“It is not your decision where you go and what you do,” the Warden hissed. “Idecide that. You go where I tell you to go. You undertake the missionsIassign.”
I swallowed, tasting blood, and made myself look back up at her. It was then that I saw we weren’t alone. Dozens of Roses peered at us from the shadows of the room, the mouths of nearby hallways, the mezzanines of the upper floors. Cira was tearfully trying to usher away a passel of gaping littles. Danesh, Caralind, and two others whose faces I couldn’t see were holding Brigid back at the edge of the room, trying to cover her mouth. Rage twisted Brigid’s face; if she managed to get free, she would launch herself at us, and the Warden would kill her.
I knew this with bone-chilling certainty: in this state, the Warden would not shy away from murder.
My horrified mind searched in vain for the right thing to say. But I’d seen her like this only once before: when she had beaten Posey nearly to death. And the only thing that had stopped her that day was me. Killing Posey myself had shocked the Warden back into sanity.
Now I was the sole object of her ire, and in my terror, I couldn’t think of how to stop her.
“Madam,” I began, “our mission to Falkeron was an abject failure. The Blessed Abbot—”
“I know all about what happened to the Blessed Abbot, and I know about that traitorous fool Errik and his deranged followers. I knoweverything, Mara.”
She didn’t know everything; she couldn’t. She didn’t know about Mother or Wardwell. She didn’t know what I was, what my sisters were.
And yet that mocking glint in her eyes cut me like a blade.
“There was a girl at Falkeron,” I said, desperate to change the subject. “Serra. She helped us escape. If she’s still alive—”
“Do you truly think I allowed any of them to live after what they did to you?”
An icy silence followed her words, and grief for this girl I barely knew flared up inside me. “You kill innocent people to avenge me, and yet you strike me with such cruelty, as if you hate me.” I drew in a painful breath. “As if you’d like to kill me yourself.”
“Oh, Mara.” Then she smiled, mockingly tender. She crouched beside me and stroked my hair. The drag of her cold fingers reduced me to the child I’d once been, shivering alone on an unfamiliar cot.
“You’re so wrong,” she crooned. “I don’t want to kill you. I want you to understand how completely and irrevocably you are mine. And until I’m convinced that I’ve corrected your misguided thinking…”
She stood slowly, her gaze never leaving mine, and for a moment everything grew still—the crawl of time, the panic buzzing through my body. Then she sighed, cocked her head slightly to one side, and held her hand out to me, palm to the ceiling.
“Until then, I’m afraid I’ve no choice but to punish you.”
I nearly reached for her hand, some stupid part of me still believing that this was a mistake, that she would help me to my feet with a smile and apologize for frightening me.
But then she clenched that open palm into a fist, and with it came a feeling I knew well—the feeling of transformation. Only this time, when my body stretched and my bones snapped into their new positions, pain like I’d never known ripped through my body, stealing my breath, my voice, my mind—worse than the brutal cold of Falkeron, worse than my flight across Vauzanne.
No Rose remembered her binding, which always took place on the last night of our trials. The older girls had told me this was a gift from the Warden. The binding was so painful, they said, that remembering itwould shatter the mind. But the Warden had softened the experience for all of us. She softened everything, even our normal transformations. She protected us from the worst of her magic, and she did it out of love.
Even so, transformation was inherently brutal; the first few times had left me sobbing, not only from the pain but also from the disturbing realization that my body was no longer my own. It could change according to someone else’s will. To my child’s mind, this was an attack. But, as had happened with so many kinds of violence over the years, I’d grown used to it.
This, though—thiswas different. It was agony. It was the world tearing itself to pieces, and I was the world.Iwas the thing being destroyed. A thousand feathers burst out of my skin, drawing blood as they cascaded down my arms. Wings broke through my back with a crack like splitting bone. My shredded clothes floated to the floor, and when it was finished, I was left naked and alone in the silent hall, choking on my own sobs.
Had this been what my ten-year-old self had felt during her binding all those years ago? I wept for that child, for the pain she had endured. All she had wanted was to go home. Instead she had killed and suffered, and now she suffered again, and she always would. My head reeled with sadness. I could hardly breathe through it.
The Warden knelt beside me, watching me shiver. When I retched, she glided out of the way so I wouldn’t soil her clothes. Then she leaned close and kissed my downy cheek.
“You are bound to me,” she whispered, almost lovingly. “Your blood, your thoughts, the power that you carry—it all belongs to me. Remember that as you fly back to your lover.” She stood and began walking away, only to pause and add with mocking concern, “I wonder what he’ll think once he realizes this is now the only form of you he can have.”
Then she left me. They all did, all the Roses hovering in horror atthe edges of my awareness. I couldn’t be angry at them. If they protested, she would kill them. Even comforting me could be dangerous.
I curled into myself on the rug, my wings limp and bloody, and waited for the strength to stand.
Chapter 36
Normally the down covering me in my avian form felt like velvet. When I was younger, I liked to rub my own arm against my face, catlike, just to savor its softness.
Now, in the wake of the Warden’s punishment, that same silken fuzz itched and burned, as if insects were swarming my skin. I felt like clawing myself to pieces.
But I uttered no protest, allowed not even a whimper to pass my lips. I wouldn’t give the Warden the satisfaction. Instead I cleaned the blood off of my body as best I could, then went down to the infirmary, where Nanette applied a balm so gently that my determination not to cry nearly broke.
