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21
She ran up to her father and threw her arms around his leg. She was crying. The other children were so mean to her. They called her names—especially the older girls. Called her a little bastard. Called her fake. Told her she was trash.
But her father loved her. Nobody else did. But he did.
He scooped her up, shushed her, and gently wiped away her tears. “You’re all right, my princess. You’re all right.” He kissed her forehead. “You have something that they never will. You were born of love.” He tapped his finger over her heart. “And that means love will always be with you. Even in the darkness, it will always find you.”
Maggie was shaking.Tears still streamed down her cheeks. She could picture him, standing over her, with that kind smile on his face. She didn’t know who he was—or who she was—but something in her soul called out to her. Something in her recognized him.
“Do not weep for me, my princess. It is so good to see you again.”
“Wh…who are you?” She shook her head weakly. “I don’t—my memories, they’re fragmented. Missing. I’m sorry. I don’t—I don’t know who I am.” It was hard not to be embarrassed by her brokenness, even with everything that was going on. Even talking to a golden skeleton.
“I think I was a king, once…a king of France, perhaps. But I have dreamed so much in this place—so many nightmares, so many pieces are gone. You and I are the same. And I might forget it all, my princess, but I shall never, ever forget you.”
A princess?
Was she really a princess?
All those times Gideon had called her that, she had thought he was riffing on a hoodie she had worn one day. She muttered a curse under her breath and shut her eyes. I’m a fucking idiot. “I’m so sorry, Father. I’m so very, very sorry.”
“You are not the reason I exist in this nightmare. He is.” The one word was whispered with such loathing that it sent a shiver down her spine. She didn’t need to ask who her father was referencing. There was only one option.
Dr. Gideon Raithe.
But she had a feeling she might not have been the one to encase him in gold, but she was still very much to blame. She wiped at her tears, but she didn’t know why she bothered. They were just replaced with more. “I don’t know how to fix this.”
“I waited all this time, trapped like this, with dreams of my beloved Diane coming to stand at my side. Oh, my princess, how I loved her…and you. But you could never take the throne, no matter how hard I wished it. For you were born of the woman I loved, but not the one to whom I was wed. And now…and now, I want to be free. Destroy me. Render me to dust. Set my soul free.”
“I—but—” She swallowed the rock in her throat and felt sick. She had just found him—just found a real link to her past—and now he wanted her to kill him? No. No, she couldn’t do it. But he wasn’t alive, was he? He was trapped, cold and alone, unable to move, left only with his fading memories in a dark vault. What kind of existence was that? She nodded weakly. “Yes, Father.”
“There will be no pain. You must be strong, princess. You were always like the willow tree. You bent and bent in the wind, you bowed low, but you never, ever broke. But I have one more thing for you…one more thing you will need to finally destroy him.”
There was a creak. The sound of metal straining. She watched in horror as the skeleton began to lift an arm, snapping the gold and silver wire that held him together. Bits of bone, and finger joints, began to fall from him as he pointed what remained of a finger to a shelf. “There. That belongs to him. Take it.”
His arm crumbled to the table, nothing more than rubble on the pillows and cushions. Maggie somehow managed to keep her lunch down. Numbly, feeling like she wasn’t even attached to her own body, she moved from the table to the shelf to see what it was he sent her to fetch.
It was only because she was already past her limit that what she saw didn’t send her flying over the cliff into hysterical sobs or violent retching.
A heart. A heart in a square glass box. It looked like a reliquary. But instead of being a shriveled, hideous thing, it was…full. Red.
And beating. The chambers pulsed, hopelessly and uselessly trying to push blood through the ventricles where none flowed. But still it worked on, in its steady rhythm. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
Images flashed in her head, the memory of him in her arms, bleeding to death. The priests of the Order had taken his heart…and here it was. With shaking hands, she picked up the locked box from the shelf—it looked so much like something out of a children’s fable. Maybe none of this is real. Maybe I’m just dreaming.
But that’s a wish I’ll never have granted, isn’t it? No matter how many times I die to try to make it come true. She slipped the box into her backpack. At least she couldn’t feel it moving. That was a small favor. All she needed was to have a Tell-Tale Heart incident with the thing in her bag.
She saw something else on the shelf nearby. A blacksmith’s hammer. It looked old, and there were runes etched on the rusted surface. Picking it up, she half expected it to talk to her. Thankfully, it stayed silent.
She swallowed down her lunch once more. She had to do this. She had to. Memories of laughter, of being chased by him through the gardens, a smiling man with kind eyes. He was King, and she was his favorite princess, even if nobody else would ever understand.
She loved him. She loved him so much. And this was the least she could do for him. Damn the Order to the pits of hell for keeping him like this. For threatening to do the same to her. God only knew how many other tortured, sad souls were trapped in this place because some old man decided they were too dangerous.
And then…there was Gideon, who had done this to her father, who had cursed him to such a terrible end.
Fuck them. Fuck them all.
Set us free.
