pain. “Why would he do that?”

“Because they’ve been lying to us. Dameon, the Queen, all of them. They’ve been poisoning us, poisoning Witches around the realm.”

Lilith was shaking her head. “Fey, don’t?—”

“Joy,” Fey said, turning toward her sister. Joy looked at her with blue eyes, so full of pain, so full of hurt. “Joy… do you remember your Awakening? Do you remember being given something to drink, something silver, like an elixir?”

Joy nodded. “Of course,” she whispered. “It was part of the ceremony…”

“No,” Fey insisted. “No, it wasn’t. That was Allium, joy,” she continued, and behind her Lilith swore, covering her face in her hands. She looked ready to faint. So did Joy.

“The White Priestesses have been giving Allium to the Witches they worry might become too powerful, Witches who might stand a chance of resisting the Queen. They’ve been cutting them off from certain elements, making sure no one is stronger than the royal line.”

Joy was shaking her head. “No, no, they only give Allium to Blood Witches, to…to…”

It clicked in her mind, and Joy’s face hardened, her eyes darkening.

“They give Allium to Blood Witches to cut them off from their power…” she finished. Her hands clenched at her sides.

“And in the right doses, with the right ingredients,” Fey continued. “They can cut any Witch off from any of the four elements.”

Joy’s eyes flared, shock burning away to anger. The Air in the room moved in fast, deadly spirals, coalescing around her.

“What did they take from me?” she asked Fey, her voice hard. The room was a maelstrom, with Joy at its center.

Fey could only shake her head in reply. “I don’t know,” she told her. “But we can find out… there’s an antidote, Joy. That’s what we found in the warehouse, that’s what Dameon sent us to destroy. They’re trying to stop the truth from coming out, trying to keep anyone from finding out what they’ve been doing and putting a stop to it. And they used us to do it…. Used us to help them cover all of this up, to help them kill anyone who was getting too close to the truth?—”

The alarm shrieked back to life, filling the quiet halls with a blast of high-pitched sound.

“What now?” Lilith snarled, lifting her head from her hands to glare at the door.

“That,” Fey said calmly, “would be Alice.”

She had been wrong. Lilith could look more shocked. Her jaw dropped open, and her eyes filled with a deeper horror.

“Alice?” she whispered, disbelieving, her face paling even more. “No. No, you can’t be telling me that Alice is alive, too. That’s… that’s not possible.”

“She’s alive, Lilith,” Fey insisted. “And she’s here to put a stop to it. She’s here to make things right.”

Fey didn’t say it, not aloud. Couldn’t bring herself to say it. But the truth hung in the air between them. Joy and Lilith exchanged a look, realizing what Fey was saying.

She’s here to kill the Queen.

That’s what it came down to, what this moment was all about.

Joy and Lilith were the Queen’s Blades, her personal weapons. They were her justice, her protection. Their entire world revolved around the Crown.

And Alice was here to destroy it. Fey’s one chance to keep them safe, to keep all of her sisters safe, was to convince them not to fight for the Queen against their own sister. To convince them to step aside and let Alice do what needed to be done.

Joy looked stunned. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it.

“Fey…” she whispered, finally, turning those huge loving eyes on her. “I don’t… I don’t know if …”

“Stop the alarm,” Lilith snapped. Joy’s head whipped back up to look at her.

Lilith’s face was dark, and there was no confusion, no conflict in her stare. Whatever shock she’d been feeling was gone now, and only grim determination remained. She, at least, had made up her mind. “Go, sister. Find a way to stop it. Make them turn off the alarm if you have to. But stop it. Before they find her.”

Joy blinked at her. Then, with a deep shuddering breath, she nodded.