Alice did not know what was happening. Sensory impressions reached her mind but failed to form a coherent whole. At the edge of understanding an image of destruction was taking shape, but it was too blurred and too distant for her to care. Pain pierced her being. Not the body, not the mind, nor the heart. This pain had arisen and paralyzed the thing that underpinned her existence, the essence of who she was. It threatened her life, her health, her functioning. It undermined everything she believed in and ground her dreams to dust. She fought it, but the struggle was futile. She realized that when memories began snapping into place. Like a puzzle, the fragments finally fit together and formed a clear picture.

  "Everything was a lie." she whispered, and the sound of the words that escaped her throat woke her from the last remains of sleep. She did not recognize her own voice. She jerked her head up, looked around in confusion, and could make sense of nothing. She was in a room half taken up by a massive canopy bed. Her gaze landed on a black-haired man. His handsome face looked like a mask. His cold eyes betrayed nothing. The man she had feared for so long suddenly seemed ridiculous and banal, not threatening at all despite the power he wielded. Now, with her memories returned and everything finally clear, she understood.

  "You knew," she said reproachfully. "You knew from the start."

  The man burst into a loud laugh. There was no point in keeping up the farce any longer.

  "Welcome to the adult world, Alice," he said, folding his hands over his chest. "How do you like it?"

  "You knew!" the girl screamed, springing from the bed. "You son of a bitch, you knew from the beginning!" Rage filled her. Pure fury was tearing her apart from within. For a moment she did not know what to do. She wanted to gouge her eyes out, bite off her tongue, flay that liar skin from his body and worse. Fury was transforming at lightning speed into a raw hatred that seized her whole body. Before she even realized what she was doing she lunged at the man with her fists. He dodged the flurry of clumsy blows with no effort, and then as if nothing had happened he threw her onto the bed and pinned her down.

  "I do not advise trying to spit at me. I'll rip your tongue out and watch you choke on your own blood," he said, crushing her wrists.

  "You bastard!" she screamed, struggling despite the searing pain. Murder filled her mind; nothing else mattered. "You knew and…"

  "And what?" he asked softly, releasing her hands. For a moment he looked at her surprised face with a mocking, contemptuous sneer, then stood and smoothed his clothes. "What would you have me say?"

  It hit her like a bucket of cold water. What would it have been? How could she know? She did not ask herself such questions. It was pointless.

  "Answer." he urged her. "Answer me. You must know, since you carry so much resentment."

  Alice did not hesitate. She dropped nimbly from the bed, walked quickly up to him and slapped him with all her strength. He ignored the blow as if it had not been delivered, as if her palm had momentarily ceased to exist. That only made things worse. His cultivated indifference and that damn smile. She struck again, and this time he reacted. In the blink of an eye he caught her wrist and broke it as if it were a mere toothpick. Pain exploded through her, but she did not move. She stood there consumed by fury, proud and superior, too blinded by the sense of wrong to show weakness. No, she could not afford weakness now. She swung with her other hand, but that strike failed too. He was far too fast. Before she knew it he had grabbed her, wrenched her arm out of its socket, popped her shoulder, and then smashed her elbow joint. This time she howled in pain. Emotion or no emotion, she was still only human.

  "Enough. Have you calmed down now?" the black-haired man asked. His voice held a cold indifference to her suffering. When she realized that, she clenched her teeth and forced herself to regain control, though it was not easy. Breathing deeply, she gathered herself to speak though she had not the slightest idea what she should say.

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  "You're pathetic." he almost snorted, tone dripping with disgust. "Still, it is better. A little better with every day. At least you are no longer a hysterical child."

  "Not thanks to you." she ground out. "You left me alone. Without a word of explanation, without a shred of pity..."

  "Pity? Oh, that's not true. First, I did not leave you; I decided I had had enough of babysitting you day in, day out. Second, I pitied you every day. I pitied myself more deeply than you will ever know, that I had to deal with you. You do not even know how tiresome it was."

  A wave of helplessness washed through her. No, she could not do anything. Her energy, even if carefully increased by exhausting exercises, could not match his strength. After all these years she saw it clearly. This man could grind her into dust without even tiring.

  "I know everything now," she whispered, collapsing heavily to the floor.

  "How melodramatic." he taunted her. "Knees buckling in a moment of confession. Marvelous! But since you started so colorfully, by all means continue. Tell me what you know, because I frankly doubt you know everything."

  Ignore him, she told herself.

  "My memories came back. Everything snapped into place. You can mock me, but you know it's true."

  "No, Alice. I know it's nonsense. Even if your memories returned, your consciousness still rejects them. If you accepted everything at once and stopped fighting the truth so desperately, you would speak to me differently now."

  "I know that the black-haired woman with the cigarette was not me. I was the brown-haired one who sat on the bench. I remembered why she always smelled of blood and incense, why I could never refuse her, what I actually agreed to."

  The man smiled in a strangely tired way that did not suit him.

  "You have remembered very little if you think you were never given a real choice."

  "I'm supposed to die for her," Alice said, looking him straight in the eye. "I will be killed in her place. You did nothing to prepare me, nothing to save me."

  "You wanted it yourself," he said, stepping toward her and laying his hand on her shoulder.

  For a moment she thought he meant comfort, an apology even. She quickly realized what he was actually doing.

  "Stop!" she shouted, but his energy was already seeping into her body, healing the injuries.

  "Do what you want. Neither she nor I will interfere. Let me make one thing clear. Back then you were given a real choice. Now I'd rather not be in your shoes if you fail. Death at the hands of Heaven's envoy is a mercy compared to what others can do to you. You remember practically nothing. One dream, that's all. What else do you remember? Her name? Her manner? Her friends? No, I don't think so. Thousands of names, thousands of facts you happily forgot while wasting time fumbling with being good. No wonder you are sick of yourself. You cannot look in the mirror. You feel awkward, never good enough to meet your own eyes. You think I don't see it, but the truth is I read you like an open book. No, it's not psychology, not cheap tricks your wonderful spiritual leaders used on you. Stop accusing me. Stop looking at me with those wounded, hopeful eyes, because it makes me sick. Now you are just human. A miserable, worthless worm I promised to protect. I did not promise I'd fuck you while swearing undying love. It doesn't work that way, Alice. Now that you've calmed down and your bones have slid back into place and decided to mend, get the hell out and finish the matter. You've wasted enough of my time."

  He shoved her through a portal to the world where she had grown up. She fell onto the bed and gasped in spasms. Right, the portal was a void, a buffer zone between worlds. Good it had been only one step and not more. Suddenly she froze, wondering how the hell he knew. How did he know what had happened? She had not even had time to see anything, just a moment of darkness and she was back home. No, not only that did he know. Information appeared out of nowhere. The world became stranger by the minute but... more comprehensible. She saw connections she had never suspected before, laws that went beyond human cognition. Why?

  "Alice, for God's sake!" Helena shouted as she ran to the girl. "Are you all right? What happened?"

  The girl started to cry. She did not want to speak at all. She felt like hiding in the darkest, remotest corner and simply disappearing. What could she tell them? How explain what had just happened? It was too much. Far too much.

  "Alice! Answer us!" Walery shouted, but it was not anger. It was despair that struck her like a stinging slap. Her people suffered like she did. Unaware, helpless, but vigilant, fighting to the end. She had no right to saddle them with this on top of everything else.

  "It's nothing," she said, though it was not easy. "I'm... fine. Just… go."

  "But…" Helena began, but Gregory cut her off. He stood a few steps away, pale as a sheet.

  "Leave her. If she wants to be alone, she must have her reasons."

  She looked at him uncertainly. Was he angry? No, she sensed not anger but pure concern and something else slipping away from her memory. She could see how much it cost him to force a smile, then exit stiffly. Seeing that, Walery also rose and almost forcibly pulled Helena from the room, then closed the door quietly. She was alone. Yes. That was exactly what she had wanted, but...