Her words might as well be poisoned arrows, riddling me with holes that burn all the way through. I flinch, the chains rattling. Suddenly she kneels next to me, pulling my chin up so my ashamed eyes meet her molten ones. They burn exactly like Lucien’s—all dark brimstone.

“I lived with the witches for five years, Heartless. I know their secrets. I know their strengths. I know the way they pull at your strings to make you dance.”

Breathing is painful as I speak. “Get your insults in while you can. My witch is going to shatter me any moment now. That was our agreement—if I didn’t contact her, she’d assume me captured and mercy-kill me. It’s been days. My death is right around the corner.”

“Days?” She barks a laugh in my face. “You think it’s been days?” My muscles go tauter than a crossbow string. Varia drops my chin, her cool fingers leaving my skin as she stands. “Nightsinger, right? That’s your witch’s name?”

Something in her confident tone makes me uneasy.

“Did you know”—the princess picks up the doll she touched earlier from the shelf—“that a Heartless is never supposed to say their witch’s name aloud to another witch?” She twines a finger in the doll’s hair lovingly. “Of course you don’t. If a Heartless says their witch’s name aloud, you’re essentially giving other witches permission to steal you away. We can use the sound to create a spell to transfer ownership. But Nightsinger never told you that, did she?”

A cold pit hardens in my stomach. Varia twirls the doll around as if she’s dancing with it.

“After all, what use was there? She didn’t live in the last witch enclave—Windonhigh—with the rest of the witches. She lived stubbornly alone in a forest. There were no witches who would steal you away. And she knew there’d be no witches left in Vetris to try to steal you, either. She must’ve wanted so badly to keep you under the illusion that you weren’t chained to her. A useless kindness and, in the end, one that sealed your fate.”

Varia suddenly stops spinning and drops the doll, the porcelain body shattering into a million pieces, shards of arms and legs flying. A piece slips by my cheek and cuts it, hot blood oozing down my face. But as soon as the cut splits my flesh apart, the familiar feeling of a wound being stitched closed by magic surfaces, knitting me back together again in a blink. Faster than Nightsinger’s magic. Faster than any magic I’ve ever felt. The cold pit in my stomach blossoms into sickly horror as I look up at Varia, the princess smiling down at me.

“Congratulations are in order, Zera. You are now the Second Heartless of the Laughing Daughter.”

…