I ended up on the stone stairs again. At least I wasn’t wearing a silk slip anymore. The tapestry pouch of boxes full of Viola’s memories was still slung over my shoulder. I felt disoriented and numb. Tears made my vision waver. I had to find someplace safe to hide before I fell apart completely.

I stumbled down the steps and out onto the first landing I came across. Torchlight flickered down the hall. I slipped into a room with an unlocked door. It looked relatively innocuous, full of heavy and elaborately carved medieval furniture. There was a huge cabinet on the far wall. It was big enough for me to curl up on the bottom of it and still shut the door completely. A selection of woolen dresses hung on one side, smelling strongly of cedar and smoke. Light filtered through the keyhole. I tried to take deep breaths but I couldn’t stop the loud animal sobs from tearing through me.

London was dead.

She wasn’t undead like the rest of us. She was well and truly gone. There wasn’t even enough of her left to bury.

I cried until I felt empty and sick. The wooden slats of the cupboard were rough under my cheek and I’d lost feeling in my legs, except for the stabbing pain in my left knee. It was tempting to give up and stay here forever, hidden in an armoire where no one was currently trying to kill me or, worse, save me. I could fade away, becoming just another shadow in Viola’s subconscious. Gwyneth had done it for hundreds of years.

Actually, that wasn’t a comforting thought.

Gwyneth was half-crazy and alone. I could easily picture myself pale and thin, flitting between the stables and the castle, crawling over the moat filled with bloated corpses. I’d hide in the forest and eat leaves and bugs, cover myself in mud when it got cold. I’d forget this place wasn’t real. I’d forget my own name, Lucy’s, Kieran’s. Everyone. Everything.

I didn’t want that. A spark kindled in the cold pit of my stomach.

Apparently, I had some fight left in me, after all.

I’d miss my family. I’d miss the way Nicholas seemed to know what I was thinking before I thought it. The way Quinn smirked, the way Logan teased me. My mom, my dad. Eventually, I’d even miss Aunt Ruby.

I already missed Lucy. I missed how cheerful and brave she was, and her irreverence for the things that would make other people quake with fear.

And I missed Kieran. I’d been missing him before Viola possessed me completely. She’d broken us up in the end. And she’d done it so she could be with Constantine. The rat bastard. He’d fooled me right from the start. He’d made me believe I was special, that he understood me the way no one else had. I’d let him kiss me. I’d even let him drink my blood, that night in the Bower when I’d cut my hand on the wine bottle. I’d let him convince me that the only way to find Nicholas was to take the crown and control the guards.

He’d done it all for Viola.

The same way she’d stolen my very body from me, to be with him again.

They had each other now, but at what cost? I wouldn’t sacrifice the world to be with Kieran. And neither would he. That was one of the things I loved most about him. He had honor and courage. He held my hand like I was just a regular girl.

London had died to keep me safe. If I stayed here and fell to pieces she’d have died in vain. I’d be selfish and weak, letting everyone suffer because I hurt inside. I’d be as bad as Viola. I don’t care what happened to her in the past. She still had no right to ruin so many lives.

I forced myself to sit up and wipe the salt stains off my cheeks. The embroidered collar of my dress was damp and my hair fell in tangles covering my face. Viola had waited over eight hundred years to steal my body. I didn’t need to be told that she wouldn’t give it up without a fight.

Well, she was about to get one.

Because she might be a Drake, but I was the daughter of Helena Drake. I’d learned how to kick ass while still in the womb.

I reached into the tapestry bag. If Constantine was Viola’s strength, then he was also her weakness. I sorted through the boxes, trying to decipher what was inside by the clues provided on the outside. The last box I’d opened was decorated with a knight, a dragon, and a lady and it had shown me Viola and her own knight, Tristan Constantine. And her dragon: Madame Veronique. The Drake family.

There were seven boxes left. There was a gold one, a silver one, and one covered in brass inlay in the shape of tiny leaves. I hovered over one painted with a dragon but in the end I decided on the smallest one. It was small and sturdy and the red enamel made it look as if it was a tiny heart wet with blood.

1199

Viola thought the witch would have been older.

At the very least, older than herself. But she looked roughly the same age, with long brown hair adorned with strange beads. Viola could smell the mint on her from even a few feet away.

“Are you her?” she asked.

Viola nodded, propped up on the stone wall of the castle battlements, barely able to keep her eyes open. She’d never felt so exhausted in her entire life, and now, when she needed all of her strength, only her own willpower and love for Tristan kept her upright. “Did you bring it?”

“Of course.”

Viola had tried everything else. Her father could not be convinced. He alluded to family secrets, aside from the rumors of her illegitimate birth, which the Vales already knew and were comfortable with, reminded her that Tristan was newly knighted and penniless, and in the end, lost his temper and threw his goblet at the wall, startling his favorite hunting hawk off her perch. He refused to release her mother or take down the barbaric post and chains, or even to deny Madame Veronique’s claims that Viola was, in fact, a bastard. He softened long enough to remind her that he loved her as though she were truly his daughter and that she was never to speak of it again. And then he banished her to Bornebow Hall.