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“Are you on her side now?” Pippa demands.
“There are no sides,” Ann says. “Are there?”
“There are now,” Pippa answers, and my blood pumps a little faster.
“She took Wendy to the Win’erlands,” Mercy says quickly.
Bessie hits her hard across the mouth, knocking her to the floor. “’At’s a bloody lie, Mercy Paxton. Take it back!”
“No one likes a traitor, Mercy,” Pippa scolds.
The girl cowers on the floor. The castle groans. The vines are blighted, diseased. When they move, they seem to calcify. One, heavy as stone, creeps over my foot, and my foot is nearly trapped under it. I yank it free.
“Pippa,” I say, “what have you done?”
“What you wouldn’t. Poor Gemma, always so afraid of her power. Well, not me.”
“Pip, you didn’t make a bargain with those creatures.”
“What if I did?”
Felicity shakes her head. “You didn’t.”
Pippa strokes her face gently. “It was such a small thing they asked. A sacrifice no one would miss. I offered that silly bunny—that’s all. You see what we’ve been given in return!” She opens her arms wide but all I see is a moldering castle corrupted by weeds.
“Tell me that you didn’t take her to the Winterlands, that I’m wrong for thinking it,” I plead.
“I shall tell you whatever you’d like to hear,” she says, gorging on berries.
“Tell me the truth!”
Pip’s eyes flash. Her teeth are blue-black with juice. “She. Was. A. Burden.”
Felicity clutches her stomach. “Oh, God.”
“No, Fee, you’ll see. It’s going to be so wonderful.” Pippa grins coquettishly at the others. “Shall I tell you what the tree promised? What I saw there after my sacrifice? I saw the Order’s time ending and something new being born,” she says, her voice tinged with wonder. “Their days have passed. Our time is at hand.”
The girls move close and sit at her feet, lost in the pull of her sureness. Her features are a mesmerizing amalgam of before and after. The delicate cheekbones, the long tangle of black curls, the dainty nose are still there. But every now and then, her eyes waver between a deep violet and an alarming blue-white circled by black rings. It is a new, savage beauty, and I cannot look away.
“I heard the voice whisper sweetly in my head: So special you are. You are chosen. I will exalt you.”
She smiles brightly with a giggle. Cold fear slithers in my belly.
“I am the chosen one. I am the way. To follow me, you must be as I am.”
With two fingers, Felicity turns Pip’s face gently to hers. “Pip, what are you saying?”
Pippa wrenches free of Felicity’s touch and marches purposefully to Bessie. She offers the chalice of berries. “Would you follow me, Bessie?”
“Yes, miss,” Bessie answers hoarsely. She opens her mouth obediently.
With her eyes on Felicity, Pippa places the berry on Bessie’s waiting tongue. Horrified, Felicity runs for her and grabs her hand, knocking the berry free. Pippa pushes her, and Felicity shoves back hard. Pip’s face crumples for a moment, her eyes roll back in her head, and a high keening escapes her, like a laugh gone wrong. Her limbs jerk as she falls to the ground, her body swept into a dance of beautiful violence.
“Pippa!” Felicity calls. “Pippa!”
Bessie and the others back away, frightened. At last, the fit subsides; Pippa’s clawlike hands go limp, and she lies upon the ground, a misshapen stick. Slowly, Pip sits up, her breathing labored. A bit of drool runs from her mouth; there is dirt in her hair and along her dress where she has fallen. Felicity cradles her.
“Wh-what has happened?” Pippa whimpers. She tries to stand and stumbles, her legs as weak as a newborn colt’s.
