“Where is Fee?” I ask. “Have you seen her?”
“I’m here.” Felicity waltzes in, outfitted in her warrior chain mail, her cheeks rosy and her eyes bright. “What do you want?”
“Fee, you can’t stay here,” I say.
She takes a seat beside Pip. “Why not?”
“The realms are falling to chaos. The tribes are at war, the Temple’s been razed, and Circe has gone to the Winterlands to join with the creatures.”
“Nothing has touched us here,” Pip says, gesturing to the chapel walls. “Now, shall we have another ball this evening?”
“Pippa,” I say, incredulous. “We can’t have a party.”
Pippa’s laughter is light and girlish. “Let the creatures have at each other. They’re no match for me.”
She lowers a berry onto her tongue and licks her fingers.
“That’s right,” Bessie agrees. “Miss Pippa will serve notice.”
She and Mae gaze at Pippa with a fierce devotion, and I want to knock Pippa from her throne.
“Did you tell them how you came to be here? Why you can’t cross?”
Pippa’s eyes flash. “Oh, Gemma, really.” She shares a grin with the factory girls. It turns to a round of giggling that makes my skin crawl.
“She asked me to help her cross the river, but she couldn’t go on. Because she stayed too long here. Because she ate the berries,” I say. I knock over a chalice; the fat purplish berries spill across the floor and are swallowed by the vines.
“You meant to cross? Without telling me?” Felicity says softly.
Pippa ignores Fee’s hurt. She fixes those wavering eyes on me. “What does it matter now? For I was saved for a higher purpose.”
I look around at the girls’ adoring faces. Wendy isn’t among them.
“Where’s Wendy?” I demand. In Mercy’s eyes, I see a flicker of fear.
“She ran away,” Pippa answers coolly.
Next time it will not be a bunny.
“Will you tell me she bit through her cage, too?”
Pippa shrugs. “If it will amuse you.”
“Tell me where she is!” I bang my hand on the altar.
Pippa puts her hands to her hips, a taunting pose. “Or what?”
Felicity steps in. “Pippa, stop.”
“Are you on her side now?” Pippa demands.
“There are no sides,” Ann says. “Are there?”
“There are now,” Pippa answers, and my blood pumps a little faster.
“She took Wendy to the Win’erlands,” Mercy says quickly.
Bessie hits her hard across the mouth, knocking her to the floor. “’At’s a bloody lie, Mercy Paxton. Take it back!”
“No one likes a traitor, Mercy,” Pippa scolds.
The girl cowers on the floor. The castle groans. The vines are blighted, diseased. When they move, they seem to calcify. One, heavy as stone, creeps over my foot, and my foot is nearly trapped under it. I yank it free.
“Pippa,” I say, “what have you done?”
“What you wouldn’t. Poor Gemma, always so afraid of her power. Well, not me.”
“Pip, you didn’t make a bargain with those creatures.”
“What if I did?”
Felicity shakes her head. “You didn’t.”
Pippa strokes her face gently. “It was such a small thing they asked. A sacrifice no one would miss. I offered that silly bunny—that’s all. You see what we’ve been given in return!” She opens her arms wide but all I see is a moldering castle corrupted by weeds.
“Tell me that you didn’t take her to the Winterlands, that I’m wrong for thinking it,” I plead.
“I shall tell you whatever you’d like to hear,” she says, gorging on berries.
“Tell me the truth!”
Pip’s eyes flash. Her teeth are blue-black with juice. “She. Was. A. Burden.”
Felicity clutches her stomach. “Oh, God.”
“No, Fee, you’ll see. It’s going to be so wonderful.” Pippa grins coquettishly at the others. “Shall I tell you what the tree promised? What I saw there after my sacrifice? I saw the Order’s time ending and something new being born,” she says, her voice tinged with wonder. “Their days have passed. Our time is at hand.”
The girls move close and sit at her feet, lost in the pull of her sureness. Her features are a mesmerizing amalgam of before and after. The delicate cheekbones, the long tangle of black curls, the dainty nose are still there. But every now and then, her eyes waver between a deep violet and an alarming blue-white circled by black rings. It is a new, savage beauty, and I cannot look away.
