I leave the trunk for a moment. I creep to the doorway and peek into the room.
I never saw the underground well in Occhia, but I was taught how it works. The watercrea collected blood in a glass tank beneath her tower. Then she opened a hole at the bottom and let it flow down into the well. She used her magic to transform it as it went.
After ten years of nightmares about the watercrea, I have a very particular mental image of what I think it all looks like. It makes seeing the well of Iris even more jarring. It’s not a small hole in the floor, like the one I imagined for Occhia. It’s wide, taking up most of the space in the round room. It’s full to the brim, the surface dark and glassy. And there’s no glass tank holding blood above it. There’s nothing above it—just endless stone walls stretching up into shadow.
Off to one side is a black doorway. It must lead to the catacombs. This place has a silence to it, ancient and total, that I would never find in the city streets above.
I move to the edge of the well and kneel down. I can’t see the bottom.
Verene claims that she spends most of her day here, filling the well. But I don’t see any sign of that. I don’t see a chair, or a bottle of wine, or an easel and paints. I don’t see any signs of… anything. The well looks like it was simply filled out of nowhere, by magic.
I touch the surface of the water, just to be sure it’s real. It’s cold.
Occhia could live off this water for days. Months. Years.
Behind me, there’s a loud crash. I whirl around to see that the trunk has fallen onto its side, and Verene is tumbling out.
I run for her, my sewing scissors out. But she’s already on her feet. She’s pushing her mussed hair out of her eyes, and all at once, she’s looking at me. In the dim light, her eyes look bigger. Colder.
“So?” she says.
I can’t move. I can’t even breathe.
She gestures to the well behind me, and I stumble back.
“Do you believe me yet?” she says. “Or are you going to tear up the catacombs, looking for whatever evidence you think you can find?”
The scissors are shaking in my grip, and I clutch them with both hands.
Verene sighs. “That’s what I thought.”
I jab at her. I have to. I have to do something. But she lunges at me, like she’s not even afraid of getting stabbed, and grabs my wrists. And the scissors are out of my hands and in hers. I have no idea how it happened. I thought I’d be better at using a sharp thing on another person. It seems like the sort of thing I should be good at.
“This is insulting,” she says. “It’s really insulting. You attacked me for no reason, and then you tied me up in the most undignified way—and I’m sure you snooped around in my things, too. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for this city. I give so much of myself, and I do it for you and everyone you love. Can’t you see that?”
She’s coming at me. The scissors are clutched in her white-gloved fingers. And her eyes are unblinking. Unrelenting.
“Just explain it,” she says.
“Ex—” I’m stammering, even though I’m not the sort of person who stammers. “Explain what—”
“My magic is real!” she says. “You have to know that! You can see it all around you! So why do you and your little group of conspiracy theorists still have meetings in the greenhouses? Why do you make up these ridiculous rumors about how I’m taking blood from people in their sleep? How would I even do that? I couldn’t. Things are so good in Iris. Everyone is happy. Except you.”
She won’t stop advancing. I stumble along the edge of the well, groping the cold wall for balance.
“I—” I say.
“I’m not like her.” Her voice is too loud, echoing off the stone walls, and I swear she still hasn’t blinked. “I would rather die than be like her. Do you think you had a bad time of it, with her ruling over you? Imagine being her daughter. She treated me like a prisoner, too. She never let me go anywhere. She made me watch as she stuck needles in dying people and took their blood. She—”
She cuts herself off. She’s breathing hard, and the scissors are trembling in her grip. She presses a hand to her forehead, like she’s suddenly dizzy.
I feel like I’ve been frozen inside. I haven’t been thinking. I’ve just been backing away, instinctively, trying to get away from her eyes. But all at once, I come back to my senses.
If I was being attacked by magic, I would know. I’m terrified right now, but the sensations in my body are all my own.
The moment I realize that I’m still free to act, I do. I lift my skirts and kick Verene in the stomach, hard. It catches her off guard. She doubles over and drops the scissors. I snatch them up and back away. And I wait to see how she’s going to retaliate.
“What—” She’s a little breathless. “What are you going to do? Stab me? You’ll regret that.”
“You…” My mouth is very dry. “You don’t have it. The blood magic.”
“No!” she says. “I don’t! That’s why I’ve been trying to tell you the whole time! For the love of—”
“Then show it to me,” I say. “Your
