Rowena had gone quiet in her work. Her body began to rock back and forth like she was in some sort of trance, the cloak turning and coiling in her hands. But even as she rocked, she kept mumbling and hissing, casting spell after spell as she stitched the torn fabric, rocking and stitching, a witch knitting a dark and wicked curse, the Black Cloak slithering with power beneath her.
Serafina felt her lungs getting tighter, her breaths getting more difficult. As she watched the sorceress, a dark fear grew within her. She pulled her mesmerized eyes away from Rowena and looked out of the lair’s damaged door to Braeden and Waysa, but suddenly they were gone. They had disappeared.
Serafina blinked and rubbed her eyes in confusion, then looked again. Braeden and Waysa were still gone.
As she gazed out at the forest, she realized that the trees seemed to be fading before her eyes, as if darkness darker than darkest night were blotting them out in a terrible black fog. It wasn’t just her friends who were missing now, but the entire forest.
Serafina looked down at the ground she was standing on. It was gone, nothing but darkness.
She could not feel it.
She could not see it.
Everything was going!
She pulled in a breath. She could no longer smell the plants of the bog. She could no longer hear the insects.
She turned to Rowena in hot panic. All she could see now was the sorceress, her hooded head down, her face shrouded, the Black Cloak glowing and writhing in her lap as she stitched the last tear closed.
Serafina’s world went black.
Serafina could not move.
She could not touch or feel.
All she could see around her was a black, swirling darkness, like she was inside a storm of soot.
All she could hear were the winds of moving fabric.
And all she could smell was ash.
It felt as if the whole world had disappeared and she was all that was left, utterly alone now and forever. Everything she had known, everything she had loved, was gone, incinerated by a prison of incessant darkness.
She tried to be brave. She tried to be bold. But she couldn’t do it. She screamed in terror. “Rowena!”
“Do not fight it…” came a raspy voice.
Confusion flooded into Serafina’s mind. Was it the cloak speaking to her?
Serafina screamed and she fought. She would not give up. She would not stop fighting. She would tear and tear and tear.
She wanted her mother and Braeden and her pa and everyone she loved. She wanted to see moonlight and sunlight and starlight and every kind of light there was, the light from inside a friend’s soul when they smiled and the light from the dawn of a new idea. She wanted it all!
“You have to let everything go…” the voice came.
She wanted to hear the rustle of wind in the trees and the sound of music and the murmur of soft voices.
“Just let everything go…”
But she wasn’t going to give up. She wanted to feel the coolness of the misty night on her skin and the warmth of the morning sun.
“Trust me, cat, just let everything go…”
Cat, Serafina thought suddenly. The voice had said cat. It wasn’t the Black Cloak speaking to her, but Rowena! She was trying to guide her, to show her the way.
The sorceress had been her enemy. They had attacked each other, tricked each other, and slashed each other with wounds. But was she still her enemy? Or had Rowena truly switched sides?
And then a different kind of thought came into Serafina’s mind.
She knew that despite the many vicious and deceitful deeds Uriah had forced his daughter to do, Rowena had always wanted Braeden as her friend.
“You don’t even know what friendship is!” Rowena had screamed at her in frustration. “I’ve seen it!”
She’s seen it, and she wants it, Serafina thought. And now I’ve forced Rowena to promise that if I don’t make it, then she’d join with Braeden at Biltmore…
Serafina had thought she had exacted a difficult promise from Rowena, but now she realized that it might have suited Rowena just fine.
All that time playing the role of “Lady Rowena” the sorceress had been pretending to like Braeden, but maybe the trick was that she wasn’t pretending.
Was that Rowena’s plan now, to get rid of her, and have Braeden’s friendship to herself? By persuading Serafina to go into the cloak, had Rowena finally managed to trick her rival out of existence?
Serafina didn’t know what was in Rowena’s heart, but she saw two paths before her. She could trust Rowena, stop fighting, and let her soul be pulled entirely into the Black Cloak. Or she could try to keep fighting in this storm of oblivion.
She thought about how important it was that Braeden had learned from Rowena’s deceit months before that sometimes he shouldn’t trust people. And she thought how she herself had learned that sometimes she should trust people. Despite all of Rowena’s duplicitous shifts and caustic moods, she had helped her talk to Braeden, she had helped her spell the letters in ash in front of the fireplace, and she had revealed the secrets of the Black Cloak. Was it possible that Rowena might have feelings for Braeden, but convincing Serafina to get pulled back into the Black Cloak wasn’t necessarily a malicious trick designed to eliminate her? Was it possible that both of those things could be true at the same time?
Serafina realized that she didn’t know the answers to the questions. It was a terrifying feeling, but there was no way to know. But she did know that here, in this dark, swirling place, and in the spirit world where she’d been wandering, there was no good path. There was nothing there. Even if she fought back to the place she’d been, there was nothing there. No voice. No touch. No love. Her only hope was forward. Her only hope was the unknown.
Trust me, Rowena had said. Trust me.
Serafina knew that she might not return to the land of the living. She might not ever see the world again. In her mind, she began to say good-bye to Braeden and to Waysa. She said good-bye to her pa and to her mother, and the cubs, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt, and everyone else she knew. One by one, she said good-bye to all of them. Her only hope was that she had somehow helped them.
Finally, she shut her eyes and pulled in a long, deep breath, her chest rising, filling her lungs with the sooty black void. She held her breath for as long as she could, knowing that it would be her last, like a person trapped underwater knows the inhalation that will finally drown her lungs in a watery death.
Then she exhaled, and her mind unfurled as the cloak sucked her soul deep into its void.
And she disappeared into the black folds that she had seen take so many souls before her.
She had no body. She had no wandering spirit. All she had was consciousness, churning through the black prison.
She finally knew what Clara Brahms, Anastasia Rostonova, her mother, and all the other victims of the Black Cloak had experienced.
She had no perception of time or change. Each moment might be a fleeting second—a drop of water as it falls to the floor and splashes into nothingness. Or it might be a whole year of bountiful experience lost—every moment she’d ever spent with the people she loved.
She did not know.
There was no up or down, no action or effect. No hard or soft, no brightness or color, no movement or sensation, no voice or touch, no shape or beauty or love or compassion.
Rowena had trapped her in a black, empty world.