“Nothing will erase what you’ve done. So long as you keep making these choices, you will remain a monster no matter what you look like.”
“Choices.” He scoffs. “I never had a choice. I was sucked into this place and trapped for years before I found a way to get out, but by then it was too late. How could I exist like this anywhere but here? This place has taken everything from me. Now I will take everything from it.”
He reaches inside my backpack. He removesan explosive—a glass bottle stuffed with a rag. He cracks the glass against the bridge. It shatters, the contents inside spilling at our feet. He holds the broken neck of the bottle with one hand and grabs my wrist with the other.
“Let her go!” Jude yells, his shout echoing across the water.
But Vorat doesn’t listen.
He slices my palm with the glass.
Blood oozes from the gash.
Jude fights against his restraints.
So do Twig and Naomi.
But it is a useless struggle.
Simon has our souls in a chokehold.
Blood pools in my palm.
Simon forces my hand over the water.
My blood spills.
It drips into the pond and the water undulates.
A wave builds.
And out from under the bridge comes the rowboat.
My mother lies inside, flat on her back, arms crossed over her chest like a princess laid out for burial. Her eyes are closed. She is ghostly pale, her auburn hair spilling around her in waves. And beside her, nested within a cage of bones, the golden orb throbs softly in the dark.
Simon removes a vial from his robes—thesame one that contained a filament of Rafe’s soul. Only now, it is empty. I clench my jaw as he forces my hand into a fist and squeezes it over the vial’s mouth. “The blood of the curse breaker,” he whispers.
Crimson drips inside, and then he is gone with a whoosh like ash in the wind.
He re-materializes inside the boat.
He kneels over my mother and removes the orb from its cage, caressing it lovingly in his hand. He pours my blood over it and the orb flares with brightness. Hairline fractures of red seep through the gold like capillaries around a human heart.
My own beats wildly.
Simon lifts the glowing orb to his mouth and inhales the same way Rafe did. He breathes in her soul.
I choke on a gasp.
“No!” I shout as he bends over her.
Molten strands of light spiral between them, and when he pulls away from the twisted fairy tale kiss, color has returned to her face. He takes off the ruby and puts it around her neck. “She will awake soon, and she will be mine.”
The amulet pulses against my mother’s skin.
My blood drips onto the stone beneath my feet.
Simon glides onto the plinth in the center ofthe pond where vines crawl across the water and wrap around the clock. Like a spider in the middle of a starlit web, he spreads his arms and begins to chant—guttural sounds trailed by a chorus of spine-tingling whispers that come from him, but aren’t of him.
