by Sara Holland
Then—pain. Mountains of it spiking through my body, solid and jagged and impassable. I cry out before I can stop myself.
Someone lifts my head into their lap, then gently wipes the seawater from my face and tucks the blanket tighter around me until the pain recedes into a faint pulse. Caro, I think distantly, her twisted tenderness.
But these hands are large and warm and gentle, only half familiar. When I finally open my eyes, it’s not Caro above me. It’s Liam, brow lined in concern, his face very pale.
“You’re alive,” he whispers, for the second time since the soldiers dragged me to Shorehaven.
I manage a weak laugh. “I think so.”
Behind him, I see the woman guard—not a guard, I suppose—quickly raising a dark sail that blends into the water, so black it seems woven from the night itself. Beyond her, I see Liam’s friend Elias drape more black cloth over the deck, to cover the boat’s sides. A red-and-gold flag is crumpled at Elias’s feet.
“Jules, this is Danna from Connemor,” Liam says, following my gaze to the woman. “She pulled you out.”
Danna nods curtly at me. She might have saved me, but I don’t suppose she’s forgotten that I accidentally cast her into the sea trying to escape from the palace.
“And, of course, this is Elias,” Liam adds.
“It’s good to finally meet you, Miss Ember,” Elias calls over to me. There’s a hint of strain to his voice, but he has a musical accent, and a wide white smile even as sea wind snaps his hair. He picks up a coil of rope and tosses it to Danna. “I’ve heard much about Sempera’s legendary Alchemist.”
My cheeks flush. I want to ask more questions, but I’m too shaken and exhausted to speak. I don’t push away Liam’s hands when he helps me to sit up. I’m shivering violently, even under the blanket. It feels like my insides have been scraped out and replaced with salt water.
He climbs around to my other side so he’s facing me. Behind him, the shape of Shorehaven looms, farther away than I expected, the lights of the ballroom just a distant glitter in contrast to the ruin of the beach, where the boulders have fallen into the sea. Dust hangs in the air.
The wind on the cove fills the black sails with a soft snap, carrying us out toward the open sea. It’s quieter here, away from the crashing of waves on land. Relief trickles into me as I watch the smoking palace recede farther.
As we skirt the palace, small lights blink to life and begin to crawl around the cove—Caro’s forces in boats, I know, searching the water for me, or my body. My heart flutters, as if it knows it’s being searched for. I cup my hand over my chest, trying to hush that incomprehensible magic that connects me to Caro.
“How long has it been?” I croak.
“An hour.” Liam produces a map. Of course he has a map. “When Shorehaven is out of sight, Elias will drop us off on the shore where we can hire a carriage. With the havoc at the palace, people will be less likely to notice he’s gone missing.”
My throat is dry. I try to follow the route he’s tracing along the map, but my sight blurs, my breath hitching as I try to stay in control of my emotions. “And is the same true for you? Will anyone at the coronation realize you’re missing?”
Liam looks up, his eyes blank.
My stomach sinks. I know him well enough by now to know that he prefers to say nothing than to lie.
“You were under for nine minutes. And still unconscious when Elias picked me up along the shore,” he tells me, his voice raw and strained.
Nine minutes. Without thinking, I squeeze Liam’s hands to assure myself that I’m present. I’m above water. I’m safe.
“I thought I was dead,” I say, hearing myself as if from a distance. “How am I not dead?”
“You saved yourself.” Liam’s voice is low; I only understand because of how close he is, our faces a foot apart. Something inside tells me to move away, but it’s all I can do to stay upright and keep the blanket wrapped tight around my shaking body. “You weren’t breathing when Danna pulled you out. Your heart wasn’t beating. They didn’t realize at first that you were—stopped. They thought—”
Here his voice breaks, and I realize he’s shivering too. His normally tied-back hair has come undone and hangs in damp curls around his face.
A sudden, warm impulse washes over me, overpowering as a wave, and I lean forward and wrap my arms around him, pressing my face into his shoulder, wanting nothing more than to feel safe. I feel his whole body tense up, and then, slowly, relax. His hands come up and rest on my back and briefly, I consider stopping time.
I pull away. My voice comes out small and raw and frightened when I speak—not only of Caro, but of Liam’s touch. “I—I thought I might die.”
A soft pained noise escapes from somewhere in the back of Liam’s throat. He closes his eyes for a moment. I glance over my shoulder at Elias and Danna, but they’ve retreated to the bow of the boat, Danna steering while Elias examines the dark horizon with a pair of binoculars. His body remains still, staring fixedly ahead; it’s a valiant attempt to give Liam and me privacy.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For what I did on the balcony. Attacking you.”
Liam blinks, brushing his hand over the journal, which is still tucked into his pocket. I can’t read his face. “You had to.”
“The wind is with us,” Danna calls. “We might make Ambergris by tomorrow, if it holds.”
“Ambergris?” I sit up so quickly that Liam flinches. “That’s where we’re going?”
He tilts his head at me. “Then to Connemor. Shouldn’t that be where we’re going?”
My head sinks into my hands as I have the sudden feeling that if the boat weren’t underneath, the weight of this decision would plunge me to the bottom of the sea. Though we are far from the castle now, skirting the shore and heading south, I imagine that Caro is looking out one of the Shorehaven windows—one of those distant pebbles of gold light—her eyes trained directly on me. “I have to stop her. She told me that as long as she’s alive, she won’t stop hunting people I love.”
Liam puts a hand on my arm. “I know you want to take Caro down, but Jules, you’re too important to throw your life away.”
“Are you so certain I’ll fail?” I shrug off his hold.
He lets out an exasperated sigh, the picture of the haughty lord that he is. “That’s not what I meant. You need to keep yourself safe. Someone else can take care of Caro.”
My gut screams that he’s wrong, so wrong. “Who? We’re not all Gerlings, Liam. I don’t have someone to do my bidding.”
He quickly runs a hand through his hair, and I know immediately that I’m right. “Killing Caro—that’s just not you, Jules. I once watched you nurse a baby mouse back to health after someone chased it from the kitchen.”
“That was a long time ago,” I say coldly. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do. I already tried to kill her.”
Liam stiffens. At the other end of the boat, Elias drops an oar. “You—you what?”
Only once my words are out in the air do I realize how mad they sound. Liam, Danna, and Elias have all stopped to stare at me, eyes wide and unbelieving. I swallow the sudden lump in my throat. “The guards took me to her right away. I had my knife . . . at first, I thought I had killed her—she bled so much—but her face started changing, then all the blood went back inside her, as if I’d never stabbed her in the first place. I can’t make sense of what happened.” I shiver, remembering Rinn, the woman I met in Briarsmoor, who’d spent every day for seventeen years reliving her death over and over.
I sit back against the boat’s rough wood railing and focus on only the black blanket of sky and water around us, trying to recall exactly what I saw. I see the image of Caro’s face, scrawled with shock below me. The sound of a scream, my scream, sends a shiver of fear along my skin. I close my eyes. There was something else. Something just in the corner of my eye, a flash of dark, like a shadow blinking its eye. If I only turn, I could see it—
“
That just makes things worse, Jules. You can’t kill her. She’s the Sorceress.” Liam lets out a huff of frustration. “She’s the Sorceress, and you tried to kill her with a blade.”
His words cut my remaining scraps of courage to ribbons. All Caro’s power; all my history, lost to me. I’m just a peasant from Crofton. Tears prick my eyes. But Liam doesn’t stop.
“You and Caro have been locked in this battle for years. Trust me, I’ve spent half my life studying it. The best solution is to run, live out your life in hiding. In safety.”
The tears fall now. Liam’s hand twitches, and I wonder if he’s considering wiping them from my cheek. I could flee to Ambergris, to the safety that Liam has arranged. Board the ship and let it carry me away to Connemor, a shore where time is still indivisible—a land where Jules Ember could forget the name Alchemist forever.
But if Caro burned all of Sempera to the ground and didn’t find me—what would stop her from coming after me across the sea? Could an ocean stop the girl who’s waited eleven lifetimes to break me? Would it stop Caro from cutting Liam’s throat, if she discovered what he had done?
My heart beats the answer against my chest. No. No. No.
Amma’s voice sounds in my head. Seize the day, before it seizes you.
I will not—I cannot—escape to the unbound land.
I battle against the lump in my throat—a tangle of thoughts I can’t give voice to—to speak. “She destroyed my home. She killed my friend. I’m not going to Ambergris.”
Liam inhales sharply. “Jules—”
“When you told me I was the Alchemist, you said I had the wisdom of my previous lives. I’ve been fighting her for years, like you said—there must be some knowledge locked inside me that will help destroy her.”
“Yes, but . . .” He trails off, lips pressed into a line. I can read the thought on his face—I don’t have the wisdom of my previous lives. They flit through my mind like shadows.
“My memories come back when I visit places I’ve been before.” I think of the grim impressions I got of being tortured in the palace. “If I go to Connemor, I won’t be able to learn more about them. There must be some knowledge that will help me defeat her, but it’s here in Sempera. It’s here too,” I grab the leather journal from inside Liam’s jacket, letting my knuckles brush against his chest. “Knowledge so dangerous and important that my father would die for it.”
The words linger in the cold night air. I nourish a small hope in my chest: saying the words can make them true.
Liam’s mouth opens, then closes. “What will you do? Where will you go?”
Elias shouts from across the boat immediately, like he’s been waiting to speak. “There’s always Bellwood.”
The name sounds familiar; it takes me a moment to place it as the school where Liam spent his childhood away from Everless. “Bellwood?” I ask.
Elias shares a look with Liam, something unspoken passing between them. Then, Liam’s face smooths over, a resigned expression sealed in ice.
Elias’s face, however, is melting with mischievous joy. “I just thought the Alchemist’s ancestral home would be a good place to start rediscovering yourself.”
The word home tugs at me, despite my confusion. I nod. I don’t know where to start, and Bellwood is as good a choice as any other. Before Liam can object, or question me further, I ask him, “What will you do?”
Liam fixes his eyes just over my shoulder, staring out to the Semperan shoreline as we pass it by, as if he’ll find an answer there. Eventually, he says, “Come with you.”
It’s what I feared he would say. “You can’t just go missing. How will you explain that? You—you have responsibilities at Everless.” I can’t fully keep the emotion from my voice. It trickles in, and I can only hope that Liam interprets the roughness as irritation and not wild, desperate hope.
“You are more important than Everless.”
I clench my fists. How is it that his words can make me cold and start a fire in me all at once? “If you return to the palace now, and leave me, she might not suspect you.”
“You made your choice to stay, Jules. Let me make mine now.”
Before I can respond, he stands and moves away from me. I want to scream at him not to follow, that he’ll die; at the same time that I want to plead with him to stay with me until it’s over, one way or another. That I’ve had eleven chances to defeat the Sorceress, and failed every time. That as far as we know, this is the Alchemist’s final chance. That I’m as confused as I am frightened, of Caro, of him—of the possibility, creeping in the distance like a stalking wolf, that somehow, this is another trap of Caro’s—
But most of all, that I’m afraid of what secrets lie locked within me.
Instead, I only say, “To Bellwood then.”
10
Once we are out of sight of the palace and in calmer waters—so still that Elias is afraid to proceed too far, lest his sailboat get stuck for lack of wind—we part ways with him and Danna. I’ve changed into one of Danna’s sensible dresses, long and gray, a significant improvement over the stolen gown, even though it hangs loose on me. Danna will continue north—to get money and supplies from allies of Elias’s family, I gathered from the snatches of conversation I overheard, while Elias will return to Shorehaven to show his face and gather news. But my eyes kept drifting closed when I didn’t concentrate on keeping them open.
Liam and I load into a little lifeboat, and he rows us toward shore. My knees press against his back, and my own back scrapes against the rear lip of the boat. Now it feels like we’re only minutes away from capsizing should a breeze pick up and hit us at the wrong angle. His arms move with the fixed determination of clock hands, and the muscles in his back brush rhythmically against my knees.
Soon I become lulled by the motion, exhaustion rapidly overtaking me. Our only illumination is a scant bit of dying moonlight, which turns the profile of Liam’s face into a sculpture of bone white and inky black. I long to touch it—to feel his warmth and remind myself that he is not a statue but alive, full of heat and energy—but I don’t.
Instead, I find myself drifting off into half dreams. In my last scraps of awareness, I both hope and fear that I’ll meet Caro there, in the dark of sleep. But I dream mostly of Amma, sparklingly alive: of sneaking into the woods with her and kneeling by the creek, playing with paper boats we folded from parchment I’d stolen from Papa’s stash, fantasizing about the future day we’d finally be able to visit the sea.
We hit land with a soft thud, and my eyes peel open. After rowing all night, the darkness of the sky is beginning to part for dawn, and a pang goes through me as I think of Amma. Our friendship was a chorus of somedays. Someday we’ll go to the seaside. Someday we’ll outgrow Crofton.
Amma’s somedays were stolen from her.
We climb out—my legs a little wobbly beneath me on the soft moss of the shore—and then set our boat adrift with a strong shove, turning our backs to the waves as the boat grows smaller and smaller on the brightening horizon.
As we walk, salt-sprayed boulders giving way to rocky plains dotted with seaside towns, I try to focus on the task ahead of us. Destroy Caro. Caro, the living, breathing Sorceress of legend, who’s walked Sempera for centuries, accruing knowledge and power that are lost to me. I flinch, remembering again how I drove the blade into her body, the soft whisper of metal piercing flesh. The sensations flash through my mind over and over as we walk, and suddenly I’m overwhelmed. I stumble to the bank of the stream that edges along our path. Kneeling, I scoop cool water over my flushed face.
I catch sight of myself in the water’s surface—and hardly recognize the face blinking back at me. My cheeks seem sharp as two blades glinting in the stream’s reflected light. My mirror face wavers in the slowly moving stream, seeming to shift and re-form with every passing second. Imagined whispers rise up from the forest—murderer . . . witch . . .
I steel myself, adding, Alchemist. It’s what I’ll have to be, if I want to
end Caro’s reign.
A hand grasps my shoulder, making me jump. I whirl to see that it’s only Liam. “Are you all right?” he asks.
“Fine,” I mutter. But my mouth is dry, my gut empty. Liam extends a hand to help me up. I ignore it and push past him, back to the dirt path.
The wilderness and towns slowly give way to the beginnings of a city—Montmere. It’s nothing like Crofton or Laista, which are surrounded by woods and fields—it’s a proper city, with roads and rivers feeding into it. My mind flits back to sitting with Amma, a map of Sempera spread across our laps, her grandfather running his finger along the rivers and towns, telling us about his travels as a younger man. Montmere is at the heart of Sempera, its oldest part, where the Sorceress and Alchemist were said to roam. Bellwood sits at the center of a tangled web of its narrow roads and rivers. Despite the early hour, carts and carriages rumble past us on the road we’re walking alongside, and I smell aromas of bread and fish, coffee and fruit, and hear the sound of clinking blood-irons trailing in their wake. Shutters above us are thrown wide to take in the breeze, and there are no beggars haunting the side of the street, no soft chorus of an hour, an hour.
Liam’s given me his cloak to wear. I pull up the hood, stealing glimpses of the neat, hilly cobbled streets from below its rim. Even though I have to duck my head whenever anyone passes by, I can’t help but feel a light, buzzing feeling in my chest. Montmere is strange, and yet something about it tugs at me, as though I’ve been here before. Vaguely, I recall reading a history book in the library of Everless that theorized it was the birthplace of the Alchemist, but the thought makes me uneasy, and I push it away. It’s the kind of place I’d always begged Papa to take me to as a child, when we still lived at Everless, when I wanted to devour the world.
We hear a clatter ahead of us, heavy footfalls and Shorehaven-accented shouts. Instinctively I veer into an alley to our right, Liam behind me, and we stand with our shoulders to the wall. Fear clouds my mind. But the soldiers pass.