You wanted to come, murmured the queen. So you have. And now you stand upon the drowned ruins of the old kingdom, amongst the souls of the long dead. You, who share the blood of the dead. You, whose ancestors escaped the dead. And left me, cursed me, bound me.
Sally trembled. “I know nothing of that. I came for answers.”
Release me, and I will give you answers.
Her hand tightened, and she realized that she was holding her mother’s necklace, squeezing it so forcefully the chain was digging into her hand. She was almost too afraid to move, and glanced back at the shore—glimpsing movement amongst the trees. Children. The little girl. Ravens fluttering their wings. She did not know how it all pieced together. It was too strange, like a dream.
Someone else stumbled from the woods, down to the edge of the lake.
Mickel. He had followed her into the wood.
5
Mickel saw her, and tensed. He did not appear hurt, but even from a distance she could see the wildness of his eyes, and the determined slant of his mouth.
I am the Tangleroot, whispered the queen, frozen as the ice within her tomb. This forest is my dream. All who touch it belong to me. My trees who were human, who became my children. My trees, whose roots reach for me, though ice confines them.
Release me, she breathed. Or I will make him mine. “Why do you think I can release you?” Sally forced herself to look at the queen, feeling as though her feet were growing roots in the ice—afraid to see if that was her imagination, or truth. “I am no one.”
My ravens tasted your blood. You are born of a witch, and I feel the key. Sweet little girl. Release me.
Mickel stepped on the ice and fell to his knees, sliding with a quiet grunt. Sally tried to move toward him, but her feet refused to budge.
He, too, whispered the queen. His blood is also sweet. “And if you were free?” Sally asked hollowly, still staring at Mickel.
A great hiss rose from the ice, a terrible, vicious sound that might have belonged to a snake or the last breath of the dead. Onshore, children swayed within the shadow of the wood, covering their hearts.
Little hearts. Sally looked down at her necklace, and the broken remnants of the wooden heart dangling from the precious amethyst. A heart the size of the indent in the queen’s crown.
Mickel rose to his feet, half crouched. His eyes were dark and hard, cold as the ice. Silver glimmered in his hands.
“Sally,” he said.
“Stay there,” she said hoarsely. “Run, if you can.” But he did not. Simply walked toward her, his unsteadiness disappearing until it seemed that he glided upon the ice, graceful as a dancer. He never took his gaze from her, not once, until he was close to the tomb. And then he looked down at the queen, and flinched.
“Whatever she wants,” Mickel said, gazing down at the sleeping woman with both horror and resolve, “don’t give it to her.”
“She wants her freedom,” Sally whispered, almost too frightened to speak. “She thinks I can give it to her.”
I came searching for freedom, she thought, and realized with grim, bitter irony that whatever happened here would be a far worse, and more irreversible, loss than any she might have faced outside the wood.
The ice rumbled beneath their feet. Sally fell forward against the stone tomb. She gripped its dark, cold edge with both hands, and the necklace swung free. Mickel made a small sound, but she could not look at him. The queen commanded every ounce of her attention, as though the roots she had felt in her feet were growing through her neck, up into her eyes—forcing her to stare, unblinking, at that frozen, chiseled face.
The key, whispered the queen. It has been broken.
Sally gritted her teeth, sensing on the periphery of her vision the split, jagged remains of the heart swinging from the chain. “Then it is no use to you. Let us go. Let him go and keep me, if you must. But stop this.”
“Sally,” Mickel said brokenly, but he, too, seemed frozen in spot.
Another terrible hiss rose from the ice, vibrating beneath her feet. Half is better than none at all. Perhaps I will find enough power to break free. Place it in my crown, witch. Do this, and I will let him go free.
Sally hesitated. Mickel whispered, “No.”
A terrible cracking sound filled the air, as though the world was breaking all around them. But it was not the world. Mickel cried out, and Sally watched from the corner of her eye—suffocating with horror—as the ice broke beneath his feet, and he plunged into the dark water.
Swallowed. His head did not reappear.
A scream clawed up Sally’s throat, and she gripped the edge of the stone tomb so tightly her nails broke.
Give me the key and I will save him, whispered the queen in a deadly voice. I will save him.
“No,” Sally snapped, anger burning through her blood with such purity and heat that she felt blinded with it. Her hands released the stone. Her feet moved. Her head turned, and then her body. She could move again.
Sally jumped into the icy water.
It was dark beneath the ice. Pressure gathered instantly against her lungs, immense and terrible, but she did not swim back to the hole of light above her head. She kicked her legs, fighting the painful cold, and searched the drowning void for Mickel. Desperation filled her, and despair; there was nothing of him. He was gone.
Until, quite suddenly, a ghost of light glimmered beneath her. Just a gasp, perhaps a trick. But Sally dove, feet kicking off the ice above her, and swam with all her strength toward that spot where she had seen the light. Her lungs burned. Her eyes felt as though they were popping from her skull. She was going to do this and die, but that would be another kind of freedom, and no doubt better than what the queen had in store for her.
She saw the light again, just in front of her, and then her hands closed around cloth, and she pulled Mickel tight against her body. He moved against her, his hands weakly gripping her waist—which surprised her—though not nearly as much as the light that glowed from a pendant that floated free from a chain around his neck.
A teardrop jewel, like her own—which she realized was also glowing. She stared, stunned, discovering the jagged half of a heart that was linked to his pendant.
She tore her gaze away to stare at Mickel’s face, and found him ghastly. Alive, though, barely. More lights danced in her vision, but that was death, suffocation. Sally kicked upward, and after a moment, Mickel joined her. His movements were awkward, almost as if his strength and grace had been sapped away even before plunging into the water and losing air. The queen had her hold on him.
The light in the ice was very far away, but the light around their necks, much closer. Sally heard voices whispering deep in the darkness, almost as if the water was speaking, or the palace that had drowned and whose last spire entombed the queen. Visions flickered, and Sally saw her mother’s face, soft with youth, and another at her side—two girls, little enough for dolls, holding hands and standing on the ice. Red hair blazing. Jaws set with stubbornness, though their eyes were frightened.
She is strong in her tangled palace, even in dreams, murmured a soft voice, but this is also where she fell, and where her greatest weakness lies. She was bound by a crown made from her own flesh, bound in the blood of those who captured her.
She cannot touch you, said another voice, sweeter than the other. She cannot touch either of you, if you do not bend. Your blood makes you safe to all but the fear and lies that she puts into your heart. What flows through your blood made her crown.