Then the White Queen reached inside and pulled out plaques.
One, two, three, four—eight in total, each one the size of a large book, thin and light. She stacked them on the floor, on this black piece of fabric beside her, then closed the vault in one movement.
Mechanical,almost, how she pulled the edge of the fabric and wrapped the plaques with it. Stood. Looked around the room—not nervously, not with any amount of guilt or remorse, just with a straightforward expression on her face, like what she was doing was just a routine task. Achore,that’s all.
Then shedraggedthe bundle out of the room with ease.
“STOP!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, with my everything, but the voice that came out of meslammedonto the surface of those colors, and it couldn’t go through. Isawit as it turned back, as if my voice had color, as if it rippled in the air.
The door closed, and the White Queen was gone.
No, no, no, no?—
Images in front of me, moving slightly faster by the second.
Horses running down a hill, people swimming in a lake—flash after flash after flash of landscapes and laughter, rain and tears, sunlight and the moon reigning over the night sky by herself—it all moved faster in sync with my heartbeat, until I was afraid I would lose my mind.
Until I closed my eyes again and forced myself to breathe.
Whatever was happening, wherever I was, itmatchedme. This place matched my heartbeat—it moved as fast or as slowly as I wasthinking.Like it knew me inside-out.
And if the images were going to slow down, my heart needed to set the rhythm.
It was easy enough to do. I’d spent years forcing myself to calm down—the past few weeks at home especially. Being on the brink of losing my mind and talking myself off the ledge each time. It was easy, and then my heart was no longer galloping, and I was breathing deeply, too. Steadily.
When my eyes opened, the image in front of me played almost in slow motion.
I saw a woman dressed in white, a shawl over her head, a crystal crown shining on top of it. My breath caught right away, but the image didn’t speed.
It was the White Queen, except she was no longer a few years older than me. Her hair was shorter, her eyes darker, and the bundle she was dragging on the floor behind her was gray, not black.
I saw it all, saw the narrow dark corridor, the shiny black tiles on the floor as she dragged and dragged. I saw the door on the other side, white and polished, and it opened with a wave of her hand and a flash of purple light—purple,not white. But the door opened, and beyond it there was a room.
A wide room. Awhiteroom.
A room full of dishes.
Racks standing on wheels, none reaching over the woman’s hips. They were full of white cups and saucers, plates and silverware—full and clean, not a speck of dust anywhere that I could see.
The scene didn’t zoom in on her when she went through the door, though. I was left outside, still in the narrow corridor, watching, as she dragged the gray bundle all the way to the other end, then fell on her knees in front of the wall.
When she did, she turned to look back at the door, back atmeas if she could really see me floating there in the nothingness.
In that split second, her mask fell off.
Her face crumbled. Itcollapsedlike all that had been holding it up was gone, and what was underneath was not rage or cunning or cruelty—nothing at all what I expected.
It was something worse. Something that lived inside me, too.
Grief.
I knew it. I recognized it like an old friend. Ifeltit all the way to my bones.
Then the queen turned toward the wall and raised her hand, pressed it flat against the surface.
In the next tick, the image dissolved, and she was gone.
NO!
