Delilah watched as the darkness began to fade into dimness, enough light seeping into Shadowland to reveal shapes, terrain, a strange shadow world that she and Alice had been pulled into.
“It’s like what Chelsea went through,” she said softly.
“So you sorta know what we’re gonna deal with?” Alice asked.
“Sort of,” Delilah said. But she shuddered. If this was the same as that… or possibly worse…
I don’t know what it might throw at me. But I’m not sure I want to know.
The girls stood on a city street. Wrought-iron lamps flickered with dark purple light. It was raining — the street was slick with it, and Delilah saw and heard the pitter-patter of rain drops — but she didn’t feel any of it. The rain didn’t touch her or Alice.
In front of them was a building that was unmistakably a theater, though the letters above the doors were worn and faded, so it looked more like TH A R. Letters plastered on the inside of the windows displayed the current show: “Pride and Betrayal: A True Story.”
The doors swung outward, doorstops dropping to plant their rubber against the slick sidewalk, keeping the doors in place.
“Guess we’ve got a show to catch,” Alice said.
“What if we go somewhere else?” Delilah asked, looking left and right down the street. It vanished into shadow in both directions, but surely if they started walking they’d be able to see further and find some other way out of this place.
“Don’t be a baby,” Alice said. “We’ve got to put on a show for Revue, you know? And whatever’s in here, we have to face it properly.”
“Jormungand talked as if he specifically had things to show you. Aren’t you scared?”
Alice’s white eyes narrowed, tinted purple by the dim light. “If he knows something about why I’m what I am, then I want the truth. If he tries to use it to scare me or break me, he’s got another thing coming.” She nudged Delilah. “Plus, how am I gonna be scared with you here?”
Delilah managed to smile at that.
That’s right. Whatever’s ahead of us, we don’t have to face it alone. Just like Chelsea and Gwen. They got through their Shadowland because they had each other.
Delilah took a deep breath, letting it out slow and steady.
I wish I could Summon my Felines, though. Without them, I feel so…
…powerless.
“Ready?” Alice asked.
“Yeah,” Delilah said with a nod. She started forward, Alice at her side, and both girls entered the theater.
The doors didn’t close behind them. They just… vanished. Once inside, Delilah looked back, but instead of doors there was just a wall of windows, plastered with signs advertising the play. The theater’s lobby felt like it had been pulled out of the past, and despite being worn-down it had a surprising charm to it. Flickering gaslight lamps hung high on the walls, their hazy hue obscuring faded photographs hanging beside them. The glass of the box office was cracked and cloudy, but on the desk beneath a small opening in the glass were two tickets.
“The only things that look new here,” Alice said, picking up the tickets, handing one to Delilah. They were crisp and smooth, black with silver lettering displaying the title of the show, as well as their seats: 1A for Delilah, 1K for Alice.
Doors down the hall opened with a faint creak, revealing the theater itself. A gently sloping aisle ran down between rows of seats, ten rows in all, towards a small stage obscured by a heavy black curtain.
“Front row,” Alice said, plopping down in the first seat of the front row, to the right of the aisle.
Delilah’s seat was across the aisle from her. The bracelet on her left hand was dark, and she felt no warmth emanating from it. Looking to her right, the five-foot gap of the aisle felt so wide between her and Alice. With her bracelet on her left hand, Alice’s on her right, the fire that had once connected them had such a great distance to cross if it were to come to life again.
A bell chimed, low and resonant. The doors at the back of the theater slammed shut, causing Delilah to jump and Alice to fail to suppress a chuckle. The lights dimmed further, until all was bathed in long, black shadows.
Up rose the curtain, to the sound of a distant clanking chain. The stage was dark for several long moments, and then a pale blue spotlight snapped on, illuminating the very center.
Delilah and Alice both gasped. There in the light of the spotlight…
…was Delilah.
No. Don’t let this be like Chelsea, please.
The other on stage seemed tall, standing upright with confident poise. Where Delilah’s long blonde curls were always such a mess, an “untamed wilderness” her mother had once called them, the other had perfectly ordered spiraling curls tumbling around her shoulders and down her back. Her blue eyes were more striking than ever in the spotlight, and she dressed in a simple black dress, her feet nestled into short black heels.
I’ve never felt confident wearing black. My hair stands out so much against it, and for some reason it always felt so… bold. Too bold.
“Welcome,” declared the other, her voice Delilah’s but strong, confident, carrying perfectly throughout the theater, “one and all, to tonight’s show. It is a story of truths, of secrets long held in the deep darkness, secrets unbeknownst even to the one who holds them. It is a story of a girl’s true nature and the lies that led her to live a shrouded, wasted life. But it is also a story of potential!” She spread her arms out wide, her smile beaming. “For the girl still has time to change her ways. She still has time to embrace her true self and live as she was always meant to live. This… is ‘Pride and Betrayal’!”
“Someone’s full of themselves,” Alice said, glaring at the other. The other’s blue eyes tracked down to Alice with a cold stare, coupled with an equally chilling smile.
“Normally, comments from the audience would result in immediate ejection,” she said. “But that would make things far too boring. Wouldn’t you agree?” She asked this as she shifted her gaze to Delilah, who could only stare back at her, heart pounding in her chest, voice stuck in her throat.
“Come now,” the other continued, twirling in a circle. “Let’s set the stage!”
The stage came to life, trapdoors opening up to raise props and sets, pulleys lowered other elements from above, and still more pieces rolled out from backstage from the left and right. Delilah watched in horror, because she knew what was being made, she knew what this play was going to show.
This isn’t me. It isn’t me. It’s never been me. It’s never going to be me. It’s not. It’s all just…
All just…
It was just a show, a fiction, a story that reflected something Delilah feared, not something that was true.
But fear’s what ruined me on the Nightmare Road. I couldn’t follow Shana because of fear.
I’m full of fear, and I don’t know how to escape it.
“Hey!” came Alice’s sharp voice. Delilah jumped, looking over to see Alice glaring at her with white eyes. “Snap out of it, huh? We’re in this together, right? Just like you said. Don’t bail on me now. You think I’m okay getting through this place alone?”
“I…” Delilah started, feeling herself come out of the fog.
But then she heard her own voice, the other’s voice, spoken with a strength and confidence that she never heard when she was speaking. “Oh, let’s not be too hasty,” said the other. “Keep your eyes on the stage, ladies! You don’t want to miss the show.”
“Oh, screw your show,” Alice said, moving to stand. But she didn’t rise, and glared as she pushed against her arm rests, struggling as if she were glued to her seat. Delilah tried to stand, too, and came to the same result. She could move her arms, lower legs, and head freely, but otherwise she was stuck, unable to escape her seat.
“What is this?” Delilah asked, finding her voice. She looked up at the other, who simply smiled back at her.
“The play’s barely started,” the other said. “Please, do pay attention.”
“For crying out loud,” Alice muttered. She let out a sigh, sitting back in her seat. “So?” she asked, looking over at Delilah. “This show’s for you, right? What’s going on? Don’t just sit there in silence. Makes me think you’re drowning in fear, you know? We don’t want that.”
“R-right,” Delilah said, trying and failing to steel herself. But she focused on what was happening, trying to find her voice, to explain things to Alice. Talking about it might help.
But talking about it terrified her.
“Let me explain,” the other said, unfailingly confident. She stepped atop a high dais, standing at the top of everything, over every element of the set. She gestured stage right, and spotlights shone on what had assembled there.
Mirrors. So many mirrors, arranged in a semicircle. And though they angled slightly downward, so they should be reflecting the stage and, in particular, Alice.
But they reflected nothing.
The other strolled with a bit of a swagger down off of her dais to step into the semicircle, and every mirror reflected her, bright and clear and beautiful. They reflected the other, this doppelganger of Delilah, and no one, nothing, else.
“Pride,” the other said sweetly, smiling so confidently. Some of the mirrors were rolled away, but not all, and the departing mirrors were replaced with display cases filled with trophies, medals, and ribbons. “Pride rightly-founded, pride that one shouldn’t run from. Small, but what is size when one is brilliant? Smartest in her class, highest grades despite her peers having private tutors, intensive night classes, and all she did was study on her own, do the work herself. She could even go to bed early, never pulling an all-nighter for the sake of schoolwork. And she worked harder than anyone, without suffering for it. The best.” Her smiled widened, her bright eyes gleaming. “The best, and she knows it. But she shrinks away from it. Ambition, so laudable, but not when it leads to such paralyzing humility.” Her gaze locked onto Delilah. “Don’t you see, dear self? You fear this, but there’s no need to fear. Strive, strive always for the stars, as you always have. But don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re worthless, into thinking you’re not the best. The evidence is all too clear.”
“ ‘Dear self’?” Alice asked, scoffing. “Just because you wear her face doesn’t make the two of you the same, you know?”
“Oh, she doesn’t know,” the other said, raising an eyebrow, laughing gently. She looked back at Delilah. “But you’ve worked it out, of course. You’re clever. Cleverer than you ever give yourself credit for.”
Stop it. That’s not me. My fears and doubts, my humility, it’s not —
“— a mask,” the other finished, cocking her head to the side. “Oh, but it is, dear self. It’s all a shield against what you fear, what you never need fear about yourself. Don’t be so frightened of me. I’m the truth you run from. And the wondrous thing about the truth is that it sets you free. You’re in chains. I’m here to free you.”
“You’re the one who glued us to our seats,” Alice said, struggling. “Let me up out of this chair and I’ll show you what freedom looks like.”
The other chuckled, strolling away from the mirrors, from the awards, their spotlights clicking off while a lone spotlight followed her to stage left. There, new spotlights shone on the set, revealing…
Delilah’s heart twisted in her chest.
It was Fae’s bedroom at Greyson Manor.
“The sister,” the other said, voice dripping with contempt. “All the rest of the family clings to her, pines for her. But you know the truth. She’s a traitor. What good is blood alone? The world isn’t so soft. Work for what you want, work for your status. If Fae won’t work for the affections of her family, for the respect of her family, for her place in her family, then she ought not be in the family.”
“Stop,” Delilah said, shaking her head. The other looked back at her, her gaze so striking.
“You’ve said so yourself so often,” she said. “You said so to Shana, so long ago. When all of your other siblings ran off to try and reach out to Fae, you’d already accepted that she wasn’t your sister anymore. She betrayed you, betrayed your siblings, betrayed your parents. All you did, all you’ve done, you’ve worked so hard to be good to your family, to give them your everything. And yet they pine for long-lost Fae, they go after long-lost Fae, when she deserves none of it. No matter how hard you work, no matter how much you accomplish, you still live in the shadow of a runaway slacker.”
“Stop!” Delilah shouted, glaring up at the other. “Stop all of this, right now! I won’t stand for any of it!”
“Oh?” the other asked, smiling so confidently down at Delilah.
“This is all you do,” Delilah said. “All any of you did against Chelsea and Gwen, all this place did to Addie for so long. Feed us truth without all the pieces, abuse the facts to suit your own narrative. You know all my buttons, you know all my dark secrets, I know. You’re saying nothing but the truth, but it’s still all wrong, because you’re not saying all of it! You’re picking the pieces that you like most, the pieces that fit what you want from me. But you’re just my darkness. You’re just a fleeting shadow without the rest of me, all the parts you try to dismiss or ignore.”
The other never stopped smiling. “Now there’s the fire I love to see. You’re so strong, yet you act so weak all too often. Stop hiding, and show the world what you’re really made of.”
“I only have to show one,” Delilah said softly, pushing herself to rise from her seat, standing tall. “Two who need to be one again. Two who I made a promise to.” She looked over at Alice, who was also standing, white eyes shining as she smiled back at Delilah. “And I didn’t make that promise alone.”
“We’ll give them a show,” Alice said.
“What are you muttering about?” the other asked. “Remember the rules of the stage. You must project!”
“I’ll deal with you,” Delilah said, glaring defiantly up at the other. “Because you’re my darkness. You’re my demon to fight and triumph over. But not here. This place just strokes your ego, lets you play at being something you’re not.” She spread her arms wide. “So come on. Go right back where you belong, and wait until I’m good and ready to deal with you.”
The other looked so puzzled, her smile fading. “Don’t think you can —” she started.
“Go. Back.” Delilah’s voice was firm. “We’ll talk later.”
The other’s eyes narrowed for a moment, but then her expression softened. She smiled, more confidently than ever before.
And then she vanished.
Delilah felt the weight, a little knot slightly off from the center of her heart. But it wasn’t so heavy as she thought it would be.
No more stages or sets for you. No more Shadowland to make you look stronger than you are.
“That’s a nice Act One,” Alice said, holding up her hand. Delilah smiled, high-fiving her. “I’d better step up if I want to hold up my end of the promise.”
“Don’t forget, we’re in this together,” Delilah said, feeling a lightness in her heart as she affirmed that. “Sorry.”
“For what?” Alice asked.
“I lost myself for a moment there. And… thanks. For snapping me out of it.”
“Any time,” Alice said.
The girls were back out on the rainy street. The theater with Delilah’s show was dark now, its doors closed and locked. The pair turned in a circle, until they saw a different theater, its neon sign flickering. Walking along the street, they came close enough to see the signs in the windows: “Now Playing: Off With Their Heads!”
Alice spent a long time staring at those signs from outside, her eyes darker than ever in this shadowed city block. Just as Delilah thought it might be time to say something, Alice started forward. She led the way, flinging the doors open with a fierce yank, stalking in like a panther who’d caught the scent of her prey.
“Would you look at that?” she asked, snatching two tickets off the box office counter and waving them at Delilah. “Someone’s spotted us a pair of seats.”
Their seats were the same as last time, across the aisle from each other, with Delilah on the left and Alice on the right. But Alice didn’t take her seat, and instead hopped over Delilah to sit directly to her left, elbowing for space on the armrest. “If only they served popcorn,” she said. “Then this place would be perfect. What good’s a theater without popcorn?”
“It’s useless,” Delilah said, laughing.
“Right?” Alice asked with a groan. “I’m hungry, too. Let’s get this over with so we can get some food. All this fighting and dancing and music and stuff is working up an appetite.” She gestured with her hand, her bracelet knocking against Delilah’s. “Be nice if that white fire came back, huh?”
“If only we knew how we did it,” Delilah said, staring at her bracelet. “It’s some sort of Sub-Paladin thing, I think. Or maybe… more than that?”
“It’s gotta do with Paladin stuff,” Alice said. “It’s the Light, right? Or something like it, or something that comes from it.” A bell chimed, and the curtain began to rise. “Ooh, here we go. Time for my show. Let’s see what the truth is then, hmm? Or better yet, let’s see what my darkness looks like.”
But when the curtain rose and the spotlight shone, the stage was empty. A voice spoke, soft and filled with something like pain, or… a desire to feel pain, like she should feel pain but couldn’t.
Alice’s voice.
“I’ve done worse.”
Next to Delilah, Alice’s mouth was set in a grim line, her white eyes staring, unreadable.
“There it is,” came a new voice, and Delilah could hear the sneer in his words.
Jormungand.
“The truth,” Jormungand continued, his voice disembodied, coming from all around them in the theater. “It’s time for you to know the truth, Alice. You know some of it. But the full story… may surprise you.”
“So get on with it, then,” Alice said softly.
The sound of wheels, pulleys, and platforms arose, as the set constructed itself. Three walls of a small house, a city street outside with glowing lunar lanterns.
Grimoire, during the Lunar Festival.
Inside the house were two life-sized wooden puppets hanging from strings. One was a man, sitting at a table. The other was a woman, slender save for a very round stomach. The woman bowed her head, hands clutched to her stomach, painted eyes drooping in sadness, flickering with fear.
“What will we do?” she said, her mouth clacking slightly as it moved, her voice sounding like it came out of an old, grainy gramophone.
“She could be an angel,” said the father, his mouth clacking the same, his voice grainy like hers. “She might be what we’ve been hoping for. A new start.”
“Or she could be like her,” the mother said venomously. She shuddered, then, as a spotlight illuminated a loft in the small home, and the silhouette of a small girl wreathed in a wicked shadow. The mother lowered her voice to a whisper. “What if she’s a monster, too?”
A knock came at the door, and both parents jumped. The silhouette in the loft vanished. Crossing the floor with jerky, puppeteered steps, the father came to the door and opened it.
A shadow spilled out across the floor, but swiftly vanished as a man walked in.
Jormungand.
“What do you want, stranger?” the father asked.
“Word has reached me of your struggles,” Jormungand said. His eyes drifted to the mother’s stomach. “Your fears need not take root. I can help you. I can ensure you don’t birth another monster.”
“How do you know so —” the father started, but the mother shoved him aside, racing forward to drop to her knees at Jormungand’s feet.
“Oh, please!” she wailed, bowing her head, her hands clutching at Jormungand’s long coat. “Please, whatever you can do, save me from another one! Save this child from being like her!”
“Raise your head, dear woman,” Jormungand said with a smile. “I will save your child. And I will save you both from your fears.”
“There from the start,” Alice said, so softly Delilah barely heard her.
“And so a grand experiment began,” came Jormungand’s disembodied voice, as the Jormungand on stage vanished in shadow. He reappeared now and then, each time only briefly, playing out short, frozen scenes with the mother and father, acting out what Jormungand’s narration described. “He came to her with medicine, a tonic to drink once every day. He laid his hands on her belly, worked secret magics on the life growing within. Plying the father’s silence with generous financial assistance, he was left to work his grand experiment through darkness and magitechnology. For the child within…”
He paused for dramatic effect, as the lights all went dark.
“…would be his greatest creation yet.”
The lights snapped on, showing mother and father gathered round a crib. Laid within was a baby puppet, one eye white and the other black.
And behind them all, looming over the crib as a dark, imposing shadow, was Jormungand. He was smiling.
“Our angel,” the mother said, gently playing with the baby’s hand.
“Our darling girl,” the father said, smiling.
High in the loft, the silhouette of a little girl appeared again.
The scene changed, once again showing frozen images. The other girl, beaten, cursed, hated. The new girl, doted on, praised, cared for.
Jormungand, watching from outside.
Yet he was frowning.
“She showed nothing,” came his narration. “No signs of the great power I’d worked in her. No signs of how she’d been changed by my magic and cleverness, save those eyes that could change color. What good was that? A failure, I thought. Another failure. Perhaps the experiment could never come to fruition at all. So I left. But if only I’d stayed…”
Jormungand left the stage, and the puppet girl grew older, to an infant, then a toddler, then a small girl. Her older sister was older on the stage than the Addie Delilah knew in the present, a young teen, shrinking from her parents with a contemptuous glare in her eyes.
“Monster!” cried the mother, striking her oldest daughter across the cheek. “What have you done this time? How far will you take this? You think we fear you? Never again!”
The Adelaide on stage said nothing.
“And you, our angel,” said the father, lifting little puppet-Alice in his arms. “Oh, my sweet girl. Thank the heavens for you.”
The spotlight snapped off, leaving the house in darkness. To the right, a new spotlight, outside the house, in a small garden. There puppet-Alice played with a small bird. At her side was a puppet rabbit, as tall as she was, not yet muscular like Rabanastre of the present, but with that same serious, stoic glare.
In one hand, puppet-Alice held the little bird. In the other hand, she held a pair of silver scissors.
“But the girl did things I didn’t expect,” Jormungand’s narration went. “She saw how her parents treated what they perceived as a monster, so she kept her own monstrous nature secret. ‘I like playing with animals,’ she would say. No one questioned when she brought knives with her. Or later, when she discovered a better tool for her practice, a better tool for the plot she schemed — a pair of scissors. Even more innocuous.”
“Practice in secret,” Alice said oh so softly beside Delilah. “Don’t want to screw it up the first time. Don’t want to have to try again. Find the perfect way…”
“…to kill them,” said puppet-Alice on stage in a childish voice. The spotlight shifted so that the bird was just a silhouette in her hand. She raised her scissors.
Snip!
The bird head fell from its body, rolling across the grass.
Puppet-Alice smiled.
“And she found her weapon,” Jormungand said. “She found her way. ‘To protect my sister,’ she would say to those who cared. But that was only a small part of it. The truth is, the truth she always held deep in her heart, was that it was…”
“…fun,” Alice said. She wasn’t smiling.
In the house, puppet-Alice leapt upon a table. Mother and father laughed, clapped, showed no signs of worry at the scissors in the little girl’s hand.
Puppet-Alice’s painted smile grew into a gleeful grin. The lights shifted, turning her puppet-parents into silhouettes.
Snip!
Puppet-Alice cut with her scissors, towards her father, first.
“Save the worst for last,” Alice said softly.
Snip!
Then her mother.
Two heads fell from two parents’ shoulders, clattering to the floor and rolling off the stage. Bodies stood there, suspended frozen for a moment.
“Off with their heads!” cried the voice of Jormungand.
The bodies fell, crashing on the wooden floor.
“The girl was perfect!” Jormungand said, a smile in his voice. “If only I’d stayed, if only I’d been as clever as she, I would have seen. But now she’s back. Now I see just how marvelous a success she was. The perfect girl. My Alice.”
The lights went dark, save for a tiny light illuminating the little puppet-Alice, that painted smile oh so wicked, those scissors gleaming silver in her tiny hand.
Then the final light snapped off.
All was silent for so very long that Delilah wondered if something had gone wrong. Then, Alice started talking. Her voice was soft and strained, sounding more like the twelve years old she actually was than she had since Delilah had met her.
“It’s all true,” she said, her white eyes pale in the darkness. “Addie thinks I just wanted to protect her, and sure I did. But… I did it because it was fun. I never understood. I never understood why I kept it secret, the things I did to those animals for ‘practice.’ Now I get it. I knew, all along. You can’t go around showing your darkness to anyone. Or you end up like Addie, hated and abused by even your own parents. But I… I always enjoyed it. Still do. Death’s fascinating, isn’t it? It can only happen once. And once it happens, this living creature or person, they turn into a… a thing. A doll. Like those puppets acting out that play, they’re a toy, they’re not a living being anymore. Turning people and creatures into toys… with just a snip of my scissors.” She laughed, a hollow sound in the theater. “Such a fun game. Addie, when she wasn’t Addie, when she was Duo, she brought me people to play with. Blaise, the other Shadows… they all stayed away from me, feared me. But not Addie. Even though she was Duo, every now and then I could see my sister peeking through. I think maybe she didn’t understand what I meant by finding a ‘playmate.’ That’s all I did for the Shadows. Took people who were inconvenient to them and played with them. Toys, not people, not anymore.”
In the darkened theater, where Delilah could only see the pale light of Alice’s eyes, her story came to life in Delilah’s mind. It felt more raw, more real, than anything that had happened on the stage.
“Duo tried to kidnap you,” Alice said. “You figured too much out. Became inconvenient. You were going to be my playmate, and I would have…” She flicked her wrist, silver scissors gleaming in the darkness. Snip. “But you never came. Then Duo took Caleb, but she made him her playmate instead of mine. Then all of a sudden… I don’t even remember what happened. There wasn’t any explanation. I was just… free. No more cell — even though that cell couldn’t hold me. But I never thought of leaving until the door was left open. And I found Solla. We’d talked a few times, I sort of knew about her, but not as much as I thought. Then Caleb was there, and no one was around to tell me what to do, so I thought… the most interesting game would be to upset Blaise’s plans. Not because what he was doing was wrong, but just because it’s fun. Showing you have that kind of power, to undo what Mister Head of the Mage Council himself put into action. But then… there was Addie. She was back to normal, and the same age as me, kept from aging in her own Shadowland. And… there was you.”
Alice took a deep breath, letting it out after a pause so slowly and quietly. “I got to play in a different way. I got to see brand new things. Instead of just turning people into playthings, fooling around with my toys in my room… I got to go on an adventure. I got to fly to space, and beyond, and then… the whole time, without a second thought or any questions…” She fixed her eyes on Delilah. “You trusted me. You were never afraid of me. Sometimes surprised, but never scared. You didn’t even give it a second thought to go save someone with me at your side. And for the first time, I… I fought the darkness. I didn’t really get what that meant, then, but now I guess…” She shook her head. “And we saved Grimoire, and we went with Marcus to all these different Bastions, but that first one, in the Abyss… when we saw all those people, dead. I wasn’t frightened by them, I wasn’t sad for them. But I didn’t see them as things, either. They were dead, but… they were still people somehow. And I know I don’t talk about or react to death and dead people like other people do, like they probably think I should, but I can see them. I can actually see them now. And I feel like, I just, I don’t… there are all these things about me I don’t really know. I was transformed by scar-face’s magic before I was born? I can absorb and neutralize darkness? I barely feel pain even when I’m stabbed or shot, and I heal perfectly in seconds? I’m not… I don’t know what I am. But I’m not…” She’d been looking down for a while, but now she looked back up at Delilah.
“I’m not his,” she said, staring wide-eyed at Delilah. “What I’ve done, what I am, it’s not… I don’t really know what to say, but I just… can you trust me, like you did before? Can you trust that’s not all I am? Can you trust that I’m not a monster, and that I won’t become a monster?”
Alice’s voice was so small, so shattered, like she was trying to hope but couldn’t bring herself to believe in it. She just had her one desperate plea, one she didn’t expect Delilah to say…
“Yes,” Delilah said, smiling, taking Alice’s hands in hers. “I already knew there was more to you than you said, and even more than you knew after what’s been happening lately. But you were never a monster, and you still aren’t, and you won’t become one. You’re a person, just like all the rest of us, with your own strange quirks and unique features. And you have a lot of darkness, but you don’t have to carry it alone. I’ll carry it with you.”
Light bloomed, white fire bursting from Delilah and Alice’s bracelets, merging to connect the girls together once again. Warmth flooded through Delilah, and a smile came inescapable to her lips, mirrored by Alice across from her.
“Don’t get too cocky,” Alice said, grinning confidently, though tears were in her eyes. “You’ve got darkness, too. You gonna carry that alone? Or can I jump in and help you out?”
Delilah laughed. “Let’s carry it together.”
The girls stood, connected by blazing white fire. The theater fell away, revealing a wild, horrific landscape stretching in all directions through Shadowland.
But Delilah and Alice kept on smiling. There was no darkness that would stop them now.