She shook her head, black locks swaying limply down her back. “Perhaps if you…if you were to leave here—right now—something could be done.”
A mirthless burst of laughter bubbled up within me, as loud and off-putting as a bullfrog’s croak. “You want me to make a bargain?”
She shrugged elegantly, the lines of her shoulder blades rising in sharp points. “It never hurts to ask.”
I stalked away from her, acid biting hot at the hollow of my throat. “I’m not leaving. I’m not doing a single thing you ask of me. Not until you fix this.”
Her face hardened, turning brittle and ugly. “I could snap my fingers and send you back to Highmoor this instant.”
“Then do it,” I taunted her. “If you’re so terribly powerful and potent, do it. Send me back. Compel me to leave. Beguile me all the way back to Salann.”
Her fingers balled into tight fists and her nose wrinkled to a sneer. She hissed out words in a language I did not know, finishing off the phrase with a triumphant shout.
All around us, the forest spun, trees and brush bleeding and swirling together in a catastrophic hurricane of color and noise. I felt as if we flipped over several times, strange forces pushing and pulling us, though I was almost certain my feet never left the ground. When it stopped, we were standing in the middle of the Blue Room at Highmoor and I wanted to crumple to the floor to vomit. This was worse than any seasickness I’d ever suffered.
Outside, enormous waves crashed to shore, tossing giant boulders against the rocky cliffs as if they were little more than marbles. Salt hung heavy in the air, coating my tongue with its brackish hold.
My mouth fell open, stunned she’d actually done it. I thought I’d called her bluff, challenged her to something she could not do, but I was back, my sister’s heavy woolen carpets beneath my feet.
I spun around, wondering where Camille was. Everything looked exactly as the night I’d left. Not a thing was out of place or altered. Nothing except a lit candle gracing an end table beside my favorite brocaded settee.
My eyes narrowed.
The candle was pink.
Just like the one I’d left in the Garden of Giants.
“It’s a remarkable facsimile,” I said, looking up at the vaulted ceilings of my ancestral home. Long tentacles, brilliant with silver gilt, trailed down from its zenith and I felt a surprising burst of homesickness. “But it’s a fake. We’re still at Chauntilalie.”
Kosamaras snarled and instantly we were back among the statues. “Wretched girl.”
“Why on earth was I so afraid of you?” I wondered, daring to advance toward her.
She stepped back, unfamiliar with being the one on the retreat. “Verity…I’m on your side in all this. Forget my past indiscretions and listen to the facts at hand. You are in grave danger. You need to leave Chauntilalie and you need to leave it now. It may already be too late.”
“What’s going to happen?”
I hadn’t thought she could turn a more ghastly shade, but she paled further, visibly shaken. “They’re going to use you—use your children—as a key. A key for terrible things.”
“Tell me,” I insisted. The smaller and more wretched she looked, the more powerful I felt.
“I can’t.”
I bristled. “You can’t do much of anything, can you? We’re taught as children to fear you, to fear the Harbingers and cower before the gods, and why? I’ve seen through every one of your illusions. I’m not scared of you. I’m not scared of Gerard’s plans. But you are,” I said, watching her face carefully. She looked absolutely terrified. “Whatever you think is coming has you breaking into a cold sweat.”
I wanted to laugh at the absurd turnabout.
“And it should you too, little Thaumas,” she hissed, her bravado slipping. “You and that boy will create things, terrible things. Things terrible enough to bring down even the gods.”
I blinked with surprise at the first bit of actual information she’d given me. “What boy?” My stomach lurched, remembering the vicious line of dismissal striking through Gerard’s observations. “Viktor?”
Too volatile.
There were jars and jars of creations Gerard had made and not blinked twice at. Babies with horns. Babies with tentacles. Babies with too many heads and not enough eyes.
Gerard had made those things without a pause of doubt.
And yet he so feared whatever Viktor and I could spawn—
Too volatile.
“Leave,” Kosamaras insisted, grabbing at my arm, her face contrite, beseeching, even as her nails raked my flesh. “Leave now while you can.”
“He’ll just keep making more children. Finding more women.”
“None like you. You are who they fear.”
Her words struck me like a battering ram to the sternum.
The gods feared…me.
“Me?” I sputtered, indignation broiling my middle. “It’s not me who needs to be feared. It’s him. He’s the one who needs to be stopped.”
“Stupid girl. Just go.”
“I’m staying,” I said, my mind made up, resolution flooding through my veins and rooting me here, to this place, to Chauntilalie and the Laurents. I would see this through. It was the only way to make sure Gerard was stopped.
The wraith’s face twisted with rage. “I tried to warn you. I tried to stop this. Whatever perdition you bring upon this world, I hope it eats you first!”
A giant bolt of lightning, wide and white and sizzling with ozone, struck the giraffe statue. The answering thunder punched a hole in my chest, tearing the world apart. I covered my ears, cowering against its force.
When the air calmed down, I opened my eyes.
Sunlight had returned.
The clearing was empty.
Kosamaras was gone.
But there, at the top of the hill, watching from the boardwalk, was Alex, his mouth hung open in horror.
“Alex,” I called up fearfully.
What had he seen?
What had he heard?
He backed his chair away, retreating from me, confusion written across his face.
I sprang into action, racing up the grassy embankment. “Wait. Alex! Please wait!”
He wheeled past one of the Menagerie animals, an almost-butterfly with tentacles instead of legs, and I lost sight of him. When I rushed around the great stony mass, I saw he’d stopped, frozen in the middle of the boardwalk, his back to me.
“Alex?”
I heard my voice rise with uncertain hope. Maybe this wasn’t really Alex. Maybe this was still part of the poisons I’d consumed. Maybe he wasn’t here at all.
But when he whirled his chair around—whole and him, without a trace of otherworldly tint—I knew such luck was not mine.
“What was that, Verity?”
I licked my lips, buying time. “What…what exactly did you see?”
His eyebrows furrowed together. “I don’t know. You were in the middle of some sort of…fit. You were screaming and…” He shook his head and a strange light flickered over his features as he studied me. “What’s wrong with you?”
I bristled against his insinuation. I’d known there was a strong chance he’d react like this. It’s why I had held my secrets so closely all this time. But it still stung to hear him say it aloud. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I was…I was speaking to someone.”