“Your willstone. Lady, was it stolen? Were you attacked?” he asked urgently.
Lily touched her bare throat. She noticed that both of the soldiers wore similar silver stones around their necks, and they were staring at her so intensely that it was clear that not wearing one of those willstones was a big deal. Lily had to think fast. The soldiers’ distress was quickly turning to fear, and she knew from experience that people do strange, even irrational things when they are afraid.
“I can’t discuss it with you,” she said, pulling rank for the first time in her life. The only thing Lily had in her favor was their deference to the Lady that they had mistaken her for. “I need to go home. Now.”
The soldiers responded to her imperious tone immediately and yelled for the gates to be opened. The portcullis slid to the side like it was weightless. There was no groaning metal or clanking chains, just a faint whisper of wind as the thirty-foot-high and three-foot-thick wall of latticed metal swept to the side to let them inside. Ignoring that this effortless entry flew in the face of physics, Lily strode forward fearlessly, playing the part of a lady for dear life.
Holding herself to the calmest pace she could manage while her heart hammered away, Lily passed more staring soldiers and entered a large courtyard. Beyond the courtyard stood the keep of a giant castle. Lily recalled the old soldier calling it her Citadel. Forcing her shaking legs to carry her, she clenched her jaw and strode toward the entrance as if she owned it.
The keep looked like an ancient structure with a futuristic makeover. It had enlarged windows and outbuildings that were designed in an open style, as if some brilliant minimalist architect had gotten his hands on an old castle and had refitted it from top to bottom.
The inside was the same blend of old and new. Lily entered and found impossibly large flagstones beneath her and airy skylights above her. There were large, open areas all around, but despite the fact that she found the place beautiful, her throat closed off with disappointed tears. A part of her had been expecting to step inside the keep, fall back through the rabbit hole, and find herself home again. When it occurred to Lily that her Alice in Wonderland moment hadn’t happened and that she had no idea how to get home, she turned to her escort and shrugged.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said hopelessly.
“Lillian?” Juliet’s voice called down from the great staircase. Lily turned to the voice at the top of the stair, sighing with relief.
“Juliet! You’re here, too?” Lily rushed up the stairs, suddenly feeling like it was all going to be okay. Her sister was with her, and together they would sort this mess out as they had a hundred others. But as Lily neared the top of the stairs, her relief faded and she slowed to a stop.
The woman waiting with a frightened expression looked exactly like her sister—from her large, dark eyes to her red heart-shaped lips and pale heart-shaped face. But the ornate gown she wore and the yards of hair that snaked over her shoulder and down to her waist in one long braid were not Juliet’s. Lily’s sister never wore fancy dresses and not once in her entire life had she ever grown her hair past her shoulders. Lily stared at this other woman, this other Juliet, and heard her mom’s voice inside her head.
There isn’t a Juliet who doesn’t love you.
Lily was so desperate for something to believe in that she wrapped her arms around the startled woman’s shoulders.
“I’m lost,” Lily whispered in her ear.