Page 139 of The Prince's Curse

Alice’s head whipped back to Scarlett. “I am sorry. I am not the needle. I am the thread.”

“But you don’t have to be her thread,” Scarlett said. “You serve fate, not Armina Voss. Don’t you?”

The creature’s eyes brightened, and she looked back. And for one split second, Scarlett saw her aunt in one of those glassy expanses, dark eyes and hair streaming behind her. Alice ran across the room and smashed the stone.

One after another, Alice smashed those panels, destroying the nightmare visions until only a pile of rubble remained. Those strange, slithering gray threads like a living web stretched as far as she could see. Bluish sparks now ran along them, like electrical signals across a trillion tiny nerves.

The hammer clattered to the ground, and Alice let out a scream that rattled the entire world, down to Scarlett’s bones, threatening to wrench her joints apart. The sound slithered between her cells, between her thoughts, and she was lost in it.

Was it madness? Sheer joy at being free?

A warm hand grasped hers, and she clasped tight. When she opened her eyes, she still saw Alice, but they stood in a familiar space, on the red brick of Centennial Olympic Park, where she’d first met Julian. Beyond the dancing silhouettes of the trees, the blue wall of the aquarium glowed eerie red.

Alice wore an I Love Atlanta T-shirt, with her red hair long and loose like Scarlett’s, but her shadow was impossibly huge, with spindly legs that stretched far beyond the brick walkway.

“Are you okay?” Scarlett asked.

Alice smiled brightly. “You care for me?” When she spoke, her voice rolled like thunder in the night. Lightning flashed in the clouds, which were woven of a million tiny gray threads.

“It seems like you were trapped for a long time,” Scarlett said. “That makes me sad. I think…I think somehow I was trapped with you. But I didn’t remember all of it. You did, didn’t you?”

The spirit’s head tilted. “I made you die. Watched you die. Felt you die. Over and over. So many threads cut too soon, patterns unfinished…but you have no anger.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Scarlett said. “But is there anything you could tell me to help the people she’s hurt? How to undo her spells, or where she’s hiding?”

“Alice doesn’t know,” she said sadly. But she held out her hand. “So much taken from you. From all of the yous.”

When Scarlett took her hand, she was struck with the image of a weaver at a loom, weeping as she sliced through her work with scissors. Loose threads fell to the ground, turning to dust. The woman wept and threw herself over the loom as her tears stained the shredded remains.

Something burned against her palm. Scarlett gasped, opening her eyes to see a skein of shining red thread in her palm. Neatly looped on itself, it felt far too heavy for its tiny size. “What’s this?”

“What should have been woven,” Alice said. “I cannot alter fate, but neither can this remain in the ether. Do with it what you will.” Her eyes drifted up, then fixed on Scarlett. “Now go, while you can.”

Scarlett nodded to her. “Thank you. I wish you well,” she said.

At that, Alice’s mouth split, far too wide, as she grew into a monstrous spider-thing again, and the landscape dissolved into something strange and nightmarish. The ground trembled beneath her, and the air went bitterly cold.

Scarlett ran.

Chapter 33

Shoshanna had been at work for ten grueling hours. The ritual space stayed silent as a tomb for long stretches, with only the occasional whispered request for water as Shoshanna kept vigil. It might have been more reassuring if there was some measured chaos, like the noisy bustle of an operating theater. At least then he would know that something was happening, that they were moving toward a solution—or even toward disaster.

But the witch remained quiet and unmoving for such long stretches that he sometimes wondered if time had stood still. All around his red-haired beauty, the lines of Shoshanna’s spellwork glowed silvery-white. Now and then, they pulsed red, then a deep and unsettling black that dimmed the whole room. The marks on Shoshanna’s skin glowed brightly, as if she wore long gloves and a collar of glowing silver lace.

Alistair had taken on guard duty, pacing in tight circles around the building’s perimeter. Inside, Misha Volkov remained close at hand, occasionally placing one of those smooth red bloodstones inside a painted circle around the arcane array.

As they worked, he felt a pulsing heat in his breast, as if Scarlett was pulling at him. He remained motionless, but closed his eyes and foolishly tried to open himself to her, thinking I am here—take what you need.

If willpower and sincerity were all it took to save her, Scarlett would not have been in this predicament to begin with. He felt foolish, with that cynical voice in his head babbling, You have no magic! What are you thinking?

But he had been cynical and hopeless for much of the last two hundred years, and it had brought them no closer to a resolution. Perhaps it was time to have faith and be idiotically hopeful.

At five twenty-three in the morning, Shoshanna’s voice rang out. It was hoarse, but loud as she said, “Scarlett, I’ve got you. Come on. I know you can do it.”

His eyes snapped open, and he shouted in surprise. Scarlett’s skin was corpse-white beneath a hideous tangle of black lines, as if a thousand tiny worms wriggled over her. The light of the spell was a sickly gray-blue, casting the whole room in a harsh shadow. An unsettling shimmer rippled in the air like a mirage, as if reality itself was faltering.

“What’s wrong?” he said loudly. “What’s?—”

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