Page 99 of The Verdant Cage
My mouth goes chalky when Albert glides out of the woods, rolling down the horse path in his wheelchair. He glances toward Marina, his expression nakedly hopeful. She ignores him.
“Apparently, poor Albert has been hiding out ever since his mother tried to self-Harvest him,” Jarek says. “But he was able to sneak away just before Reatha and Marie went up in the basket. He’s offered to help us reconstruct the poison so we have a defense against this Beast and any more. With your help, of course, as concoctions aren’t his specialty. He’s a true hero of the Valley.”
Albert looks to me, clearly worried I’ll contradict his lie and reveal that in fact, all three Chemists have been living inside the Wall this whole time. But I won’t sentence Reatha and Marie to death.
“Albert wasn’t sure who to trust after he escaped Reatha,” Jarek continues, “so he went to the Record Keeper.”
Poor, lovesick Albert must have been trying to catch a glimpse of Marina.His foolishness will be the death of us all.
“David had the good sense to bring him to me. Albert is ready to rejoin the village now, help usher in a new era. His service will be his punishment for a crime.” Jarek’s sharp canines make another appearance, but it’s a look of true pain this time. “He confessed that he was the one who Harvested your mother. It happened in a most unusual way, with a weapon from a time before the Wall.”
“Noooo,” I moan. Jarek appears genuinely upset, just as he was when he first saw my mother’s body, but I don’t care because I’m overcome with a horrible awareness. I’d guessed, but I hadn’t known. Of course it was Albert, whose then-hovering wheelchair I’d seen a flash of right before my wedding.I start panic-coughing, choking on my own saliva. I try to sit up, but my extremities are still weak from the nerve locks.
“It’s a good thing we caught you red-handed with the weapons you’ve been hoarding,” Jarek says, flicking his wrist at the nearest Guardian, who removes my cloak. The explosives inside clink against each other. “It’ll make it more palatable when we marry you in shackles and then tell the villagers—sorrowfully—that they won’t be seeing much of you for a while. That it could take years to rehabilitate our Rose.”
“Sit her up!” Albert says, hurrying over to where I’m drowning in my spit. “She can’t marry anyone if she’s dead.”
The Guardian who threw on my shackles maneuvers me into an upright position, facing Jarek. My cuffed wrists rest on my lap, my legs out in front.
“You’ll probably want to prepare for tomorrow’s ceremony,” Jarek says. “I know Misia will be excited to do your hair and makeup.Girl time, I think it’s called. Guardians, take Rose back to her house.”
62
“Naturally curly, just as I suspected,” Misia says.
This morning—Friday—broke liquid with sunshine, just as the Astronomer House predicted, and it stayed golden all day. Misia confined me to my room through all of it. When the afternoon came, she half-carried, half-dragged me downstairs to wash my hair at the kitchen sink, my hands and feet still shackled. Next, she cut away my clothes and sponge bathed me after joining me in the bathroom to watch while I peed. She brought in two female Guardians, one to stand sentry at the door and the other to hold a blade at my neck, as she removed the wrist shackles to drag on my wedding dress. The skin beneath the restraints was tender, bright red braceleting both wrists.
None of the precautions are necessary.
I’ve lost my anger. My fight. Jarek has the weapons and the explosives. I don’t care that I’m bathed like an infant, that these Guardians have seen me naked. My brother is lost forever. Soon the Wall that has protected us for over a century will be breached, allowing unknown horrors to enter while we’re left to battle the Verdant Beast. The best I can hope for is that Jarek manages to kill it when he blows open the Wall.
“I’m glad I started with your hair,” Misia says. “So it had time to dry.”
I’m seated in a chair in front of the ornate mirror inside the Tzu kitchen, wearing a red wedding gown, exactly as I was seven days ago.
But I’m not the same person I was then.
I know the mirror I’m looking at came from original prison warden Helen Hayes’s secret stash. I know Jarek has stockpiled her weapons, has hidden the Verdant Beast from us, has used fear and greed to turn the villagers against one another. I know that my mother was killed because she uncovered Jarek’s plans, and my brother was illegally Harvested because Marina didn’t want to marry him and they needed someone to pin with Mom’s murder. I know that I’m powerless.
I’m only a girl in a blood-red wedding dress.
“Stop fidgeting,” Misia says, tugging so hard at my hair that my neck jerks back. I’ve been motionless, but she’s claimed every opportunity to hurt me since my capture. Cracking my skull with a mug as she washed my hair. Pinching my skin between two buttons as she yanked on my dress. I drugged her and left her husband to find her unconscious at her post, so none of it surprises me.
“There,” she says, setting down a wide-toothed comb. “Look at how striking you are.”
Everything I care about has or will be stolen from me. My mother and father. Jonas. Gran, Aunt Florence, and Uncle Richard, who will certainly be punished until I agree to help Albert craft the herbicide that will kill us if monsters Beyond don’t first. Meryl, Oscar, Eero, and Sal, if they’re even still alive. It feels as though my very soul is draining into the earth.
A single question—a single unexplained fact—is scratching at me, but I brush it away.
“I said look.” Misia jerks my chin and forces me to stare at my reflection. “Even more arresting than your mother. Neither of you was ever beautiful, but there’s something interesting there.”
I don’t recognize the girl staring back at me. Her dark brown hair cascades in curls threaded with currant-colored ribbons and tiny, polished stones that glitter like captured stars. Her eyes have been lined with a pencil, her lids dusted with pink. The colors make them appear impossibly large, her lashes lush. The artificial rosiness of her cheeks complements her broad nose and strong chin. Her lips are plump and cherry kissed. She wears the most beautiful crimson gown, a delicate pattern of beads accenting her chest and waist, leading to a full skirt.
Only her shackled hands disturb the picture.
“Do you like it?” Misia asks.
The creature in the mirror nods. What does it matter? This isn’t matrimony; it’s propaganda. I wonder how many people will recognize that. I wonder how many more will hate me for violating everything our collective is supposed to be, once they hear Jarek’s accusations against me.
