“Why does he wear my soul around his neck?” I said, teasing my hand out in front of her.
Her smile widened. “Will you make me young and beautiful again?”
“Answer my questions and I’ll think about it.”
“He can’t keep you in the jars, you helped a few of them escape the last time you were here.”
I knew I set their souls free. So, all I had to do was break a few pieces of glass and I helped them here? Seemed too easy. Wait, if that were how it could be done, why hadn’t anyone else escaped on their own? “Why haven’t you broken your own jar? Why would anyone stuck here just leave their souls in the jars?”
Her hand reached out for mine, fingertip to fingertip like the pull of a magnet. “No one here can touch them. No one but you.”
“But Mathias touched mine. Mathias broke my glass and—”
“No, child, it was you. Whatever it is you have, you gave him the ability,” she whispered. “Please, just one time let me feel something.”
I wrapped my fingers over hers and emptied my mind. She wanted to feel human again? My pleasure. If I could give life here—if I could make people feel alive again—could I make them feel the pain of life?
Her dark eyes searched mine, begging me on her knees, as I raked through my mind to feel what I needed her to feel.
I remembered my grandmother and the night I found her dead. The shock and horror and the absolute terror of her last moments. My mind zoned in on the blood splattered over the walls, bits of brain and bone sticking to the clumps of it. I thought of the loneliness of my childhood and the emptiness of the house and my heart for all these years.
“At least it’s something,” she whimpered.
I yanked my hand away, my breathing quickening in anger. “If Hemlock is a god and he came from gods, where are all the others? Why is he the only one left? Who is Erebus? What is Ravenswood really?” I shot question after question at her, but all she did was look up at me and smile.
“Do I look beautiful again for the king?”
“No. You look like the same dead old lady I first met when I got here.” I stepped back fiercely, heart pounding hard in my chest. “What did you do in life to get here?”
“I helped ourkingbecome a god again.”
“How?” I demanded. Then I saw it, a small glowing ball that hung from around her neck. “Whose soul do you wear, Rose?”
She clutched at her chest and covered the dull light.
“Is that how you get people to stay here? Is that how everyone is trapped here? They’re imprisoned somehow?”
Her smile trembled a small fraction, and then she bolted up off of the floor and grabbed me by the neck with both her hands.
Instantly I felt the pull beneath my skin. I wasn’t giving her anything—she was taking and taking from me. Her skin pinkened and a flush of life rippled over her flesh. I tried to break free, but the pull was too strong, her hands clenched too tightly. I focused my mind on the whipping Hemlock’s guards gave me and she stumbled back, hands outstretched away from me. “You’re a petulant spoiled brat.”
“And you’re going to be the first one I kill here,” I growled, lunging at her. I went straight for her neck—but not the flabby flesh that hung there. I went right for the necklace and tore it off her body.
“No!” she grunted, falling forward at me.
I let the chain tumble out of my grasp, holding tightly onto the charm. The necklace hit the stone floor with a tinkling tin noise and she dove for it, clawing at the rocks and grime that covered the floor to pick it up.
But I held the most important part in my hand and I opened my palm to see.
And there in the middle of my hands lay a warm light encased in a tiny little jar the size of a wine cork, complete with a little cork of its own holding it closed.
“Where is it? You stupid girl! Where is it?” Rose howled as she crawled around, searching through the dust and filth that covered the stones like a rug.
The little ball of light inside the charm pulsated hard, like the beating of a thousand hearts. A universe squeezed into a ball. Once again I heard music, choirs singing—singing my name.
Without another thought, I pulled the small cork out of the bottle and a warm shimmering light lit up the room. It burst in glittery sparks through the air, making intricate webbed designs like unfurling scrollwork into the shape of Rose’s face, young and beautiful, my grandmother’s twin.
It hovered in front of me, rippling through the air between me and Rose’s dead body. “Raine, it wasn’t always this way. They are all cursed here.”
