Finally, Roman stops in front of a girl who must have once been beautiful. Her dark brown hair fans out, tangled around so many vines that it makes her look like she’s been caught in a windstorm. Even with the blood caked in it, you can see veins of auburn. Her features are sharp and petite. Dark purple bruises and scabs mar her pale skin. If her eyes were open, I bet they’d be the deepest brown.

“Your sister.”

“Yes.”

“You tried to cut her out.”

I stare at his profile, the tight jaw, the way he keeps swallowing as if something is lodged in his throat.

He pauses and lifts a hand toward Beatrice before dropping it again. “She failed and ended up here, so I can’t leave. I can never leave.” He shakes his head again. His deep auburn curls blend with our surroundings like blood-slicked vines, like he’s spent too much time here. Something tells me he has.

Sympathy washes through me. I know what it’s like to be caught in a horrible memory, to have it always with you. Roman can actually visit his. He can smell the blood and see the always fresh wounds. It makes me sick. My memory is vivid and alive, but if I could actually visit the scene every day, I don’t know if I’d still be moving.

But rage whispers in with my sympathy too.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me? All those vague warnings? You could have led with this.”

“I couldn’t. Why do you think I said my sister was dead? We’re all spelled so we can’t say a thing about it to anyone who doesn’t already know. The only reason I can talk now is because you broke through the spell. You’re not supposed to be seeing this. We don’t show you the truth until you win. But when you broke the barrier spell, I thought maybe you could break this one, too.”

But that only explains one of the things I’m angry about. “Why bring an apprentice at all if you know they’ll end up here if they don’t win?”

“Because if we don’t bring an apprentice, then the oldest member of the troupe gets placed in here instead.” He points out Edgar, bound in so many vines they look like a cocoon. His mentalist apprentice who made Lucius slap himself is next to him, dangling by vines piercing his arms, feet not even touching the ground. “Lucius has thought of everything. It’s brilliant, really, because it also gives him the chance to get rid of the oldest and more powerful magicians.”

“Why don’t people leave?”

Roman points to a man next to Beatrice with golden hair that reaches his waist. He’s held up by the roses piercing through both wrists. “He ran two years ago. People don’t escape.”

“Except my mom.”