Evermore

by Sara Holland

  Stef has her own room. It’s small and close, lit only from one narrow window looking out over the city. I have to duck so as to not hit my head on the eaves. A square desk sits in one corner. She opens the bottom drawer and pulls out a wooden box, which is full of items.

  I hang awkwardly back, curious but not wanting to pry, as she fills her leather pouch with a mixing bowl the size of her palm, a wooden pestle, several bundles of herbs. She hands me a worn pamphlet scrawled with ancient Semperan. It’s clearly old, its texture soft under my fingers. It smells faintly of metal and ashes, or the bittersweet perfumes that all hedge witches seem to have in their shops. Then she strides across the room and lifts a wooden floorboard to reveal a row of gleaming wine bottles. She tucks one into her cloak, murmuring, “I owe you one, Ruthie.”

  Once she’s concealed the pouch and the bottle, Stef straightens up and looks at me expectantly. “So—where to?”

  I feel the blood drain from my face. I wouldn’t mind taking Stef to the Thief’s Fort—it’s my home, after all—but Liam’s there. Even though she knows I’m the Alchemist, it’s dangerous to let her see that Liam’s with me.

  “I’m one step away from getting expelled as it is,” she says pointedly. “I won’t do magic in my own room. Where are you staying?”

  Doubt pricks me, but I won’t back down now. Seize the day, as Amma said.

  The silence between us is stiff as I lead her to the Thief’s Fort, the quiet seeming to crackle with danger. A stream of students passes us in the other direction, laughing. Dread rises in my gut. I feel as if I’m back at Shorehaven, toes hanging over the cliff, nothing below me but jagged rocks and a great fall. Stef’s eyes, too, dart side to side. Nervous, I think, and this knowledge releases some tension in my muscles. I’m the one to be feared here—not her.

  I have Stef wait below while I climb the stairs. The Thief’s Fort is my secret to tell, but Liam will have to leave before I let her in. No one can know he’s with me.

  But when I enter pass through the archway, into my patch of stolen time, Liam isn’t there.

  He’s probably out looking for me, that’s all, I tell myself, trying to dispel the fear gathering in me. But an image of a soldier dragging him away makes bile crawl into my throat.

  Not knowing what else to do, I call for Stef to come upstairs. When she reaches the Alchemist’s room, her lips part, her eyes widening to devour the space, lingering on the summery image of Bellwood that appears outside the broken wall, spilling sunlight over the floor.

  “My mother told me about this place when I was a girl. I never knew . . .” Her eyes scroll over the broken wall with wonder, a smile forming, quick and fleeting but real.

  “Earlier, you said that she told you about me. What did she say? Did I—” I pause on the strangeness of the words in my mouth. “Did she know the Alchemist?”

  Stef doesn’t answer right away. Instead, she goes to the table and begins to lay out her things. Eventually she tells me, “As a girl, yes. She grew up on stories of the Alchemist and Sorceress like any child does—though our stories were passed down, not found in books. But when my grandmother died in service of you, my mother stopped dreaming of you. The stories she told me were more like warnings.”

  “Oh,” I say softly. Lamely. I wring my hands, guilt burning in my gut. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel a twinge of envy. What if instead of hiding the truth behind lies, Papa had been honest with me when I was a child, after he saved me from the Queen—from Caro—in Briarsmoor? What if Liam had told me about my past instead of tucking it away for himself, like a handful of blood-irons slid underneath the mattress? Would I have shunned the truth, like Stef? Would I have run?

  Or would I be the Alchemist, stronger and more powerful than my enemy?

  Emotions bloom in me, tangled and hot. Stef grew up with magic, and I feel the urge to unburden myself to her. “I only found out about my past recently. I don’t know anyone from my past, other than the Sorceress herself—”

  “The less I know, the better.” Stef interrupts, waving her hand to quiet me.

  “Right, of course.” I press my lips shut, trying to keep the sting of disappointment from showing on my face.

  She sighs. “It’s hard to shed the old ways. My mother used to tell me that every single thing in Sempera—perhaps everything in nature itself—once held magic. That still, to this day, you can bleed magic from a stone, if you know how to do it.”

  Motioning for me to join her at the table near the window, Stef gathers a black leaf shaped like the tip of an arrow, a bright-red fruit half the size of a plum, and a familiar string of leaves pearled with silver in the palm of her hand. Her voice is brusque, but I think I can detect a note of excitement underneath. “Spadesmark, from the oldest tree in Sempera, to connect you to the past. Hour’s blight, a poison in high volume, to shed the present from your mind, and finally—”

  “Ice holly.” I try to keep my voice light. “It only grows in spots where the Sorceress has worked her magic.”

  I know that because Caro told me herself. In my mind, she smiles.

  “Strong magic always leaves something behind,” Stef says flatly.

  Stef tears the spadesmark, hour’s blight, and ice holly into pieces, and lets them flutter into the brass bowl that sits at the tip of her knees. Taking a pestle, she grinds the mixture impatiently, turning the bowl as she jabs. Then, satisfied, she places the pestle on the floor and uncorks the stolen wine with a soft pop. The sweet scent blooms between us, filling the room.

  Slowly, she pours the dark red liquid into the bowl, floating the plants on a shining mauve surface. At first, nothing happens—but soon, a thread of pale green smoke grows from the mix. The potion is nothing like the liquid that Laista’s hedge witch kept in a bottle in her shop. Just as I think that the strange curling smoke resembles the stem of a flower, the end stretching toward me bursts into color: a crown of five golden petals encircling a pulsing red center. My breath catches in my chest. “It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  I watch in awe as Stef plucks the smoke flower from its stem with her index finger and thumb. The nearly translucent bud seems to float upward, toward the vaulted ceiling—a bird gripped by the tip of its wing.

  “Listen closely. Focus on what you want to remember,” she instructs.

  I open my mouth to protest—there are so many shadows swirling in my past that they all burst into my head at once. I do my best to push them away, to focus on the object that felt more real: the jeweled dagger. I need to know what it is, where it came from. Where it is.

  While I try to keep everything from my mind but the image of the dagger, Stef starts whispering in ancient Semperan. My mind latches on to the sounds, begins to reel and spin, growing as thin as the smoke surrounding me . . .

  With her free hand, Stef tilts back my chin and opens my mouth in one gentle motion, then drops the smoke flower inside. The smoke dissolves instantly on my tongue, sweet as honey, then cold as ice, then hot as flame—

  And though I sit perfectly still, I feel myself plummeting down, down, down.

  I feel stone pressing in on me on all sides. I’m in a small room, smaller than the Thief’s Fort and devoid of light. I have my hands pressed to a wall, and I’m concentrating, pouring time into the stone, willing it to erode and crumble, until it gives way, pouring dust over my hands.

  I’m jerked upward, enveloped in smoke, dropped into a new memory. Caro stands on a dark plain, her face in shadow, and raises her palms toward me. Her eyes are wild, streaked red with tears. Blood slicked over the palms of her hands. I turn and run from her.

  Then—I’m still running, but the dark bursts into sunlight with the force of an explosion. My curls are flying around me, and I’m not crying but laughing, being chased. A pebble sails past my head, splashes the surface of the river next to me. I bend down, panting to draw a childish shape onto a boulder with a stick charred black at one end. Suddenly, the water rushes up in a gre
at wave—

  Too powerful, a voice calls from nowhere, and the flashing images dissolve into utter, starless black. The rubied dagger appears swirling in space in front of me, as if it suddenly born from nothing at all.

  Then something tugs violently at my mind. I feel myself rising to a watery light, panting, ready to strike—

  But only Liam’s face is before me, his eyes flashing fire.

  14

  I freeze. The anger simmers on his face—and confusion too, underneath. Liam is swaying on the balls of his feet, as if to leap. His gaze flies from me to Stef. He looks every inch the cold, arrogant lord that I knew at Everless. It makes my stomach drop.

  He rounds on Stef. “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?” she shoots back. She’s already on her feet, too, her stance that of a warrior’s, shoulders squared and eyes defiant.

  I pull myself up unsteadily, still dizzy from the onslaught of the slew of memories. “Stef, Liam is traveling with me. Liam—she’s helping me do a blood regression.”

  She cuts her eyes at me, accusing. “You said you’d heard rumors from him. You didn’t say you were traveling with him.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t.” I feel as young as the taunt makes me sound. Head spinning, I lurch forward over the table.

  “Why would you share the Alchemist’s secrets with a Gerling, of all people?”

  Liam scowls, and I know Stef’s touched a nerve. “I’m not my family. Jules knows she can trust me. Can you say as much, hedge witch?”

  “Don’t talk to me about family, lordling,” Stef almost spits. “My grandmother died in the Alchemist’s service. My father won’t recognize me because he’s ashamed to have a hedge witch as a daughter, so he sent me away, to a school where everyone whispers about me. Jules”—she whirls to me—“you have others who will support you who don’t support the crown. You don’t have to rely on a Gerling—”

  “Liam saved my life,” I say. “I trust him.”

  Stef goes still. A tense silence settles over the room. Liam’s eyes are hollow and his mouth tight—frustration, I’d guess, at losing control of the situation. Eventually, his face softens and he glances at me, giving a small nod of acknowledgment.

  “Stef,” I say, my voice rough. “I want to try the blood regression again. Please.”

  A grimace curves her mouth. Quietly, more to herself than to us, she says, “Mama and Grandmama would be horrified to know that their Alchemist had entrusted herself to a Gerling.”

  “Jules.” There’s a strained quality to Liam’s voice, like he’s trying not to snap. “I don’t think—”

  “Tell me what you saw,” Stef cuts in, her voice tight.

  Liam falls silent too, both of them looking at me. I close my eyes, as much to shut out their curious gazes as to describe the series of images. When I finish telling her about the slew of images I saw, ending with the dark blank surrounding the dagger, I’m shivering with heat and cold. Stef is staring steadily at me, the only trace of hesitation on her face the slight tension in her pursed lips. “Jules, I don’t think another blood regression is going to help you.”

  “But—it has to,” I finish weakly. Hot, desperate tears sting my eyes. “Why would you say that?”

  Shaking her head, Stef pulls a glass vial from her leather pouch and fills it with the remaining liquid in the brass bowl. “Memory can take many forms—but it’s never blank, empty, and altered as you described. It sounds like a dream.”

  “No,” I say bitterly. “I wasn’t dreaming. It’s not a figment of my imagination. Liam, tell her what you found in your research.” My voice comes out pleading.

  Liam shifts uncomfortably. His face reddens. “Records of the old stories speak of a weapon that will kill the Sorceress. There are symbols inscribed on the wall”—he points to the glyph carved into the stone—“that suggest the same.”

  Though Stef’s eyes narrow, it’s clear that she listens to him. She turns back to me. “I don’t think it’s a figment of your imagination, Jules, I didn’t say that. I only know that your mind seems . . . scattered, somehow. Affected by magic.”

  “Affected? What do you mean?”

  “When you removed the Sorceress’s heart, you removed pure magic from her, then cut it up into pieces. It’s like”—she gestures, searching for the word—“cutting the sky into pieces. No one knows how that magic might change you.” She pauses, staring out the window, eyes blurred in thought. “It may just be that you’re too far removed from this weapon to see it clearly. But to the Alchemist, memory is moments, and moments are time. Who knows how your magic could interact with them.”

  While I consider this, Stef’s attention alights on my journal. Her hands still, and then she’s moving. She crosses the room to sit in one of the chairs, holds the journal in her lap, and begins to flip through its pages.

  I reflexively move after her. It’s odd to see a near stranger leafing through the journal. I want to snatch it away, but I resist. Her movements seem idle, but her eyes are focused.

  “Let’s try something—an old trick. Give me your knife,” she says suddenly. The journal tips down, and I see she has it open to a blank page. The cream parchment curls with age.

  Liam stiffens. “Jules—”

  I touch Liam’s waist, and he falls quiet. I find the knife I’ve left on the bedside table. My chest is tight with something, not quite hope but akin to it. I’m afraid to consider it too closely, in case it dissolves.

  When I pass the knife to Stef, she catches my wrist and holds the tip of the blade to my left thumb.

  Liam curses under his breath, but she’s already pressed the blade down, already brought a bright bead of blood welling up. She presses my cut thumb to the top of the parchment.

  Liam lurches forward, but stops when I tilt the paper from the page so that he can see what’s happening. My blood isn’t soaking into the parchment and ruining it but branching down the paper in thin red threads, splitting up to follow what seems to be predetermined paths.

  Words. The blood is forming words, swirling down to form lines and letters in a familiar hand. The Alchemist’s hand, my hand, as it appears in the journal. My breath leaves me.

  Seek the river of red.

  “‘Seek the river of red,’” Liam says softly, reading upside down. His eyes flit to the stack of books on the desk, and I know he’s considering how many other secrets might be hidden there. “How did you do that?”

  Stef answers, calm. “That’s certainly not the business of a Gerling.”

  Liam’s breath leaves his teeth in a hiss of frustration. “If this is a trick—”

  “It’s not a trick. As I said,” she says steely, “my family has been in the service of the Alchemist forever.” She lifts her eyes to mine. “I don’t want to get mixed up in whatever this”—she waves her hand, contempt in her voice—“is, but I’d never harm her.”

  Liam and Stef continue to bicker softly, but all I can think is: Seek the river of red.

  My blood swells. I feel the knowledge swarming in it, the secrets singing in my veins just out of reach. I must have written this note, laid this magic in a past life. Many rivers run through Sempera, most of them named for the towns they run through, but I don’t know anything about a river of red. I close my eyes and picture the maps of Sempera that Papa would teach me to draw as a child. We should know our own land. With a lurch of my stomach, I wonder if he insisted on it because he knew that one day, I’d have to run.

  The images tug at me somewhere deep inside, but when I try to follow them down, I come up against another infuriating blank wall. Their words buzz in my ears. “Stop,” I snap.

  Liam and Stef fall quiet, then Stef rises to her feet, the journal in her hands.

  “I have a proposal, Alchemist,” she says.

  “What?” My cheeks prickle at the title, but Stef holds my gaze.

  “Let me read this,” she says. “In payment, instead of the blood-irons.”

  I
look at Liam without meaning to. He looks pained, but he must have learned his lesson earlier, because he remains silent.

  I swallow. “Will you take care of it?”

  “The best.” Her voice is steady. “I’ll bring it back later tonight.”

  I nod.

  Stef inclines her head in thanks, then sweeps out without saying good-bye.

  After the door falls shut behind her, Liam lets out a long, slow breath. “I don’t like letting that journal out of our sight,” he says stiffly.

  “She already knows I’m the Alchemist,” I say. Any secrets beyond that feel small and unimportant in comparison. “And besides, she found the bit about the river of red—maybe she’ll find something else.”

  Despair trickles into me along with hope. I stand up, cross over to the open wall. “It must mean something. Do you know anything about a river of red?”

  “Maybe there’s something in my papers . . . ,” Liam mumbles, retreating to his stack of books on the shelf. He takes them down one by one while I stand by the window, trying to pull any scrap of meaning from what I saw during the blood regression. Though the image is shimmering—fading—I recall the stone soaring past my curls, into a river at my feet. Drawing a snake and fox on a boulder. Just like I doodled in the margins of my journal, as a child.

  I shake my head, trying to loosen a buried answer, but nothing surfaces. Moving back to the window, I watch Stef stride through the field below, back toward the dormitories. From this height and distance, her green cloak resembles a leaf tumbling through the grass. The sun melts over the horizon. She turns, shading her eyes with one hand and looks back at the tower—I wave in greeting, realizing only a second later that because of the time enchantment, she’ll see nothing but an empty window.