“These messages are being transmitted in a staggered pattern throughout the palace. If it’s a trap room, we have programmed it to trigger within twenty seconds of this message’s transmission. That should give you enough time and encouragement to move. You’ll have only one safe direction to travel. Toward the salle des glaces. We will be waiting.”
I pivot. The floor is a checkerboard, white and black.
Every black panel has a butterfly etched into it.
Every white one a glaring, angry eye.
“Trap room,” I say stupidly. “Trap room—”
We start running, pelting toward the opposite end, but the speakers are off now. The clock is ticking. Twenty seconds. We can do this. The tall double doors are eighty feet away.
My legs pump. I throw myself forward and the air rushes in my ears, streaking my hair back from my face.
We reach the doors with ten seconds to spare. They’re locked.
No. No way.
A shudder flies through the hall. I can feel it in my entire body, an arthritic clicking, skittering behind the walls. And now every butterfly panel in the floor flips up.
“Back!” Jules screams. “Back!”
We whirl, sprinting for the other end. One panel opens right in front of me. I leap. Skid to the side to avoid another.
Jules is shoving himself to his feet. Running again, limping.
This isn’t happening. We’re not dying here, right when we were making progress.
My lungs burn. I run faster, barely manage to dance around one of the holes in the floor. Something’s rising out of it. Glass globules, floating on thin wires, like delicate balloons. They shimmer coldly, poison blue.
“They’re not going to kill us,” I whisper to myself. “They need us for something; they’re not going to kill us—”
The glass balloons are drifting up by the dozens. Some reach hip height; others rise higher, diffusing the light and throwing it down like iridescent jellyfish. They begin to sway, ringing softly, piercingly.
The one nearest to Will bursts with a musical pling! A cloud hangs where the glass was. Blue, spreading. Will swerves to the side. Whatever is in that globe got on his arm. His sleeve is smoking.
The hall is full of the balloons now, hundreds upon hundreds, swaying gently. They’re so close together, almost touching. I can’t run anymore. I’ve slowed to a walk, slithering between them. They’re shifting against my thighs, bubbling around my shoulders. Pling! I hear, somewhere close by. Pling!
Fifteen feet to the door. Only fifteen feet.
“It’s burning me,” Will mutters, somewhere to my left. “It’s burning me!”
A globe brushes my cheek. I feel like I’m choking, drowning in a clinking glass sea. Something pops close to my ear. I feel a prickle. The sudden itch of a million tiny crystals, and now wetness. Blood?
No-no-no, NO, it’s going to burn me; it’s going to burn my face. I gasp, clamp my mouth closed, and breathe through my nose. High above, the lights begin to flicker. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe my eyes are dissolving. The itch on my ear has turned into a screeching pain, burrowing under skin and into bone.
“Keep moving, Ooky,” I say to myself. “You can make it.”
I fall. I’m crushing them under me. Blue powder is everywhere, and I hear Lilly screaming. Will grunting in pain.
I roll onto my back, my arms clamped over my face, glass bulbs popping and hissing under me. I look up. The blue is closing over me, an ocean of glass and creeping fumes. My eyes are tearing up, my throat closing. I think I hear something, far away, beyond the shimmering whine of the globes––
“Anouk!”
I shove myself to my hands and knees. I’m coughing, a deep chesty hack. I feel it ripping out of me, but the sound is far away. My eyes are burning, tears streaming down my cheeks. Through the blur I see a figure. It’s running toward me, almost flying, a shadowy shape against the lights.
It’s not Will. Not Jules or Lilly.
I think of the laughing woman in her red gown. Perdu in his loose, bloodied shirt.
I sway, tip forward. See crushed glass and whole glass rising to meet me. The wind-chime clink of the globes is suddenly deafening. Someone is coming toward me. Throwing something—a rope?
Shouting, yelling for me to grab hold. The lights are still flickering, chopping out. I raise my head. And I see:
It’s Hayden. He’s standing at the edge of the field of glass bulbs. His hair is matted, plastered to his scalp. Grime and blood slick his skin. He’s yelling at me.
I grab the rope. It’s thick and tasseled.
I’m out from among the poison bulbs in one pull, squeaking over the floor.
“Hey, Anouk,” Hayden says, and that jerk-face grin is on at a thousand watts as he drags me to my feet and shoves me toward the doors. “Better run.”
Palais du Papillon, Chambres Jacinthe—112 feet below, 1790
On the seventy-fourth day of my entombment, a visitor arrives.
I am still in bed, half asleep, and in that foggy valley between waking and dreaming I dare hope my visitor is Jacques and we are leaving now, finding my sisters, returning to the sunlight. . . .
I hear the rasp of a coat, heavy velvet, the whisper of lace.