“Who are you?” the queen asked in that horrible whisper. Eleanor didn’t think she could speak if she wanted to. She swallowed and stayed silent. The queen laughed softly, a dry and scuttling sound. “You think that you are being brave. You think that what you do here matters, but it does not. There is no purpose to your silence. Where did you come from, child? The mountains? Across the sea? Beneath some rock we neglected to turn over?”

Eleanor clamped her back teeth together and didn’t say a word.

The queen sat up once more. She considered Eleanor, tapping a single finger in a slow, relentless rhythm. “Melia. Come.”

The older girl flinched, then stepped forward. She moved like a deer picking its way out into the open as she approached the dais. She was beautiful, Eleanor thought—an aching, perfect kind of beautiful that made Eleanor feel tense. As if a single flaw, a hair out of place or a smudge of dirt, would be disaster.

Behind her, the younger girl shivered—and split apart. A second, identical girl darted away, hiding quickly behind a column. Eleanor blinked. She didn’t think the king or queen had noticed. The little girl must be Katie, with her ability to split into multiple versions of herself, which meant the other girl was Mrs. Prosper—but her first name had been Korri, not Melia.

Katie, Mrs. Prosper, Mr. January—those were the names they’d chosen for Eleanor’s world. Of course they weren’t their original names, Eleanor realized.

“Dearest Mother. Honored Father. What do you wish of me?” Melia asked. Her voice was smooth as polished stone, but her fingers knotted behind her back.

“What would you use to make this girl speak the truth?” the whisper asked.

Melia tipped her chin up, answering confidently. “A tincture of angelica and yew would encourage honest answers.”

“That is correct. Yet it would not force her to speak. She could remain silent. Ash.”

The boy holding Eleanor’s arm stiffened. “Yes, Mother?” he asked.

“How would you make this girl speak?”

Ash looked down at Eleanor. She stared up at him. Could this really be Mr. January? He looked so young. And there was something in his eyes she’d never seen in Mr. January’s.

Sympathy.

“Pain might make her speak,” Ash said. “But she would give up more readily to save one of her companions. A bargain, perhaps. Spare them suffering in return for her answers.”

He sounded so matter-of-fact. It made Eleanor’s skin crawl.

“An interesting approach. Thea.”

Then came the younger girl, scurrying forward to take her place at her sister’s side. Eleanor noted the tiny twitch in Ash’s fingers against her arm, and the way Melia tensed, trying not to look over at her sister. The younger girl bounced up nervously on the balls of her feet before curtsying and settling.