“Mirage?” Lullaby’s voice sounded strange through her cracked door. “It’s third Nocturne. Is everything all right?”
“Not really,” I choked out.
Lullaby pushed the door wider. She glanced around and raised a quizzical eyebrow. “No Suicide Twin entourage today? Did you assume the Red Masks would stop trying to kill you now you challenged their favored Sun Heir to a glorified duel?”
“You’re still angry with me.”
“Less than I was.” Lullaby cracked a half-hearted smile. “Why aren’t you exploring the Oubliettes, before they’re overrun by advisors and courtiers and commoners andGavin? It’s soon to be a badly kept secret.”
“I was about to,” I admitted, “except that place scares the stuffing out of me. Will you join me?”
“Are you sure you want me to?”
I thought I heard a bare hint of pleading in her voice.
“Of course I do,” I said, vehement. “Don’t you know how much I’ve missed you?”
She relented, and we trotted down the hall in silence for a few minutes. There was only one wolf guarding the dungeons. I cast a ragged but passable illusion of invisibility over the pair of us so we could sneak to the entrance.
Lullaby waited until we were through the portal in the Oubliettes before speaking again.
“When you challenged Gavin—I was surprised.”
“You didn’t think I’d do it?”
“Not so soon, at least. I think I knew it would eventually happen—these Ordeals sing a song that sounds like destiny.”
My Relic throbbed.
“Do you believe Arsenault?” she asked. “About Severine going mad over the Ordeals and killing Seneca for his Relic?”
“I don’t know.” Our voices echoed strangely in the halls. My arm smarted as I reopened Oleander’s wound and smeared my blood on the sunburst door. It hissed open, and we reentered the labyrinth. “The story he tells is the one I believed a week ago. But it contradicts Severine’s own explanation. And part of me—” I gnawed on a lip. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but Iwantto believe Severine. She killed our father, she killed countless half siblings, she tried to killme.And yet, I want to believe she had a reason beyond pure power to do the things she did. It doesn’t excuse her crimes—not by a mile—but if she did what she did for Seneca, for the love of a brother? I want to believe that kind of love exists.”
Unexpectedly, Lullaby nodded. “Sometimes I feel that way about Colette—about my mother. If I can find an explanation for the things she does, the ways she uses me, that will soften the hurt. If I can understandwhy—why the things that I am traded for are so important to her—that might make her actions acceptable.”
Her voice wavered on the last word, and I remembered her awful story:Being your friend feels like that name day.
“Oh, Lullaby,” I whispered. “You’re not talking about Colette anymore, are you?”
Her face fell like shatterglass. My heart twisted hot and dark in my chest.
“Whyhim?” she asked violently. “Why did you choose Sunder over me?”
“I—” Her words knocked me off-balance. I realized with an uncomfortable pang that I had to ask a follow-up question to her accusation. “Which time?”
Lullaby barked a laugh. “Every time! You ran off to Belsyre—withhim—without even telling me where you weregoing! Do you know how worried I was? Thibo had barely been gone a few days, and Mender a week before that, and Scion if I didn’t hate myself for worrying about you, but I was sick with it. I didn’t know if you were—” She swallowed, hard. “But I forgave you for all that, when you told me what happened, when you told me about everything. And yet, mere days later, you abandoned me again. You sent me away—out into an exploding, battle-torn palais with Skyclad patrols around every corner, to look for a healer forhim.While you crouched on the marble and embraced him.”
“He was dying.” I knew it was no excuse.
“We all could have died.” Lullaby looked at me with hollow eyes. “You made choices, that day. Hard choices, I’m sure. But choices nonetheless. And that’s how I found out that I wasn’t a lead character in my own story, but a supporting one in yours.”
“Lullaby—”
“So just tell me why. Why him?”
“Because—” That all seemed so far away now. Ihadmade hard choices, but now they seemed flimsy, translucent—as though it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d chosen differently. As though everything that had happened was always going to happen, no matter what I chose. “You may not believe me, but I never actually considered that I was making a choice. We were all on the same side. We all risked death to defeat Severine. We all risked death for each other. It never occurred to me that to you, it must have looked like a choice.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
