“I’m not. Unlike your father, I don’t lie. Now that your father and the mirror are gone, you’re right. I don’t need any of this.” She pointed a red nail at me. “You’re the last annoying weed that needs to be pulled from my life. Your death will finally bring me peace.”
It wouldn’t, but there was no point in arguing.
“Don’t you dare, Lil,” Jillian yelled before a leaf flattened over her mouth and silenced her.
“That is most definitely going to give you food poisoning,” Driscoll added.
“You’ll let them go?” I asked. “You won’t imprison them or kill them? You’ll stop terrorizing my people?”
“I swear it. Are you a woman of the people, or are you like your father, a ruler who only cares about herself?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, eyes darting to the apple. This would be the end for me. I wouldn’t survive it. But maybe that’s what I needed to do. I couldn’t let Jillian and Driscoll die. Couldn’t let my people suffer anymore. I had to believe Elwen would one day rise again. I just wouldn’t be here to see it.
“What’s it going to be?” She tapped her foot on the ground.
“Okay,” I said.
“No,” Driscoll shouted, and Jillian struggled against her constraints, her muffled yells echoing through the room. “She’s manipulating you!”
The vines loosened, and I reached out for the apple with a shaky hand. It was sticky and mushy, not at all like the firm, ripe apples my stepmother always grew on her prized trees.
She watched me with dark eyes that gleamed as I brought the apple to my mouth and took a bite of the rotten fruit.
“No,” a voice that I recognized yelled out.
I swallowed the bite just as Penn and the seven thieves burst through the doors.
“What have you done?” Penn asked, but it was too late.
I fell to the ground, hearing muffled voices all around me. My gaze focused on an object lying near me. The vial. Arms weak, vision going fuzzy, I reached for it, rolling it between my fingers. I couldn’t break it. Couldn’t. Break.
My last thought was that maybe I couldn’t break the magic; maybe I could set it free, and then I fell into darkness.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Isaw myself. It was like I was there, but I wasn’t. I hung overhead, watching my lifeless body on the ground. Penn screamed, a gut-wrenching scream that seemed to come from the deepest depths of him. He ran to me and fell to his knees, all while my stepmother stood there and laughed, and for once he didn’t look like his stoic self. He looked panicked, all sense of calm gone from his wild eyes.
Penn shook my shoulders. “Liliath, wake up. Please, wake up.” He snarled up at my stepmother. “What did you do to her?”
“I didn’t do anything. She’s the one who ate the apple.”
Penn stroked my cheek. “Liliath, you have to come back to me.” His voice broke, and that broke something in me. “I love you, Lilypad. I’m sorry I never told you, but I need you to hear me now. I love you. I know you’re angry with me. I know I did terrible things, but I never meant to hurt you. And now I need you to wake up so you can kick her ass—and then you can kick mine.”
I didn’t move. I didn’t know how to.
Penn looked up at my stepmother again. “What was in that apple? What did you do to it?”
“It’s just your standard dark magic. You know, magic that’s been corrupted,” she said. “She ingested it, which I generally don’t recommend.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Penn said. “I’m going to make it slow, to make sure you feel every bit of pain and suffering you inflicted on her.”
“Ah, ah, ah.” She wagged a finger, and that’s when Penn stiffened.
I watched as a green smoke seeped from him, from all the thieves, traveling straight into the vial pinched between my fingers.
She was stealing their magic, and there was nothing they could do about it. She’d slaughter them, kill them all.
She’d won. It truly was over.
