Page 69

The woman stood in a ragged slip, her hands magically bound in front of her.

Her chin was lifted, and she was murmuring something, lips moving quickly.

To her left, a boy with the same color of curls on top of his head stood shaking.

He couldn’t have been more than eighteen—Strawberry-Blonde’s brother.

He’d joined Rory’s army. The only nonmagical person to do so.

Briony thought of the note stuck between her skin and the gold collar. Had the girl been caught? Did someone know what she was doing with the collars? Briony tensed—was someone coming for her as well?—and flinched under Toven’s hand, squeezing her tightly in warning.

A man stepped into view, and the cheering hit her in full force. It was Mr. Vein, from the auction. Vein smiled toothily and amplified his voice, greeting the crowd.

“To Mistress Mallow,” he boomed, lifting his hand to the platform.

The crowd responded, “May she reign forevermore.”

Mallow stood stoically with her hands folded in front of herself.

“A traitor to Mistress Mallow’s reign stands before you,” said Vein. “She and her brother—two servants without magic”—the masses snarled—“find themselves ungrateful for everything we’ve given them here, at the center of our mistress’s power.”

The booing and spitting rang in her ears. Toven stood behind her, a hand still on her elbow.

Briony knew what was to come. The girl and her brother were going to be executed, here in front of them all, as an example. Briony searched the crowd for someone, anyone. Her knees buckled as she tried to turn about, and Toven’s hand tightened on her again.

Her eyes finally landed on Ilana, passing drinks around on a tray, smiling tightly.

Ilana glanced to the front, a stab of sadness in her eyes that couldn’t be masked quickly enough.

Briony brought her fingers to her collar again, without thinking, and when she looked back to the strawberry-blonde, the woman met her eyes.

Briony dropped her hand quickly, her heart splintering at the edges.

“This non-magical filth,” Vein continued, “showed no appreciation for what we’ve given her. We allowed her and her brother into our world. Allowed them to serve us. And how does she repay us?”

Briony held her breath, watching the strawberry-blonde flicker her gaze between herself and Ilana. She could feel Mallow’s presence to her right, like oil.

“She was communicating with the rebels!”

The crowd hissed. Briony turned her gaze to Mallow quickly. Her lips were curved in a satisfied smile.

“She was caught at the gate! Not only speaking to the enemy, but also arranging for her brother’s escape!”

The sea of people jeered. The note Briony had tucked beneath her collar burned against her skin. This woman and her brother were about to die, all because she’d helped the rebels communicate. Would Briony be next? Was she on this platform next to Mallow so she could be killed on a stage?

“Mistress Mallow!” Vein called. “How do you sentence this slut and her brother?”

Mallow’s pale skin shone in the moonlight. Her jaw was sharp as Briony watched it move.

“Death. Painful death.”

The Bomardi screamed and cheered.

Briony’s world tilted on its axis, and it took her several long seconds to realize that Toven was steadying her lower back, pushing her upright.

Through the pounding of her blood, a thought clarified: If Mallow suspected that she had a note under her collar—if anyone knew that the collars were being used this way—every heartspring would be searched on their way in. The parties at Biltmore would cease.

This woman’s sentencing had nothing to do with the note she’d passed to Briony. Glancing back to Strawberry-Blonde, Briony watched her eyes move back and forth between Ilana and Briony, the intensity in them burning as her brother sobbed next to her.

Ilana moved to the base of the platform on which Briony stood.

The strawberry-blonde turned to her brother, speaking quickly, too low to overhear. He nodded solemnly, his shiny eyes never leaving his sister’s.

They were servants. Non-magical. They had no business getting involved in any of this horror.

And yet, this was the woman who’d grasped her hand under the table with glass digging into her knees.

A woman who had risked everything to get that note to her.

Just as she’d risked everything to protect her little brother.

Briony looked away, blinking rapidly to stop the tears from falling. Throughout the crowd, silver-collared women were frozen, many with silent tears trailing down their cheeks.

A wild cheering brought her attention back to the front. A cannon wheeled forward.

Terror gripped her as the old war cannon that announced the time every midday in summer spun slowly to face the two siblings.

“No!” she choked, but it was too loud everywhere—inside her mind and out.

A pair of hands landed on her waist. A firm chest against her shoulder blades.

Vein raised his voice again. “Let us prove how foolish it is for anyone to resist Mistress Mallow’s will. We will take the boy first and make his sister watch.”

Briony was frozen in place, heaving for air, Mallow watching her as she panicked. She looked away and a hand moved from her waist to turn her chin back, forcing her to face ahead as they aimed the cannon.

A sharp jaw pressed to her temple. Warm breath fanned across her cheekbones.

“There is a lake with still waters,” Toven’s voice whispered. “A mountain range surrounds it. The waters are deep with hidden secrets, but the water is still.”

She blinked, legs swaying, feeling her breathing even out as she let his words wash over her. His hands slipped around her stomach, pressing her close to him.

They lit the cannon, and she started to feel her panic drift away, like a leaf on a lake.

The courtyard screamed and stomped while they counted down.

“Think of your mind as a library. Shelves upon shelves of novels and journals and biographies,” the voice lulled. “Find an empty shelf for this moment.”

She pulled a book forward, her mind dissociating from the moment in front of her.

An explosive boom rocked the stones beneath her feet. Briony watched with a slack jaw as the spot where the boy had been a moment before smoked and crumbled, his sister speckled with his blood. The cannon was reloaded.

“An empty book in your hands. Its blank pages between your fingers. Write this moment into the book. Give it a title.”

The Strawberry-Blonde , her mind supplied.

“Fill the pages and close the book.”

The cannon aimed at the woman. She shed tears slowly, mixing with her brother’s blood, dripping pink down her neck.

“Push it into a corner. Lose it within the piles and piles of texts and novels.”

A book’s pages fluttered shut in her mind. It locked. And she breathed deeply, stretching to her tiptoes to push it onto a shelf that was just too tall for her to reach. She imagined a hand with long fingers helping her reach the top.

A cannon was lit.

There was a woman crying.

A crowd cheered and counted the seconds.

The woman tilted her head back to the sky and screamed.

She disappeared in a spray of smoke and blood and rage.

There were hands on Briony’s waist, leading her backward, tugging her down the platform steps.

A beautiful woman with a silver collar and a tray of champagne glasses stood at the last step. Briony’s mind was blank. She was nameless to her.

“Master Hearst, can I get you anything?”

“Thank you, Ilana. We’re on our way out.”

Ilana. The name was familiar to her, but there were books in her mind that refused to open.

Briony’s body jerked forward, stomach flipping over, the ground coming up to meet her face.

“Oh!” the woman—Ilana—caught her just before she landed. “Miss Rosewood, do be careful.”

Two fingers slid along Briony’s neck. A piece of paper was removed.

How had it gotten there?

“Have a good evening, Master Hearst.”

Arms around her again, moving her quickly past the screaming fanatics and wolves and other monsters. Pulling her to descend a sandy hill.

Reality ripped as a portal opened, and a man with pale hair pulled her into the void.

She stepped through and into a bedroom of grays and silvers, a bed of dark wood, and neatly organized trinkets.

She turned around, bookshelves swaying and buckling, and Toven Hearst stood before her in his bedroom.

His hands came to rest on her jaw, examining her eyes.

“Look at me.”

She blinked, and her bookshelf crashed to the ground. Free.

Shivers came over her skin, gasping breaths from her chest, a flood of tears down her cheeks. She sobbed, her hands clutching his elbows, keeping him close.

And without knowing how, she pressed against his chest, her forehead pushing into his sternum. Her cries shook her body. He enclosed his arms around her back.

There was a hole in her stomach the shape of a cannonball, filled with grief and rage and despair.

Toven didn’t say a word, simply holding her.

She pulled back when she’d finally exhausted herself, stepping away from him. She knew she was red and swollen and wet. But he looked down at her with such a raw emotion that she couldn’t feel vulnerable.

“They’re going to pay for what they did,” she vowed, her voice hollow and misshapen.

His gray eyes stared down at her. He moved a curl behind her ear. And he nodded.