The Offering (The Pledge 3)

Mostly, she had warned me to squeeze in a few hours’ sleep before our first overnight journey, and I’d tried to follow her instructions, but I was too keyed up to rest. We’d be departing just after midnight, and all I really wanted to do was say goodbye. I didn’t know when, or if, I’d ever see my family again.

As Sabara insisted on reminding me, I was about to embark on a suicide mission.

I gave Zafir the signal to wait for me, preferring to be alone with my sister, if only for a few moments.

The ladder was harder to climb than I’d expected, especially considering I’d just watched Angelina scale it deftly, like a small and agile little monkey. I glared through the rungs at Zafir, who was watching my progress with increasing amusement. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that soon he’d be climbing this very same ladder. That he’d be entertaining my sister with tea parties and pony rides and other games she saw fit to include him in.

Eden would never admit as much, but I knew she’d enjoyed the childish endeavors. Zafir almost certainly would not. But he’d tolerate them all the same, because it was his duty to do so.

When I reached the top, my head poked through an opening in the rough-hewn floor, and I saw Angelina sitting cross-legged, staring at me. Her direct gaze made me aware of the fact that I hadn’t snuck up on her at all, but rather that she’d been expecting me. Perhaps she’d known I’d been watching her all along.

It had always been hard to fool Angelina.

Her eyes never left me as I clambered the rest of the way inside, but she didn’t flinch or try to move away from me, which I took as a good sign. We’d come to a truce, she and I, ever since I’d admitted to Sabara’s existence inside me.

Angelina had already known, or suspected at least. She’d sensed the old queen’s presence—her Essence still clinging to life within me—long before anyone else had realized it.

Maybe too she was aware that Sabara would be just as willing to take her as a host as me. Angelina’s blood was just as royal as mine was.

She’d only have to say the words, Sabara had uttered in my head time and time again, making it sound like mere sport— moving her Essence from body to body.

The words, I thought. Those three simple words that would end Sabara’s control over me once and for all. That would give me back my body.

“Take me instead.”

I’d already traded my life for Angelina’s. And forcing anyone else to say the words was a potential death sentence, whoever she was. I was the first person to ever coexist with Sabara. The first royal to survive the transfer and to share a body with Sabara. Every other girl had simply . . . vanished, surrendering her body completely to Sabara’s dark soul.

I couldn’t do that to someone else.

I wouldn’t do it.

“It’s okay if I come up, isn’t it?”

Angelina didn’t answer, just blinked at me with those achingly beautiful blue eyes. But still she remained where she sat.

I came in anyway and settled down across from her, crossing my legs like she did. Looking around, I could see she spent a good deal of her time up here, and that it was roomier than it appeared from below.

The walls and the floors were unfinished mostly, but there was a small table, just about Angelina’s size, and I couldn’t help wondering how Eden had managed to sit at it. I imagined the tall woman scrunched up in one of the undersize chairs, with her legs bent and her back hunched over as Angelina chatted and clucked over her.

There were more ladders inside the fortress as well— boards, really—hammered into the enormous tree trunk in its center that led to another level, creating a small loft above us. Surrounded by more small chairs, there was a rug made from some sort of furry pelt. There were plates and cups, and drawings stuck to the walls, and the outline of a checkerboard that I recognized as a miniaturized court for playing Princes and Pawns. This last item that had been carved into the floorboards.

“Wow,” I breathed, more impressed than I should have been. I was suddenly envious of her hideaway and couldn’t help wishing that my place were like this—hidden among the trees. Away from the palace walls.

Glancing her way again, I saw that her eyes were shining, and I saw her reach for something that was hidden behind her back. When her hand emerged, she was clutching Muffin, and she placed the threadbare rag doll tentatively on her lap. I felt a lump stick in my throat.

The last time I’d seen Muffin, the doll had been covered in blood that I’d thought surely had belonged to Angelina. Muffin looked no less tattered today than she had when I’d first given her to my sister, a hand-me-down from my own childhood.

I grinned at the both of them, wondering how in the world I was ever going to leave them. “I wasn’t sure you even had her anymore,” I whispered.

Angelina eyed me doubtfully. “I’m never getting rid of her,” she stated matter-of-factly. “She’s my best friend.”

Again my heart squeezed for my sister. I wanted her to have real friends. Ones she could run and jump and laugh with, not just a beat-up rag doll she had to do all of the talking for. “Angelina—” I started, but she interrupted me.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Her blue eyes cut through me like no one else’s, and not for the first time I had to ask myself just how far her powers of observation extended. Angelina had always had the ability to know who could and could not be trusted. It was how she’d known that Sabara had remained inside me, that it was no longer just me anymore.