Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(75)
Aurora
Aurora drags a heavy ax through the quiet of the sleeping castle, dew still clinging to the hem of her dress. The morning fields had opened before her like a series of yawns, great mouths watering with hunger, and she’d allowed them to swallow her for hours as she wandered, searching. Since the necklace of pearls and rubies now lay scattered throughout the Borderlands, she’d need something else, she knew, something powerful—stronger than the rose lullaby. An object from the real world that could break through the queen’s illusions once and for all.
And then she remembered the story Heath had told her, of the soldiers who first tried to break out of Blackthorn, one of them successfully forming a rift in the wall with an ax. And so she’d scoured the estate, finally coming upon a store of tools. This ax had stood out to her as different from the others—a complex design decorated the stone head. The wood of the handle was weathered and old. It felt firm in her hands, definite, unlike so many other objects in Sommeil, which seemed to give just slightly when held, to take on some flavor of the person who had touched them.
As she passes through each of the now-familiar rooms and halls of Blackthorn, Aurora reminds herself that this might be the last time she sees them. She knows what she must do: she must make Belcoeur remember. She must make her realize that Charles is never going to come, and that jealousy has eroded her mind. If the queen can let go of her jealousy, she can let go of her dreams and move on. She can set Aurora free—set all of them free.
Though Aurora isn’t certain who came between Charles Blackthorn and Belcoeur, she has a good guess. After all, she knows something about jealous sisters. Wasn’t it the last thing she said to Isbe before her own sister fled? Don’t be jealous of me. Aurora knows the unfairness of life better than anyone: some are born princesses, some bastards. That is how the world has always worked and will always work; those who are born blessed will be the envy of those who are not.
The musty scent of the corridor leading to the north hall clings to Aurora’s senses, filling her with sadness. She feels draped in its longing like a physical weight, its stickiness like a spider’s web that wants to pull her back, back, back—the walls whisper. Stay. They throb. Don’t hurt us, they seem to say.
But sometimes pain is the only way.
She reaches the north hall, and the door that only recently had opened elegantly before her, inviting her closer to the queen’s lair. Once again, however, the door is locked. The knob is cold and hard as bone. The castle is so quiet she can hear her breath loud in her ears.
Don’t hurt us. Stay.
Aurora’s arms pulse from the weight of the ax. She lifts it over her head.
And then, she swings it down.
A loud krick-crack ripples through the air as the stone axhead meets the wooden door, splintering it. Pound . . . pound . . . thwack. It takes several swings, and with each, the door shudders, cries, cracks further, and Aurora could swear she feels how it wants to heal itself closed, keeping her out. The splintering wood seems to sigh a final stop. She swings again, throwing all of her strength into it.
Finally the door collapses.
Her hands are raw. Her back is strained and tight. Her arms feel like lead.
She grabs a lit torch from a sconce and steps inside. The hall of tapestries. The den of fog.
Finding her way around the wing doesn’t prove easy, though. There are doorways that cut right in the middle of walls that lead to twisting tunnels, each impenetrably dark, studded with mouse droppings and the occasional chilling sound of scratching or whimpering—Aurora soon finds herself disoriented. It’s not just the winding passageways of the forbidden wing that have her so turned around. She has the distinct impression that the chambers have all stood up and rearranged themselves every time she emerges into a new room, like an endless maze.
And then she recalls that her own palace used to have many of these tunnels before they were blocked with plaster—all but the one connecting her room to Isbe’s. Yes.
As quickly as the thought comes to her, she is able to slide back a wall hanging and enter another passageway, one sloped steeply upward . . . and uncomfortably familiar.
Aurora lets out the breath she didn’t know she was holding as she bursts out the other side, into a tower bedroom that looks very much like her own at home.
She takes in the neatly made bed with its drooping lace canopy, the gilt mirror, and the vanity with a hairbrush lying on it, the half-woven tapestry stretched across a loom in one corner.
The room is empty but filling with the same dark fog that has followed her this far. At the foot of the bed is a trunk. She kneels before it and throws open its lid. She braces herself for more horrors—bugs or rodents or even decayed bones. But instead she finds only a heap of objects that appear to be the queen’s private treasures. Across the inside of the curved lid, words have been scratched into the wood:
Everyone deserves true love.
The message sends an odd jolt down Aurora’s spine. There’s a rotting wedding veil, and beneath it, several old, nearly hairless dolls. Below those lie a small, flat rectangle of wood. She picks it up and turns it over. On the other side is a portrait of two little girls. Their faces look very alike, though one is sharper somehow, and has darker hair.
Marigold.
The sister with the lighter hair is holding a daisy and smiling, while Marigold is looking somewhere past the portrait artist’s position.