Court was in session and the new Crown on full display. He stood where his mother had died, the crown still stained. Blood flaked from the gold as he spoke, the peers flinching each time he moved and it rained, and I watched it all from the back of the room with the servants. Fear would only get him so far, but the peerage was listening. The Wyrslaine guards had flocked to him. Mori had let the change in rule occur without revolting.
Once court was done, I waited in the wings. Alistair moved through the motions of conversations, but even from this far away, I could tell his expression was hollow. It only made me angrier.
I took a breath and tilted my head back to keep any tears from showing. We were too high up for even the mountains to block the light, and the stained-glass dome above me had a clear view of the sky. Red and blue, green and white, and smoky black danced across my eyes. From here, only the moon could look down on the peers.
“Lorena?” asked Alistair.
I hadn’t heard him approach, and my wrights hadn’t so much as shifted.
“Do they ever hold court at night?” I asked. “Did you ask your mother that once?”
“I did,” he said with a low laugh. “She said it was best we worked during the day so that the leftover Noble, banished to the worlds beyond the moon, couldn’t look down on us.”
I shrugged, lowering my face. His red glasses were bright smears, and I blinked. Alistair frowned.
“Lorena? Are you all right?” Alistair smiled, a soft and slightly crooked thing, as he approached and dismissed the courtiers vying for his attention. Soon enough, it was only us in the room. “I did as you wanted. No one can pay to get out of being sacrificed, and as of tomorrow, fines are the first response to safety violations in Mori factories. The second is closure and inspection.”
Another way I had played right into his hands. Now Will couldn’t buy his way out of dying. At least one good thing had come from my meddling with Alistair and the court—fewer children would lose their parents or themselves to accidents.
“I’m not all right at all.” I hated knowing my truths. I hated having to reveal my truths to him. “You knew Willoughby Chase was guilty the moment you got to Felhollow.”
Julian’s apathy over his father’s faults disgusted me, and I couldn’t reconcile him with the boy I’d fallen in love with years ago. That Julian Chase would never have preferred not knowing his father was sowing evil, and he was reaping the benefits. Red hands were still red even if you hid them under gloves, he’d have said.
But Alistair’s betrayal reached deep into the heart of me—the little, hopeful part I’d tried to bury—and ripped it out. I’d thought we had an understanding. I’d thought I understood him.
“Ah.” Alistair hemmed and hawed under his breath, the light in his glasses hiding his expression. “Yes, I knew Willoughby Chase was guilty of treason when we wrote the contract.”
I had thought I could be the one to drive Alistair toward a better path, lure him with understanding, but Alistair was only another boy with blood on his hands and lies on his lips. My arrogance had undone me.
“You let me write that contract knowing I was doomed to fail,” I said.
“Yes,” said Alistair, “and you never asked.”
Hadn’t I? I knew he had filled in the warrant then and there, but I couldn’t remember if I had asked him outright.
“That hardly matters.” The words came out in a rush, and he arched a brow. “Don’t patronize me!”
My wrights loomed, and he lurched back.
“We were using each other.” He ground his teeth together and studied me. “We understood that. We started from the same point of understanding.”
“Don’t be intentionally oblivious,” I snapped. “You ensured I started with one foot in the grave. There is a difference.”
“Is there?” he asked, taking one step toward me. “I ensured I had a dualwrought by my side as I took on the Door. You ensured I killed my mother and took her crown.” He took another step and cocked his head to the side. “How much of that did you plan?”
I wouldn’t have done any of it if I hadn’t been here, but still, I had chosen this. I knew who I wanted holding the knife.
“It was foolish of me to think we had an understanding.” I stepped back from him, and he did not follow. “I will work with you. I will help you. I will uphold our deal. I cannot be your friend.”
What did it say about me that I had trusted him, if even a little? That I had wanted the understanding I thought we had?
“Lorena, please.” He reached for me.
“Don’t touch me!” I darted back. “I thought we were on even footing, but I know better now. I need time to figure out where I stand with you.”
“Next to me. I want you next to me.” He lowered his hands and kept them in my sight. “What can I do to make this right?”
“You’ve thoroughly destroyed my trust in your deals,” I said, smiling when he flinched. “There is nothing you can do except wait for trust to rebuild.”
He hated his vilewright; he hated that he could only destroy.
“Would you pardon Willoughby Chase?” I asked.
“If I did, would you stay?”
“Yes,” I said and hated knowing that it was the truth. Mortals weren’t made to know their terrible true selves. “I have nowhere else to go.”
My tongue didn’t curl and my throat didn’t clench, and I knew myself.
He shook his head. “He wanted me dead.”
“So he did.” I bowed to Alistair and turned to leave. “I will see you in the laboratory, Your Excellency.”
I did not see him again until that evening. The moon rose, and we descended into the depths of the palace. Basil drew in a sharp breath as we entered the cavern, and Carlow dug her nails into the binding on her chest. They paced before the Door, Creek’s ghost following after Carlow and glaring at me, and I set down three pieces of Creek—bone, blood, and flesh—on the Door’s boundary. His bones lasted the longest.
“It’s odd,” said Alistair, studying the boxes we had made of Creek. The granules had reformed this morning and worn a hole in the boxes to rejoin the others. “The Door never leaves behind the bones of the sacrifices.”
“Have any been wrought?” I asked.
He had, true to his word, not approached or touched me. He treated me like Basil.
“No.” He made a note. “No wrought and none cursed. Carlow is the last of her kind.”
“Joy,” she muttered, and Creek’s ghost laid his cheek upon her scalp. “Another thing to set me apart.”
“Through no fault of my own,” Creek’s ghost said, but only I heard him.
“We shouldn’t tell anyone else.” I studied the Door, remembering how easily it had tricked me that night so many days ago. The door to my mother’s sickroom still creaked and warped as if it breathed.
Alistair nodded. “Agreed.”
Within an hour, we learned not to touch the Door with our wrights. Basil attempted to create a small lock on the Door, and the cuts on their arms tore wider. Carlow ran to get Safia, her goggles forgotten, and I cared for Basil as best I could. I’d never learned how to ease the pain of sacrificial wounds or even if I could. Safia was the only person I knew who could, and she’d spent years studying the ways sacrifices affected healing. The Sundered Crown had never seen a reason to build a lift to the Door, but Alistair had already asked Carlow and Basil to design it. We would need healing to tackle this vile thing.
“It takes anything left near it,” said Alistair, gesturing to the empty spots where Basil’s blood had splattered the ground. “It’s always hungry and always wants more.”
Like our wrights. Like him.
“We were like cattle to the Noble and Vile. Would we take the threats of a steer seriously?” Carlow approached and adjusted my coat, straightening the collar and unbuttoning it until the lack of binding on my chest was clear. “The councilors won’t take a Wallower seriously unless you look as good as they do.”
I laughed. “Why should they take cattle seriously?”