Page 3

Two

BUT BEFORE I EVEN GET A CHANCE TO OPEN MY MOUTH, I’m interrupted.

“Violet . . . what . . .” Ginger gapes at me. She’s the oldest of the three new girls, with carrot-colored hair and broad shoulders. “What are you doing here?” Her gaze snaps to Amber. “What is she doing here? I told you I didn’t want to get in trouble!”

“Stop whining,” Amber says. “We picked you for a reason. Don’t you want to know why?”

Amber is a bit of a bully, but she was an excellent first choice. None of the girls ever want to argue with her and she knows exactly how to push them.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in the Jewel?” Tawny asks. She’s fifteen, with eyes like a doe, and they are so wide right now they seem to take up half her face.

“I was,” I say. “But now I’m here to help you.”

“Help us?” Henna asks. She’s a tiny thing with russet skin and curly black hair. Something about her reminds me of Hazel, and it makes my heart pinch. She doesn’t look frightened or confused, but curious. “How?”

“You’ll see,” a pretty redhead named Scarlet says, putting an arm around her. “It’s incredible.”

“We’ve been practicing,” Amber says. “Scarlet made a whirlpool in one of the bathtubs the other night. I made a mini tornado in the palm of my hand, like the one you showed me the first time you came.”

“That’s wonderful,” I say at the same time Ginger says, “Scarlet made a what?”

“You better not let anyone catch you,” Raven says.

Amber shoots her a smug look. “We’re careful.”

I would have thought that having so many young girls be opened to the elements in one place would be dangerous, volatile. But it has turned out to be the opposite. I noticed it first with Indi and Olive. They didn’t experience the same fitful, destructive sleep that I did when I first changed from surrogate to something more, because Sienna and Sil and I were there. It’s like the more of us there are together, the easier the elements are to keep under control. As if we keep one another anchored.

We’re lucky. Otherwise some poor girl might have accidentally destroyed her room in her sleep. It would be hard to explain that to the caretakers.

“All right, what is going on?” Ginger demands, folding her arms across her chest. “How did you get here? Why aren’t you in the Jewel? Why did you drag us out of bed in the middle of the night?”

“I knew she’d be the worst,” Amber mutters to me. Raven chuckles softly.

I take a deep breath and begin to explain. It’s a story I’ve told many times, and I’ve got it down quite succinctly. I tell them about what it means to be a surrogate—about the leashes, about the stimulant gun, about the humiliations of being forced to perform in front of the royals. How we are treated as property, as pets. I tell them about Dahlia, killed by the Duchess of the Lake for no reason other than spite. I tell them about Raven, how the Countess of the Stone cut into her brain. Raven leans forward at that point.

“You can still feel them,” she says, motioning for Ginger to touch her scalp.

“Feel what?” Ginger asks.

“The scars.”

Raven’s skull is so covered with them that it only takes one touch before Ginger recoils.

“Violet saved my life,” Raven says in a flat tone. She reaches into the pocket of her shirt and pulls out the photographs. This is my least favorite part. “Otherwise, I would have ended up like this. And so will all of you if you are sold on Auction Day.”

I keep my eyes trained on a lone curl by Henna’s temple. I hate these photographs. I was grateful when Raven offered to be in charge of showing them. I think she knew how much it hurt me to see.

There are four girls, all dead, their lips blue, their skin waxy. Their eyes are closed but there are deep V scars on their chests. Lucien told me that sometimes, if a doctor was particularly interested, an autopsy would be performed. Not to determine cause of death—they know that already. Just to see what we’re like inside. Just because we’re different.

Henna gasps. Tawny looks away. Ginger leans forward.

“Are those . . . are these real?” she says.

“Is that Verdant?” Henna gasps again. Every photograph is of a girl from each of the holding facilities. Verdant was sold at the Auction before mine.

My and Raven’s faces are the only answer she needs. Ginger takes a step back, her face full of horror.

“They told us the royalty would take care of us,” she says. “They . . . Patience said—”