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The ghost standing in front of her.

“Hey babe,” Alice said, a sad smile on her face. “It’s been a while.”

Part Three

Chapter 42

Fey’s world fractured—shattering into hundreds of sharp, dangerous pieces.

“Alice?” she whispered, staring up at her sister in disbelief.

It couldn’t be. Alice was dead. Fey had felt her die, felt her being ripped away from them through their shared Blade’s mark. She’d never forget that pain, never forget the sudden void, the cold absence left inside her where Alice had once been.

But here she was—alive. Safe.

Alice had always worn her hair short, but now it was cut so close to her scalp it was practically shaved. It suited her—the tight black coils of hair just a shade darker than her skin. But her eyes were the same eyes Fey remembered, the same eyes that had haunted her memories. Large, dark eyes, full of love and understanding, even now, as she stared down at her sister below her.

Fey opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“I’m going to help you up, okay?” Alice said, slowly. “I don’t want to fight you, babe. I just want to talk.”

Fey didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, but when Alice offered her a hand to help her rise, she took it, letting Alice pull her up and to her feet.

“I…” Fey started, stunned. “I don’t understand how this is possible... You died. I felt you die.”

“I know,” Alice responded, her voice a pained whisper. “I’m sorry, babe, but I had to do it. If there had been any other way…”

“How?” Fey asked, the anger in her voice surprising even her.

Alice sighed, closing her eyes. Then she rolled up the sleeve of her shirt and held out her arm for Fey to see. A stark white line ran through her Queen’s Blade’s mark. A long angry scar, splitting the mark right down the middle.

“You faked your own death,” Fey whispered, staring down at Alice’s broken mark in shock. Which meant… “You blew up your own apartment, didn’t you?”

Alice nodded.

The dangerous pieces of Fey’s fractured world shattered a little more.

It was too much. Willow’s death, Dameon’s betrayal, and now... now this. The world felt insubstantial around her, the floor tilting under her feet, and for a moment Fey thought she might faint. Her own Blade’s mark felt uncomfortably hot on her own arm, and Fey realized absently that her sisters were awake, were dealing with their own worlds shattering around them in the fallout of Willow’s death. She could feel them through their bond. Feel their horror. Pain. Shock. Fey tried to push their emotions down, unable to handle it with everything that was happening around her.

“Come on,” Alice said. “We should get out of here before everyone starts to show up for the morning shift. There’s a basement below us—that’s where I’ve been staying since….” She trailed off, unable to finish her sentence.

“Do they even know you’re here?” Fey asked.

Alice laughed. “Yeah, of course they do. I’m good at keeping quiet, babe, but no one is that good. Sam has been taking good care of me, here. But you’re not their favorite person right now, so I think it’s best we’re not on the factory floor when they all arrive, just in case.”

Fey didn’t question her, didn’t question why any of the workers here would even know who she was. It was all too much. She let Alice lead her to a hatch hidden among the floorboards under the stairs, barely noticeable if you didn’t know where to look.

The hatch swung upward to reveal a set of wooden stairs that led down into a basement. Alice started down them, gesturing for Fey to follow her.

It was dark in the factory basement, darker still when the hatch shut behind them, and the space felt cavernous in the absence of any light, far bigger even than the factory above them. Alice drew on her power to make a small ball of fire appear in her hand, lighting the room around them just enough for them to safely descend the stairs. She walked to a light switch on the basement wall and turned on the overhead lights, illuminating the entire room.

“Welcome to the resistance,” Alice said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

The basement was massive, even larger than Fey had expected. Lab benches lined an entire wall, their surfaces stacked with bottles, gloves, jars of chemicals, and empty glass vials. Hooks next to the stairs held lab coats in various sizes and various degrees of filthy.

“Is this… is this a lab?” Fey asked.

Alice shrugged. “In a way, I suppose. We’ve scaled down production recently, so we were able to move everything down here for the time being.”