Markham traces her high cheekbone, his gaze wandering over her face. “Do you dream of me, my love? For I have dreamed of you.”
He leans down and tenderly presses his lips to hers.
I fidget at the intimacy of the moment. We are intruding upon their privacy, yet I cannot stop myself from watching.
Tears run down Tavis’s cheeks for the reunion of the husband and wife. Markham’s hands will always be bloody, but the horrors outside this castle feel far away compared to the hope the sight of the prince and princess instills.
Love is unstoppable.
Love can break the bounds of death.
My hand seeks Tavis’s. He looks at me in astonishment. I have not yet sought his touch or affection. I have been too afraid of what it would mean to move on. No matter how trivial or insignificant, my touch is my best offer of forgiveness. A promise that I would seek him through the eternities.
The prince kisses his princess’s cheeks and forehead several times each. Tears brighten Harlow’s angry eyes, her chin quivering. Laverick weeps too. Even Jamison’s gaze shines with withheld tears.
“So beautiful,” Claret says, wiping her wet cheeks.
“How do you wake her?” Tavis asks.
Markham stands above his wife, his countenance drawn down. “No power can repair the damage left by a fissure in time. Once time is torn, the lives under its care are lost forever.”
Before I can ask him to explain, he picks up my sword, lifts it over his head, and plunges it into the chest of his sleeping princess.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Time buckles beneath me. My heart does a little jump, skipping ahead and then whirling, then skipping, then whirling once more. The sequence of stops and starts, the incredulity and dread, leave me woozy.
I need a moment to think and breathe. Per usual, time doesn’t care what I require.
As Markham hacks farther into his princess’s chest, my unbelief blinds me to what I am seeing. What is this insanity?
I seek my companions’ reactions for understanding. Harlow’s lips twist in a wicked smile, but the others are no less shocked than me. Claret and Laverick appear near to fainting, embracing one another as though to hold each other up. Tavis covers his eyes and mutters “no, no, no” under his breath. I relate to Jamison most, his expression locked in horror. It is the look of someone who has identified a monster—a blend of abject terror and wrecked innocence.
Monsters exist and, apparently, so do monstrous princes.
The princess sheds no blood. Markham butchers her surgically, as my uncle would section a portion of wood for crafting, splintering away the rough outer layers and cutting into the hard inner core. He goes no deeper than the length of three or four barleycorns into her left breast and then saws out a small section where her heart once beat. Out of spite or warped sentimentality, the shape he chooses to carve is a heart the size and width of an acorn.
“This,” Markham says, holding up the wood for all to see, “is the greatest treasure in all the worlds. Others have sought riches and gold, jewels and priceless antiques. The heartwood of an elderwood tree contains the power to animate life.”
Harlow strides to his side. “I’m sorry I doubted you, Killian.”
He kisses her and murmurs against her lips, “I promised we’d be together.”
Markham’s honeyed words for Harlow, when not long ago he was professing devotion to Amadara, snap me from my shock. I tremble all over, my ticker jumping sporadically. The image of him carving out the princess’s heart will never leave my mind.
The heartwood must be the sought-after treasure from his kingdom. This expedition was for him to finish what he started in the Everwoods. He returned to his world so he could gain creation power.
And he still has my sword. I want my sword back.
“You’re vile,” I say. “I should cut you down and leave you here to rot. You never meant to wake Amadara.”
“I couldn’t,” he replies, sweeping out his arms. “Amadara ruined time. Not even Father Time could reverse her destruction. He no longer has power here. Releasing Ama from this living tomb was a mercy. She’s at peace.”
“She’s in pieces!” I yell.
A sudden quake shudders the castle. A pulse of agony strikes the middle of my chest. I double forward onto my knees, my clock heart wrenching. Markham and Harlow lean against the tree for support. Tavis weaves on his feet while the doors to the balcony swing closed and then open again. Laverick and Claret brace themselves in the doorframe. Behind them, the sky is staggering. The moon is tilting from its perch and steadily dropping toward the horizon.
As soon as the quake stops, the pain in my chest ebbs but leaves a wake of gooseflesh.
A second stronger quake hits, and the agony recommences. The tree branches swing and sway as though a gust of wind is barreling through the tower. I stay down as furniture skitters across the floor.
The Fox and the Cat have crept out of the chamber onto the balcony. Stones from the hole in the roof shower down, and Tavis bends over me to shield me from the debris. Jamison covers his head until the shaking peters out. I can breathe again, but the deadening cold senses my weakness, and the tingling in my fingertips spreads.
Tavis straightens from where he stands over me. “What have you done, Killian?”
“The rope bridge is falling,” Markham replies.
The tear in time is collapsing. The pain in my ticker must be tied to the incoming obliteration. Time is falling apart, and with it, the one thing that is keeping me alive.
Tavis is pasty, his countenance drained of color. All his strength goes to his voice. “You’re destroying your world.”
“Oh, don’t look aghast, Tavis.” Markham loops his arm over my brother’s shoulders and embraces him as he would family. “Time eventually turns on everyone.”
I see him raise his sword, see him turn it on my brother. Yet I am too slow to react, to scream, as he plunges my sword into Tavis, straight through his middle. I experience the blow as though I am the target, the pain paralyzing. Tavis releases an awful noise that should never be made by anyone. I make a similar moan of agony as Markham extracts the blade in a clean swipe.
Tavis drops to the floor, bleeding out before me. I kneel by his side and press down on his wound. My gloves are sticky and wet in seconds. On a burbled exhale, his gaze washes to blankness and the call of life within him goes silent. I cannot tell if the anguish in my clock heart has restarted or if it didn’t ever cease.
“Don’t weep, Everley,” says Markham. “Access to creation power may only be obtained through blood sacrifice. Tavis would have wanted it to be him.”
Markham wipes my brother’s blood across the heartwood. The blood soaks into the wood and it glows, strengthening in brightness. A wave of light ripples out from the heartwood and cascades through the castle, out the door, across the balcony, and expands to the rest of the kingdom. Within a moment, the golden surge overtakes the field beyond.
Laverick and Claret step nearer to the edge of the balcony to see. Below them, the waterfall unfreezes and gushes down the cliffside. As the shining wave stretches to the horizon and travels on, the glowing heartwood dims.
Markham lowers his treasure. “Guards!”
The castle guards stationed outside, formerly wooden statues, step into the room. Their appearance has not transitioned back to flesh. They are wooden, like giant replicas of the figurines I lovingly carve. Each movement is mechanical, rigid and meticulous. They cross their spears, blocking the door.
Jamison helps me get up onto my wobbly knees, then stand. We back up toward the balcony, closer to the Fox and the Cat. The terrible quaking returns, fiercer and angrier. The minute hand of my ticker is slowing and the pain screwing deeper. Time is vanishing, and with it, the power that has driven my heart is vanishing too.
“You’ve awoken your army?” Jamison asks.
Pain blurs my vision, so I cannot see out at the fields. Jamison holds me upright and prevents me
from sinking to the floor again.
“My men would have perished,” replies Markham. “I have given them a second life. Flesh is weak. In this form, they are strong.”
A shudder from the land sinks the moon faster. Segments of the castle crack apart, and debris streams and bounces around us. Agony cranks into my chest, swelling in cruelty.
Another quake loosens the balcony, severing free the stones under the Fox and the Cat. The whole partition collapses, and they tumble out of sight, their screams swallowed by the revived waterfall.
Jamison and I retreat from the torn-off ledge. The wooden guards stomp up behind us, their spears forward.
“Lay down your weapon, Lieutenant,” says Markham.
Jamison drops his rapier. The next quake pushes a fresh stab of pain into my chest. I gasp, clutching my clock heart. Jamison holds me up and stares daggers at Markham. “Will you sacrifice us too?”
“No need. I’ll leave the collapse of time to finish you. When the moon collides with the horizon, this world will disintegrate.” Markham signals at his castle guards. “Seize them.”
The wooden soldiers drag us to the elderwood. The tree wilts and withers to gray, yet another life Markham has taken. Jamison swings at a guard. His fist slams into his wooden chest and goes no farther. He grimaces, like he has punched a wall. One of them strikes him in the middle, and Jamison slumps over, wheezing. They manacle our arms over our heads to low-hanging branches, so high that our feet dangle.
Harlow saunters up to me. “This is how you and I part, Everley.”
The castle walls decay, another one tumbling loose, and weakening moonlight rushes in. I rely on my bindings to hold me up, my head hanging and my hair in my face. The pain in my chest threads apart my focus. My clock has outlasted the lull of time, but it will not outlive its collapse.
Harlow opens the top of my shirt to reveal my sputtering clock heart. “I imagined it bigger,” she says.
From the corner of my eye, a blue light dashes in from the doors to the balcony and disappears behind the vanity. My sight is focusing in and out, eroding to splotches.
“It’s time to leave,” Markham says to Harlow.
I glare at him through the curtain of my hair. “My father was right to keep you away from here.”
Markham strides up to me. “You still don’t understand. Brogan knew this world was unsalvageable. We intended to harvest the elderwood’s creation power together. He betrayed me, Everley. He failed us both.” The prince tucks my hair behind my ears so I have nothing to hide behind. “Your father’s greed killed your mother and siblings. He could have saved you all, yet he chose to die instead of share the treasure with me.”
His harsh words drain the last of my strength. I slump forward, too stubborn to let his and Harlow’s final view of me be with tears.
“Come along,” Markham says, locking elbows with her.
They depart, the guards following them out, and leave Jamison and me shackled to the tree as the world shakes apart.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Markham’s rapid footfalls down the stairs carry from the tower into the chamber. I sag forward from the tree, my toes skimming the ground. As soon as the noise of Markham’s departure ceases, a swell of rage floods me. I wrench at my bindings and yell at the sinking moon.
A quake hits, crippling me with a fresh flood of agony. Each rumbling tremor lengthens and strengthens. The roar rises through the floor, widening the cracks in the stone.
In the following quiet, Jamison jerks against his shackles.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He quits resisting his confines and slumps forward. “You didn’t know.”
“I knew he was a monster, and yet when he held Amadara, I believed him. I believed he loved her.”
“Maybe he did love her once.” Jamison’s voice mellows to a reflective timbre. “I didn’t want to change you, Everley. I just wanted you to be free of him.”
“I wanted that too.”
A tremor hits the castle and the floor splits open between us. Branches wane as the tree leans in our direction. We try to scramble from its path, but our bindings lock us to the plummeting elderwood. Trunk and boughs tip toward the floor as branches crash around us. The top of the tree rips through the ceiling as it bends, its roots buckling the stone.
Jamison and I are pulled under a tangle of leaves. My branch snaps as the tree lands on the torn-up floor of the chamber. The top of the tree breaks through one wall and hangs partway out of the tower. A tidal wave of green immerses me. I go still, then slip my shackles off the broken branch and climb to the surface of the greenery. Out the huge hole in the ceiling, the moon has nearly sunk into its grave.
On the far side of the tree, Jamison tries to free himself from his branch. I need something to trigger our locks.
“The tool kit,” he says.
I unbury his bag from under debris and dig out the kit. My fingers tingle and my joints quiver. I jam the recalibration tool into his lock and jiggle it open. Jamison frees me next from my shackles, then stuffs the tool kit in his pack and puts it on. We help each other over the cracks in the floor to the stairway. Big chunks of steps are missing and crumbling apart, the staircase too precarious to use.
More quaking starts and does not stop, one long sustained rumble, one never-ending stream of pain. I lean against the doorjamb while Jamison searches for another way down from the tower.
A pixie flies out from behind the vanity and hugs a bough of the fallen elderwood, her little wings drooping. She must be the light I saw more than once since we came to this world, having followed us from the Everwoods. Jamison sneaks up behind her and snatches her in his fist. She squeaks at him and kicks her little feet.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. “We need you to make a doorway to the Land of the Living. We need to go home.” The pixie sticks her chin out in defiance. He lifts her to eye level. “We’ll all perish if you don’t help us. Can you create a door that will take us out of here?”
The pixie points out the balcony and makes a motion like a door opening.
“There’s a portal?” he asks, and she nods. “Will you show me?”
Jamison loosens his fist, and she flies out the balcony door. We stumble across the vibrating floor, around gaps and crevices, to the ledge. The pixie flutters her iridescent wings over the rushing waterfall. She points down, and then once more, makes the motion of a door opening and shutting.
“Oh, no, no, no,” I say. Markham told us the portals are in undesirable places. A waterfall suits where one could be hidden. I dare not consider where it will spit us out on the other side.
“Is there another option?” Jamison asks.
The pixie points off into the hills by the army of wooden soldiers. The moon is a moment away from splintering. We will never get to the other portal.
Jamison’s solemn gaze holds mine. “Everley . . .”
The tower starts to disintegrate around us, shaken apart by another quake. The pixie flies into Jamison’s breast pocket to hide. I lock hands with him, and we leap.
Suspended in midair, we’re cradled by the same warm hand that welcomed us into the Everwoods. The hand slows our fall, as though we’re dropping through hot molasses, and then we burst the bubble and smack gushing water.
I lose Jamison’s grip on contact and plunge under the surface. Though I can hold my breath longer, my heart clock immediately floods, knocking me breathless. The gears lurch to a halt, and my limbs seize. A current hurls me about over and over again as I sink farther into the deep.
Arms drag me up to the surface. Air presses upon me, but my sleepy lungs will not draw a breath. Water tosses me about in hard, wet slaps, and soon, the cold quits hurting. I stop preparing for the next wave of pain and embrace the quiet.
Amid the emptiness comes a pervasive calm. I sit up, but my body stays beneath me and I float out of myself in spirit form.
Even as a spirit, I have a clock for a heart. Below me, Jamison is hu
nched over my body on a beach. The pixie sits on his shoulder, watching him work on my ticker. Beyond them lies a blur of green and blue, land and sky. I float up, so high that I breach the treetops and swim in the clouds.
Across the isle, I see the white tents of the settlement. North, up the same western coastline, another group congregates.
Who are they?
My clock heart spins, and then my spirit soars up the seaside. Markham and his army of wooden soldiers emerge from the Thornwoods and gather on the shore. He evacuated from the Land of Youth through the second portal the pixie pointed out.
His mammoth ship is anchored offshore. The last time I saw the Cadeyrn of the Seas, it was moored on the windward side of the isle. He must have anticipated his return from his fallen world. All along, his plan was to awaken the wooden soldiers and lead them here.
He and his army begin marching down the shoreline toward the settlement.
What does he have planned?
In answer, my clock heart whirls, and my spirit leaps across great distances, flinging me like a streaking comet. The moon and sun fall away, and then suddenly I’m floating over a fallow field.
Two armies confront each other on opposite ends of the open area. Markham directs his troops from atop his horse, brandishing the sword of Avelyn. His battalion comprises fearsome giants. The monsters of legend tower over the catapults and are even bigger and uglier than my imagination.
Across from Markham’s legion of giants, a second militia has gathered. Smaller in number, their soldiers include men and women as well as some giants and a mixture of mythical beasts. Within their ranks are so many fantastic creatures, I cannot fathom where they came from or how these forces were united.
The hodgepodge military is captained by a woman astride a white mare. Her helmet and shield conceal her face and hair. The captain extends her sword and leads the charge against their enemy. I have no sense what her army battles for, but I am invested in their victory.
Before the Broken Star (The Evermore Chronicles Book 1) Page 23
