“I didn’t mean it.”
Rose just looked at her.
“Okay, yes, I meant it. I’d just found out she’d been a whore. What would you have done?”
Rose shrugged.
“I meant to hurt her, but . . .”
“Yes, yes, adolescent drama. Big, big feelings that can’t consider someone else’s struggle because yours are the only feelings that count. You said things you knew would hurt, but you expected her to get over them as soon as it was convenient for you.” Rose stared at her. “It doesn’t always work that way. Maybe it does most of the time, but sometimes wounds go too deep, and you can’t fix the harm you’ve done. When that happens, you have to accept the consequences. She’ll always be your mother in terms of bloodline, and she’ll probably always try to protect you to make up for the ones she couldn’t save—she still dreams about them sometimes. Did you know that? But Mother is gone. Look. There’s the next door.”
A corridor in the Hall. Was she home? But . . . Why was she with Clayton and why was he saying . . . No. No! She didn’t want to go with him, but if she loved him . . .
And then Holt walking up to them. A flash of power and Clayton unable to move. And the next door revealed . . .
. . . another corridor at the Hall, another boy from school, backhanding her for not letting him do . . . A snarl, a white paw, the crack of bone as the boy’s neck snapped beneath that angry blow. Fur and strength and safety. She held on to the big white cat, held on until she stumbled through the next doorway and . . .
Her breasts were painfully swollen from a strange arousal, and her nipples were so tight, they hurt, and the wild throbbing she felt between her legs . . .
Titian, I’m sick!
Not excitement like the way girls felt in romantic stories. This was painful need that burned through her. Burned and burned.
I’ll help you to your room. Krellis. No, not Krellis. He was the enemy, and he would . . . And there was Delora, her eyes glittering with the anticipation of destroying another rival.
She was on the floor. Had to get up. Had to run. Had to help Titian. Titian!
Would this pain, this need never end? Would it never end?
“You reached the doorway, but there’s not much sand left in the glass,” Rose said. “If you don’t leave before the last grain falls, you never will.”
Jaenelle Saetien pushed herself to a sitting position. Not a proper doorway, just an opening in the wall.
An opening filled with a tangled web.
“We’re surprised you only had to take back the harm done to Surreal and the girls at your party,” Rose said. “Everyone thought you’d been thoroughly corrupted by the coven of malice. That’s why the Queens wanted you executed along with the rest of Delora’s friends. That’s why you ended up here.” She began to fade. “Sand is running in the glass. You’d better hurry if you want to get out.”
“Rose?” Jaenelle Saetien cried. “Rose! What am I supposed to do?”
“Pay the debt,” a midnight voice said.
On the other side of that tangled web stood . . .
She scrambled to her feet and approached the web. “I remember you.”
“Do you? Not well enough.”
She hadn’t forgotten this strange female who had golden hair that looked more like fur, delicately pointed ears, a tiny spiral horn growing out of her forehead. A human female’s body, but the human hands had cat’s claws and the legs below the knees belonged to a horse and ended with delicate hooves.
“You gave me Twilight’s Dawn,” Jaenelle Saetien said, feeling hopeful for the first time since she’d awakened in this place.
“I gave you that Jewel because you had the potential to wear it,” was the cold reply. “You had the heart to wear it. And then you no longer wanted to be the person who could wear it. Choice by choice, you turned away from who you had been until you became an enemy of everyone who had fought against what you now embraced, until you became an insult to everyone who sacrificed themselves to cleanse the Realms of Dorothea’s and Hekatah’s taint.” She looked over her shoulder at the large hourglass floating on air. “It’s time to pay the debt.”
“I just did that!” Jaenelle Saetien said. “I paid!”
The creature she’d once thought of as her special friend laughed, a terrible sound that contained no mercy. “No. That was to tally up the debt and help you appreciate the pain you caused—and to show you what your friends had done to other people. By going through the web, you will pay what you owe to the Dhemlan Queens. Or you can stay here among the ghosts until your power fades. Your body will wither and die within a week so that your family won’t be chained to caring for a husk, but you will be here for a long time. That, too, would be considered payment in full.” A beat of silence. “Pay the price and, hopefully, live. Or stay here and let your body die. Choose.”
Caught in the strands of the tangled web were Jewel chips. Rose, Summer-sky, Purple Dusk, Opal, Green. All the colors that made up her Twilight’s Dawn.
The creature looked pointedly at the hourglass.
Jaenelle Saetien studied the web. Try to go through on one side or the other? No, the web seemed thicker there. Through the middle.
May the Darkness have mercy on her.
She rushed the web, flinging up her arms and tucking her head to protect her face. The strands of the web caught her, tangled her, bit and tore out pieces of her as she struggled to move forward, to get out.
A crack of power. A moment of feeling hollowed out, so terribly empty. Where was her inner web? Where was she in the abyss?
Nowhere.
She fell through that tangled web, landing on hands and knees beside the creature. She looked back and sucked in a breath. The tangled web across the doorway was in tatters, the strands turning to black ash.
She’d gotten out. She was free. And furious.
Scrambling to her feet, she shouted, “Who are you?” Had she ever asked? This creature had been her special friend, and she’d been dazzled when she was young.
“I am Witch, the living myth. Dreams made flesh.” An odd smile. “As you can see, not all the dreamers were human.”
She was who? What? That meant . . . “You’re the Queen? My father’s Queen?”
“I was. I am. I always will be.”
But that meant . . . “You’re Jaenelle Angelline?”
“I was when I walked among the living.”
Too much, too much. “Do you know why I wanted to be Delora’s friend? Because I didn’t want to be like you! I was tired of being compared to you!”
Something feral and beyond ice filled those sapphire eyes. “Didn’t want to be like me? That was exactly what you wanted when you were young. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that, before your Birthright Ceremony, you were who I might have been if I’d had your childhood instead of mine.” A terrible smile. “Did you enjoy your tour of Briarwood?”
“It’s an awful place.”
“I was five years old the first time I was put in there.”
Moments? Minutes? Jaenelle Saetien didn’t know how long she stared into those sapphire eyes as she remembered Myrol and Rebecca, Dannie and Marjane. Rose. “Why?”
“Because I told the truth about meeting unicorns and dragons. Because I told the truth about the men who came to that place and what they did to the girls. Truth was inconvenient for the Queen of Chaillot, so it was decided that I was unbalanced and needed to be in Briarwood. I was in and out of that place until I was twelve and was raped by a man named Greer.”