Chapter 42

Chapter 42

F ey's world fractured—shattering into hundreds of sharp, dangerous pieces.

"Alice?" she whispered, staring up at her sister in disbelief.

It couldn't be. Alice was dead. Fey had felt her die, felt her being ripped away from them through their shared Blade's mark. She'd never forget that pain, never forget the sudden void, the cold absence left inside her where Alice had once been.

But here she was—alive. Safe.

Alice had always worn her hair short, but now it was cut so close to her scalp it was practically shaved. It suited her—the tight black coils of hair just a shade darker than her skin. But her eyes were the same eyes Fey remembered, the same eyes that had haunted her memories. Large, dark eyes, full of love and understanding, even now, as she stared down at her sister below her.

Fey opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

"I'm going to help you up, okay?" Alice said, slowly. "I don't want to fight you, babe. I just want to talk."

Fey didn't answer, couldn't answer, but when Alice offered her a hand to help her rise, she took it, letting Alice pull her up and to her feet .

"I…" Fey started, stunned. "I don't understand how this is possible... You died. I felt you die."

"I know," Alice responded, her voice a pained whisper. "I'm sorry, babe, but I had to do it. If there had been any other way…"

" How? " Fey asked, the anger in her voice surprising even her.

Alice sighed, closing her eyes. Then she rolled up the sleeve of her shirt and held out her arm for Fey to see. A stark white line ran through her Queen's Blade's mark. A long angry scar, splitting the mark right down the middle.

"You faked your own death," Fey whispered, staring down at Alice's broken mark in shock. Which meant… "You blew up your own apartment, didn't you?"

Alice nodded.

The dangerous pieces of Fey's fractured world shattered a little more.

It was too much. Willow's death, Dameon's betrayal, and now... now this . The world felt insubstantial around her, the floor tilting under her feet, and for a moment Fey thought she might faint. Her own Blade's mark felt uncomfortably hot on her own arm, and Fey realized absently that her sisters were awake, were dealing with their own worlds shattering around them in the fallout of Willow's death. She could feel them through their bond. Feel their horror. Pain. Shock. Fey tried to push their emotions down, unable to handle it with everything that was happening around her.

"Come on," Alice said. "We should get out of here before everyone starts to show up for the morning shift. There's a basement below us—that's where I've been staying since…." She trailed off, unable to finish her sentence.

"Do they even know you're here?" Fey asked.

Alice laughed. "Yeah, of course they do. I'm good at keeping quiet, babe, but no one is that good. Sam has been taking good care of me, here. But you're not their favorite person right now, so I think it's best we're not on the factory floor when they all arrive, just in case."

Fey didn't question her, didn't question why any of the workers here would even know who she was. It was all too much. She let Alice lead her to a hatch hidden among the floorboards under the stairs, barely noticeable if you didn't know where to look.

The hatch swung upward to reveal a set of wooden stairs that led down into a basement. Alice started down them, gesturing for Fey to follow her.

It was dark in the factory basement, darker still when the hatch shut behind them, and the space felt cavernous in the absence of any light, far bigger even than the factory above them. Alice drew on her power to make a small ball of fire appear in her hand, lighting the room around them just enough for them to safely descend the stairs. She walked to a light switch on the basement wall and turned on the overhead lights, illuminating the entire room.

"Welcome to the resistance," Alice said with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

The basement was massive, even larger than Fey had expected. Lab benches lined an entire wall, their surfaces stacked with bottles, gloves, jars of chemicals, and empty glass vials. Hooks next to the stairs held lab coats in various sizes and various degrees of filthy.

"Is this… is this a lab?" Fey asked.

Alice shrugged. "In a way, I suppose. We've scaled down production recently, so we were able to move everything down here for the time being."

"I don't understand," Fey said, but Alice ignored her. She walked past the lab benches, toward the center of the room, where heavy metal shelves held row after row of…

Wooden crates. Fey drew in a sharp breath.

"I have to hand it to you," Alice said. "You came very close to wiping out our entire supply when you blew up my warehouse." She glanced over her shoulder at Fey, her hands on one of the crates, ready to pull it from the shelf. "That was you, wasn't it?"

Fey's heart hammered in her chest. She nodded.

"I thought so." Alice sighed, sadly. She pulled the crate down and walked it over to the nearest lab bench to set it down. "It was a good job. Efficient. I was almost proud."

"You hired guards to watch it at night," Fey whispered. "Someone noticed. It was a rookie mistake if you were trying to keep the place hidden."

Alice winced. "Yeah… that was careless of me. I thought I'd been so damn careful, you know? The guards were just there to prevent someone from sneaking in, some kid stumbling onto something they shouldn't know about. I never thought…" Alice took a deep breath. "There was a kid there that night, wasn't there, Fey?"

Fey swallowed. "Yeah," she said, remembering the prey Shifter who had held a knife to her neck, remembering the way his hands had shook. Remembering his fear.

"Is he…?" Alice asked, turning her gaze to Fey.

Fey nodded.

Alice squeezed her eyes shut, as though in pain. "I… I figured. He didn't come back that night, so we thought… fuck ." She shuddered. "He was just a kid, Fey. The guards, they knew what they were doing, what the risk was, but him? He was just an idealist kid from the PFTC, in way over his head."

"You're… you're working with Prey for the Crown?" she asked in disbelief.

"I'm working with everyone, Fey. Every Faction, every dissatisfied citizen I can get to listen to me," Alice snapped, her voice turning angry. "And there's plenty of them out there, if you know where to look. Do you have any idea what it's like, for the other Factions? Have you even left the palace long enough to see what the city is really like?" Alice turned toward her, eyes blazing.

Fey felt her own anger rise to her defense. "Of course I have," she snapped.

"Really, Fey?" Alice challenged. "Have you really looked around at the state of the Eternal City lately? Tell me, then… Did you know the other Factions can't own land here?"

She hadn't. Fey blinked, caught off guard by the question. "I don't see why?—"

"Only Witches can legally own property within the City. Which means every home, every business, every building within City limits can be taken from a citizen at a moment's notice. No explanation, no time to pack up your store or home and move—if the Witch who owns your house decides they no longer want you as a tenant, you're out on your ass."

"What does it matter if?—"

"Did you know poverty in this City is almost entirely centralized in Fallen districts? There are plenty of jobs, plenty of food available for us Witches, but the Shifters? Demons? Most of them are struggling to get by, struggling to get enough food for their families," Alice continued. "Tell me, Fey, when was the last time you went hungry? The last time you had no idea where your next meal was coming from?"

"Don't give me this pious, self-serving bullshit," Fey snarled, the anger that had been building inside her finally coming to a boil. "You benefited from all of this just as much as I did, Alice. And you never cared about the Fallen when you were a Blade. You never mentioned poverty or hunger to me then. So, why do you suddenly care now, huh? Why do you suddenly give a shit about the other Factions?"

Her words hung heavy in the air between them as they stared at one another. Alice looked away first.

"You're right," she said softly. "I don't care about them, not really. But I have my own score to settle with the Crown. And so do you."

She opened the crate, but Fey already knew what was inside even before Alice pulled the glass bottle out and held it up to the light.

"Do you know what this is?" Alice asked, looking at the golden liquid that danced inside.

Fey didn't. But she'd been thinking about it long enough that she thought she now had a pretty good guess.

"Allium," Fey answered, thinking back to Phillip Danvers's dissertation.

Alice blinked, turning her attention from the vial back to Fey with curious surprise.

"Now that ," she said, her lips quirking into a smile, "is a very interesting answer, and I can't wait to hear all about why you think that… But no, Fey. It's not Allium."

She closed her hand around the vial, and for a moment she was so lost in thought that Fey began to think Alice had forgotten all about her.

"You must be exhausted," Alice said finally, opening her eyes. "This—" She motioned around at the room, at the factory upstairs, at everything around them. "This must be a lot for you to take in, I know. I will tell you everything, I promise Fey, but let's at least sit down and maybe rest a little first, okay?"

Fey wanted to argue, wanted to demand answers from her, but the truth was Alice was right. She was dead on her feet. Had been dead on her feet for hours now, and she was running on fumes. Plus, the warm smile Alice gave her… it made her feel like she did months ago, before Alice had disappeared. Like everything was okay, like everything would be okay. Alice's smile had always done that, always made her feel safe. With Alice here, with Alice alive, Fey finally felt safe enough to rest, if only for a few minutes.

Instead of demanding answers, Fey nodded.

Alice led her past shelf after shelf of crates, through that massive space, and to a small room tucked away in the far corner of the basement, with a measure of privacy from the rest of the space. Inside was a single lamp, sitting on a crate, a bedroll, and a few cushions. Alice motioned toward the bed, inviting Fey to sit, while she pulled one of the cushions closer, and made herself comfortable next to her.

"This is where I've been staying." Alice smiled, looking down at the bedroll and its rumpled blanket. "It's not as comfortable as the palace, of course, but it gets the job done. It's warm and dry, and it's somewhere to sleep."

Fey sat on the makeshift bed, feeling a little of the tension in her body ease just at the thought of sleep.

"I've missed you so much," Alice admitted softly. "All of you. You have no idea how hard it was to leave you all like that. How much it hurt me."

Fey tried to respond, but there was a lump in her throat. Tears stung her eyes.

"How?" she whispered, finally. "How could you leave us, Alice? How could you put us through it?"

Fey squeezed her eyes shut against the pain, but all it did was push the tears that had gathered in her eyes out and onto her cheeks.

"I know," Alice said. "I was so scared of you getting hurt, scared of bringing any of you into this… "

"But we were your sisters ," Fey snapped. The tears were coming heavier now, rolling down her face, and her voice was shaking. "Why didn't you come to us? Ask us to help you?"

Alice crawled forward over the bedroll, pulling Fey towards her and into a tight hug. Fey let her, wrapping her arms around her sister, resting her head on Alice's shoulder, and sobbing.

"You are my sister, Fey," Alice insisted. "Please remember that. No matter what happens, you are my sister, and nothing will ever change that. Nothing could ever change that, okay?"

Fey sobbed harder, and Alice shifted to hold her tighter with one arm.

‘I'm sorry," Alice whispered against her hair. "Fey…I'm so, so sorry."

"It's okay," Fey insisted, swallowing the last of her tears, and shifting back to try to look at her. "It's okay, you're alive and?—"

Click.

Fey stopped, registering the sound of metal on metal at the same time Alice pulled back from her. She frowned at the metal cuff now attached to her wrist, confused. Stared at the chain that bound her to the floor, the chain that had been hidden under the bedroll the entire time.

Stared, but couldn't understand what it meant.

"Alice, what—?" Too late. Too slow, bogged down with exhaustion and pain.

Alice's hand whipped out, fast and deadly as a viper. Fey barely had time to see the glint of the knife as it struck, the razor-sharp edge cutting down the inside of her forearm.

Slicing through her Queen's Blade's mark.

"I'm so sorry, Fey," Alice repeated, tears on her cheeks, as she leapt back, out of Fey's reach.

But Fey didn't hear her. She felt the pain, sharp on her arm, felt that connection to her remaining sisters surge and grow taut like a string pulled too tight.

Then felt it snap, as that connection was lost forever.

Her sisters were gone.

Fey stared at her arm and screamed.