IF ZOSIA HAD DISLIKED BEATA before, now she couldn’t stop wishing she’d used her claws of shadow to rip out Morning’s throat instead of just ripping her from her sleigh.
Beata was insufferably pleased with herself. A steady stream of smug words poured from her mouth as they paused at a curve in the tower steps, listening for anyone coming. “It wouldn’t have made a difference anyway, even if you had managed to take the prince’s heart for yourself. Even with the power you gained from consuming it, you wouldn’t be a match for Black Jaga. Or Red. Or White. The witches made us. We’re their servants. Do you think our magic can even touch them?”
Zosia gave no answer, and when only quiet came from around the curve, she continued up the steps, taking them two at a time with Beata on her heels.
“You wouldn’t have been able to kill her. Only those blessed with a pure heart can do them harm. Do you think you’ve been blessed with a pure heart, Midnight?”
“If you keep talking,” Zosia said, “you’re going to alert the guards.”
The royal dungeons were like a tomb or a crypt, buried deep in the bones of one of the Golden Castle’s towers. She’d lost track of the number of steps they’d climbed, the number of rank cells they’d passed.
“Where would you even go if you were free?” Beata continued. “East? West? You have no money. No family. No friends. You think your life would be better anywhere else?”
Again, Zosia didn’t answer. It had never been about having a specific place or destination in mind. It was the possibility to choose, to go anywhere, wherever the mood and the wind took her. The freedom to decide her own path no matter where it might lead, the freedom to craft her own destiny.
“The witches take care of us. We never go hungry. They give us a home.” Beata’s halo of braids gleamed gold as they swept through a pool of guttering torchlight. The stairwell and the twisting corridors leading up to the outside world were as dark and bleak as the cell Zosia had been locked in.
“I know you and Marynka think you’re better than me because I’m quiet and don’t make trouble, but look who’s winning now? You said I underestimate Marynka, but both of you underestimate me. There are ways to win if you keep quiet, if you’re good and you cooperate and keep your mouth shut. Just do as you’re told, say what the witches want to hear, don’t stir the pot. Don’t take risks. Look how I’ve survived all this time. Look how I’ve even managed to free Marynka from Red Jaga’s clutches.”
“By giving her me instead,” Zosia muttered.
“Maybe you should’ve thought twice before setting your shadows on me.”
“Do you hate me that much?”
“It’s hard not to. When I’ve had to watch Marynka be so miserable because of you.”
Zosia gritted her teeth. Her anger didn’t run hot, but cold, spreading through her veins like ice. Why did Marynka get to go free? Why was she the one?
Marynka, who swanned about in the sun while Zosia had to claw her way out of the dark. Marynka, who had a friend. Marynka, who didn’t even want to escape this life.
Zosia regretted having ever wished for freedom. It hurt worse to have wished and dreamed and dared to hope only to have that dream ripped away than to have never dreamed to start. After everything she’d done, all the many months of careful planning, the slow, meticulous accumulation of each heart she’d stolen, all the lies she’d fed Black Jaga, knowing just one slip could get her killed, all of it, had come to nothing.
“You’re not the first, you know,” Beata said. “I’ve been a servant longer than you and Marynka. I knew the girl who was Midday before her. I knew the girl who was Midnight before you, and I saw what Black Jaga did to her when she tried to run. Why do you think she’s tried so hard to keep you separate from us? Night always makes trouble and tries to run away with the sun.” She slipped on the next step she took and would have fallen, crashing back down the stairs, if Zosia hadn’t caught her wrist and hauled her upright.
For a heartbeat neither of them spoke. The revelation made Zosia wonder what other secrets Black Jaga had been keeping from her.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” Beata said softly, “always being the one left behind, the one left out. I don’t want to watch another girl die. It’s not a bad life. What’s so terrible about following a few orders? Isn’t it enough to live like this? Why make such a fuss?”
Zosia dropped Beata’s arm. “You like being kept in a cage?”
“You don’t notice the bars of the cage,” Beata said, “unless you start to throw yourself against them. Surviving is a choice too.”
A clamor punctuated her words: shouted orders, panicked footsteps, the crash of doors flinging open. The telltale sound of rooms being searched. Their escape had been discovered. Zosia reached instinctively for her magic, but the holy symbols carved into the tower’s walls still sapped her strength. When she called to the shadows lurking in the corners of the stairwell, they swirled, broke apart, swirled, and broke apart again.
She and Beata doubled their pace. Zosia’s teeth bit into her lip. She should have fled when she’d had the chance, the second Józef revealed he knew what she was, the second she was cornered. She shouldn’t have wasted her time trying to fight. She should have run.
You could still run, whispered a voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like Marynka’s.
She could still run, but Black Jaga was already headed this way, summoned by her sister. Black Jaga, who had given Zosia magic and a second chance at life, and all she’d asked in return was Zosia’s complete obedience.
“I raised you, clothed you, fed you. You could act a little more grateful.”
They’d had a deal of sorts and Zosia was going to pay for breaking it. Unless, of course, she swore herself into the service of another witch and let Red Jaga protect her. . .
But she could still run.
She could still take her chances.
Do you really think you can outrun her?
Zosia’s heart jumped as they clambered up the worn stone steps. “Where is Marynka now?”
“Waiting for the prince with Red Jaga,” puffed Beata. “There’s an abandoned woodcutter’s hut in the forest past the outskirts of the city. Near the monastery they took you to.”
They reached a landing. The air changed. It was no longer tainted with the scent of incense, the stench of damp and decay. It tasted fresh. Cold.
Beata pushed through a set of double doors, moving swiftly.
Zosia stopped short as steel sang through the air with a flash of silver. A dagger buried itself in the wall inches from her ear. Beata lunged to the side in time to dodge a second blade.
A guard charged them.
But this time they were finally far enough from the dungeon for the dampening spells to lose most of their effect. When Zosia reached for the shadows in the corners of the room, they came alive, drawing themselves up into monstrous, nightmarish shapes. Grotesque faces swelled out of the darkness, their mouths yawning open in silent, agonized screams, their clawed tendrils reaching to wrap around the terrified man’s legs and arms and neck.
There wasn’t time to relish the victory. More footsteps sounded beyond the doors, the heavy tread of soldiers.
Zosia and Beata fled into the next room and the next. Beata’s claws left luminous streaks in the air as they cut through skin and flesh. Together they were a blur of light and dark. It was strange fighting shoulder to shoulder with Morning instead of against her. Their powers were so different, yet somehow meshed together. It didn’t feel right exactly, but not entirely wrong either.
It was unnerving.
Perhaps that was the real reason why Black Jaga had kept Zosia locked away from the world and separated from Beata and Marynka. Not to make her stronger, but because it made her weaker, and more easy to control. She hadn’t wanted Zosia to be able to build connections, to learn things, to have anyone she could go to for help.
“You say our magic isn’t enough to harm them,” Zosia said, panting. “That I can’t harm Black Jaga with the magic she’s given me. But what if we used other magic? What if the three of us worked together to free ourselves?”
Beata blinked and then laughed outright. “Us? Morning, Midday, and Midnight? You’re getting desperate. Didn’t I just tell you how it worked out for the last girls? And do you really think we could work together? After everything?”
She had a point. Look at where trusting and confiding in Marynka had gotten Zosia—captured by a prince, thrown into a dungeon, forced into a bargain with another witch.
Unless. . .
The words chased each other around her head.
Run. Stay. Run. Stay. Run. Stay.
“Every time I look at you,” Beata said, “all I see is Marynka after you’ve snatched a heart out of her hands. All I see is her thinking she’ll never be good enough.”
They burst through another set of doors. A line of soldiers stood ready to meet them, their sabers gleaming with holy flame. The dying red light of day speared through a long set of windows. Beyond the glass, the snow-dusted city and a darkening sky beckoned.
Beata’s palms glowed incandescent. “Stay back and close your eyes,” she ordered in a tone that grated on Zosia’s nerves. She was right. They would make terrible allies.
“I’ll blind them,” Beata said. “You take the ones on the right.”
Zosia nodded and moved behind Beata as the men closed in.
Beata raised her hands. . .and Zosia seized her chance and bolted.
Sprinting for the windows, leaving Beata to deal with all the guards and their flaming swords, ignoring her cry of outrage. Zosia didn’t stop when she reached the window, but threw herself at the icy glass, crashing through it, plunging down, down, down, the rush of cold air shrieking in her ears.
She felt the full measure of her magic flood back as soon as she was outside the walls, a sensation like shrugging off a too-small, too-tight skin. She could breathe again. Power flooded through her veins.
A breath before she hit the snow at the foot of the tower, Zosia transformed. She was weightless. Formless. Made of nothing but dark wisps of the gathering night and frost-laced air. A whirlwind of it. The Golden Castle, the city of Warszów, its tree-lined avenues and twining black streets, and its snow-covered rooftops shrank as she let the winter wind carry her away to freedom.