Chapter 2

Rosabel La Rouge

So many things I could have done differently that night.

So many nights I lay awake staring at the ceiling and thinking about them. Seeing the scenarios unfold in my mind’s eye, my imagination fully equipped to make every word, every move, every look perfectly believable simply because of how well I knew every little detail of Taland Tivoux’s face, and because I wished so hard for any of those scenarios to have been real instead.

Taland, there are agents outside and you can’t go into that Strongroom or they’ll kill you! I could have said instead of grabbing that candleholder and hitting him with it.

And Taland would understand right away, raise his hands in surrender, and pretend he was there just so he could have a moment by himself—but what if he didn’t?

What if he didn’t understand and didn’t just automatically know what to do, and would there be time to explain before the agents broke the door?

No, there wouldn’t have been. No time-no time-no time.

But then another scenario went something like this: Taland, you better do exactly as I say or you’ll be dead. Agents will come through that door any second now and you’ll tell them you came here to surprise me. That you hid a surprise here somewhere and you knew I’d follow you all along, do you understand? You tell ? —

The door would open too soon. Not enough time.

Taland, run! was a pretty desperate one, followed by questions like, why would he just listen to me telling him to run? Where would he run to? We were underground—where would he go?!

So, no, that one would definitely not work.

Another might have— Taland, I need you to grab me by the neck and use me as hostage so you can get out of here. There are agents outside that door that is going to burst open any second now, and you’re going to use me, threaten them with my life, to make it out of here—do you understand?!

That one might have worked, except knowing Taland, he would have never agreed to use me as hostage or hurt me if needed in any way. Even if he did, he had no weapons on him, no anchor to do magic with, so what would he have threatened my life with? Those men were agents, trained and armed and chockfull of magic. They’d have taken him out without question if we pretended Taland was going to kill me if they didn’t let him out.

So, in the end, that scenario failed, too.

All scenarios failed, and I failed, and the guilt won every single time. The guilt suffocated me even while I was still drawing in air. The guilt killed me while also keeping me alive.

Torture worse than anything physical anybody could ever do to me. Worse than what the Tivoux brothers had done, even worse than knowing Taland was sitting there in the shadows, watching me screaming while he smiled.

My cheek stung with a slap.

Wake up!

I was almost a hundred percent sure that somebody was calling my name, but I couldn’t open my eyes.

I tried to focus, tried to feel Taland’s arms underneath me, tried to speak, to tell him to just go back to the Rainbow mountain, to our familiars, to those players who wanted me dead— just go back ! Don’t step onto those bones, don’t get drained, don’t lose everything again on my account.

By Iris, I am not worth it. Don’t you know that I am not worth it by now?

Except I couldn’t. I had no energy to open my eyes, and I was sure somebody slapped me again, whoever was telling me to wake up. It wasn’t Taland—that much I knew. He’d be kissing me to wake me up, not slapping me.

He’d be kissing me.

Darkness, full and absolute.

The voices, even those from the outside world calling for me to wake up, faded away. It was just me and my thoughts and my memories of Taland. Of the game. Of the vulcera.

Where was she?

And where was he?

And where was I?

I stayed in the dark for a long time, but eventually, I began to make out the light somewhere far away. I began to move toward it instinctively, and to feel more of my body—my heart beating and my blood rushing and my thoughts clearing and…my magic.

My magic was there. I felt it, felt the weight of it in my veins, felt the flavor of it on my tongue, felt the heat of it against the inside of my skin.

It was there and it was alive and it was moving, eager to answer my call.

Every other thing that had been on my mind until that second, all that chaos my skull had barely contained, came to a sudden halt.

My magic was vibrating inside me, and I knew that if my ring was on my finger and I called for it, it would answer.

Goddess, I’d won the Iris Roe. I’d actually drained the colors of a man-made Rainbow with the help of Taland’s magic, and it had worked. It had fucking worked, which terrified me, because I also remembered what had happened after. How they hadn’t ended the game, but the players had tried to kill me, demanding their magic back because I had no right to it. Because I was Mud.

And then the vulcera and Taland’s eagle had fought— stop it, I’m not worth it, stop it! —and Taland had taken me through the Drainage. Please, please, please stop…

My eyes opened.

No-no-no-no —it couldn’t be. Taland was too smart to simply walk through that Drainage. He was too smart to have cost himself everything because of me— too smart. He wouldn’t.

He would never. Not ever.

But then how am I in my room?

I blinked and blinked for possibly a hundred times before I was able to tear my eyes off that ceiling, to look around in hopes that maybe I wasn’t where I thought I was. Where I knew I was.

The memories rushed through my mind even though I didn’t want to believe them. I didn’t want to believe that any of it had happened, that the Iris Roe was over and Taland wasn’t there and my magic was inside me, magic I didn’t even recognize anymore. I hadn’t had it in a while, and now I couldn’t tell you if it was the same or different, or if it was magic at all!

I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t care to think about anything else other than Taland.

Taland, who was most definitely not near me.

My body moved somehow, and I sat up. There was no pain anywhere on me—none . I was clean, my hair dry, my nails trimmed, my red silk pajamas on me.

My red silk pajamas are on me , and I had a small bruise on the inside of my elbow, right over a thick blue vein, like I’d been pierced by a needle in the past couple of hours. I was lying on my bed, in my empty room, and it was dark outside but all three lamps were on so I could see.

I could see that I was all alone.

No Taland anywhere.

Tears filled my eyes as the chaos continued inside my head, taking my breath away. I refused to believe that that had happened, that those players had really tried to kill me after I’d already won, that the Council hadn’t ended the stupid game— after I’d already won!

I needed to get out of there before Madeline found me. I needed to go back to the City of Games, to find Taland—and no, I didn’t wonder about how I was in the mansion, in my room; why I was clean and dressed in my own clothes. I didn’t wonder about anything, just tried to make it out of bed so I could start running.

I never got the chance.

The door to my room suddenly opened and Poppy came through with a big glass full of reddish juice in her hand, and Fiona followed.

On the inside, I screamed.

I screamed in panic and fear and relief and every feeling under the sky that was suddenly falling over me, and Poppy screamed on the outside, too. Only a short scream when she saw that I was awake, then turned and put the glass in Fiona’s hands, and ran over to the bed. To me. Grabbed me by the shoulders, looked at my face, said something I couldn’t quite understand because my ears behaved like I was underwater, and then she pulled me to her chest and hugged me. Tightly. For a long time.

Meanwhile Fiona stayed by the door with the glass in her hands, a smile on her lips, and tears streaming down her cheeks as she watched us.

“…survived! I knew-knew-knew it! And don’t you worry about a thing—I took care of everything,” Poppy said without stopping to take a breath. “All that filth is off you and we gave you vitamins and everything you need to get your strength back through an IV for like four hours straight. You’re okay. You’re perfectly okay—Grandma’s healers put about twelve different spells on you—you are fine! ”

Grandma’s healers.

Funny—she’d never once called them for me, not when I was young and sick with a flu, and not when I’d gotten wounded on a mission when I worked as an agent— best to stay at Headquarters; they’ll take care of you just fine, she’d said that first time.

I’d been relieved. Any reason to stay out of this mansion was a good reason in my book, even when I was sick or in pain.

And now she’d brought her healers in for me—really, so funny. Now I’d been healed and washed, and they’d even given me everything I’d lost in the Iris Roe straight into my veins, which was probably why I could even move in the first place.

Poppy talked and talked. Fiona cried.

I cried, too, in silence, and Poppy thought they were tears of joy, and so she wiped them and hugged me again and again.

But they weren’t, though. They weren’t tears of joy—they were tears of fear. Of guilt. Raw panic.

Because I remembered exactly what had happened the last time I was awake. I remembered being in Taland’s arms, and the sound of him stepping on those bones, the white of his skin, the way he’d swung to the sides, seconds away from collapsing yet he’d never once let go of me.

Close your eyes for me, will you? It will be over in no time.

Fuck, I didn’t want to believe it. Goddess, please let it be a dream, I prayed, though I knew it wasn’t. Because even my nightmares wouldn’t dare to be as terrifying as this. Only reality.

“Drink,” said Poppy, and suddenly the rim of a glass was pressed to my lips and my mouth was full and I was drinking. Goddess, I’d been so thirsty, and I only realized it when the thick liquid went down my throat.

Alive. I was alive. I’d survived the Iris Roe, no matter how absurd the thought seemed to me now.

I’d won the Iris Roe, and it was all thanks to Taland. The same guy I’d lied to, had betrayed, had put in prison.

He’d saved me, given me his magic, carried me through the Drainage to save me from the other players.

He’d saved me.

“What is it? What do you need? Talk to me, Ro,” Poppy was saying, the glass now half full in her hands, her big amber eyes wide and hopeful.

“Water,” I managed only barely, because the juice had been great, but I needed water, too. Just plain water to put off these wild flames burning inside me, scorching my soul—or maybe that was the guilt?

Fiona slipped out the door without word.

Poppy put the glass on my nightstand and dragged herself closer to me. “How are you feeling? Does anything hurt? Do you need healers again?”

“No, I’m-I’m fine.” I was fine—and I actually meant that.

Holy fuck, nothing on my body hurt for real. Not my leg, not my arms or shoulders or head, and I was pretty sure I’d hit those repeatedly in one challenge or the other, yet no pain from any of it remained on me. No pain.

I was fully healed.

“Are you sure?” Poppy insisted.

But what I was sure of was that there was magic inside me, bright and vivid and…not fully red.

Goose bumps on my forearms. “I’m fine,” I repeated. “Just tell me what happened, Poppy. Tell me?—”

“You won the Iris Roe, baby—that’s what happened!”

She cheered. She clapped. She smiled so big it had to be painful.

“When?” I choked because she was right—I won the Iris Roe but the cost of it had been so much bigger than just my life. It had been Taland’s life, too—or at least his magic.

Please, please don’t let it be real, I prayed again, as if suddenly I was a believer that prayers could actually make a difference for anything.

They didn’t.

“The game ended yesterday,” Poppy said.

“ When , yesterday? What time?”

Her smile faltered. “About six p.m.—I don’t know. They brought you home at about eight. Please calm down, Ro.”

Poppy looked concerned.

It was the one time in my life since I remembered myself that I didn’t care about keeping a neutral face in front of her. In front of anyone at all.

“What time is it now? How long have I been out?”

“Seven p.m.,” said Poppy, her hands ice-cold when she grabbed mine. “You slept for twenty-four hours, give or take. You were exhausted, and then the healing spells…”

Fuck, fuck, FUCK!

I wanted to stand up, but my body was still so heavy. My limbs weigh a hundred pounds each, and in my mind, I was already standing, running, doing something other than just sitting here, but in reality, I didn’t have the energy to even make it to the edge of the bed.

“Easy, Ro. Easy,” Poppy said, more concerned by the minute. “It’s okay. You won. The game is over—you won!”

Of course she was focused on that . Of course she didn’t see how that was a bad thing. An awful thing. The worst thing that had ever happened to me, even considering what my life had been like since the age of six.

Then the door opened, and a part of me actually expected Taland to walk into my room. I’d gotten so used to having him around in such a short amount of time that it felt like the most natural thing in the world for him to be coming to me, grinning mischievously, teasing me, turning me on by just looking at me. It had become so, so normal—but it wasn’t Taland who came into my room. Just Fiona with a glass and a jug full of water.

Now that the panic had set in, when I drank I hardly felt the water going down my throat. It didn’t clear my head the way I’d hoped.

“Fiona, do you mind?” I said in half a voice. I didn’t mean to be rude, but she’d stopped by the door and I needed her outside because I wanted to talk to Poppy in private. I had to know where Taland was—I had to. Otherwise, I was going to lose my mind right this second.

“Of course,” the elf said with a wide smile, eyes glossy and a bit red but she wasn’t crying anymore. “I’ll be right outside. Just call if you need me.”

“Thank you.”

She opened the door while I fisted my hands to see if they’d stop shaking—they didn’t.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Rora,” Fiona said before disappearing in the hallway.

She meant it.

I don’t know why I was so surprised.

“Poppy, where is Taland?” I asked when the door closed, and Poppy flinched like that was the last thing she’d expected me to say.

Which struck me as odd.

“They haven’t caught him yet, I’m afraid. He’s still on the loose,” she said.

I narrowed my brows. “What do you mean, still on the loose?” Was she joking, was that it?

“Last I heard, they’re still searching for him. He’s in hiding, but it won’t be long until they find him, okay? You don’t need to worry about it, Ro. In fact, don’t even think about him at all—he’ll be back in prison before you know it. Nothing to worry about, really. Nothing! ”

All this she said in one breath and with a fake smile plastered all over her beautiful face.

I blinked and breathed and waited a moment or two.

She didn’t start laughing and tell me she was joking.

Wetting my lips was easy now that I didn’t feel like I was completely dehydrated anymore. I looked Poppy in the eyes and waited just another second to see if she’d flinch, if she’d give me a hint that she wasn’t being honest with me. It was easy enough to tell with Poppy. She’d always been an open book to me. I always knew when she was lying or hiding things—always.

Which was how I knew that this time, she wasn’t.

Silence in my head for a moment. Complete silence. All those thoughts that had been screaming at me until now came to a halt, and I chose my next words carefully.

“Poppy, how did I make it out of the Iris Roe?”

Because Taland had carried me in his arms. That’s the last thing I remembered about that goddess-forsaken place—he’d carried me in his arms through the Drainage, and I’d been paralyzed, hadn’t been able to move or even speak at all, and the vulcera and his eagle had been there, too, by the Rainbow mountain, holding back the players who wanted to kill me, who thought I wasn’t worthy of being the winner because I was Mud.

Mud.

“Through the gates,” said Poppy, stuck between a smile and a frown because she had no idea how to react just now. “You came out through the gates with another player.”

Another player. “Which other player?” Because it was Taland. The other player was Taland—he’d walked me through the Drainage to get to the fucking gates.

Poppy shook her head, eyes wide and lips parted, getting paler by the second. “I don’t…I don’t know, Ro. I didn’t care to check his name.”

There went my thoughts again, crashing onto one another. My mind was a chaotic mess within the second.

“Is he…did he…did he survive?” My voice shook. I reached for the glass of water in her hands just to do something.

“I think so,” said Poppy, and I’d just brought the rim to my lips when I stopped again.

“You think so or you know so?”

“I-I-I?—”

“Poppy, is the player dead?!”

Yes, I realized I was freaking her out. I realized how I must have looked to her, but the thing was that I didn’t give a shit. I couldn’t have cared less about how I looked or sounded. All I cared about was Taland.

“No, he’s not,” she finally said, and it felt better than water. “He’s not dead. They said, the two survivors who made it out of the gates —he’s not dead.”

My heart thundered in my chest. “Where is he?”

Had they taken him back to the Tomb? Had they chained him, dragged him from the City of Games?

Poppy shrugged, and she was almost afraid to do so. “I don’t…I don’t know, Ro. I don’t know. I didn’t care to check.”

“His name,” I whispered. “What was his name?”

“Collins, I think. His last name was Collins.”

Collins.

My ears rang once more. I brought the glass to my lips and finally took another sip of the water. Collins was not Taland’s last name.

“Rora, are you okay? You’re scaring me,” Poppy said, and any other time I’d have probably felt bad about it.

“I need my laptop,” I said now. “I need my laptop right now.”

“But you need to rest first. You need to lie down and eat and?—”

“Laptop, Poppy,” I cut her off. “Bring my laptop—it’s right over there on my desk. Go . ” Very unlike me to order Poppy—that was usually her thing—but I couldn’t help it, couldn’t bring myself to care.

“ Go! ” I urged her again when she remained on the bed and watched me with those eyes wide, glossy, like they were full of unshed tears.

Finally, she moved.

Finally, she grabbed the laptop from my desk and brought it to me, and of course the battery was dead, so she had to go get the charger, too, and plug it in behind my bedside table. Those couple of minutes before the laptop came to life might have been some of the longest minutes the world has ever gone through.

Then I opened my browser.

Poppy climbed on the bed with me. My hands were shaking so badly that I barely managed to type two words on the keyboard correctly.

“Want me to get that?” she said, but she didn’t need to bother. The first suggestion of the browser was The Iris Roe 2024.

Suddenly a million images of my face filled the screen and I flinched.

Rosabel La Rouge - Mud - Victor - Cheater - 5 million dollars - Rainbow - unconscious —all those words and more popped up in bold letters on these pictures, and I was dizzy three seconds in. Poppy grabbed the laptop and brought it to her lap instantly.

“There isn’t much Google can tell you about the Iris Roe,” she said, and opened a new tab—straight into the web page of the City of Games. While she signed in, I closed my eyes to gather myself for a moment—all those pictures of me had been on there. Pictures of my ID, my IDD badge, and a couple I’d cared to share on social media. Some had had happy emojis on them, and some had had Mud or Cheater plastered over in bold letters, and they were still right there in the center of my mind even when the screen changed.

Then, Poppy logged into her paid account with the City of Games, tapped into the big colorful button that said, IRIS ROE 2024, and there I was again, at the top of a very long list.

The word Players was written in colorful letters at the very top, and all the names and pictures of the players of the Roe were below it. The third column showed the age of the player, the fourth their coven, and the fifth their status.

Mine went: my ID pic, La Rouge, Rosabel; 20; Redfire Coven; Victor

And below me, all eleven names that fit the screen of the laptop without scrolling down had the same word under Status: Deceased, written in red.

Deceased. All of them below me, the names in alphabetical order, deceased.

“See? You were declared the winner by the Council last night,” said Poppy, showing me my name, and that last column. My status.

“Scroll down,” I said because I didn’t yet have the strength to grab that laptop and search that whole page myself. Pictures, names, numbers—one of those below me was Taland, and when Poppy began to scroll down, she revealed more and more Deceased written in red.

The rest were labeled, Participant.

They simply participated in the game, since they didn’t win it, and they didn’t die. Participants, that’s all.

“Rora, are you sure you want to do this? Maybe you can just rest for today. Maybe you can—” Poppy started, and I hated— hated to be a bitch right now, but I simply didn’t have the patience.

“Just keep scrolling. Go to the end,” I cut her off, my eyes on the small pictures of the players, searching for his face. I was praying with all my being, though I couldn’t tell you what for. For Taland to be on that list—or not? Which was better—knowing he had been there and he was a participant, not a deceased, or not knowing at all?

“Yeah, okay,” Poppy whispered, and to say she was shocked by my behavior was an understatement, but she continued to scroll.

Deceased, deceased, deceased, participant, deceased, participant, participant, deceased…

“How many?” I dared to ask, and Poppy knew exactly what I was asking about, but she pretended she hadn’t.

“Two hundred and twenty-one people played,” she answered.

Played —as if she really thought the Iris Roe was a game and not a fucking slaughterhouse.

“How many died, Poppy?”

A second of silence. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

“A hundred and twenty,” she finally whispered.

That noise in my ears again.

One hundred and twenty people had died in the playground of the Iris Roe.

My goddess, how many had I killed at the Ghost Festival? Better yet, “What about others? Staff and residents—what about others?” So many elves and orcs had died in Night City alone, killed by the players to get their keys. “And…and the animals…where are the animals? What did they do—where are they?”

I was shaking. I was crying. Big warm tears were sliding down my cheeks as if I was just now realizing that it had been real. Goddess, all of it had been real. The blood and the pain and the fear and the helplessness, all that death— real. So fucking real.

How am I going to live with myself?

This question I kept on the inside.

“We don’t…we don’t know. The numbers haven’t been made public. The playground hasn’t been checked and shut down yet,” said Poppy, and she was shaking, too. As if she, too, was just now realizing what a-hundred-and-twenty meant. As if she was realizing that a-hundred-and-twenty was almost sixty percent of that original number.

Sixty percent of players died in it last time.

Well, sixty percent of players died in it this time, too, apparently. And some of them I probably killed myself.

On the inside I screamed and thrashed and pulled all my hair out of my skull. On the inside I set the world on fire and watched it all burn to the ground.

On the outside, I said, “Keep going.”

Poppy did.

So many names. So many faces, some of whom I recognized.

And then… “Stop.”

My heart took a long, terrifying pause. The face of the man under Kovak, Ben grabbed me and took me back to the Roe, to Night City, to that half-burned building and the guy I’d kissed back. The guy I’d almost killed with Blackfire magic—courtesy of Taland.

Almost, because the word on the last column following his name and age and coven was Participant. Not deceased, but participant.

My eyes closed and a new wave of tears hit me. I hadn’t killed him. I hadn’t killed Bed with that kiss. He’d survived.

Poppy was confused, scared, terrified, but when I asked her to keep scrolling, she did so again without a word. Until we reached the letter T.

Tanner, Teague, Thacker, Tompkins, Torres and Tyson. Those were all the last names starting with T and there was no Tivoux there. I read and reread the names until my eyes burned—Tivoux wasn’t there.

By then I was shaking, sobbing, a bigger mess than I had been even while hiding in that alley when Vuvu first showed the door of his inn to me. Back then it had been easy— how had that become easy now?! —because I’d known I was going to die, had made my peace with it. There were no secrets, nothing to figure out—just a game and its players who were out to take my life.

But if Taland’s name wasn’t on that list, how the hell would I know what had happened to him? If Taland’s name wasn’t on that list, did that mean that I’d imagined him? That he hadn’t been in the Iris Roe at all?

“Rora, please,” Poppy whispered. “You’re scaring me…”

I imagined I did. The first and last time she saw me crying in years was when she was bathing me that day before the game began—but even then she hadn’t seen my tears because of the water.

“Just keep scrolling. I need to see the list again,” I barely said, my words slurred together, but she understood.

“Let’s just rest for a while, okay? I’ll tell Fiona to bring us food—you need to eat, Rora.”

I appreciated her concern, I really did. But she had no idea what it was like inside my head. Not just the memories of the game that had actually been real, and for some reason the fact shocked me still, but because of how it had ended. Because of what Taland had done. Because of the Drainage.

Because all of it could have been inside my head, and I both prayed that it had because then Taland would be okay and prayed that it hadn’t because then everything we went through, all of it wouldn’t have been real.

So, so torn it was a miracle my body hadn’t come apart yet.

“Just take me through the list one more time,” I said, and I tried to blink fast and wipe my eyes to empty them of tears, but more kept coming. So much more and right now I didn’t know how to stop them. I lacked energy and focus and will.

“Do you…do you want me to read the names for you?” Poppy whispered, and her own eyes were full of tears, too, but she held herself back.

“Please,” I thought I said.

And so she began.

From the top of the list, she read the names of all two hundred and twenty-one players who had entered the Iris Roe.

None of them was Taland.

By then, I had somehow calmed down, had decided that thinking would be my biggest enemy right now, so I stopped altogether. There was no point trying to figure out if it had been real or if it had been inside my head—there was no way for me to tell that for sure. What I could do, though, was look at all the pictures available online and find my proof there.

My eyes were dry and my hands were working, so I grabbed the laptop from Poppy and promised her that I was okay.

She continued to complain, though, so I said, “Actually, I could use some food right now. Mind running to the kitchen to get me something?”

It worked—she was over the moon that I’d agreed to eat. But unfortunately for me, Fiona had meant it when she said she’d be right outside, so Poppy barely opened the door of my room, told her to bring me food, and came back to the bed again. It was fine, though—by then I’d already started to analyze the small pictures of the players, zooming in the page as much as I could without ruining the quality.

“I can help if you tell me what you’re looking for,” Poppy said, staring at the screen with me, but how could I tell her that I was looking for Taland? Chances were she had no idea what he even looked like, so I said nothing. I just continued to go through the pictures until the very last one.

Taland wasn’t there.

My eyes closed and my ears started to behave like I was underwater again. The doors opened and I was pretty sure Fiona came through with a tray full of food, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from that screen where they’d posted my name and called me The Winner.

As if anybody could win in the Iris Roe. As if the price at the end was worth what I went through, who I became while in that playground.

Goddess, I couldn’t stand who I’d become.

Then there was food.

Poppy made me eat. She took the laptop away, and I was too weak to chase her, make her give it back. She said she’d tell me everything that had happened after the game if I agreed to eat because the Whitefire healers who’d taken care of me had insisted that I eat within the first hour of waking up.

“The food won’t hurt your stomach—they made sure of that. You really, really need to eat,” Poppy said, a bowl of some sort of soup in her hands, and she held up the spoon as she came for me.

In that moment, a new wave of tears wanted to crash against me and take me down. I had the urge to hug Poppy like I never had before in my life. I had the urge to ask her again why she was bothering, but good thing I lacked the energy.

Instead, when she brought that spoon to my lips, I opened them.

It was delicious, the soup—or maybe it just had an okay taste, something that food Vuvu had served me had lacked. Now when I thought about it, it had been absolutely disgusting, yet back then I hadn’t minded. I’d been starving, so I’d eaten everything he’d brought me without question. Had even thought, they’re not so bad, but they were. They’d been really, really bad, my memories said.

This soup, and the baked vegetables, and the meat and bread Poppy made me eat were heaven in comparison. And just like she said, nothing hurt my stomach—on the contrary. The more I ate, the more I felt how absolutely flawlessly whatever spell was used on me had worked. The more I ate the more I experienced the full effects of the Whitefire magic they’d healed me with.

Magic. Something I never thought I could actually live without, and then I’d gone and completed almost an entire magical game without it.

Almost —but I wouldn’t have without Taland. Without Taland’s magic. Without Taland’s protection.

Every muscle in my body clenched—I was starting to think clearly now, too, with food in my system. I was starting to not just panic and want to pull my hair out of my skull, but to think about what had actually happened. To put the pieces together in a way that it made sense.

Taland had been inside the game with me simply because without him, I couldn’t have possibly won. Without his magic, I could have never done the necromancy spell to get my Blackfire key from the body of that crow. Without him, I could have never drained the colors of the Rainbow.

I could have never won the Iris Roe without him and his magic.

That was the undeniable truth and the undeniable proof.

“They’ve posted footage.”

Everything came to a halt again when Poppy turned to me with a smile on her face—she was really happy that I’d eaten. She was just returning from taking the tray back to Fiona waiting in the hallway, and she was smiling ear to ear now as she made her way to my bed, and something came over me just like that. Something foreign and something very familiar at the same time, but now I could actually move my body, had energy to spare, and my limbs didn’t weigh a thousand pounds each. That’s why when I made to stand up from the bed, I could. When I made to wrap my arms around her before she had the chance to even ask what I was doing, I could.

I was hugging Poppy of my own free will without being forced to do so, but simply because I wanted to. Because I was thankful for her. Because despite our differences, I loved her. She was the only person I considered family.

Poppy hugged me back, her face against my shoulder. “I was so, so scared…” she told me, and I thought, maybe, despite our differences, she loved me, too.

And the thought made me smile.

“Thank you, Poppy.” For staying with me when I was Mud, for not being disgusted by me like everyone else. For bathing me and feeding me and just being here right now so that I didn’t have to face the world completely alone. “Thank you for everything.”

She laughed, but when I let go and leaned back, I found she was crying, too.

“Please don’t say that, Rora. Don’t thank me. I am awful! ” Bringing her hand to her lips that were stretched to look like she was smiling, she cried and cried and shook her head, as if those words had slipped her by accident.

“You’re not. Come on, you’re?—”

“I am,” she cut me off. “I always saw. I always knew, and I never did anything. I always saw .”

Here I thought Poppy sucked at pretending.

The joke was on me because she’d done a hell of a job pretending about this.

I knew what she was talking about— Madeline . Her precious grandmother. Poppy always spoke like she thought the two of us just misunderstood each other, Madeline and I. Always spoke like she was sure we’d get over it eventually, and that she really believed that Madeline was good and kind and everything she actually really was— to her.

But she knew all along, even when I wondered if she did. Even when I was glad when I thought she didn’t.

“It’s okay, Poppy,” I said anyway because what the hell did it matter now? “It’s fine. Stop crying.”

“It’s really not. I’m a coward. I hate that I always chose easy,” she said, again, smiling and crying, her shoulders shaking.

“Everybody would if given the chance.” Goddess knew I would have chosen easy…right? I would have chosen easy because why would anyone ever choose hard on purpose?

“Of course you’re gonna try to make me feel better,” she said, and she was laughing now as she wiped her tears. “Of course, of course, Ro, of course you would!”

I let her get it off her chest. I let her laugh and cry for a few more minutes, and eventually, she came in for another hug, and I could stand perfectly fine. I wasn’t out of breath and I wasn’t dizzy and my stomach didn’t feel heavy and my leg didn’t hurt at all.

At. All.

Like I never gotten shot by my traitorous team leader. Like that day at the woods hadn’t happened at all.

But it had, and I would get to it. I would think about all that had happened that day, the very thing that had led Madeline to smuggle me into the Iris Roe. I would think about it, but first…

“Show me the footage.”

Apparently, there was footage of me in the Iris Roe, just small parts that the Council had released.

“They haven’t yet put out the whole package, which will also have pictures and a score board to show how much time you needed to complete each challenge,” said Rora when she grabbed the laptop again, and we sat down at the edge of the bed, and she showed me.

“This is it,” she said, entering a new window, and only four small thumbnails of videos appeared on the colorful background. The names under them said,

The Greenfire Challenge, The Blackfire Challenge, The Bluefire Challenge, and the Blackfire Challenge again.

“You’re not on the first two, but I think I see you in the Bluefire Challenge, and the second Blackfire,” said Poppy. “Do you want to?—”

“ Yes!” I shouted. “Yes, just open them!”

She pressed play on the third thumbnail—the Bluefire Challenge—and I was face to face with Madame Weaver again.