The Ends of the World

by Maggie Hall

  “We didn’t miss anything.” Jack jogged up beside me. “I was paying close attention the whole way.”

  “You saw those ruins.” Elodie caught up with us, too. “You see whatever this weird tunnel is. There’s no way it means nothing. We’ll just have to go around again, watching more carefully.”

  “And if we don’t find anything this time?” Stellan said.

  “Give up if you want,” Jack snapped. “The rest of us won’t.”

  “So what you’re saying is that the rest of you have a death wish.”

  I grabbed Stellan’s arm and dragged him down the tunnel. “We’ll take the front this time,” I called over my shoulder.

  “Not that I’m complaining,” Stellan whispered loudly, “but I’m not sure this is the most appropriate time to sneak away and make out. Though there is no shortage of dark corners in here . . .”

  “Quit antagonizing him,” I whispered once we were out of earshot. “It’s not helping.”

  “It’s also not untrue.” Stellan looked casually down at his arm. I hadn’t realized I was still holding on to him. I let go.

  Talking to Elodie had taken my panic down a notch. There was no way Stellan would allow her to do the same for him, so maybe it was my job. “I get how you’re feeling.” It was hypocritical of me, but I went on, “And I know safe is a relative term these days, but we’re okay right now.”

  Our lights made a halo of white on the dark ground. “Are we, though? Really?” His face was barely illuminated, but I could see his eyes darting around, still searching, despite his protests. “I’ll forget for a moment that one of the few people I trusted has been lying to me for years, and that I’ve been working for the same group that killed my family. But as much as I’ve been trying to, I can’t forget that this, right now, is exactly what I’ve been afraid would happen since we discovered the thirteenth bloodline. That the Circle would find a reason to turn on us. You don’t get on the Circle’s bad side. You just don’t.”

  “Maybe once we find—”

  “The thing is,” he cut me off, “it’s not just my own life I’m risking to save the people who want to kill us. Where do you think they’ll turn once someone remembers that I have a sister? So there you go. That’s why I’m having a hard time following this dead end further than is logical. Is the psychoanalysis finished?”

  This all sounded too familiar. Too much like how I’d been feeling for a long time. Everything he’d ever known was wrong. He didn’t know whom to trust. He didn’t say it, but I could see the flashbacks hitting hard, too. From the hospital. From Elodie’s story of her own family’s deaths. It was torturing him not being able to see Anya safe with his own eyes. This spiral into the carefully constructed snarky persona he was so good at playing was his version of my panic attack. “Maybe we could get Luc to go check on Anya,” I said.

  He exhaled. “I don’t want to draw more attention to her than I need to,” he said quietly.

  “Just because I’m asking you to control yourself doesn’t mean I don’t understand,” I told him. “I very much do. I’m worried just like you are, and I keep thinking there’s something I should have done, too. Like maybe I should have just gone to Lydia in Jerusalem and let the rest of you get away while you could. Or—”

  Stellan let out an exasperated groan. “I suppose this is why I do have to be around for the rest of this treasure hunt. You know, when the Saxons were parading you around like a show pony waiting for the highest bidder, I had a plan to get you out of every one of those places, in case your dear father decided that was the day he was going to put his foot down and force you into something.”

  “You what?”

  He ignored me. “I thought I might not have to worry about that kind of thing with you no longer in captivity. Please don’t make me save you from unnecessary martyrdom and get us both killed in the process, okay? This quest is trying enough as it is. Are we finished here so we can get back to work?”

  I felt like I had whiplash. “I didn’t say I was ever actually going to turn myself in. And what do you mean you had a plan to get me—” He sighed. I scowled. “Okay. Fine. Once we’ve done what we have to, I’m free to do stupid, dangerous things to my heart’s content. You can yell at Elodie and talk out whatever you need to with Jack and go get Anya. You can leave all of this behind forever if that’s what you want. But for now we finish this.”

  He cut his eyes to me, and quickly away. “Fine.”

  “Thank you.”

  We slowed to let Jack and Elodie catch up. For a few minutes, we inspected a divot in the wall here, a root across the path there. I couldn’t stop glancing over at Stellan. I knew he had stayed nearby while we’d been on our tour of Circle suitors, but I’d thought it was only to make sure we didn’t try to cut him out of the equation. I hadn’t realized he cared what happened to me. When I darted another glance at him, he quickly averted his eyes. I hung back and walked with Elodie.

  “Question,” Stellan said. “I know you all want to save them, because apparently you’re the most altruistic group of people in the world. But do you actually still want to be part of the Circle once this is done, if they’ll take you back?”

  It was a good question. One I hadn’t entirely figured out the answer to yet.

  “Do you not want to?” Jack asked.

  As much as I’d taunted him about it before the initiation, I knew Stellan had only wanted the power being the thirteenth could bring so he could feel safe and know Anya was happy and secure. So much for that.

  Stellan turned to walk backward in front of us, tapping his chin in an exaggerated fashion. “Let’s see. So far, our destiny has involved divulging every personal detail of my body and my life so the Circle wouldn’t murder me for being a traitor. Then letting them think we’d be their puppets—and now we’re fugitives. I suppose the prawns at the party the other night were good, though, so that brings it up to . . . two out of ten stars for the thirteenth family experience. Would not recommend.”

  “Hilarious,” Jack deadpanned. “What you really mean is that as soon as things stop being easy you’re ready to quit. Because loyalty means nothing.”

  I sighed. Maybe it was Jack I should have lectured. Or maybe trying to keep anyone from fighting right now was futile.

  “Excuse me?” Stellan said. “Talk of loyalty from someone who was literally spying on his girlfriend for the enemy?”

  I cringed. There was a shuffle, and a bang, and Jack’s light fell to the ground, illuminating the two of them from below. Jack had Stellan against the wall, his forearm pressed across Stellan’s throat.

  Stellan glanced sideways at me, with a smile and a shrug that very obviously said, He started it. Then he shoved Jack. I had to jump out of the way to keep from getting knocked down.

  “Don’t.” I took a step forward. Elodie held out a hand to block me. The boys ignored me anyway.

  Jack grabbed the front of Stellan’s shirt. “I know you never liked being a Keeper, but you had an obligation. You still do.”

  “Well, you’re doing it all wrong right now,” Stellan said, low in Jack’s face. “A Keeper’s not allowed to lay a hand on family members, you know.”

  Okay, so this was definitely not about the fact that they’d both kissed some girl.

  Jack panted hard, the shadow of his chest rising and falling. He would normally never make a scene in front of people like this. Now, though, he shoved Stellan into the wall. “And a family member isn’t allowed to leave the Circle.”

  Suddenly I saw what the rest of the world must see in them. They’d been trained to be this aggressive and violent since they were children, but I saw it so infrequently; it was unfamiliar and feral and frightening. I backed off another step.

  “The Circle isn’t everything,” Stellan growled. “If you believe they are, you’re just going to continue to ruin your own life and everyone else’
s.”

  I watched Jack’s fingers curl into Stellan’s shirt, his jaw twitch. “I haven’t—”

  “Oh really? You felt so guilty about being with Avery that you betrayed her to the Circle. You felt so guilty about Oliver Saxon’s death that you turned on me and Elodie.”

  Elodie hissed in a low breath, and I held mine. Oh.

  “Do you remember that?” Stellan went on. “You were practically my brother until you decided not to be my friend anymore. It wasn’t your fault what happened to Oliver, and it certainly wasn’t mine.”

  There were some things between them I’d scratched the surface of, and there were plenty I knew nothing about. But I did know Jack blamed himself for the death of Lydia and Cole’s older brother. He also, to an extent, blamed Stellan and Elodie and the relationship the three of them used to have for being a distraction that led to the tragedy. If that’s what this was about, it had been building for years. Since they were younger, more naive, less broken. And since they were smaller and less powerful and couldn’t actually kill each other.

  Jack’s biceps strained with effort, whether from holding Stellan off or holding himself back, I couldn’t tell.

  “It’s not my fault that I’m this thirteenth bloodline, either,” Stellan said, strained. “And it’s not my fault—”

  Stellan glanced at me, and then Jack did, too. I wanted to melt into the wall.

  “For years you’ve been blaming other people and hating yourself for bad things that happened.” Punctuating his words with shoves against Jack’s chest, Stellan said, “It is not. My. Fault.”

  Jack punched him.

  Stellan staggered backward, bracing himself against the wall. He worked his jaw back and forth, and then he laughed. Laughed. Jack might actually kill him.

  I started forward again, but Elodie grabbed my arm.

  “I’m just sorry you’re stuck with us when you’d rather be with a real Circle family who plays by the rules.” Stellan stalked toward Jack again. He might have been laughing, but the fists balled at his sides said something different. “I guess it is my fault that I wanted someone around who I used to trust.”

  And then I realized it. As much as all of us had been afraid of losing people we cared about lately, Jack and Stellan thought they’d lost each other years ago. They’d both suppressed the feeling for so long that it only took a spark to make it explode.

  Love and hate. They weren’t opposites.

  Stellan shook his head slowly. “I thought maybe one day you would wake up and see that blind obedience is not the same as doing the right thing,” he said. “I guess not. But that means you, of all people, cannot talk to me about loyalty.”

  Jack flew at him, and slammed him into the wall hard enough that his head bounced.

  I sucked in a quick breath, but another sound drowned it out.

  A loud crack sounded through the tunnel, and Stellan’s arms pinwheeled—then he fell backward through the wall, pulling Jack with him.

  CHAPTER 11

  I rushed to the destroyed wall to find Jack scrambling off Stellan, who lay on his back in a pile of bricks, blood trickling down his temple. They had knocked a person-sized hole into what appeared to be an older, mustier tunnel.

  Elodie peered over my shoulder as I climbed through the hole. The air was damper in here, and sour. I coughed, and pulled my shirt up over my mouth and nose as Stellan stood and brushed dirt off his palms.

  “If we’re supposed to go in there, wouldn’t there be some kind of sign?” Elodie said suspiciously. “There’s nothing to indicate we should knock through a piece of the wall and traipse inside.”

  Stellan picked up his flashlight and peered into the darkness.

  I picked up one of the bricks. They were about the size of modern red bricks, but a good deal thinner, and rough hewn. They could have been two thousand years old. I scratched at the mortar on the edge of the brick with my fingernail, then smacked it against the nearest wall. It shattered easily.

  “Why would anyone make a wall of an underground tunnel out of something that’d break so easily?” I wondered out loud. “Unless . . .”

  Elodie reached through the hole and plucked a piece of the brick from my hand. “Unless it was meant to be broken.” She thought for a second, then said, “Come here.”

  She shined her flashlight on me, picking up my necklace, with its thirteen loops, and studying it. “It’s a Gordian knot,” she said. “I hadn’t realized it before.” Down the tunnel, Stellan’s footsteps stopped.

  I picked the necklace up off my chest and held it out. “What’s a Gordian knot?”

  “It was one of Alexander’s tests.”

  Stellan came back, the hem of his shirt pulled up to wipe his face. He dropped it back onto his chest, and the streaks of blood across it looked eerie in the dark. “Legend said the Gordian knot was impossible to untie.”

  “The oracles prophesied that whoever undid it would be the king of the world,” Elodie agreed, with a quick glance at Stellan. He’d spoken directly to her with no animosity in the words. It was a step. “And when Alexander realized that there were no ends to the knot—”

  I squeezed my necklace hard. “He undid it by slicing it in half.” I remembered this from history class. I had never connected it to my necklace, or this quest. I looked from my necklace to the hole in the wall. The larger tunnel hadn’t been a circle. “It’s a Gordian knot,” I said. “The whole tunnel is. That’s why we ended up back where we started. There’s no way into the inner chamber—”

  “Except to go straight through the wall,” Jack finished. He was flexing his fingers, but dropped the hand to his side when I looked his way, like he didn’t want me to see that he’d hurt himself on Stellan’s face.

  “I guess that’s our sign.” Elodie climbed through, and we set off into the mouth of the tunnel.

  This passage was much smaller—just wide enough for us to go single file—and cut roughly out of dirt. It was also descending rapidly. Roots snaked down the walls and across the path, and the farther we went, the wetter it got. My cheap sneakers were caked with mud.

  At the front of the line, Jack paused. As we caught up to him, we saw why: a drop-off of at least five feet, with a pool of water at the bottom.

  “I feel like I need to mention that these old tunnels were sometimes booby-trapped,” Elodie said. It was barely a whisper, but still felt too loud in the confined space.

  “Napoleon got through here, and he’s the one who must have sealed it back up,” Jack said. “I don’t think he would have done that.”

  “Be careful,” I whispered.

  He glanced back at me and nodded, then swung himself down into the pit with a splash, sinking up to his knees in water. On the other side, he pulled himself out using tree roots as handholds and Elodie followed.

  Stellan splashed down into the hole. Jack looked back over his shoulder. “Help Avery,” he said.

  “Obviously.” Stellan reached for me. He met my eyes, then quickly looked away again.

  “What?” I thought again of what he’d said earlier.

  “What do you mean, what?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.” I let him help me down and boost me up the other side because the hole was deeper than I was tall. I could have sworn his hand lingered longer than necessary on my back on the other side, but when we’d scrambled to standing, he just gave me a nudge down the tunnel and followed close behind.

  It was eerily quiet, the only noise the damp squishing of our clothes. I felt my shoulder brush the cool, wet wall, and shuddered when I had to wipe a film of spiderwebs from my face. The tunnel narrowed and shortened, so we had to crawl. It opened into a wider clearing a few minutes later, and we stood up one by one, shaking out our limbs and looking around. And then we saw what was on the other side of the clearing.

  Our lights shining ahead seemed to fall off int
o nothing. The tunnel dead-ended into open air.

  We made our way slowly to the edge. It was pitch-black. Jack brought his light up, and drew in a sharp breath.

  “It’s a pyramid,” Elodie said, barely louder than a breath.

  The rocky sides of the chamber went straight down. But when I looked more closely, I saw tiny steps carved into the side, starting just below the ledge. On the floor of the chamber, about two stories below us, a small, gleaming white pyramid rose out of a pool of water.

  My breath caught in my throat. The tomb of Alexander the Great, and his mother. It had to be.

  “It’s—” Elodie whispered, then cut off. From below came a sound we never would have expected to hear in the world’s most famous lost tomb.

  Voices.

  CHAPTER 12

  There were two people talking down in the cavern. Judging by how muffled they were, they must have been inside that pyramid.

  They were the voices of a boy and a girl. Voices we knew.

  Lydia and Cole Saxon.

  “How the hell did they get here?” Elodie hissed. The chamber must have had other entrances. But that wasn’t what she was asking. How did they know how to get here?

  I’d been waiting to confront my siblings for so long, but now I was paralyzed.

  “We have to get down there before they get what we’re looking for,” Stellan whispered. “And then put a bullet in their heads and end this whole thing.”

  Jack motioned us all back to the tunnel, where we could whisper without being heard. “You’re not going to want to hear this, but we can’t kill them.” Stellan started to protest, but he went on, “I know some of us might be leaving the Circle, but not all of us are. And I doubt any of us want to give them another reason to hunt us. Right now, the Circle believes the Saxons completely and thinks we’re monsters. If we ambush them and kill them without a trial, that’ll only confirm it. The only way is to capture them and bring them to the Circle.”