Star Cursed

“Er, yes.” I’m whispering, though no one can possibly hear us. “Do you—Brenna, everything you see, does it all come true? Always?”

Brenna nods. “Oh, yes. I don’t make it happen. You understand that.” She rushes at me, grasping at my cloak. She’s gotten even thinner in the month since she came here. She looks half starved, and there is a bruise shadowing one of her cheeks. “You do understand, don’t you? Please. I tried. I tried with Jack, and with Grandfather, but no one believes me. They never listen.”

“I understand.” I reach out to pat her shoulder, and she jumps, frightening both of us. I fight the urge to recoil. She’s only a sad, broken girl. I take a deep breath, steeling myself. “Have you seen anything about my future?”

“Ah, that’s why you’ve come.” Brenna buries her head in her bony fingers. One blue eye peeks out at me from a gap. “I have.”

“Will you tell me? I’d like to know.”

Brenna shakes her head, her snarled hair lashing against me. “No, I don’t think you would.”

I swallow hard. “Please.”

“Ask the little one downstairs. She knows,” Brenna says. “She wants to change it.”

Fear turns my legs to jelly. Does Brenna know that Tess is the oracle? Can she sense her, somehow?

“Who do you mean?” I demand.

“The other one. The little oracle.” Brenna frowns, combing her tangled hair with her fingers. “I don’t want them to have her. I don’t see—why is she here? We mustn’t let them have her. If they knew about her, they’d keep her here and make her tell all her secrets. I’m lonely, but not so lonely I’d wish that for the little one.”

“You mustn’t tell them, Brenna. They mustn’t find out about her.”

“No. Not from me. I’ll lock it up and throw away the key.” Brenna giggles, mimes turning a key in front of her mouth and throwing it over her shoulder.

It is hardly reassuring to have one’s secrets kept by a madwoman.

“I don’t want them to keep you here, either. What if—what if I took you away?” I whisper, coming closer. “What if I took you somewhere safe? You and me and the little oracle. Rory’s there, too.”

Brenna puts her face right up against mine. “Rory? Uncle Jack’s Rory?”

“Yes. We’d look after you. You’d be safe.”

She wrinkles her brow, as if she can’t quite understand that, and turns away, running her hand over the cloth walls. “They’ll still kill me, in the end. But—yes. I think I would like to see Rory again.”

“I’ll come back for you soon. Just a few more days. You mustn’t tell anyone that, either.”

“I should like to meet the little one,” Brenna muses. “She’s not broken, like me. Not yet.”

A shiver of fear works its way down my spine. “No. I’ll protect her.”

Brenna shakes her head. “You can’t protect them both, Cate. That’s your fate.”

What does she mean? That someday, I’ll have to choose between Maura and Tess? I want to ask, but I’m afraid the answers might break me.

I back away until the doorknob jabs into my hip. “I have to go. I’ll come back for you, Brenna. I promise.”

The look in Brenna’s blue eyes hurts my heart—as though she is very used to people promising her things and not following through. She nods behind her curtain of snarled hair. “Good-bye, Cate.”

Lord, I hope I can keep my word. Brenna is sick and sad, and she deserves better than this. They all do.

Out in the hallway, I droop against the wall like a wilted sunflower. The nurse snores, and water from the leaky roof plinks into the two tin pails.

I don’t want to admit the truth, even to myself. I don’t want to be the kind of girl who would consider such a possibility, who could weigh one life against another so callously. I will not let leading the Sisterhood turn me into Inez, or even Cora. I will stay true to myself.

But the facts present themselves on an endless loop in my head.

Brenna knows about Tess.

Brenna is mad. She can’t be expected to keep secrets indefinitely.

Tess isn’t just my little sister anymore. She’s the oracle who could win this war for us.

Which means—

If I can’t break Brenna out of here, I’m going to have to kill her.

I arrive at the infirmary doors at half past three, just as we agreed. I peek inside. Sister Sophia is speaking with the two nurses; her job is to keep them occupied. Addie sits beside the same coughing girl as last week. The skeletal old woman is gone, her bed empty, and I wonder whether she died. The mother I healed is missing, too—moved upstairs, I hope, and not into the mass grave Zara described. I vow to myself that none of these women will end up there.

Mei catches my eye and hurries out. “Ready?”

I nod, and we walk down the empty hallway. To our left is the kitchen. It smells sweet and sour, rotten meat mixed with fresh-baked bread, and I hold my breath until we are well past the door. I hear the clang of metal as someone washes pots and pans. A high, pretty voice rises in one of the old songs and then abruptly cuts off.

Heels clip toward the door, and Mei and I turn, making for the infirmary. We pause as a scullery maid storms out of the kitchen, towing a bedraggled brunette in her wake. The girl’s face is flushed from the steam, her hair limp, and she still wears a wet white apron tied around her waist.

“How many times have I got to tell you, Livvy? No singing!” the scullery maid lectures. “Now I’ve got to step away from my tea just to escort you back to your room!”

“I’m sorry. It just popped out, on accident,” Livvy says. When her brown eyes meet mine, I expect hers to drop—but instead she stares back curiously. “Good day, Sisters.”

“Come along, girl, I haven’t got all day,” the maid grumbles.

We wait until they’ve pushed through the doors at the opposite end of the hall, Livvy still gawking over her shoulder at us while the maid drags her along by the wrist. Mei and I hurry past the kitchen to the locked storage room beyond.

“Cough if anyone comes. I’ll try and be quick about it,” I promise. The lock clicks open at my command, and I slip inside.

Blast. It’s so dark I can barely see my hand in front of me. I pull out the extra candle and two matches I liberated from the sleeping nurse upstairs. My hand shakes so much that the first match burns down to my fingers, and I’ve got to blow it out before I can light the candle.

On the second try, the candle catches. I’m in a small room with stone walls and a dirt floor. Moisture drips along the cracks between floor and wall. In the corner, something dark scurries down into a privy hole. This must have once been a cell.

I scan the wooden shelves. On the bottom are some surgical implements: a large saw, a few knives, and some wickedly sharp scalpels. I imagine they’re locked up in here to prevent the patients from turning them on the nurses—or the nurses from fencing them. Small brown bottles marked CHLOROFORM rest on a higher shelf. Bottles of whiskey and sherry line the lower shelves, along with small bottles marked OPIUM POWDER, big sacks of sugar, and tins of cinnamon: all the ingredients for the laudanum mixture.