by Sara Holland
“Do you think they know we’re here?” I ask Liam quietly, when we’re back on the street.
Liam shrugs, but I see the worry creasing his brow. “I doubt it. It’s just that they’re everywhere.”
Ina’s face flashes in my mind, the way she looked at me when I confronted her in her room. Rage bordering on hatred. The thought of her hating me sends sadness and dread stabbing through all over again. But worse than that is the possibility of Caro controlling Ina like a puppet, like she did the Queen before her and threatened to do to me. I remember her words from the blood-soaked day I confronted her at Everless—how she whispered in the Queen’s ear and stole her mind to control her—and cling to the hope that Ina’s mind is stronger than the Queen’s, that Caro has not yet invaded her head with the tendrils of her magic.
After the soldiers’ voices fade away, Liam leads me onward, uphill, to a quieter part of town, where the wide streets are nearly empty. A high stone wall runs along one side of the street for several blocks, beyond which I can see the tops of trees and hear the faint call of songbirds. We follow it as it curves gently, until we reach a large gate of oak wood and wrought iron, boasting a single word spelled out in twisting brass inlay:
BELLWOOD.
As we draw closer to the gate, I see that it’s covered with a series of slits in the metal. Liam doesn’t hesitate. He withdraws three day-coins from his purse and puts them into three of the slots: the third, seventh, then the first. I hear a muted grinding of gears, and then the gates click softly open. A combination lock.
Liam pushes the door open. Beyond it, I see a stretch of bright green grass, clustered with brick buildings shrouded in ivy. All around, trees the color of ash have started to bud with small bursts of violet and yellow, giving the entire place the appearance of being strung with garland. Seeing no one, he beckons to me, and I follow him inside.
I feel half dead on my feet, but I hope I look presentable. My hair is tamed and covered with Liam’s hood. In Danna’s dress, I could pass for a student, or so Liam’s told me. I have no idea how scholars dress, or how they act, or if I resemble them in the least.
Fear has kept me awake and moving, never fully fading. The daylight feels like a new threat—but Bellwood, and whatever is hidden there, will hold a way forward. I have to believe that, trust in the past, or I won’t be able to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
“Are you sure this is safe?” I whisper as we slide inside, walking under the scant cover of the fruit trees that line the road.
Liam scrapes a hand through his hair. “Safer than anywhere else,” he says, walking faster. “For what it’s worth. And we’ll be able to keep track of Caro’s mischief from here.”
Old resentment stirs in the back of my throat. “Is burning down an entire village mischief to you?”
“No. But it is to Caro.”
I grit my teeth, biting back anger as if we’re once again in the cellars of Everless.
“Come on, we should be inside before the first bell tolls at eight.”
We race the rising sun up the hill, toward the neat collection of buildings, veiled in ivy and all surrounded by a low wall of red brick, topped with burnished iron spikes. Liam grew up here—after the fire that destroyed my father’s forge, and his parents sent him away from Everless. This is where he transformed into the boy who’s spent his life studying the myths of the Alchemist, and who’s risked his life more than once to keep me safe.
The sky is dripping with light now. We stay in the shadow of the outer wall, Liam slightly ahead of me. I increase my stride, determined to stay at his side.
“Everyone ought to still be asleep,” he tells me quietly. “But we’ll be careful, just in case.” He can’t hide here, recognizable as he is. The thought makes my stomach churn uneasily. How long until Caro and Ina put two and two together, realize he’s helping me? Have they already?
“It’s beautiful,” I say, anxious to break the silence between us. “What was it like, growing up here?”
Liam looks at me, his expression surprised and uncertain, as if he’s not sure whether I really want to know. When I hold his gaze, a small smile steals onto his face, making my heart flutter.
“My parents meant it as a punishment, sending me here,” he said softly. “Far away from Everless, the feasts, the hunting trips, the luxury. But I never experienced it that way.” He surveys the gold-limned silhouettes of the buildings, an unfamiliar softness in his face. “I wanted to learn. I liked the classes, the scholars. First-years weren’t allowed in the library—too many old books that can fall apart if you look at them the wrong way—but I would sneak in at night anyway to read the stories.”
I let myself fall just a step behind him, so he won’t see me staring. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard him say so many words in one breath. It makes me miss Everless with a fierce ache. And maybe it’s just the rising sun, but there’s a glow in his eyes that I can scarcely tear my gaze from.
“How did you meet your friends?” I grasp for words, wanting him to keep talking. I realize there must be an entire world of people he knew here, people he respected and studied with and socialized with. Maybe even people he loved.
His smile comes back all at once, now even more light-filled. The change in him takes my breath away. “Elias and I met in year one. It was in our very first class,” he says, the corner of his eyes crinkling. “Tenets of Semperan History. We got there first and sat in the very front row, not in the back like everyone else. No one had told us that the scholar for that class had terrible breath.”
I let out a laugh, too loud, but I can’t help it. With the happiness in his voice, I feel like we’re shedding the weight of years, that we’re children and history has changed to make us friends. The side of his mouth tugs up, and he glances at me.
“I always wished you could have come here too, Jules,” he says quietly. “You would have loved it.”
I smile crookedly at him. “You’re only saying that because you know I’m the Alchemist.”
“No,” he replies with surprising conviction. “You, Jules Ember, you would have loved it.” He waves his hand. “The biggest library you’ve ever seen. Staying up late with your classmates, trading stories, just like you used to do at Everless with us and the servant children.”
My heart twists with memories, a bittersweet feeling. A longing for the life I never had, but also a warmth because Liam is right. Even now his words call to me, painting tableaus of happiness in my mind. He knows me better than anyone alive, I suppose. “Maybe so,” I admit, trying to tug down the feelings that have risen up in me like a flock of birds. It won’t do to become nostalgic for the Gerling estate, not when I can’t go back.
“But yes, the Alchemist is said to have walked all over this city when it was nothing but wilderness. This was your home.” He clears his throat, changes his tone as if he’s said too much.
“I’d always planned to return to Bellwood after Roan’s wedding, though my mother had a different idea,” he says as he guides me across the campus—over an arched bridge beneath an array of draping tree branches, across a wide-open square of green, along cobbled paths, around tall brick buildings that look both old and timeless. “Don’t worry. No one will wonder why I’m here—”
Voices behind us make me jump. I whirl around, my muscles already tensing, and Liam’s hand flies to my arm, as if to pull me behind him—but it’s not soldiers. It’s students, two girls and a boy, stumbling with too much madel, laughing and weaving as they emerge from a building, only a few paces away from us.
“Long live the Queen!” the brown-skinned girl shouts in greeting, raising an imaginary glass at Liam. “Let’s see how long this one lasts!”
Liam freezes like a hare who catches sight of a fox, but they keep walking. The girl’s gaze lingers on me though. Despite her smeared makeup and tripping walk, her dark eyes are sharp and penetrating, freezing me to the spot.
“She saw me,” I whisper after they pass. “She
saw my face.”
Liam’s frowning, but he shakes his head to dismiss me. “Don’t worry about her.” His eyes follow the trio away. “Even if she were to recognize you—and I doubt it—no one takes Stef seriously.”
I think of her powerful gaze. “Why not?”
He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “She’s the illegitimate daughter of one of the Chamberlaynes.”
The name sends a shiver over my skin. The Gerlings are the most influential family in Sempera, and widely known to be cruel to their servants. But according to rumors, they are almost considered kind when compared to the Chamberlaynes.
Liam continues. “Her line is full of hedge witches. And you heard her, she has a bad habit of spouting treason when she’s had too much madel.”
“A hedge witch?” In most parts of Sempera, hedge witches are tolerated as an amusement for the superstitious—an amusement that drained poor towns like Crofton of their meager blood-irons, according to Papa. The old Queen was rumored to collect powerful witches, though some claimed that she had them killed if they displeased her. I shudder, remembering how close this belief hewed to the truth. What would Semperans say if they knew that the Queen kept the Sorceress by her side—or rather, that the Sorceress kept the Queen at her side, under her dominion, disposing of her with a cold thrust of her knife.
“I’m surprised to find a hedge witch at Bellwood,” I say, trying to push the thoughts away. “Don’t you need money to attend?”
Liam’s cheeks flush. He clears his throat but doesn’t say anything more. We walk a little farther before he finally slows. Ahead of us is an ancient-looking ruin, a shell of a building about the size of Everless’s carriage house, with crumbling stone walls, two half-fallen spires, and one standing tower, like a small castle. The decaying structure is surrounded by a circle of bare earth—or maybe ash—as if both grass and snow have conspired to shun this place.
Yet something about it calls to me, pulls me toward it, and I have to hold myself back from moving forward and putting my hands in the ashes.
“Is this . . . ?”
Liam nods. “The Thief’s Fort. Where the Alchemist once lived.”
My breath catches. Before us, the ruin is a gray, three-pronged smear against the cool blue sky. I try to imagine what it must have looked like before it fell to pieces, a refuge—a home.
“What happened to it?” I ask as I step over the edge of a ragged hole in the wall, into the shadow of the interior. It’s untouched by sun, and dust—or maybe ashes—muffles the sound of our footsteps completely. It seems strange that wind and rain hasn’t washed it away. What remains of the walls suggests a large, round space, ringed by a courtyard with semi-collapsed archways leading off in different directions. A staircase winds steep along one wall but ends with nothing at the ceiling. As I wander, Liam follows at a distance. I’m aware of his eyes lingering on me. My skin prickles with warmth in spite of the chill—the temperature seems off in here, warmer than it is outside.
“The Queen burned it centuries ago. Most of the secrets of blood time were lost,” Liam replies. He considers me for a moment. His gaze sends more waves of warmth through me. “Most of them, anyway. Some books remained—people never realize how many secrets a book can contain.”
I nod. My throat tightens, thinking of the flutter of pages in my journal now, the petals of hidden knowledge pressed inside, flat and dry and lifeless, each more inscrutable than the last. Will being here, among these ruins, help me discover what might be hidden in the book my father died for?
“Look.” Liam lifts his hand to gesture to one archway on the opposite side of the room, an east-facing, intact arch that perfectly frames the morning sun. He takes my hand—I start—and leads me outside through one of the broken archways, then back through the intact doorway.
I’ve opened my mouth to ask him why we’re walking in circles—but then my breath dries up in my throat.
The room inside has transformed. Instead of shadows, it’s filled with light, summer sunshine pouring in from certain glass-paned archways. The others lead into new rooms, through which I can see bookcases, a porcelain washing tub, a garden bursting with green. Tapestries decorate the spaces between doors and windows. The grimy stone floor has given way to clean, shining tile, covered with a blue carpet in this room, and a table laden with food sits in the center of the room. Strange, half-familiar food, bread and wine and flowers. And outside, through the gauzy curtains, I can see the eggshell blue sky of a spring noon.
“What is this?” My voice escapes in a whisper.
“An enchantment.” Liam sounds joyful. He points back to the archway from which we came, where a curtain has materialized. “If you walk through that doorway with a belonging of the Alchemist’s, you can get inside this . . . this . . .” He gestures around him, for once at a loss for words.
I think of the frozen town of Briarsmoor, twelve hours behind the rest of the world, its one resident stuck in a loop of life and death like a fly in amber. But that was frightening, grotesque. This feels peaceful, right. It’s the same feeling as stepping into our warm cottage to escape a howling winter wind, back when I lived with Papa in Crofton.
“I found it by accident when I came through carrying your journal,” Liam says, a bit sheepishly. “I hope that’s all right.”
“All right?” I echo, confused. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Liam looks at me strangely. “Because this is—was—your home. The Alchemist’s home.”
I take a deep breath, inhaling the smell of the place, bread and flowers and something else, something achingly familiar. I recall reading about this place long ago, in the Crofton schoolhouse or the Everless library, I’m not sure. About two hundred years after the Queen put down the foreign invasion and took the throne, Sempera’s inequality had deepened so that blood-iron was no longer a glittering promise, but a death sentence for the poor. In the midst of this, a group of scholars tried to unbind the country by uncoupling time from blood. And the Queen burned them, to provide a warning to Semperans and outsiders alike—that the secrets of blood time were hers alone.
Or Caro’s alone, I think. The Queen wouldn’t have burned this place—burned my home—except by her command. Was Caro trying to find the Alchemist, find me, all those years ago? Or was she simply trying to erase every mark of my influence, everything I cared about, from the face of the earth? For a heartbeat, the loss dissolves in me like blood-iron into tea. It feels like Crofton all over again, the impact blunted by centuries, but painful all the same. My happiness at the magic fades.
“Why is it called the Thief’s Fort?” The echo of the Crofton woman who screamed at me floats through my mind again, a refrain I can’t get out of my head. Thief. Snake. Murderer.
Liam blinks, seeming to read the hurt in my eyes. “I don’t know how it began.” He speaks slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. “But according to an inscription on the wall, the Alchemist herself called it that too. And her followers, in their writings. She—you—reclaimed the name for yourself.”
The words kindle a small warmth in my chest, like a struck match.
“Another thing,” Liam says. He points up the staircase, which extends along the wall in both directions. “Down leads to the tunnels, so you can get around Bellwood without being seen. The students do use the tunnels, but not often these days.” He lifts his hand, pointing up. “And there . . .” At the top of the stairs, instead of the dead end I saw earlier, a wooden door with bronze detailing has materialized.
Without waiting for an answer, he guides me to the staircase and climbs up. He produces an ancient, intricate key on a leather cord and passes it to me.
A nervous lightness fills me as I take it. I turn the key in the lock—it scrapes a little but moves easily—and brush past Liam to step inside; it takes me a moment to recognize the feeling as excited anticipation, so long has it been since I had something to feel truly happy about. Now, the feeling grows that I’m returning to something familiar and beloved,
and though I know I should be careful, I can’t stop myself from bounding up the stairs, my fingers skimming along the wall as I go. The walls and stairs are stone bricks, smooth with age, and it should feel cold but it doesn’t. Warm sunlight spills in through small windows set into the round walls, turning the dust motes in the air to gold. It feels familiar, it feels right, and something in my chest swells buoyantly, tugs me upward.
The sight at the top makes me stop short, Liam colliding with my back a second later. We’ve emerged into what must be one of the three spires I saw, a stone room bright with afternoon light.
The room is dry and smells like old paper and cinnamon. Instead of a window—half the wall is gone, its ragged edges giving way to a view of Bellwood’s redbrick buildings and the farmland beyond it cast gold by the sun. I can’t feel any chill from outside. Inside, a deep red rug covers the floor; and in the center of the room is a voluminous bed strewn with green and gold fabrics, a trunk at its foot spilling clothes. There’s a small washbasin along one wall, a writing desk across another. Leather-bound books are piled at random across the floor.
“How is this possible?” My voice comes out in a whisper. Liam moves me gently aside so he can squeeze into the room. He stands beside me, looking at our surroundings with reverence in his eyes.
“Look.” He takes my hand, making me start, and pulls me gently over to the window. Staring out, I can see the mosaic of rooftops in Montmere, a field just starting to turn green. Liam lifts our clasped hands and reaches them, together, outside the tower. I feel cool early spring air for a second before he pulls our hands quickly back down.
“It’s your room, Jules,” he says softly. “You built a home here.”
I can scarcely hear Liam over the roaring in my ears. The specific memories elude me, swirling just out of my reach, but the feeling is there—that this was my home, that I was safe here.
