“Madam, this is a mistake,” I told her, standing firm. “Posey deserves no punishment.”
“She led you right into a trap.”
“A risk we all take every time we pursue a piece of intelligence.” I stepped closer, lowering my voice. “Look at what you’re doing. This is the behavior you wish to model for us?”
The Warden glanced to the right, her fierce expression wavering at the sight of two littles hiding their faces in Cira’s tunic.
I took a chance and pushed a little. “This isn’t you, Madam. You are not yourself. Posey is one of us now and has been for months. She is not our enemy.”
Behind me, Posey let out a gurgling cough. “Mara, tell her I didn’t know about Kilraith. Tell her!”
The sound of Posey’s voice snapped the Warden out of her reverie. With a surprising burst of strength, she pushed me aside, ripped the staff from my hand, and brought it down hard on Posey’s broken arm.
Posey howled in pain, her screams wreathed in sobs. I raced to the weapons rack against the wall, grabbed a staff, and made it back to the Warden before she could deal another blow.
Our staffs crashed together and locked in place. I heard Freyda shriek from somewhere behind me and prayed Brigid would manage to restrain her.
“Madam,stop this,” I spat out. “Look at me and remember yourself.”
But she wouldn’t look at me. She pushed hard against my staff, but I was ready and met her with a shove of my own. She stumbled backward, and I kept after her, dealing blow after blow against her staff while she threw up sloppy defenses. Only when I’d cornered her against the wall did I relent.
I backed away slowly, holding my staff across my body and keeping my eyes trained on the Warden’s even though looking at her made me feel queasy. Cowering against the wall like that, she looked so much smaller than usual and stared at me in a dazed sort of shock. I had never defied her like this, not even when she’d tortured the harpy, Nerys, for those long weeks.
I would not condemn Posey to the same fate.
“Posey, can you get up?” I said, keeping my voice as calm as I could.
Her breathing was ragged. She could only grunt a garbled assent.
“Get up slowly,” I told her, “and walk away. Cira and Brigid will help you to the infirmary.”
“No,” said the Warden. Her voice was faint, but then she sucked in a breath and said it again:“No.”
This time the word had teeth. It grabbed on to the binding magic that had lived inside me since my trials—the magic that bound me to the Mist and the Warden and compelled me to obey her—and it bit down hard.
Don’t move.The compulsion was irresistible and rang through my head in the Warden’s voice.Don’t stop me.
I had never been compelled like this before. The Warden had never needed to use that power on me. I was a good little Rose, always had been. Rebellion was not in my nature. She seldom used this trick of the binding magic on anyone, even willful Roses like Danesh. She preferred that our eager obedience come naturally.
Nothing could have prepared me for the feeling that swept over me. Cold fire scorched my veins and turned my vision white. I dropped the staff and crashed to my knees, my body frozen in agony, and then I watched, helpless, as the Warden strode toward Posey and withdrew from her pocket a slender glass syringe. Inside it was a single drop of dull purple liquid.
My racing heart kicked into a gallop. It was the Box, the poison I’d seen used only once during my time in the Order. On that occasion, a Rose had betrayed one of our scouting teams to a reader—an eyeless Olden creature of Jaetris gifted with the art of reading and influencing the thoughts of others. To gain safe passage into Edyn, the reader had convinced everyone on the team that it would be wise to throw themselves off a cliff into the sea, and they had agreed and jumped happily to their deaths.
When the traitor Rose had been found out and the Warden had asked her why she had betrayed her sisters, she had answered, dry-eyed, “They aren’t my sisters any more than you are my mother.” It was the only explanation she had offered.
The Warden had made me stay and watch as she’d injected the traitor with the Box. We’d been in the Stillhouse; even then, at age twelve, I had already been her favorite. I would never forget the sounds the traitor had made as the Box did its work. By the time she was dead, she’d been nothing more than a mess of viscera on the floor.
Imagining Posey convulsing as that Rose had done—imagining the poison snapping each of her bones, and jerking her across the ground, and knotting up her beautiful green limbs like they were nothing more than gummy ropes of clay—gave me the strength to move. The Warden’s binding magic was fierce, turning my legs to stone and my blood molten. Its commands circled through my mind—don’t move,don’t move—but I thought of my father, how he would feel fear but not be afraid, and pushed through them.
As I dragged myself across the yard, sound came to me in muffled bursts. I heard Brigid yell something furious before falling abruptly silent. I heard Posey’s screams turn animal as the poison took hold of her. What remained of her crystalline fae voice disappeared. Through my hazy vision, I saw someone approach the Warden. Two people. Three. She moved toward them, shouting angrily.
Now was my chance. I willed myself to move faster, calling on all the strength I possessed. My bandaged hand scraped across the cobblestones. When I reached Posey, she gurgled something I couldn’t understand. I pulled myself closer, trying not to gag at the sight and sound andsmellof her. One of her legs snapped in half, exposing muscle and bone. One side of her face collapsed, leaving her jaw dangling. The scents of blood and urine surrounded her like a rancid cloud.
“Please,” she rasped, “kill me.”
Nerys had said the same, and Petra too. Their voices lived in my memory—one gnarled and ancient, the other that of a trembling child. And now Posey’s joined their ranks. I would hear her pleas every day for the rest of my life and remember how completely I had failed her.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. At least I tried to. The Warden’s magic slowed my voice. But I think Posey understood. I locked eyes with her, or with the eye I could see—one was buried in the ruined pulp of her face—and grabbed her head, and twisted. Hard. Sharp.
