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Julie stares at me.
“What? They are helping her, so what do they get?” If not sex, then something else. “They must want something…they are monsters.”
Theo nods. “Joe’s right, they aren’t doing it because they want to help.”
“The endless supply of meat falling off the spire?” Julie asks.
“Or they aren’t working with her at all,” Theo whispers.
I glance at the bars. Then why have they captured us and what are they planning?
“If they aren’t working for her, how did they know my name?” Julie’s voice is soft, like she is worried that someone will hear.
“How does she know your name?” I counter. Names mean something. Names matter even when I was called Tail, it mattered that someone cared enough to give me a name. As though the simple act of having a name gave my life meaning. Which is stupid, as my life has the meaning I assign it, but without a name I didn’t assign it any meaning. I existed. That was all.
“She learned it when she pulled me through?” She shrugs and looks at Theo.
The bone dangles from his fingers, still swinging.
“Theo?” Julie steps toward him.
His head jerks like she slapped him. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about this place.”
He turns away and sits on the floor, the bone still in his hand.
He knows something, and I am going to find out what.
4
Theo
My mind scrambles and twists as I remember too much. Maybe I’m wrong. I want to be wrong. I thought I had all my memories, or at least the ones that mattered. I remember too little and only the wrong things. The pieces I wish I could forget.
That I don’t want to talk about.
And that they can’t ever learn.
I know how to reach the spire and where it is, where the queen resides. And I understand why I was drawn to Michael and Tail. It wasn’t because I’d never seen it before, but because it was familiar.
I close my eyes as the day I fell rises in my mind.
They arrived with her at their head. They killed the two I had been working with, tearing them apart and eating them as they screamed. I thought I’d be next. I expected death. No king or queen survives a dethroning—I knew that because I had once done the same when I claimed the throne.
For how long I sat on the throne of Under, I don’t remember. But the day I was removed was the day I had to climb. She wanted to see me fall and be ripped apart.
But I survived, and I tried, and I failed, before eventually disappearing and slinking out of the castle, vowing revenge. I had forgotten that part.
Yet here I am. With a new selection of helpers, as if I am planning to reclaim my throne.
I had heard the queen was ferocious, but now I remember the burn of her touch and the fire in her eyes. She was as unforgiving as a wildfire, scorching everything in her way. Including me. I run the back of my hand over my head. No hair grows there, and probably never will. My skin remembers the pain of her touch and the scars from the burns, even though they have faded beneath a hundred other changes.
Does she think we are here to challenge her?
I glance at Julie and Joe. We are no match for her guards. Facing the queen will be fatal.
Coming here was a mistake. I don’t want to remember all the lives I have ruined by dragging them to Under. I press the heels of my hands to my eyes as though I can keep the memories from surging forward.
I don’t want to know who I was when I ruled.
