She turns.
At the far end of the hall, someone has bent down to pick up the pearl. Someone with long, disheveled white hair . . . and a large crown. The old woman—the queen, Aurora realizes with a quick intake of breath—continues turning the bead over in her fingers with apparent consternation, like she’s trying to recall something. Then the queen looks up.
Aurora freezes, terrified. Her instinct is to run, but she can only stare. The woman was obviously once beautiful, but now old. Thick makeup streaks her face with a jesterlike horror, as though applied by a child’s hand. Her crown looks overlarge and jagged on her petite head. This is not the fearsome Night Faerie Aurora has always imagined, the one with enough strength—and evil—to rival Malfleur’s.
She doesn’t know why everyone here says it’s so difficult to get to the queen, and she doesn’t know why the locked door came unlocked, but here she is. She draws in a breath. This is it. This is her chance.
“Belcoeur,” she says, trying frantically to gather her courage, to channel Isbe’s bravery. “Why—why did you create Sommeil?” She stands taller. “Your people are suffering. You—you must release us.”
“Are the cherry tarts ready?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The tarts!” the queen hisses. “Bloodred. They must be red as blood. For the visitor. Someone is coming. Someone is coming.” Her hands shake. Then her clear green eyes lock on to Aurora’s. “Who are you?” she demands with renewed clarity. “Why are you here?”
“There was a spinning wheel,” Aurora stutters.
“But I don’t know you. You’re not the one I’m waiting for.” She shakes her head. “Everything is wrong.”
Aurora clears her throat. “Just tell me how to get back to the other world, the one you came from. The one we came from.”
The queen shakes her head again. “I don’t know how to make it right. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
“Surely you can help. You have greater power than any other living faerie.”
The queen stares back at her again, trembling now. “I’m trapped too.” Her voice, raspy and low, is unnerving.
“But that doesn’t make sense. You made this place. Why?”
There’s a pause.
The queen continues to stare at her in grief, a look that drives through Aurora’s chest like one of the deadly sharp icicles that hang from the Delucian gates in winter.
“I don’t remember.” The queen’s hoarse voice crawls into Aurora’s ears, making her shiver.
A series of shouts cause Aurora to turn. Through the open door there’s a light bobbing.
“Aurora?” It’s Wren’s voice. Relief floods her. “What are you doing here?” Wren asks urgently as she bursts through the door to the north hall carrying a lantern.
“I was just—” Aurora turns around, but Belcoeur has vanished.
She blinks rapidly. Not only is the queen gone, but there is no other exit to the room. She looks around. Despite the dust hanging in the air and the dimness, diminished only a little by the lantern, Aurora sees that the walls are completely bare. All of the tapestries have disappeared. She swallows hard, her head swimming through the murk of the room and the conversation she just had. Could she have imagined it all?
No. No. Belcoeur was here.
“There you are. You shouldn’t be near the north turret; it’s not safe,” Wren says, taking Aurora by the elbow. “The queen’s enchantments are particularly strong here. Many have gone in search of her and never returned. I’ve told you already, the rooms become a maze with no end and no center.”
“I . . . I saw her. I saw the queen,” Aurora says. “A pearl rolled under the door and unlocked it somehow, and . . .” She trails off, no longer trusting her own impression of what happened.
Wren wrinkles her pretty brow as she leads her out of the empty hall. “Heath was so worried when you were missing at dinner, and we realized no one had seen you all day,” she says quietly as they wind their way back through the castle. Through the large windows in the east parlor, Aurora sees that night has fallen. But it felt like she’d been in the tapestry room for minutes, not hours.
“Heath said . . . he said you two had an argument earlier,” Wren goes on. “His moods can sometimes be stormy,” Wren says apologetically. “We’ve never had an outsider before. None of us knows quite what to believe. Many of the others fear—”
“What do they fear?”
“That you are not real. If not an Impression, then some other creation of the queen’s. A trick, an illusion, an enchantment.”
“That I’m not real,” Aurora marvels.
Wren squeezes Aurora’s hand. The quick pulse reminds Aurora of Isbe and sends a lump straight to her throat. “But don’t worry. Heath believes you, and I believe you too.”
She delivers Aurora to her room.
“Thank you, Wren,” Aurora says, still clutching her hand. But despite the young woman’s kindness, Aurora has never felt more alone.
16
Isabelle
“Far’s I can take ya, lad.” The stranger who saved Isbe from drowning now pats her shoulder with a rough hand as their boat bobs, quietly knocking against a pier.
She nods, her mouth dry from salt and vomit. “Honor be w’ you,” she says, trying to keep her voice masculine and devoid of the polish of nobility. It seems an inadequate phrase, but she’s at a loss for words. The man rescued her for no good reason. He asked for nothing in return, only stated with a half laugh, “A’ thought you’d were the ghost a the Balladeer hisself out there, I did,” as he pulled her aboard.
Isbe’s entire body now screams in stiffness and pain as she wobbles out of the small boat, pulling herself onto the abandoned pier. The immense cold had ceased to bother her for the last hour, but moving has reawakened the bone chill, and she shivers uncontrollably as she sits on the dock listening to the man row away.
She inhales, taking a moment to consider this new depth of aloneness, cool and echoey as a wine cave. She has never been this alone—never without Gilbert’s or Aurora’s hand to guide her through unknown territory. Or when they weren’t there, she always knew they’d be close by, looking for her. Now the world yawns open around her, a giant blank. A terrifying mystery full of mixed sounds and smells and unpredictable dangers.