The lantern’s brightness grows, the walls fall away, and I’m in the Winterlands on the night of the fire. A hard wind blows black sand and snow. A huge beast of a tracker in a black cloak as long as the Queen’s robes holds tightly to Eugenia Spence’s arm. She is on her knees as she throws her amulet to my mother. “You must close the realms! Go, now! Hurry!”
Dutifully, my mother drags Sarah toward the East Wing, and Eugenia begins her spell to seal the realms.
The tracker hovers over her. “You cannot close us out so easily, Priestess. Just because you deny us does not mean we do not exist.” He hits her hard across the face and she falls. Her blood spills across the ice and snow like the petals of a dying poppy. And she is afraid.
Another tracker arrives. “Kill her!” it snarls, revealing sharp teeth.
“Do it and we shall have her magic, but not the magic of the Temple! We’ll still have no means into their world,” the first tracker snaps back.
“We shall not sacrifice you. Not yet. You will help us breach the other world.”
Eugenia staggers to her feet. “I shall never do that. You will not break me. My loyalty is without question.”
“Whatever is without question is most vulnerable.” The tracker smiles. “To the tree.”
They drag her to the Tree of All Souls. It is not quite as majestic as the tree I have seen. One of the Winterlands creatures slices Eugenia’s hand. She cries out in pain and then in terror as she realizes what they mean to do to her. But her cries are meaningless. The creatures force her blood onto the roots of the Tree of All Souls, and within seconds, the branches crisscross over her legs and up her body.
“When her blood is spilled, she must join with the tree.”
The roots continue their march, devouring Eugenia, and then she is part of the tree, her soul joined to it.
“Let me go, please,” she begs in a whisper.
I see Eugenia trapped inside the tree, her mind splintering over the years. I see the first day she asks the creatures for a sacrifice and the smallest sliver of red shows in the roiling clouds of the Winterlands.
In awe, the creatures bow before her. “We are lost and require a leader. A mother. Will you guide us?”
The tree’s limbs stretch out, and wrap themselves around the Winterlands creatures like protective arms. And Eugenia’s voice drifts from the tree like a lullaby. “Yes…yes…”
The fog grows heavier. The tree speaks again. “There is one who comes, and she holds great power. She will give us what we want.”
“We’ll spill her blood at the tree!” a tracker thunders to great cheers.
“But first, I must pave the way for our return,” the tree says.
The scene shifts to the music hall. Wilhelmina Wyatt writes upon her slate: You must restore the East Wing and take the realms again. The Order must prevail.
Tears of joy flood Wilhelmina’s cheeks as she receives the message from her beloved Eugenia. She shows it to McCleethy, and the plan is set in motion. For how could the Order ignore a message from their beloved Eugenia?
But Wilhelmina can see into the darkness, and soon, she knows. I’m back in the room, watching Wilhelmina scribble her desperate message on the walls. And when the knowledge is too much to bear, she slips the needle under her skin and sinks into oblivion. I see her trying to warn the Order through letters and entreaties, but the cocaine and her fear have made her increasingly unstable; she frightens them and they dismiss her. And when she writes her book—a last, desperate attempt to reach them—they see her as a traitor and a liar.
Lost to the drug, Wilhelmina makes one final effort. She hides the dagger in the slate and walks out into the cold night. Her mind is frayed, and she sees haunts—trackers and beasts—in every shadowed corner. A carriage thunders down the lane, and in her mind, it is ghostly. She runs to the wharves, where she slips, hits her head on the pier, and falls into the Thames. And when the rivermen pitch her lifeless body back in, the darkness Wilhelmina feared surrounds her, but she is beyond caring. She sinks slowly into the deep, and I follow.
I break away from the vision with a loud gasp. Kartik is beside me, stroking my hair. He looks worried. “You’ve been in a trance for hours. Are you all right?”
“Hours,” I echo. My head aches.
“What did you see?”
“I need air. Need to breathe,” I pant. “Outside.”
Out on the wharf, the damp air of the river hits my face, and I am right again. I tell them everything.
“No one killed Wilhelmina,” I say, looking out at the boats bobbing on the water. “It was an accident. She slipped and hit her head and drowned. Stupid, stupid.” I might as well be speaking of myself. I’ve let it all get away from me.