Aurora drags a heavy ax through the quiet of the sleeping castle, dew still clinging to the hem of her dress. The morning fields had opened before her like a series of yawns, great mouths watering with hunger, and she’d allowed them to swallow her for hours as she wandered, searching. Since the necklace of pearls and rubies now lay scattered throughout the Borderlands, she’d need something else, she knew, something powerful—stronger than the rose lullaby. An object from the real world that could break through the queen’s illusions once and for all.
And then she remembered the story Heath had told her, of the soldiers who first tried to break out of Blackthorn, one of them successfully forming a rift in the wall with an ax. And so she’d scoured the estate, finally coming upon a store of tools. This ax had stood out to her as different from the others—a complex design decorated the stone head. The wood of the handle was weathered and old. It felt firm in her hands, definite, unlike so many other objects in Sommeil, which seemed to give just slightly when held, to take on some flavor of the person who had touched them.
As she passes through each of the now-familiar rooms and halls of Blackthorn, Aurora reminds herself that this might be the last time she sees them. She knows what she must do: she must make Belcoeur remember. She must make her realize that Charles is never going to come, and that jealousy has eroded her mind. If the queen can let go of her jealousy, she can let go of her dreams and move on. She can set Aurora free—set all of them free.
Though Aurora isn’t certain who came between Charles Blackthorn and Belcoeur, she has a good guess. After all, she knows something about jealous sisters. Wasn’t it the last thing she said to Isbe before her own sister fled? Don’t be jealous of me. Aurora knows the unfairness of life better than anyone: some are born princesses, some bastards. That is how the world has always worked and will always work; those who are born blessed will be the envy of those who are not.
The musty scent of the corridor leading to the north hall clings to Aurora’s senses, filling her with sadness. She feels draped in its longing like a physical weight, its stickiness like a spider’s web that wants to pull her back, back, back—the walls whisper. Stay. They throb. Don’t hurt us, they seem to say.
But sometimes pain is the only way.
She reaches the north hall, and the door that only recently had opened elegantly before her, inviting her closer to the queen’s lair. Once again, however, the door is locked. The knob is cold and hard as bone. The castle is so quiet she can hear her breath loud in her ears.
Don’t hurt us. Stay.
Aurora’s arms pulse from the weight of the ax. She lifts it over her head.
And then, she swings it down.
A loud krick-crack ripples through the air as the stone axhead meets the wooden door, splintering it. Pound . . . pound . . . thwack. It takes several swings, and with each, the door shudders, cries, cracks further, and Aurora could swear she feels how it wants to heal itself closed, keeping her out. The splintering wood seems to sigh a final stop. She swings again, throwing all of her strength into it.
Finally the door collapses.
Her hands are raw. Her back is strained and tight. Her arms feel like lead.
She grabs a lit torch from a sconce and steps inside. The hall of tapestries. The den of fog.
Finding her way around the wing doesn’t prove easy, though. There are doorways that cut right in the middle of walls that lead to twisting tunnels, each impenetrably dark, studded with mouse droppings and the occasional chilling sound of scratching or whimpering—Aurora soon finds herself disoriented. It’s not just the winding passageways of the forbidden wing that have her so turned around. She has the distinct impression that the chambers have all stood up and rearranged themselves every time she emerges into a new room, like an endless maze.
And then she recalls that her own palace used to have many of these tunnels before they were blocked with plaster—all but the one connecting her room to Isbe’s. Yes.
As quickly as the thought comes to her, she is able to slide back a wall hanging and enter another passageway, one sloped steeply upward . . . and uncomfortably familiar.
Aurora lets out the breath she didn’t know she was holding as she bursts out the other side, into a tower bedroom that looks very much like her own at home.
She takes in the neatly made bed with its drooping lace canopy, the gilt mirror, and the vanity with a hairbrush lying on it, the half-woven tapestry stretched across a loom in one corner.
The room is empty but filling with the same dark fog that has followed her this far. At the foot of the bed is a trunk. She kneels before it and throws open its lid. She braces herself for more horrors—bugs or rodents or even decayed bones. But instead she finds only a heap of objects that appear to be the queen’s private treasures. Across the inside of the curved lid, words have been scratched into the wood:
Everyone deserves true love.
The message sends an odd jolt down Aurora’s spine. There’s a rotting wedding veil, and beneath it, several old, nearly hairless dolls. Below those lie a small, flat rectangle of wood. She picks it up and turns it over. On the other side is a portrait of two little girls. Their faces look very alike, though one is sharper somehow, and has darker hair.
Marigold.
The sister with the lighter hair is holding a daisy and smiling, while Marigold is looking somewhere past the portrait artist’s position.
Understanding cascades through Aurora: Marigold is an Impression of Malfleur as a child, one created by Belcoeur, whom her sister called Daisy. The painting—and Marigold’s existence at all—indicate that Belcoeur cared deeply about her twin, despite what the stories would have had Aurora believe.
She sets down the portrait and looks to the bottom of the chest, which is covered in a dark, rusty stain. She knows what it is. Blood.
“Stop.”
Aurora turns around to see—not Belcoeur but Wren, standing in the doorway wringing her hands.
“I have to do this,” she says to the girl. Her voice floats out of her with an authority that surprises her. “I have to confront the queen.”
“No, you don’t. You could just leave it, leave us.” Wren’s voice has a slight warble to it, like it could break. “You’ve done enough damage.”
They stand facing each other in the dark bedroom. “That’s just it. I need to fix this. I need to go home.” Aurora keeps her mind and her words focused on those truths.
“But what about Heath?” Wren asks.
Aurora shakes her head, willing the tears not to fall. “Please forgive me,” she says. “I never meant for . . . I didn’t know. Please don’t be jealous of me.”
“Jealous of you?”
“Because of the kiss—because you—”
“Aurora.” Wren folds her arms across her chest. “I know Heath better than anyone. Certainly better than you. I know him; I know what he’s like. He hasn’t chosen you, and he never will.” Her calm tone sends a shiver up Aurora’s spine.
“But, but . . . you love him,” Aurora says quietly, her heart still aching for the girl, and for herself, and for the impossibility of the true love in which she once believed.
“Love,” Wren replies, “does not have room for jealousy. It is just a thing you know, a part of who you are forever. It’s inalterable.”
“But he kissed me,” Aurora sputters. “And it’s more than just that. I know it is. I can feel that it’s more. It’s just like what happened to the queen.”
Wren cocks her head. “What do you mean?”
“Belcoeur loved Charles Blackthorn. But I think he fell for her sister, Malfleur. That’s why Belcoeur made Sommeil and retreated into her world of dreams. She didn’t want to have to face a life without true love,” Aurora says, telling the story as if it’s one she’s read a thousand times in her library. “Her jealousy is what destroyed her.”
“You have it all wrong,” says a raspy voice.
Both Aurora and Wren go silent. Wren pushes her way into the room beside Aurora as they both peer through the haze.
The queen now sits at the loom on the far side of the room. Aurora can’t be sure how long the woman has been there, her loom softly click-clacking as she listened to their argument. It’s even harder to see now. The windows are blackening—another illusion, Aurora thinks.
Wren turns to Aurora and then back to the queen, clearly awed. Aurora can’t believe that the girl—that all the residents of Blackthorn—have lived their entire lives right beside the mad queen and have never once laid eyes on her. It’s crazy to think that they’ve been so close to a way out all this time, but have never known it.
Then again, she realizes, perhaps everyone has the key to her own prison. Maybe freedom is just a matter of knowing the right story, of being brave enough to say the right words in the right order at the right time.
The old woman leans over her loom, and for a moment Aurora thinks she is weaving her own silver-white hair into the tapestry. She doesn’t look up but shakes her head slightly.
“My queen?” Wren whispers, trying to wave away the haze. “What do we have wrong?”
The queen sighs. “I was never the jealous one. It was my sister who envied me.”
Aurora and Wren step closer, until Aurora can see the tears on the queen’s face, even in the stifling dimness of the room.
“Then why are you crying?” Aurora asks gently, as though too harsh a demand might make the woman dissolve into the thick air.
“Because there’s nothing sadder than someone leaving,” the queen says, her voice almost childlike.
“Who left you? Was it Charles Blackthorn?”
“Aurora,” Wren cautions. “Be careful. She’ll trick us.”
Belcoeur shakes her head. “She left. She left. But not again. Not this time. I won’t be left alone again.”
“She?” Aurora steps closer. It’s getting harder to breathe in here. No matter how her eyes adjust, the air only grows thicker and blacker. Could the queen be talking about her sister? Is it possible she’s been waiting all this time not for her true love but for Malfleur herself?
The queen looks up, her eyes ablaze with swirling greens and blues. “I won’t be left alone again.”
“Aurora!” Wren says, beginning to cough. “Run!”
Aurora feels a tug on her sleeve, but she can’t move. She’s fixed to the spot, staring at the loom.
“No one will leave me,” Belcoeur says.
Aurora is riveted not by her words but by the breathtaking beauty of the tapestry the queen has been weaving all this time. A forest dashed with streaks of red and yellow and orange that leap toward a blackened sky.
Flames.