Evermore

by Sara Holland

  “You’ll have to pretend to enjoy my company,” he adds in my ear. If I wasn’t so nervous, I would laugh at how cold and irritable he can sound even as he guides me through a graceful dance. But there’s no room in me for laughter, only fear.

  He changes the direction of our dance, angling us directly toward the door. I’m caught off guard and fall behind a step, which makes Liam pull me closer, tightening his hold on the small of my back. My breath catches, but Liam either doesn’t notice or pretends not to.

  Then I realize we’ve crossed most of the dance floor and are nearing the propped-open glass door that leads outside. Liam’s grip on me tightens and I force myself to smile, to hold his gaze, to project casual grace as we reach the edge of the crowd, just as the song ends. My pulse flutters as questions race through my mind. Have the guards gotten free? Are those Caro’s eyes on me, up on the dais? I daren’t turn around to check, but needles prickle the back of my neck. Liam steps away from me, keeping hold of my hand, and though I hate to admit it, it’s all that keeps my fear at bay.

  Together we walk onto the garden-balcony, which hugs the curve of the palace. On the far end, the balcony stretches over the cliffs. The earth below is all craggy rocks and sand, though up here is cultivated with slender trees and enormous flowers surrounding us, almost lush enough to make me forget the sheer, salt-stained cliffs that flank the palace. But the constant low thunder of the waves below us is enough to make me remember, and my muscles tighten up with fear and adrenaline. Freedom is so close. I can hear the waves that will carry me away.

  I glimpse the water through the trees. The cove is dotted with boats, small pleasure craft and stately yachts, flying the pennants of Sempera’s five most powerful, land-owning families, in addition to a few other crests I don’t recognize. My eyes land immediately on a sleek craft flying Connemor’s colors—red and gold—Elias’s ship, which will carry us away. A dozen yards off the shore, it sits incongruously in the dark, bobbing with the waves. I don’t know how we’ll get in the boat without being seen.

  Liam keeps hold of my hand as we walk, passing a few others who have drifted from the ballroom as the music from inside gradually surrenders to the sound of the waves. One woman’s head turns to follow us as we go by. She’s thrown her veil back, revealing a strong, bronze, lovely face, and I see her dark eyes linger on Liam. It’s more than a casual glance. My chest contracts with fear that she’s seen something amiss.

  But it’s nothing, I tell myself. Liam is tall, handsome, striking in his finery. It’s unsurprising that gazes would follow him.

  We’re so close to the sea, I can taste the salt on my tongue. My legs ache to burst into motion, but Liam’s hand is firm around mine, forcing me not to run. To act like any other young people escaping the dance, enjoying the gardens.

  And that’s when everything goes wrong.

  The music from the ballroom stops, not the gentle fading out of a finishing song, but abruptly. I had stopped hearing it, blended as it was with the waves below, but my ears detect silence where they couldn’t detect sound.

  And suddenly I know, with certainty, that Caro has realized I am not in my cell. My hand flies to my leg, feeling for the hilt of my knife beneath my dress, and it’s only the knowledge of the two women strolling behind us that keeps me from whipping the blade out.

  It takes Liam a heartbeat longer than me to hear the threatening silence—but when he does, his eyes fly wide, and I sense his body stiffen. His gait falters.

  “Should we run?” I whisper, though there’s nowhere to go but down or back into the ballroom.

  Liam shakes his head, a barely perceptible motion. His face is white in the gathering dark. “She doesn’t know where you are,” he says, his voice so low I have to strain to hear. “Just that you’re somewhere in the palace. We can still leave without being noticed.”

  I nod, but Roan’s blood flashes in my memory, and my limbs scream at me to run from Liam, to put as much distance as possible between him and me—dangerous, deadly me. It’s all I can do to keep walking. My fingers twitch with the effort not to go for the knife. Instead, I pull the veil farther down over my face.

  As we walk, the hush gives way to a clamor of confused voices, as people begin to pour from the ballroom out onto the balcony. Liam’s grip on my hand tightens. Behind me, I can hear confused voices, people shouting over one another in an effort to find out what’s going on.

  The Queen’s murderer?

  Here?

  Escaped?

  Fear seizes me suddenly, stronger than anything since Caro held me in her arms, and my knees fold without warning, the world swaying around me. Liam doesn’t miss a beat. He tucks an arm around my waist and pulls me to him, as if he’s just supporting his sweetheart who had one too many glasses of madel. He pulls me along through the crowd. All the tension between us momentarily forgotten, I press against him, trying to steal resolve from the places where his body presses against mine.

  I can see the end of the balcony, where it slopes downward to the lawn. Just a short drop—

  But then the soldiers appear. A dozen of them stream from a side door in the palace, all broad shoulders and shining breastplates fanning across the marble balcony. The guards step forward to meet the coronation guests, grabbing men and women roughly by the arm. A glass falls to the ground and shatters. I watch a guard speak to the woman who dropped it. She hesitates for a moment before lifting her veil.

  They’re searching the guests. For me. Panic floods my veins.

  Liam begins to run, pulling me along with him. Startled guests jump out of our way as we race forward, trying to pass the guards before they coalesce into a line. A salt-scented gust of wind blows my veil up, off my face—

  Then my eyes are full of light, pouring down from above. A door has been thrown open to yet another smaller balcony above us, and torchlight floods the lower balcony, illuminates my skin. Caro and Ina emerge. Both their faces so familiar, but Ina’s is hardened with wrath. With hatred. And Caro’s, twisted into a terrifying smile.

  All around me, people stop moving and look up, mesmerized by the light streaming out of Shorehaven. Then, Ina points a hand straight at me.

  Shouts rise up. The soldiers close ranks ahead of us, their gold chest armor like a line of blood-iron barring the path of escape.

  No, I think as hundreds of faces turn toward me at once. They see me, all of them—and they see Liam, standing beside me. Too close.

  One thought crystallizes in my head. No matter what happens to me, Caro cannot have Liam.

  I pull out my knife—and lunge for him.

  8

  Even in the midst of the chaos, I catch a glimpse of Liam’s face. All the haughty distance he wore in the ballroom is torn away. His open mouth and wide eyes steal my breath. Pain spikes through my body.

  I need to make it look real. In the air, I arc the blade over his chest, shoulder to ribs—aiming for the place where I know he has my leather journal tucked in his pocket. I sink the tip of the knife into his jacket, but it only pierces the fabric and the leather journal underneath.

  It works. All around us, people scream. He stumbles back, hand to his chest, and I start after him, knife raised dramatically high again, keeping my eyes trained on his the whole time. As he backs away, putting a hand on his sword hilt, I see the understanding come over his face.

  I slash out at him one more time—the attack is too wide, careless, but I can’t bring myself to get any closer. I’m grateful when a guard drags Liam back and charges for me instead. Inches ahead of her outstretched hands, I turn and surge forward, brandishing the knife as I run.

  Guests scramble out of my way, but the guards make for me, closing in from behind. I run with everything I have, ignoring the burning in my chest and feet. Hundreds of gazes heat my back, and I can feel Caro’s presence, imagine the stirrings in the air of her awful power that I saw at Everless.

  And I’m not fast enough. A huge guard slams into me from behind, throwing my body
into the balcony railing so hard that I almost tumble over the edge. The air leaves my lungs, but through the pain I slash blindly at his arm with my knife. He curses and jumps back—but by now I’m surrounded, ringed by five guards all two yards away, my back to the ocean. Behind, the balcony overhangs the water. Below, huge, sharp, pale boulders tumble down a slope to the sea cove. Elias’s ship bobs in the dark water, its sails fluttering, waving good-bye.

  Trapped.

  I have no choice.

  I lash out with my power, trying to freeze the guards in time like flies in honey—but it’s as if they don’t exist in the world of time. My attempts to stop them slide right past them, like water around oil. Panic grips my heart, and I look up to the distant figures of Caro and Ina on the upper balcony.

  Desperately, I search out Liam’s face in the gawking crowd. He’s halfway down the balcony, surrounded by a knot of solicitous guards and guests, staring helplessly at me.

  “Arrest her!” Ina cries, her voice battering the backs of the guards.

  As the guards step forward, advancing on me, I glance over my shoulder at the sea.

  It’s far enough down that a leap wouldn’t be certain death, but wouldn’t be safe either. I could break a leg and have Caro drag me back to her dungeons, utterly helpless this time. Or there’s the possibility that I could break my neck, and everything would be over in an instant. But if I stay here, deliberating, the guards will take me back to Caro. And Liam has already freed me from her captivity twice now.

  Would she be so careless as to let it happen again? Or will this be the time she finally breaks me?

  No. If I can’t kill her now, I have to get away from here until I can finish what I started.

  I throw the knife toward the lead guard, realizing too late that she’s the same one who helped Liam get me out of my cell. Luckily I haven’t the skill or strength to aim true, and it flies over her shoulder and clatters harmlessly to the marble floor. But more screams rise from the crowd, and the guards exchange alarmed glances. I take the moment to bunch my gown up around my thighs—I wish I could tear it off, but there’s no time—and haul myself over the railing so I’m standing on the outer edge, the sea churning far below me, with only a jagged cliff face and stacked boulders in between.

  More screams and gasps. Caro’s eyes bore into mine from a distance, two calm pools in a sea of panic. I look down only long enough to get a sense of where the boulders are, and immediately vertigo slams into me. But I’ve made my decision.

  I turn around and step off the ledge.

  Wind fills my eyes and ears. The waves and tiny, distant boats blur on all sides of me. I barely have the presence of mind to bend my knees and slow time slightly—imperceptibly, I hope—before I hit the stone with what feels like bone-shattering force. My ankles slide out from beneath me with a sickening crunch of rock and flesh, sending me hard to my side.

  For a few long moments, I lie there, gripping the stone beneath me with all my might so I don’t slide into the ocean. Above me, I see a multitude of faces against the night sky, peering down at me . . . and the guards, already fastening rope to the ironwork of the railing, preparing to rappel down after me.

  I push myself upright, still dizzy from the fall, and look back and forth between their small silhouettes and the water. There is nowhere for me to go but down the boulder, toward the sea. Already I’m soaked through with icy, salty water. The velvet of my dress clings uselessly to my body, the skirt shredded by the sharp boulders along with the palms of my hands.

  I could try to swim to Elias’s boat, but even from here I can tell the tides are too strong, the waves white-tipped like some hungry beast snapping at me.

  The thought of drowning—of being driven to my death like a panicked animal—sends a flood of adrenaline coursing through me. With every ragged breath, time rages stronger in my blood, screaming to be let loose. I shut my eyes, trying to gather the faded magic in my blood into a storm. Time can be a cloud, expanding out of me, capturing everything in its path. It can be a battering ram. And now—

  I look up at the descending guards once more, my breath sticking in my throat. I memorize where they are against the night sky. And then I close my eyes and imagine wielding time like a whip, a glowing line of light arcing over the ocean and the rocky beach. I imagine it weaving into the ropes, aging the fibers, ten years in a moment, fifty years, a hundred, grasping for my magic more deeply than I’ve ever had to. It saps my strength from me; and I have to remember to breathe, my chest aching for want of breath. But even at this distance, I feel it working, feel myself throwing off the invisible chains that Caro put on me—and I know that the soldiers’ ropes will start to fray and snap.

  I don’t consider what this means until the first soldier plummets toward the blackened sea.

  Shouts come from above. I open my eyes as the guards start to scramble down faster, dropping onto the boulders. Another isn’t quick enough—the rope breaks, sending him screaming down. I don’t hear him land among the crashing of the waves, but nausea rises in my throat. Another person, two, probably dead because of me.

  But even as the thought crosses my mind, I’m turning my attention to the boulders that hold up the three remaining guards, imagining them as they will be after centuries of these waves beating down, smooth and shrinking and eventually tumbling into the sea. I concentrate with every bit of strength I have. My grip loosens on my own perch; if a wave were to hit me, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from being washed away.

  But one of the guards loses his grip and slides down, only barely catching himself on a lower boulder. The other two—a hulking man and the captain with the braid, close enough now for me to see their terrified faces, scramble down toward me. The woman gets closest, catching herself on a boulder separated from mine by twenty feet of water.

  “Jules,” she yells.

  But I can’t answer. All my attention is now taken up with keeping my balance, fighting the waves that grab at my ankles like living things. I’ve stopped eroding the boulders, but a deep, terrible creaking has started up among them.

  Like the crude wooden dominoes Amma and I used to play with as girls, I can’t stop what I’ve started. And the boulders begin to crash down, tumbling over the sandy, sheer slope from the castle, taking others with them as they go. Only one or two at first, and then half a dozen, and then there’s a terrible moment where I know what will happen in the instant before it does.

  I will time to stop, but I’m spent, my strength gone. Nothing stops.

  One by one, all the boulders on the cliff begin to tumble down. If they seem to be moving slowly, I can’t tell if it’s my power or just sheer terror warping my perception. But they are falling, with a deep, monstrous grinding and screaming, one after another. The stone shakes beneath my feet, threatening to give way.

  I turn, screams from the balcony above pummeling my back, and leap from my boulder, into the sea.

  The cold hits me first. Above water, it was a balmy spring night—but the sea has kept a jealous hold of deepest winter, saving it so it can wrap around me now. Like hands made of ice are gripping my limbs and pulling me down, reaching down my throat and groping for the warm vital things that keep me alive. I can’t move, not even to pull myself toward the surface or fight the waves that spin me around, head over heels, heels over head. I’m spinning, bubbles rushing from my mouth and nose, and I can’t tell if the silver glimmering in my eyes is moonlight on the water or my brain manufacturing images in a desperate plea for air.

  I’m vaguely aware that boulders are falling into the sea around me, each hitting the water with a deep, resounding, water-muffled boom that rattles my bones. The impacts make the water snarl against the existing currents, tossing me like a rag doll between them. There’s nothing I can do to avoid the boulders, no way to know where they are going to fall—no air.

  I force my limbs out and try to swim in the direction I think is up, and my head breaks the surface for a moment—I catch a glimpse
of the woman guard, swimming toward me—before a wave drives me down. For all the ancient magic and memories tumbling inside me, I’m helpless against the water. When I break the surface a second time, I don’t even have time for a breath before I’m dragged farther under. Panic blooms in my mind as my limbs start to burn, ice creeping in. Black spots waver at the edges of my vision. I am going to die like this, drowning.

  I don’t want to die.

  I cannot die.

  A sudden, wild surge of power fires my body, starting in my heart and racing outward. It makes me cry out in a rush of useless bubbles, throw my hands and feet wide and start fighting the currents again. Time seems to leap through my veins.

  But I can’t control the ocean—it’s too vast, too wild. I can feel the thousands of years already winding through its waters course through me. All I have left is my own body, and I retreat into it now, pulling my magic inward, willing my seconds not to tick away, pleading with my heart to put off the moment of its surrender. An odd sensation prickles over my skin: I feel my blood slow and cool, as if it’s transforming into lead in my veins.

  I’ve never tried to freeze myself in time before. Dimly, I think that it will probably kill me—but even in my frantic, fading mind I know that I’m dead already if this continues. I have minutes left, less of that conscious, less still if one of the boulders falls where I’m fighting the waves. My very blood dragging me down.

  Fingers wrap tightly around my wrist. That’s the last thing I feel before I feel nothing at all.

  9

  I am vaguely aware of someone hauling me upward, out of the sea. Hands lay me on a hard surface on my side and start pounding my shoulder blades until I cough up the seawater I swallowed. I’m lifted and settled on a bench, a blanket tucked around me—too weak and frozen to move or even open my eyes, to do anything else but splutter out seawater and gulp down air. There’s indistinct footsteps and voices around me, and the wrathful beating of the waves through the wood of what must be a boat floor, like they’re furious to have lost me.