by Sara Holland
And still the door waits in front of me, its presence like something alive.
The channel down the middle of the door is swimming with red—maybe just a trick of the light, but it’s as if someone has recently put their hands to the spike, letting their blood, their time run down the door. Paying to enter, with—with—
A river of red.
My hands move of my own accord, rising toward the door. I press my palm against the spike, barely registering the pain as blood wells and trickles down the heel of my hand. The world shudders around me as my blood fills up the thin channel, shining like liquid rubies as it races down toward the earth.
Something deep inside the door clicks, the small sound ringing out, impossibly loud in my ears. And when I take my hand from the spike and push against the door, it opens with only the slightest bit of strength. Still moving as though in a trance, or a dream, I step forward into darkness.
I climb the stairs feeling like a sleepwalker in my own dreams, like my feet are trapped on a predetermined course and I’m only observing. And isn’t that true—isn’t that how it’s always been, ever since I came back to Everless, spilling over with desperation and bad dreams? Hasn’t my every move been imagined and anticipated by Caro long before I was born, even before she knew who I was? I’ve never outrun or outwitted her, never had any hope except that when she tries to break me, I will prove stronger. And now I have the sense that for all the stories and books Papa and Liam have armed me with, I am nearing a great and terrible end.
The end of the world plays out in flashes in my mind as I reach the top of the spiral staircase. If I’m not strong enough, if I lose, Sempera will not only remain locked on its course, the course will turn darker under Caro’s reign. Bound by blood-iron, time tied to blood until the fragile balance of peace breaks, and we savage each other like wolves under her watch.
Inside the vault, it’s dim except for the glow of the lamp—but I can discern enough to see that just as Liam said, the vault is emptied, the shells of chests scattered across the floor. Moved by instinct alone, I trail the lamplight along the walls, searching for any clue that will lead me to a secret dungeon, or door.
Something catches my attention. It’s almost nothing—a tiny imperfection in the stone, but I stop and peer closer. And I realize—it’s not an imperfection at all, but a symbol, carved into the wall. A flowering tree, barely discernible by the torchlight. It takes me a moment to remember where I’ve seen it before, but then—it flashes through my memory, from the memory of the child Caro at the river, and from Lord Ever’s grave.
Fear presses in sharp on my throat and lungs, but not enough to stop me. I push down on the symbol, moving more on instinct than anything else, and a small hatch in the ceiling slides open with a deep shudder and groan. Dust rains down on my hood, stinging my face, making tears leap to my eyes. But I wipe the water and dust away and look up into a tiny, vertical tunnel, scarcely wider than the breadth of my shoulders. A hollowness in Everless’s tower, a hidden cell in the sky.
My dread is stronger than ever as I stare into the darkness. Not a dungeon, then, but a cell nonetheless.
A sort of ladder is carved into the stone itself, a simple series of hand-and footholds sunk into the wall. The air that hits me is cold though it shouldn’t be, and sound seems to fall around me too, a deep and undefinable noise, like howling wind and rushing water and a sighing voice all put together. Low and distant, but there.
I want to turn and run, but where would I go? Hide in the kitchen like the girl I used to be?
No. There’s nothing else for me, here at Everless or anywhere in the world that Elias described. There never has been, I realize with a sense of almost-unbearable heaviness.
There’s a sense of inevitability as I reach for the tunnel. Hook Liam’s lantern over my elbow. Stretch up until my fingers find the first hold. No matter the twists and turns my life has taken, might have taken, I was always going to end up back in Everless.
Like the groove in the wall that opened this passage, each step of the carved ladder is gritty with dust. They’re smooth at first as I start to climb, but get rougher as I go—as though people have discovered this place over the millennia and have started to climb up, but at one point or another their hearts failed them and they retreated, pushed away by the black dread that seems to emanate from above like something alive.
The stone is cold beneath my hands and shoulders, when they brush the wall. Colder than it should be. And it seems as though the tunnel is narrowing, though that might just be my imagination, claustrophobia closing in on me as the light from below fades and vanishes, leaving only the precarious flickering of the lantern.
Up and up the ladder goes, until I’ve climbed as high as I can go. The air takes on the damp, earthy quality that I recognize from the root cellars beneath the kitchen—which should not be the case, being so close to the sun. Then, as my limbs start to ache and my fingers cramp into claws, it changes again, growing colder, the scent of the earth shifting into something strange, sourly metallic like old blood. I’m breathing hard, my panting magnified by the narrowness of the tunnel, compounding my fear, making me feel like I’m announcing myself to whatever lies above.
No one has climbed this ladder in decades, maybe centuries; the dust and settled earth that tumble down with each brush of my boots tells me that. Nor am I climbing toward nothing. All my instincts tell me that, prickling my skin, urging me to flee, whispering that I’ve gotten everything wrong.
But I don’t run. I keep climbing until I feel a space open above me. Until my fingers hit a stone floor.
I haul myself up.
I stand in a medium-sized chamber, the light of my lantern reaching just far enough to illuminate the round shape of its curved walls. The walls and ceiling are stone. The floor is tile, but buried so deep beneath a blanket of dust and earth that my cautious steps away from the ladder leave footprints in it like snow. It smells like earth and ashes and—
It’s not empty. A long, wooden table along one wall, warped with age, bears an assortment of even more ancient-looking instruments, the shine of metal and glass dulled beneath dust. But I see the sharp edges of knives, the glitter of strange powders in my sputtering light. Tools of time-binding, I recognize that much, but strange and primeval. Behind that, in cubbyholes bored straight into the earth, dozens of bottles rest—green and brown and blue, some with wine or potion or I don’t know what still dark inside.
Last, two narrow beds, each made as if the owners had just stepped out.
I turn around to look at the rest of the room, and see two things at once.
The sweep of wall behind me is carved with a glittering mural of some sort. A snake and a fox face each other, crouched and coiled to fight, their warlike shapes captured in long lines and rough gouges in the stone, marks that have then been filled in with a red, gold, and silver spray, which makes them glitter and shift in the lamplight. But the snake and fox—Caro and I—are far smaller than the other creature that looms above them.
I can’t suppress a shiver as deep as my bones. A hound, fur bristled and mouth snarling open, descends on the fox and snake from above—though they don’t seem to notice the animal, the way his lips are twisted in hunger.
My mouth dry, I lift the lantern to look closer at the beds in spite of the fact that on the surface, they seem the least interesting. I run my hands along the thick quilts. Guided by nothing but a swimming, longing feeling, my fingers move under the pillow and knock against a hard, cold object.
Heart racing, I pull out a rubied dagger with the snake-wound handle.
I inhale sharply, dropping it onto the bed like it’s an actual snake. Blink, because for a moment, I’m sure this is a dream. But the dagger remains there. Waiting for me.
Footsteps sound from below.
I reach down and take the dagger into my hand.
31
Fear spills through me, and I freeze, listening. I grip the twisted handle, trying to push awa
y the nagging feeling that I’ve done this before.
There’s a faint clattering from below that can only be someone climbing up the ladder. The tunnel takes the sound of soft footsteps and amplifies it, so that what drifts up is an unearthly, hollow, echoing thud. Getting louder and louder. And there’s nothing I can do, nowhere to go. No escape from this round room but a great fall.
I look at the weapon in my hand, squeezing it as if I could drain courage from it.
My breath comes fast and ragged as the noise from the tunnel grows louder and louder.
But there’s no time to wonder, no time to regret. Because someone is emerging from the vault shaft. In the dim lamplight, I see a sweep of shimmering black skirt, delicate slippered feet flashing beneath them. Even before her face shows I know her, her shape and her movements intimately familiar. Caro.
Panic chokes me. In the darkness, she seems to be made of shadows, her black hair loose around her shoulders and blending into her black gown. She turns and sees me and a grin splits her face, her teeth white in the dark. She reaches to her waist and withdraws from somewhere two daggers as long as her forearms. She holds them easily at her sides, turning them slowly so they catch the flickering lantern light. Then she raises one hand, the knife still in it, and something above us moves. A stone disc slides over the entrance to the vault shaft over our heads, shutting out what little light filtered down from below, sealing us inside. A bedroom, becoming a cell, becoming a tomb.
A terrible dread seeps through me as we face each other. Her smile has faded, but her posture is tightly wound, ready to fight. It doesn’t make me feel any braver that her usual cold confidence has been replaced by blazing hunger in her eyes.
For the first time since she killed Roan, I feel a twinge of sorrow for Caro, twisted and deep and undeniable—because she, too, has wandered Sempera searching for a way to destroy me. Unlike me, she has been trying for centuries.
I push the pity away. The time has come for our story to end.
I can see the thoughts pass behind her eyes as she registers the room around us. The table with its cruel instruments, the mural, the simple beds. By the stunned look on her face, I know that she has not been here since the break between us.
Her eyes fall to the dagger in my hand, then fly back to me. Her jaw is set, and her eyes wild.
If anything is weighing on her, she seems to shake it off now.
“My guards have Liam surrounded. Your magic won’t last long.”
In the back of my mind, I register that she’s skipped her usual twisted pleasantries, though her voice is still edged with a poisonous sweetness. She raises her right hand with the knife in it, tipping it against an imaginary throat. “Why drag it out any longer? To chat a while?”
I take a deep breath, trying to keep my calm. The air seems to slice my throat on the way down. “No.”
“You wound me,” she says, her voice seeming louder and deeper in the small space. She takes a step closer to me, her eyes falling to the dagger in my hand. “What is that?”
I hesitate, unnerved by her ignorance. Feigned, I decide. “The weapon I’m going to kill you with.”
“Living on the scraps of me has blunted your mind, my friend.” She laughs, a short bark of a laugh, then sighs. The sounds mingle in the space between us, making my knees quake. “Must we play this little game all over again?”
“Isn’t that what you want—a game?” I make my voice like hers, like frozen silk. The ease of it makes my stomach churn, as does the weight of the dagger in my hand. All I need to do is strike out and use it. “Isn’t that why you’ve been chasing me around Sempera for centuries, murdering everyone I love, everyone who’s protected me?”
At this, Caro’s light eyes go even colder. “Protected you? You never wanted to be protected, not when you were Antonia—and not now. If you did, do you think you’d be standing here with me, alone?”
I shiver at the truth in her words.
“Do you think you would have raced back to Everless when you discovered who you were?” she goes on.
“I came back to Everless to protect Ina from you,” I spit.
“Perhaps. But that’s not all, is it? You figured out who you were. Because every time you died, and every time you lived, my heart was the only part of you that remained true. The part of you that was me. You’ve always found your way back to the Sorceress.”
“It’s almost over now,” I say, voice shaking.
Her eyes find mine, flash with something like hurt.
Caro has stepped close enough now to press the tip of the knife into my chest. I swallow hard, incapable of moving, of stopping her words with my own, of raising my weapon. If this is another trap, another pretty lie, then she has me ensnared in it like a glimmering spider’s web.
“I don’t want your heart anymore, Caro,” I whisper. “I tried to give it back to you before. . . . I tried, but . . .”
Now I’m fluent in the subtle language of Caro’s face, her movements. I can tell by the way her lips turn down that she’s losing patience. Know from the way her spine straightens that she’s come to a decision.
“How about I try killing Liam Gerling and see where that gets us?” she says with a casual flick of her blade that makes a tear where it presses into my dress.
Desperation cascades through me, and my body takes over, moving without authorization. I spin around and snatch up an old bottle from the table, smash it into her hand, the one that clutches the knife. The blade cuts across my chest, but I ignore the pain. She lunges for me at the same time I lunge for her, neither of us trying to call on our magic to aid us. This isn’t a battle of power but of will, I suddenly realize. This is not about our magic. This is about us.
We struggle, but Caro finds her strength and with both arms, slams me into the wall with the mural of the fox, snake, and hound.
All I can see for a bleary moment is the hound above me, teeth bared, before I sink the dagger into Caro’s flesh.
32
Blood wells up around the rubied blade. Before I understand what’s happening, a shimmering smoke begins to rise from Caro’s wound, curling into ribbons that begin to wrap around us. Caro’s eyes reflect my confusion—but then, the acrid-sweet smell of blood-iron fills my nose, and I think I understand.
The jewel is melting, dissolving where it touches Caro’s blood like an hour-coin in wine.
The smoke grows thicker, changing from red to a blue gold to green. Remembering the blood regression, I let the smoke flow into my mouth like water. It’s cool on my tongue, and my eyes flutter closed.
“Jules,” Caro whispers, her voice soft and surprised, telling me that she wasn’t expecting this.
The world falls away as moments cascade through me, flashes that I only half understand at first. But then, an answer rises in my mind: the blade contains not time, not strength—but memories. Moments pulled from time itself.
A girl finding me in the forest, holding out her hand to bring me home.
Two girls chasing each other, yelling “Fox!” and “Snake!” with no need for magic other than birdsong and the wind singing through the woods.
Lord Ever’s grand estate being built, the workers leaving at night, abandoning the empty half-built castle for our use, piles of stones all around and certain rooms still open to the sky. Caro and I, sneaking in at night, running blind through the dark hallways following the sound of her voice, snatching glimpses of the stars. Caro telling me, “Father has room for two, but let’s share our bedroom, so we never have to be apart.”
Creeping up next to Caro at Lord Ever’s workbench, barely tall enough to see over the edge, the way her eyes shine with greedy curiosity as she reaches out for the beautiful, sharp, glittering things scattered over its surface.
Sneaking into the village to play with the other children who live there, joining in their games of chase and sticks and cards without ever telling anyone our names and never leaving each other’s side.
Floating on my back i
n that glen in the forest, Caro beside me, my right hand and her left stretched out and anchoring us together even as the currents try to tug us gently apart.
Testing our magic on trees, holding Caro’s hand and squeezing our eyes shut, concentrating to find the current of time running through the wood. A sapling shoots upward, branches unfurling toward the sky like arms opening, leaves bursting into existence in a storm of green, and then the next heartbeat turning gold and falling.
Standing beside her at the top of a cliff, a cold wind whipping our faces, nothing but blue sky all around. Her hair flying out behind her like a dark shining flag, her excited whisper in my ear. “We could do anything, Antonia. We could fly if we wanted.”
A new story of the Alchemist and Sorceress unfolds in front of my eyes in a rapid stream of moments, so quickly that I can’t count them. In only seconds—or hours, I can’t tell for sure—an entire friendship, our friendship blooms in my mind. And alongside it, another story takes shape.
Lord Ever, observing. Training. Always pushing, punishing. No matter how strong we grow, he grows stronger.
I chase Caro from the castle, unsure why she’s angry but knowing I must comfort her. I catch her arm, see the shine of tears on her cheeks as she turns around. I feel the weight of her head on my shoulder as she falls into my arms.
A spring day, gathered around the table. “We found you alone by the river,” Lord Ever’s voice drawls, looking at me. “When I told you that I was the last and most powerful sorcerer in all the land, who lives with his daughter in a house of dark stone at the top of a hill with woods all around, you begged to come home with us.”
Ever and little Caro taking me to the stone house, which is full of light: sun in the day, starshine at night. Lord Ever says he can sense the power living in me, just like it lives in Caro. “You balance each other—fear and boldness, sweetness and strength,” he tells us as he demonstrates how to call on our power to turn lead into gold, how to hold flame in our small, cupped hands. When it burns our skin, he tells us that the price of power is pain. Caro nods, and I notice how her eyes gleam with hunger. Lord Ever sees it, too—and smiles.
