“Sorina, you never would’ve been able to create your illusions without me. Look at Tree. He’s barely sentient. He’s dangerous and violent. That was the extent of your powers before. I was the one who helped your powers grow. Without me, you wouldn’t have had any of them. I’ve been training you for this since I found you.”
“How can I believe anything you say?” I ask. “You could’ve altered all of my memories. Did you actually save me from slavers,
or is that just a story you made up to guilt me into working with you?”
He ignores the question and gestures behind him, to the commotion happening outside the tent. “After the Up-Mountains fall and the Down-Mountains are free, you can always recreate your friends. They’re only imaginary, after all. They’re not real.”
I squeeze my hands into fists. How can he say that? He attended both Blister’s and Venera’s funerals. He sent them presents on their birthdays. Asked me how they were doing with school. Watched their performances.
But it was all for show. All so that he could kill them in the end.
Nausea falls over me, and I cup a hand over my stomach. I should’ve seen the truth. I should’ve seen this side of my father. All those years, I thought he wouldn’t share the responsibility of Gomorrah’s proprietorship with me because I was too young, too stupid. But really, he didn’t want me close to the truth. Had I simply stepped outside the Freak Show tent, ventured more than a few times to the Downhill, I could have learned the truth on my own.
This is my fault.
“You’ve been plotting to kill them from the beginning,” I say. “I’ve just been a tool for you. Not a daughter, not your heir. Just a tool you could use to start a war.”
“No. Never,” he says, almost like he means it.
But I don’t believe him. Not anymore.
“Let me go.”
“Don’t leave. We’re so close.” He squeezes me tighter until my arm hurts. “It would’ve been easier to make you forget them altogether, to save you the pain.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because, as I’ve found out, I cannot use mind-work on your illusions, just as Kahina cannot see them in her fortune-work. It ends up messy, imprecise.”
Then it’s over. Nicoleta knows the truth. He won’t be able to make her forget.
Unless he kills her.
He reaches toward me and unties my mask. It drifts to the floor.
“The pain of losing a loved one... Wouldn’t you rather forget? I could do that...simply wipe them all from your mind, the way I first did when you created Luca. You could start over. Start fresh—”
“I’m not going to forget them,” I hiss. I try to squirm out of his grip. “I don’t want to.”
“Why waste the opportunity for relief? I would’ve been grateful for such relief after my mother died or when my uncle was killed where he stood by a religious zealot. If only I could ease my own mind the way I can ease yours.”
Villiam leans down to my forehead, as if to kiss me, and I instantly cover it with my hands.
“I don’t want to force you, my dear,” he says, through gritted teeth. He grabs my other arm, as well, and yanks both away. In the process, he drops his crutches and, wincing, puts pressure on his broken leg. He presses his thumb against my brow bone.
When he touches my skin, a pain stabs through my head, as if Villiam has clawed his way into my brain. I shake. I should run. I should get out of here. But my legs won’t move, as if the pain is rooting me to where I stand. He lets go of me, now that I can no longer flee. I raise one shaking hand to cover my forehead where he touched me, where the pain still lingers.
“Exander is evil,” he says. “You know what he thinks of us? That we’re scum. He’d burn all of Gomorrah and our people’s homes in a heartbeat. With him alive, the deaths of your other illusions will be meaningless. The Alliance will survive. Yet you’d let him live.”
“I’d let Luca live,” I say.
“Luca isn’t a real person. He’s a figment of your imagination, one you and I brought to life.”
“I won’t let you hurt him,” I say again.
I press past the pain in my mind to search for some kind of illusion, anything, even the moth. Something I can use to escape. But it’s hard to concentrate beyond the pain, beyond the shrieking outside, beyond the smell of Villiam’s cologne. It’s hard to delve deep enough in my mind to escape the reality in front of me.
He lifts my chin up, forcing me to look at him. “I can make you forget this whole conversation. I can make you forget anything. You only need to move your hands.”
Agatha told me that there is magic in a kiss. That must be what Villiam needs to dig into my mind properly—a kiss, on my forehead. I’d always thought it was meant for comfort. For love.
He rips my hands away from my forehead and kisses me. The pain in my head increases tenfold, and I scream as he splits my mind in two. I see flashes of my memories, as if I’m caught in a dream. I see the night of Gill’s death and my argument with him about working with Jiafu. I see Jiafu’s blood spill to the ground when the official stabbed him in the throat. I see Luca’s head rolling at my feet. I see the apothecary where Luca told me he suspected Hellfire could kill him. I see the charms he kept in his vest, the charms crushed on the ground outside the Menagerie.
The pain squirms around my thoughts like a worm. It reaches my row of Trunks, then it slithers to the farthest one: Luca’s. It yanks the Trunk open.
Luca appears beside me. He groans as he fights to move, but, like me, Villiam has him frozen. He presses his thumb to Luca’s forehead. “It does not take precision to break someone,” Villiam murmurs.
“Get. Out. Of. My. Mind,” he snarls at Villiam, his dark eyes almost black with rage.
“It won’t last long.”
Another scream. Luca falls to his knees.
“Don’t touch him,” I beg. “Please. Please.”
“This wouldn’t hurt so much if you had only listened to me, Sorina. If you hadn’t gone looking for answers yourself and lied to me. You never would’ve met him to begin with. Nicoleta tried to warn you. So did Venera. If you hadn’t met him...this mess would never have happened.”
Villiam leans down and kisses Luca’s forehead.
Luca screams.
The pain in my mind lessens. Slightly. With Villiam focusing so much energy on Luca, I now have more room to breathe. I don’t dare move an inch to clue Villiam in to this but instead frantically search through my mind for some kind of an illusion. I settle on hornets.
We hear the buzzing first.
Then they appear, one by one, as if sprouting from the earth. They circle the air around me and Villiam, so loud they drown out the noise of everything but Luca’s screams.
“I can see through your tricks, Sorina,” Villiam says. “You can’t actually hurt me.”
Still, I order the fake hornets to attack Villiam. Whether or not he knows they aren’t real won’t stop him from feeling the pain of their stings.
Villiam grunts, but his concentration must not waver, as Luca doesn’t stop screaming. However, the pain in my own head lessens. Sweat rolls down the side of my face, and I lift my hand to wipe it away.
My mind eases open to me like a sigh, and I search around it as if I’m crawling and reaching for things in the dark. I find a Trunk—I’m in too much pain to identify whose it is. Hopefully it’s Tree, who could stampede over Villiam just like he did to Agni. This time, I’ll be ready for the sound of bones crunching. I’ll be ready to watch my justice carried out.
But if it isn’t Tree, who is seven feet tall and capable of protecting himself, then whichever illusion it really is could be in danger. How could Unu and Du save Luca? By slapping Villiam across the face?
But it’s the only shot I have.
I open the Trunk, and the Strings slip out like a rope dropping off a cliff. They run and run and run until a silhouette appears beside me in the darkness, one with sharp hair curling on his head.
Crown.
His face hardens as he examines the scene before him, of Luca screaming, of me sweating and trembling on the ground. I curse. It could’ve been anyone other than Crown. Crown has been weak after Blister’s death, and this...this could kill him.