I heard raised voices at the end of the hallway.

At first, I wasn't sure what I was hearing. And when I did, my stomach fell away.

Someone was shrieking, the loud noise edged with hysteria.

My pulse sped up as dread, a cold icky substance, sluiced through my veins.

I recognized that voice.

Rounding the corner, my heart pounded inside my chest like a sledgehammer when I slammed to a halt.

Oh my freaking gods.

Mr. Whiskers hadn't come through for me.

He hadn't found any glamour potion and administered it to the Wychthorn Princess while she slept. But he'd had no time either. Not with Jurgana slinking out from the Hemmlok forest.

Laurena, her face white with shock, stood outside her bedroom. She shrieked, a high-pitched warbling sound as she ran a trembling hand over her almost-bald head.

Laurena's wide eyes had a wild, unhinged look festering in their vivid blue depths. The soft light spilling from the ornate lampshade above burnished the bare tufts of uneven hair, making them almost translucent, and the scalp shone through.

Bald.

Pretty much bald.

Freaking hellsgate!

Guilt tripped over my tongue. Anxiety thrummed through my veins and tangled my stomach into knots. I'd hacked off Laurena's hair and stolen it. Me! Yet someone here amongst the Deniauds was going to take the blame. My only hope was that the bodyguard would drag Laurena away, and with the confusion and disarray in the aftermath of Jurgana, the evidence would be hard to discover.

And I'd make sure of it.

I needed to get my hands on those dressmaker scissors and strip her room so there wasn't any lingering evidence. Everything I had intended to do inconspicuously the next day, if my plan of glamouring her to the truth, that her hair was gone, had worked.

But it hadn't.

My plan had fallen apart.

I stood paralyzed at the end of the hallway. I didn't know what to do.

Beads of clammy sweat broke out along my temple and beneath the damp, heavy hair on the nape of my neck to run down my spine, blending into my wet, sticky dress. It felt as if everyone in the hallway had turned accusing glares at me. But they hadn't. So far no one even noticed I was there.

I sucked in a deep breath, curled my fingernails into the soft flesh of my palms, filled my lungs, then exhaled—in and out, in and out—as if I was having a panic attack and blowing into a brown paper bag.

I was having a panic attack!

What the freak am I going to do?

Think...think!

Laurena flung the hand gripping the dressmaker scissors wide as she rounded on her bodyguard. Her voice was a shrill manic screech. "Someone cut my hair off and you didn't know? You didn't do anything?!"

Several things were happening—separate incidents that were set on a collision course. While Laurena cursed out her bodyguard, looking like a broken toy whose pretty fake hair had been hacked off by its mischievous owner, and her spitting fury filled the hallway, Yveta Troelsen limped past me toward her bedroom.

There was a faraway glaze to Yveta's bloodshot eyes. "I've got to get my things and leave," she mumbled.

Valarie knocked into my arm, sending me rocking off balance as she sped by, chasing Yveta down. What once had perhaps been a white nightie was now smokey-gray and splattered with black gunk. Her dirty combat boots left behind a smear of sludge on the floor. But there was blood there too, a thick trail of it, vulgar against the pristine floorboards. I followed the path and it led straight to Yveta.

The tattered hem of the nightie flared with Valarie's quick movement as she darted in front of Yveta, a hand on the other girl's shoulder to stop her from walking.

Ugly scratches, welts, and bruises marred Yveta's body. Blood crusted a long cut that sliced down one side of her face, and mascara ran down her grass-stained cheeks in thin streaks of black. Perhaps she'd been caught out in the middle of the lawn, perhaps she'd fallen beneath trampling feet.

Yveta simply brushed Valarie's hand from her shoulder and side-stepped the other girl, limping toward the door of her bedroom.

Valarie moved fast, and as Yveta's hand curved around the door handle, she placed her hand on top of Yveta's to stop her from opening it. "Wait, Yveta—"

"I want to go home," Yveta said dully. Sweat glistened on the pallid skin that was showing beneath the grime. She swayed precariously as she glanced over herself. Her eyebrows arched slowly as if she'd only just become aware of her current state. "How did I get so dirty?"

"Yveta, p-please, you need to sit d-down," Valarie pleaded.

Yveta ignored Valarie, tugging her hand free from the Crowther girl to fuss with her knotty locks of hair, matted with ash. "I need to fix my hair," She smoothed a hand down her wrinkled and shredded skirt before fiddling with a torn sleeve. "I need to shower and change into a new dress. I have to meet my mother for High Tea, she's expecting me..."

Valarie spotted me standing there mute and frozen. The hilt of the sword strapped to her back poked out over her shoulder. She lifted a helpless hand. "She n-needs m-medical attention."

I jerked into motion, hurrying down the hallway. As I drew nearer, my breath wheezed from me. Blood spilled down the inside of Yveta's thigh from a wound I couldn't see, hidden behind the skirt of her ruined dress. It rolled down her muddy leg in stark crimson rivulets to her ankle and over her wrecked strappy high heels.

Dropping to my knees, I pulled up her skirt to see a vile gash in her upper thigh. Acid stung my throat to see the raw flayed flesh. Fresh blood pumped out with every move Yveta made. The Troelsen girl didn't even notice or care that I was inspecting her wound. She was busy trying to pick away the dirt crusted beneath her once perfectly manicured fingernails, too traumatized by what she'd endured to be fully present in this moment.

The thing inside me stirred. It gathered itself and slid along my bones, a low growl, hungry for Yveta's pain.

I needed to find something, anything to stop the flow of blood.

"We need to get her downstairs," I whispered to Valarie, who supported Yveta's shock-trembled body.

As I got to my feet, searching for something to tie around the wound and stem the bleeding, I noticed that Laurena had thrown on her Chinese silk dressing gown over her silk nightie, but the mauve gown wasn't tied at the waist, and it gaped wide. Maybe the pandemonium with Jurgana and all that endless screaming had woken her up. Or more than likely, her bodyguard had gone in to rouse her and provide protection while he escorted her off the Deniauds' estate. And somewhere along the way, Laurena had glanced at her reflection in a mirror.

Her bodyguard took her arm, a stern reproach in his tone. "We need to leave now." I caught a flash of his handgun beneath the flapping suit jacket as he moved to tug Laurena bodily down the hallway.

Laurena wrenched herself free and seethed, "I'm not leaving until I find whoever it was who cut my hair off!"

"Laurena, it doesn't work that way, you need to come with me—right now."

"Get your useless ass downstairs and find my brother!" She whirled around and snatched up the closest thing she could lay her hands on. Her fingers wrapped around an antique Indian gourd with a cypress motif. The bodyguard took several hurried steps backward as Laurena lifted it above her head, held awkwardly in her hands, one of them still holding the dressmaker scissors.

He held a hand out, palm outward, warning her off. "Laurena—"

She screamed, an ear-piercing sound, as she hurled the gourd at the man. He dodged sideways, narrowly missing being hit. The gourd struck the wall, bounced off, hit the floor, and split apart. The chunks spun across the polished wood to disappear beneath a low table.

"Get Byron!" Laurena screeched, frantically reaching for another missile to throw at him. "NOW!"

Her bodyguard clenched his jaw. Reluctantly, he followed her orders and hurried past us.

Yveta frowned, then blinked. "What's happened to your hair?" There was a dreamy, confused quality to her voice.

Valarie's black ponytail bounced as she jerked her shoulders around. Her mouth fell open and her eyes grew round to see the Wychthorn Princess shorn.

"My hair?" Laurena hissed, advancing with small steps. "My hair?!" Her shriek of outrage seemed to burn all the air in the hallway with the way the air thinned around us. Or perhaps I was holding my breath like we all were. "Someone cut all my hair off while I was sleeping! That's what happened to my hair!"

My heart sped up.

It seemed I spent an eternity waiting for Laurena to turn her gaze my way and rightfully accuse me as the thief who stole her hair.

Except her feral gaze fell upon Valarie. Nostrils flared and cheeks blotched with rage as she stormed up to Valarie and shoved a finger at her face. "You... You did this! You spiteful, vindictive bitch!"

Valarie's mouth fell open, stunned at the accusation.

Yveta's dazed voice cut through the tension in the hallway. "Why would Valarie cut off your hair?" Her forehead slowly wrinkled as if perplexed. "Do you have any proof?"

"Proof?!" Laurena bellowed, astounded, rounding on her friend.

"Valarie wasn't the only one you were nasty to. You bullied Rosa Battagli. You bullied pretty much everyone here, including harassing the servants." It wasn't said cruelly, simply stated. She dazedly glanced at Valarie before returning her gaze to Laurena. "It could be any one of us. Especially with all the nastiness that you spit out in your horrid way. It could even be one of the servants. Every single person here is a suspect."

Laurena jerked back, staring at Yveta like a snake, unblinking.

Confoundment pinched my eyebrows together that this was coming from Laurena's friend, her lieutenant. I'd seen them in action together and I'd been repulsed by the way they'd ganged up on Valarie earlier in Marissa's bedroom. And now Yveta was acting against her.

Move, move, move!—I shrieked at myself. I needed to stop the bleeding instead of standing there gawking like a bystander.

My anxious gaze landed upon a running cloth, just as someone else had the same idea. Romain Deniaud appeared, sent up by his wife to give his thanks to the Wychthorns. He ripped the long cloth from beneath a row of antiques, not caring that they tipped over and shattered on the ground as he quickly strode toward us, his gaze fixed on the blood running down Yveta's leg.

I fell to my knees, holding up Yveta's skirt as he knelt down beside me.

Romain produced a dagger, slicing the material into a narrow strip. "What the hells is going on?!" he asked Laurena, casting a glance up at her over his shoulder.

But the girls were too busy facing off at one another to hear him. Yveta's voice had risen to a shrill shriek. "You are cold and mean, Laurena!"

Laurena's delicate, feminine features were accented and tragically doll-like with all her hair cut away, pinched ugly with her wrath. Romain's thin mustache twitched as he pressed his lips together, taking in her almost bald head. His gaze bounced from Laurena's scalped head to me. I could see the answer rotating in his mind until it fell into place and understanding flared in sharp eyes.

Romain had seen the plastic zip-lock bag stuffed full of blonde hair in the backpack that had fallen from my shoulder. He'd observed me dressed in baggy sweatpants, my shape hidden beneath boxy footballer's shoulder pads. I'd been dressed like a thief.

I tipped my chin up and held my ground, daring him to call me out.

Romain's mouth parted, tongue curling—

I braced myself, clenching my jaw, my fists bunched up in Yveta's tattered dress. I delivered a withering glare right back. I wasn't going to back down from this. If he was going to expose me, so be it, I wasn't going to wail and try to defend myself. I refused to fall to my knees to beg Laurena to spare my life.

Romain's blue eyes blazed with cold resentment. He didn't say anything though. The anger melted away, slackening his features as he came to an internal decision. He rubbed a grimy hand over his blood-splattered face, his shoulders falling.

"She needs help now," I urged Romain as relief, short and brief, spiraled through me that he wasn't going to spill my secret.

"Hold her still!" he barked up at Valarie.

But Valarie was trying to stop the two girls from bickering. "L-L-L-Laurena p-p-p-p—"

Laurena ignored her and spat back at Yveta, "Watch your tongue—"

"I was there..." Yveta thrust a trembling finger at Laurena. "I was there when you mocked Valarie—"

"Y-Y-Yveta, d-d-don't..."

Yveta ignored the Crowther girl. "You tossed her artwork to the floor. You taunted her speech."

"I was merely talking to her. Merely handing back her stupid book with her childish drawings and it fell. Not. My. Fault."

Everything that Laurena had accused Valarie of, now seemed plausible.

My stomach fell away as I realized Yveta, while dazed and confused, had unconsciously marked Valarie as the thief. That Valarie had indeed retaliated and cut off Laurena's hair for spite.

I need to help Valarie.

I can't let down my aunt.

I didn't know what to do.