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Fighting past the fear wrapping around my throat, I choke out, “No it wasn’t. It isn’t. All I see is that you’re out of your mind. And your heart, if you ever had one to begin with.”
Her fingers curl around the back of my neck, drawing me closer as she bends low.
Hovering her lips inches away from mine, she inhales deeply. “I can smell him on you. The sour stink of a beast slobbering over a treat. Did you actually think he loved you, Foxglove? Were you that foolish? Even after all you’ve seen in the minds of men?”
I wrench away, pointing a warning finger. “You know nothing about love. You murdered your own children, you have no—”
“Oh, you poor thing,” she cuts in with a hard laugh, mocking me with false pity. “I almost hate to tell you. I really do.”
“Tell me what?” I wheeze, fresh terror rising inside even as I remind myself that Declan is safe in Adrina’s bed. There’s no way Mother could have gotten to him in the time it took for me to race from the forest to the village and pass through my dreamer’s mind to the night garden.
“How quickly he gave you up,” she says, clearly relishing every word. “How eager he was to betray.”
“You’re lying,” I say. Declan would never betray me. Never.
“I didn’t even have to hurt him,” Mother whispers. “Just hinted that I might. That was all it took to have him down on his knees, begging to swap his skin for yours.”
I ball my hands into fists at my side. “No.”
“Yes.” Her conviction might rattle me if I didn’t know she was mad. “He said it would be easy to kill you. Confessed he’d nearly done it before, in fact. The day he realized what you really were. He spent the entire walk to the ruins working up the nerve to push you over the edge of the cliff.”
My head rears back an inch, but I turn the movement into another shake of my head.
So, she knows about the walk and Declan learning my secret. Fine. That doesn’t mean he’s the one who told her. She could have had spies watching me.
For a moment, I wonder if Wig and Poke might have come telling tales but dismiss the thought. They wouldn’t. They didn’t, but if they had, they would have confessed it before letting me rush off to the garden to face Mother.
I trust Wig and Poke. And I trust Declan. None of them are perfect, but they care about me. They love me and want what’s best for me.
The only way they would turn on me, even for a moment, is…
The tortured expressions on my sisters’ faces and the nails ripped from their clawed fingers flash in front of my eyes.
I pull in a ragged breath. “You hurt him. Didn’t you?”
“I opened a door and showed him what was on the other side,” she says, the smug note in her voice making my teeth grind. “Come. See for yourself…”
She turns, leading the way down the hill. I stand, watching her glide between two rows of Earwigs still too young to float from their beds at dreaming time. But they don’t wiggle with excitement or unfurl their tiny leaves as she passes by the way the babies always did when I was young. Their faces remain hidden, tucked away at their centers as they cower closer to the earth. The Skritches turn away, too, folding their spindly limbs, tucking their chins and keeping their wide eyes trained on the ground.
Things have changed in the garden.
But, of course, they have. These plantings watched my sisters starve to death, heard them screaming and…
I don’t finish the thought or turn to look at their bodies again.
There will be time to grieve later.
After I’ve made sure there is nothing else to mourn.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Clara
I follow Mother at a distance—through the rows of minor plantings toward the dark forest of Thieving Trees—giving myself time to think.
She could be lying. This could be a trap.
Or Declan could be lying to gain her trust and lay a trap of his own.
Or…he could have decided that I’m not worth fighting for, not when my enemy is so powerful and ruthless. And if that’s the case, then…
My footsteps slow and the vise locked around my throat loosens.
If that’s the case, then I will forgive him.
I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of Mother’s violence. The night she cut me away from my sisters, if she’d offered to let me choose someone else to take my place…
I might have done it. I might have thrust a finger toward one of my sisters’ faces and scuttled, sobbing, back to my bed. I would have regretted it later, of course. I would have hated myself for my weakness. But in the moment, with my entire being electrified by suffering, with every cell ablaze with agony and each breath a violation, I might have done the unthinkable.
