by Kresley Cole
Not permanently. Not if I can help it.
Sol had just turned off the ignition when the gates swung open, wind battering them against the wall. No one manned them. The metal groaned like a Bagman’s wail.
“Come with me,” I said, climbing from the cab. When Sol joined me on the ground, I stretched the stalks circling his wrists to bind his ankles as well.
“Is this really necessary, pequeña?”
“Really is, Sol.” As I approached the wall, I cried, “Hello! Is someone here? Please answer me!” Aric! Finn! Tess!
I half expected to find Aric waiting here for me. Would I hear his horse nickering in the stable? Had Thanatos survived the flood?
Had Aric?
Of course, he would have. So where is he?
Inside, I swept my gaze around and found a ghost town. No fires, no animals, no voices. Just the blustery winds and desolation.
This place was a shell. Fort Arcana had . . . died.
Crates of supplies had been abandoned. The fort’s inhabitants must’ve thought the Emperor would continue his path of hell straight for them.
Maybe some Azey South survivors were camped across the river? I hopped onto a plankway and ran to the tower. Sol hobbled after me, but I couldn’t wait for him.
I climbed the stairs, then peeked from the lookout, hoping to spy a campfire, any sign of life.
Nothing.
I turned back to the fort. In one corner, I saw the orange tree I’d grown for Tess. Without sun, its leaves had already begun to brown.
Beside the tree was a mound of dirt. Was that a . . . grave? Whose? A horrible idea arose—no. No. I quashed it as I raced down the stairs and lurched past Sol.
I tripped over another plankway, blundering around empty animal pens. I passed Jack’s tent and imagined I heard his deep voice saying, “Ma fille aux yeux bleus.” My blue-eyed girl.
Heart in my throat, I slowed when the mound came into sight. The ground was trampled as if someone had been buried in a hurry. A single staff jutted from the dirt to mark the grave.
Tess’s staff.
A cry slipped from my lips. No, no, that didn’t mean Tess was buried here! Her death was my nightmare scenario: the one that couldn’t possibly be.
The one in which Jack had been burned alive by a monster—and I could do nothing to save him.
Someone had just wanted to mark a burial, and her staff had been handy. She had left it behind on occasion. Only one way to be sure.
Sol had hobbled closer. Uncaring of his gaze on me, I knelt and started digging, stabbing my claws through the icy soil in a frenzy.
One foot down; two feet down. Three. Four.
I reached cloth and pulled on it. More dirt gave way to reveal . . .
A husk wrapped in a sheet.
Choking back bile, I peeled away the material and found what had once been a sweet girl named Tess.
Her body was like this fort—a shell of her former self. Without life inside.
My nightmare. One look at her wasted body, and I knew how she’d died. She had already tried to reverse time. To save Jack, Selena, and the army . . .
Tess had tried so hard that she’d lost control of her incomprehensible powers. Lass likes to help. She’d killed herself to bring others back. And she’d still failed.
Jack is dead.
I cradled what was left of Tess in my arms and mindlessly rocked her body like a doll.
From a distance, Sol watched grief destroy me.
10
Day 393 A.F.
I was covered in mud and out of breath, my muscles knotted. But I neared the top of that peak.
The one I’d stood upon while witnessing a massacre.
When I’d last journeyed to this vantage I’d been filled with hope, riding a hard-working mare that I’d never even named. Her remains must’ve been washed away in the flood.
What would I find atop the peak now? Having no idea, I trudged upward.
I’d remembered more of the Emperor’s attack, and every detail confirmed that Jack had died. But I’d also told him I would never underestimate him again. Maybe I could find some clue, some hint that there’d been survivors.
At the very least, I had to see for myself his . . . final resting place.
And so I gritted my teeth and climbed. Circe’s flood had gouged this slope, making it much steeper.
What will I find at the top?
I’d told Sol to wait in the truck. Had I tied him down? I was so numb with grief that I couldn’t remember.
As I searched for a handhold, I recalled the vision Matthew had given me before he’d disappeared. He’d shown me ten swords in my back—like the ten of swords Tarot card—vowing that the darkest days were ahead. He’d told me, “Matthew knows best.”
On the way back from the Lovers’ lair, I’d asked Selena what she made of his message. Her brusque answer: “That he’s a freaking nutjob?” At my disapproving expression, she’d added, “I know that the ten of swords card means that somebody’s about to be crushed by a merciless power—with no warning. I mean, totaled. It’s supposed to represent rock bottom, when you can’t sink any lower.” Her dark eyes had grown serious. “Doesn’t sound good, Evie.”
Matthew had been preparing me for Jack’s death. Or trying to.
The Fool had no idea. There was no preparing to have one’s heart destroyed. Those ten swords had stabbed me through, piercing it.
He’d asked me what I would sacrifice. I hadn’t been able to answer then, but I could now.
Not Jack.
I pulled myself higher. What will I find at the top of this rise?
The Fool had also begged me never to hate him. I would give him as much mercy as he’d shown me. He could have prevented Jack’s and Selena’s deaths, the entire army’s.
All of those people had set off, filled with hope about a place called Acadiana. Jack would’ve made good on his promise of a refuge.
Matthew knows best? He’d ridden away like a coward before the Emperor attacked, telling Finn one last cryptic statement: I’ve made peace with it.
With letting my Jack die.
I blamed Matthew as much as Richter. One of those ten swords had been the Fool’s. He had stabbed me in the back.
What will I find at the top . . . ?
I blamed myself as well. It should have been me. I had been fated to die.
At the very least, if I had listened to Circe’s advice—leaving Selena in the hands of the Lovers—Jack and all those people might’ve been spared. Selena had died anyway.
I’d made those choices—I’d pretended to be a leader—so those deaths were on my head. Tess’s was as well.
Last night, after I’d reburied her body, I’d run down to the shore outside the fort, where Circe and I had once talked. I’d yelled to the river, “I know you’re here, Circe! Show yourself!” Nothing. “Have you seen Aric?”
She hadn’t given me even a ripple on the surface. “You were right about taking out the Emperor!”
When she’d still refused to answer me, I’d waded into the river and kicked the water to provoke her. “Damn you! Why won’t you appear?”
Silence. Even as my tears had spilled into her domain. . . .
Finally, I reached the top. Gasping for breath, I levered myself up on my feet—and stared in shock.
The peak was no longer a peak. Circe’s tidal wave must have flash-cooled Richter’s lava because a sea of smooth black stone stretched from the top of this mountain to a distant one, across what used to be a valley. The drizzle made the surface shine.
“Mark this image,” Aric had told me as he’d pointed to the cauldron of bubbling lava. “Where will you search for him?”
A sob burst from my chest. I’d watched Jack’s murder.
No, I refused this! There must’ve been a way for him to escape. I fought to clear my dazed mind, to recall what I’d seen before the attack.
The long line of the army’s caravan had inched across that valley, a glowworm in
the dark. Cars and trucks had sprawled for about a mile, a fraction of the valley’s length. Jack and Selena would have been riding at the forefront, but had turned back toward me when I’d radioed.
Jack and I had marveled at the snow. At tiny drifts of white. He’d marveled that I’d chosen him.
He and Selena might have ridden a mile or two at most before Richter had struck. Lava had buried the line of trucks from front to back—as well as this entire valley and several rises all around.
Even if Jack and Selena had covered ten miles, they still would’ve been in the middle.
Selena, the girl who’d just endured the Lovers’ hell, had died. Part of me had sensed that kill. Other Arcana had as well, and Matthew, in his own way, had confirmed it.
She’d had superhuman speed, agility, and senses, yet she’d perished. And she’d been right beside Jack.
He’s dead.
No one could have survived this.
That battle had left behind a vast gravestone. Buried beneath it were hundreds of victims. My Jack was buried there.
Why had I made the decision not to fight in this game? Maybe the game was punishing me for daring to challenge it. Or the gods were.
By trying to reverse time and bring back Jack, I’d challenged fate as well. And I’d failed.
Did that mean I always would? Could a fate ever be changed?
In a daze, I trudged across the stone. Roughly halfway across, I stopped. Here the wind blew even harder, the rain stinging.
With a sob, I dropped to my knees to mark Jack’s and Selena’s graves. How could I sum up their lives in a few short lines? They’d been so much more.
Flaring my claws, I began to engrave the rock, starting with Selena.
Then . . . Jack. Sweating, bleeding, hyperventilating, I carved. Time passed. Who knew how long? Night rolled over into more night.
When I finished, I’d worn my bloody fingertips to the bone, and insanity beckoned as seductively as a blossom. I collapsed onto my back and lay between the two memorials, dripping blood on them.
I grew friendship ivy for Selena.
And honeysuckle for Jack.
I wondered if grief could be so strong it was fatal. My heart hurt so badly it must be bleeding out inside my chest. I must be bleeding to death. Ten swords pierced me through.
But something else was competing with my heartache, a thread of fury.
After Jack and I had watched the smoke plume from my mother’s funeral pyre, he’d told me, “She died in grace. I only hope to go out so clean.”
He hadn’t. Because of the Emperor. Richter had laughed as he’d murdered Jack and all those people.
Richter would die. The red witch would annihilate him. Hatred made me rise. Hatred forced one foot in front of the other as I staggered away from the graves.
With each step, blood dripped from my ragged fingers, dotting a trail across the vast black gravestone. A tether from me to Jack.
As I neared the edge of the stone, I remembered those last moments with Aric, my new arm aching. What if he hadn’t survived that searing flood? Maybe he wasn’t invincible.
No! No Arcana had gloated over Death’s death; none of us had sensed it.
Then I frowned. We were all disconnected now. And I didn’t know when the switchboard had gone down.
What if he’d . . . drowned? He might’ve called for me as he’d died. His lifeless body could be washed up somewhere along the flood’s path. Maybe that was why Circe’s river wouldn’t answer me.
I’d assumed Jack’s death was the worst that I could endure. Matthew might have been preparing me for both of their murders.
Dear God. Both.
I shrieked with fury and pain. As I screamed and screamed, rose stalks burst from my trail of blood, spreading until they’d blanketed the gravestone and the surrounding mountains.
If Aric lived, I had to find him. But how, when I was dying from grief?
I pictured a tourniquet around my pierced heart, stopping the bleeding and keeping me alive long enough to reach Aric and then to get revenge. Yes, I would twist the tourniquet, tightening it to constrict my heart, starving it of blood. Strangling it.
A bloodless heart couldn’t feel.
Twist, tighten, constrict.
Numbness settled over me. My emotions shut down. Like this, I reasoned that Aric must still live. He had for so long. He was strong.
We might have simply missed each other over all this distance. The flood waters had parted often; he could have been carried in a different direction. I seized on that thinking.
Yes. This was what I needed. Numbness. Just until I’d completed my two missions:
Find Aric.
Annihilate Richter.
After that, I would release the tourniquet and let myself bleed out.
Jack and I had marveled at the snow.
11
The Fool
Whereabouts unknown
My eyes flashed open.
The Empress’s screams had awakened the dark in me. Reverse, perverse.
The Dark Calling.
Her smile was broken. It was time. I always know best.
12
The Empress
Sol sat at the edge of the black stone. As I closed in on him, I tilted my head. “You followed me. You were watching me.” The Sun’s icon would look so good on my hand.
He stood, his gaze bouncing from my eyes, to my reddened hair, to my bloody fingers. “You, uh, get everything taken care of?” He backed up a step. And another.
I advanced. “You should have escaped me while you could.”
“I considered it,” Sol said, as I struggled not to slice him. “But I’m trying to earn your trust.”
The red witch ached for a kill. Until the Emperor’s turn, this card would do. “By spying on me?”
He stumbled backward, nearly falling. “What did you carve?”
“Epitaphs. Have you ever written one? Ever summed up someone’s life in a few lines?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“I’m going to pay the Emperor back for these murders.” Aric and my grandmother would teach me Richter’s weaknesses, and I would figure out how to use Sol as well. Which meant I didn’t get to kill him.
Seething with displeasure, the red witch receded.
I had to get the Sun to Death. Maybe with this card strengthening me—and the help of every player in our alliance—we could take out Richter.
But then, our small alliance had recently dwindled by two Arcana.
The game seemed to be speeding up, building on itself. Right around the deaths of Tess and Selena, I’d met the Sun.
Were we spinning to an end?
How stupid I’d been to think I could avoid fighting—that Jack and I could live happily ever after. The Arcana did converge; I’d face them for the rest of my life. Unless they all died.
That doesn’t mean I have to take them out, I thought, even as my claws tingled for Sol’s vulnerable flesh.
“What will you do to the Emperor?” he asked.
“Vines will grow through his body like veins, oh-so-slowly flaying him. Roots will burrow and feed on his organs. When he begs me to kill him, I’ll force him to pick his next meal: thorns or pieces of himself.”
Sol coughed. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
“You and I are going on another little trip.” Logically, getting to Aric’s castle made the most sense. Then Lark could help me find him. I didn’t exactly know the location of his home, but I’d made the journey from there to Fort Arcana not long ago. Matthew had given me directions; I would simply reverse them.
“Where are we off to now?” Sol said.
I smiled evilly. “Right to Death’s door.”
_______________
Day 396 A.F.
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Sol asked for the third time this hour.
I ignored him and kept walking.
Two days ago, the truck had died, probably due to Sol’s d
riving. I didn’t miss the ride too much though. The roads had gotten so bad that we’d bottomed-out every other mile. Each time, Sol and I had freed it with the help of my vines and his Baggers.
Pushing the truck shoulder to shoulder with zombies had been bizarre.
We’d been forced to continue on foot, trudging through mountainous terrain. Sol had found some clothes and boots at Fort Arcana, so he wasn’t slowing me down. He, Bea, and Joe had restocked our food and water from the supplies there, while I had . . .
I frowned. Huh. I didn’t remember what I’d been doing.
Now Sol asked, “Pequeña, can we stop for a moment?”
I kept walking.
Ever since the gravestone, he’d tried to be nice. He’d said consoling things. We’d politely shared food and water as we’d traveled the Ash together.
But I had nothing left. Bea and Joe showed more liveliness than I did.
Whatever burgeoning friendship—or at least understanding—between me and the Sun had disappeared.
Jack had been one of my last links to humanity. Without him, I was cruel.
Without Jack. I was already thinking about him in past tense. I might have sobbed, but my tourniquet was holding fast. Yet my mind suffered, making odd connections.
The whirlpool I’d been trapped in just days ago, spinning like a roulette wheel . . . roulette meant little wheel . . .
Tess reversing time as though on a backward-spinning carousel . . . carousel meant little battle . . .
Tourniquet came from the French word tourner, to turn or rotate . . .
Everything was turning; I was turning. I’d entered Fort Arcana one way; after finding Tess, I was changed forever. I no longer believed with certainty that I was in charge of my own destiny.
In the middle of a clearing, Sol stopped. “Empress, you’re lost.”
I faced him. “I’m not lost.” I was completely lost. I never thought I’d miss the voices. I still hadn’t heard any. I was relying on my own sense of direction—which sucked.
