I make it to the castle but the guard has other ideas about letting me through. 

"I'm sorry miss, we simply can't let you in. We've received no notice and seeing as you have no letter, we can't just let you walk in." The guard is unbearably stony faced, standing right in front of the door that I'm currently trying to barge through.

"You can and will let me in. I'm one of the recruits, I'm not here to assassinate someone." I try going around him but he sidesteps smoothly, blocking me.

"This is your last warning; leave or I'll escort you to the dungeon."

"You listen to me." I jab a finger at his shiny breastplate. "I demand- ow!"

The guard grabs the hand I'm poking him with and twists it, spinning me around and yanking my arm up. My shoulder screams in protest.

"Stop it, you big oaf!" I stomp on his foot and struggle but he just twists my arm harder, pulling me up on my toes.

"You can calm down in the dungeon," he mutters in my ear, trying to force me away from the door despite my protests.

"Stop!" An unfamiliar voice calls out, and the guard spins around, turning me with him. A tall woman who appears to be a few years old than me is striding towards us. I blink, making sure my mouth isn't hanging open. 

Her simple pants and tunic emblazoned with the royal seal show off curves I can only dream of having. Huge golden curls bounce as she walks. She has strong features and once she's close enough, I can see tawny colored eyes and a small smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose.

 She is absolutely stunning. 

"You must be Talia." It isn't a question. She turns to the guard. "Let her go, she's with me." 

To my complete surprise, he does as she says. 

"Come on, I'll take you to Willow," she tells me, walking through the doors without waiting to see if I follow.

Hurrying after her, my brain finally catches up. Since I haven't heard of any other female guards, this is probably the infamous Kassia. Suddenly I understand why Sebastian is so happy to use her as his informant.

I catch up to her. "Can you tell me anything about what happened? With Willow last night?"

She glances at me as we start up the huge staircase. I discover that the carpet is as plush as it looks, my feet sinking. 

"Out of respect for Willow, I feel like I should leave it up to her to decide what she wants you to know." I opened my mouth to argue but she cuts me off. "But I also know what it's like to be an older sister. So out of respect for you, I'll tell you that something serious is going on. Don't let her downplay it or reassure you that everything is okay. What I saw-"

She stops and grabs my arm, tawny eyes serious. "I've seen lots of horrible things in my life but what I saw last night chilled me. Something evil is at work here."

I can see fear in her eyes. What she says immediately makes me think of the necromancer and it terrifies me to consider that he has somehow managed to reach Willow in the supposed safety of the castle.

We keep walking down the halls and Kassia doesn't bother speaking again.

She leads me to a hallway with a large set of double doors at the end. As we draw to a stop in front of them, I realize that I have no idea what to expect from Willow's room. Judging by the crystal doorknobs and swirled engraving on the doors that look like they're lined with gold, I imagine her room is fit for a queen. Which is, I suppose, only to be expected.

Kassia gestures me forward so I knock tentatively on the doors, feeling rather self conscious.

''Willow? It's me, Talia.'' There's no response for a long second. I look at Kassia who shrugged.

''She's been turning away everyone that's come to see her today. I was coming to find you because I was so worried.''

I pound harder on the door. Sometimes when things would get bad for Willow, she would withdraw deep into herself and block out everything else. It always scared me, with her empty face and emptier eyes. Right now though, I'll take that, something I know how to handle, something familiar.

"I'm coming in, even if I have to break down this door!''

"You won't be able to break it down,'' Kassia whispers, stepping forward. Seeing my face, she backs up, hands out. "Sorry, sorry.''

"Go away,'' Willow calls, voice quiet. 

I rattle the doorknob and jam my shoulder against the door but all I get in return is a throbbing shoulder.

Something flashes in my peripheral vision. 

"Need this?'' Kassia asks, dangling a gold key on a chain, the top swirled just like the engravings on the door.

I stare at her. "Really? You couldn't have handed it to me before I broke my shoulder against the door?''

She shrugs. "I tried to tell you that you couldn't break it down." 

I snatch the key out of her hand, shaking my head.

Once the door is open, all I can see are dark shapes in the gloom of the room. All of the drapes are tightly closed across the windows and all of the lights are doused. Light from the hallway illuminates just enough for me to make out what looks like the end of a velvet blue couch and a side table.

I stumble through the sitting room which, based on the big table I smack my hip against, leads to a dining room of sorts. From there, following the wall and cursing all the way, I enter Willow's bedroom. There's a single candle lit on her bedside table and the air smells sour. 

Willow is laying in bed, eyes closed. She looks almost like a doll, her blonde hair silver in the candlelight, face looking younger than usual.

"Please go away," she whispers, a sort of wrongness in her voice that makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. 

"What's wrong, little bug?" I ask, using Mother's nickname for her when she was younger. Willow always hated it, saying there was nothing cute about crawly bugs. 

I sit down on the edge of the bed, sinking a few inches, and place a hand on her forehead. It's burning hot. My throat goes dry. I turn her face towards me gently, but she still won't open her eyes.

"Come on little bug, tell me what's wrong."

"I don't want to scare you."

"Well, you're scaring me now." I try to keep my voice light but it falls flat. 

Willow finally opens her eyes and they are pure black.

I flinch away, barely catching myself before I fall off the bed. 

"Gods Willow, what's wrong with your eyes?" They are pure black, almost oily looking. It's one of the most terrifying things I've seen in my life. Black, demonic eyes staring at from my sister's angelic face.

"Something's wrong with me Talia, and I think it's just getting worse." 

She covers her face and I'm overcome with the urge to scream. Scream and furiously kick at the wall until the gods stop trying to see how much it will take for me to finally break. 

Willow sobs. "It's so dark and tastes like death and it won't leave me alone and-"

"Calm down," I interrupt, already feeling lost and overwhelmed. "What are you talking about? Is it the necromancer?"

"No," she sniffles. "It feels different, a different sort of darkness. Like night versus a dark room. It's a presence I feel here. It comes at night mostly but I can feel it lingering on me constantly. Like when you're walking through the woods and you walk through a spiderweb and it sticks all over your skin and no matter how much you brush and brush at it, you can still feel it." 

She shudders violently. "It's stuck to me constantly, oozing over my skin and whispering in my ear." Twin tears leak out of her eyes, slipping down her face to spot the pillow.

"Why haven't you told me about this? We could leave and never come back, go home where you're safe and-"

"That's why!" she exclaims. "I don't want to go home. Whatever this presence is, it wants to scare me, it wants to send me running. But I can't, I can't run away from this power. I can't run away from anything, no matter how much I wish I can."

There's a lump in my throat, one I can hardly breathe past. This feels hopeless, like there's nothing I can say or do to make it better. Like I just have to sit back and watch as this thing destroys Willow.

"Last night, it appeared." Those black eyes stare at me and even though I know it's Willow, it's nearly impossible to look at them. It's like staring at the manifestation of my worst fears; Willow being corrupted and transformed into something she isn't by this power.

"I woke up to this urgent feeling of- something. And when I opened my eyes, there was this dark mass hovering over me. I tried to throw up some sort of protection but I couldn't so I screamed for the guards. And it-" she pauses, swallowing loudly. "It slithered inside of me."

"It what?"

"It slid under my skin and into my bones. I can feel it here now, inside me, latching onto my very core. It digs in with thousands of tiny, tiny pointed claws and poisons my blood, twisting my insides. It calls to me with a voice like the sea, old and dangerous and it wants me, it wants to drown me, it wants to fill my lungs-"

She's mumbling crazily to herself again. She does this sometimes when she goes too deep into her mind. It's almost like she's reciting something that someone else is telling her. It's always creepy as hell.

Willow doesn't even notice as I slide off the bed slowly, still muttering to herself about death and blood. I quietly make my way back to the door, lighting lamps and opening curtains as I go.

I crack open the door to find Kassia lounging against the far wall, picking at her nails with a dagger. She looks up with a curious expression on her face.

"Go get Mortimer, the head librarian," I hiss at her, surprised when she nods and takes off quickly, the dagger disappearing from her hand quicker than I can follow.

Mortimer will know what to do. He said he had all of the records on previous queens so he must have some information that can help. He has to know how to pull Willow back from this.