“Don’t mention it,” she grunted.
“Shall we?” Oleander prompted, stepping into the dark corridor beyond the sunburst door. Lullaby went after her.
“Will it stay open?” I looked at my blood glowing livid on the wall.
“How should I know?” Oleander flounced ahead. “It’s not like we came here because we knew what we were getting ourselves into. Besides, if we’re down here too long, someone will fetch us.”
“No one else knows we’re here,” I reminded her.
Lullaby’s mouth quirked nervously.
“Since when have you been afraid of anything, Mirage?” Oleander’s voice echoed from the dusk swallowing her figure whole. “You may be rude, graceless, self-important, and annoyingly dim-witted, but I never took you for a coward.”
I knew it was a dare. But she wasn’t wrong. I squared my shoulders, clenched my bloody fists, and followed Oleander and Lullaby into the Oubliettes.
Beyond the entrance, three passageways branched off into darkness.
“Let’s go left,” Oleander said.
“I prefer right,” Lullaby protested.
“Um.” I suddenly regretted bringing either girl. “Middle?”
We crept down the middle passageway in uncomfortable silence, red-tinged light following us like a curse. Past the sunburst doorway, the Oubliettes seemed less mystical and slightly more explicable—I could see how the dark stone and narrow passageways might once have been part of a fortress or citadel, meant to house soldats and withstand siege instead of soar over a city and dominate a horizon like Coeur d’Or. Still, it was hard not to jump and shudder at each twist and turn of the corridor—I kept expecting faceless ghosts and impossible monsters to leap out. But there was nothing but grim streaks of ancient mold and the sepulchral hush muffling our footsteps.
After a few minutes of silent walking, Oleander sighed, “I knew we should have taken the left passageway.”
“Of course you did.” Lullaby’s voice held an edge.
“While I appreciate seeing the half-fish songstress grow sharper teeth,” Oleander sneered, “you might want to reconsider whetting those fangs on me.”
“Why?” Lullaby’s eyes narrowed, glittering in the low light. “You’ve never given me such consideration.”
“Haven’t I?” Oleander asked, loftily. “You should be lucky I even know your name.”
“Seriously?” Lullaby pointed an accusing finger at the tall blond girl, something she usually had too much self-control to do. I noticed her once-buffed nails were bitten nearly to the quick. “When I first came to court you hazed me like it was your Scion-given purpose.”
“That doesn’t sound like me.”
Lullaby gave a high-pitched laugh. “So you don’t remember cornering me with all your minions and dumping me into the Weeping Pools in a new ball gown I could barely afford? You shoved my head underwater to see how long theblue girlcould hold her breath. I nearly drowned, and coughed blood for a week afterward.”
“I thought you had gills.” Oleander was expressionless. “And if you couldn’t afford a wardrobe then you shouldn’t have come to court.”
“My mother is a baronne. She couldn’t afford my gowns without the empress’s favor my presence at court bought.”
“So sad, your mother being poor. My mother isdead.”
Both girls lapsed into a quivering silence. I held my breath.
“It wasn’t anything personal,” Oleander finally breathed. “The Amber Court has always been that way. You have to earn the position you never asked for. And if it helps, what I did to you was nothing compared to what I got when I arrived at Coeur d’Or.”
Lullaby’s eyebrows winged toward her hairline. “Who had the audacity to haze a Suicide Twin?”
“Everyone.” Oleander toyed with a frayed finger on one of her gloves. “Our legacies were already notorious by the time we got to court. It became like a game for the older courtiers—how loud could you makepain boyscream? How close topoison girlcould you get without losing a finger? An eye? Severine encouraged it, I think—she didn’t like how beautiful we were. Or how dangerous. But none of that was as bad as what Gavin—”
Oleander broke off, realizing who she was talking to. She shot me a wary glance, and I remembered her words:I loathe him with my whole heart, which he was determined to break, and if I ever set eyes on him again I might be tempted to kill him.
“Tell me.” I threaded a note of command into my voice.
