by Sara Holland
I’m not afraid.
I want it to be true. I don’t want to be afraid any longer.
But I know from the look of animal panic on Liam’s face he won’t accept this.
So instead, I say, “Elias is right. We can’t leave now. If you don’t show up for dinner, you’ll be suspicious.”
I’m interrupted by the pop of a cork. Elias grins roguishly. He’s pulled a bottle of wine from his bag. He pours a rather large glass and hands it to me. “While you’re gone, Jules and I will enjoy ourselves. After all, we’ve survived the Sorceress so far.”
“Ignore him, Jules,” Liam says loftily. To Elias, he says, “It isn’t the time for your gallows humor.”
“On the contrary, it’s always that time.” Elias stretches, leaning back in his chair. “You Semperans are so humorless.”
“Oh?” The challenge comes from me. “What are Connemorians like then?”
Elias smiles at me. “I’m so glad you asked, Miss Ember,” he says. “There are our striking good looks, for one. Our happiness—I think that comes from not having winters that last an age. And in Connemor, when you feel something, it’s frowned upon to bury it underneath layers of stiffness and formality.”
Elias throws Liam a glance. “Don’t glower. Isn’t it what you always dreamed of, being here with—” Elias’s hand rises and gestures vaguely in my direction—then drops as Liam gets hastily to his feet. Blushing furiously, I realize what he meant to say: being here with the Alchemist.
Liam’s posture is suddenly stiff, his fingers drumming on the table. “I’ll go to dinner, but we’re leaving as soon as I return. At least one of us should take this seriously,” he says.
His barbed words catch on my skin, but I don’t object. Once Liam is gone, the tension spills out of me, and I collapse onto the bed. It’s easier to forget the small thrill of the thought of Liam sitting here, books open on his lap, dreaming of the Alchemist—of me.
Outside, the bells of the school tower ring out—for special occasions, Elias tells me—then fade into the night. The bustle of birds in the trees has given way to the first of the season’s crickets. I tell Elias everything: about Stef, the weapon shaped like the curve of a fang made of gem and stone with a carved metal snake wrapped around it, and the clue found in my journal that I hope will lead to it.
Elias listens to me with interest. His manner, charm underlaid by a serious intensity, fascinates me. After I’ve finished, Elias pulls out several more bottles of wine and some food.
“Where did you get those?” I ask.
“I stole them from the palace when I showed my face there, obviously. There were quite a few left over after the coronation, which was cut rather short.”
“Yes, I remember.” I laugh.
He tops me off. “Your breakthrough calls for a celebration.”
“Breakthrough? What breakthrough?” I keep my voice sarcastic, trying not to betray that I want him to answer sincerely.
“You know there’s a weapon out there that will kill her. All you have to do is find it,” he says simply. He leans over and squeezes my hand. “Most of all—you’re here.”
The air has the gentle warmth of summer, and we sit together at the little writing desk, eating bread and cheese and apples. Eventually—and after several sips of wine—I gather the courage to pry. “You and Liam know my story. It’s only fair that I know yours.”
“It’s a boring tale, Miss Ember,” Elias counters.
“You helped save my life. I think we can dispense with this Miss Ember business.” I give him my best smile. “Just Jules is fine, thank you.”
His teeth flash in a bright returning smile. “All right, then, Just Jules.” His accent softens the j sound in my name. “I don’t envy you, traveling alone with Liam, even for a few days. I’m surprised you remember how to speak.”
The tone of his voice isn’t cutting, like when Ina or Caro mocked Liam back at Everless. It’s warm, fond, perhaps even a little protective. It reminds me of something Amma and I used to do, teasing each other before anyone else could, because a joke from someone you love has no teeth at all. Grief moves through me. I take a sip of wine to push it away.
It occurs to me that Elias probably knows Liam Gerling better than anyone I met at Everless—maybe anyone in the world—and I feel a rush of curiosity. “You’re from the unbound lands; how did you end up on our shores?”
“The unbound lands?” Elias laughs, not unkindly, but I feel myself blush. “That’s an exotic way of putting it, when in fact you Semperans are the odd birds out of all the world. The only land with magic.”
“I’ve never left,” I say. “So I wouldn’t know.”
“Most haven’t, in either direction.” He leans in. “They’re afraid of you.” He must see my shocked expression, because he laughs. “No, not you, Jules. They’re scared of Sempera and its magic. You should hear the stories of this place. Some say that as soon as you step on Sempera’s shores, the land itself will drain every drop of blood from you. Fear worked in your former Queen’s favor.”
That much I know is true. “So your family was brave—they sent you here to be a student, and . . .”
“Well, my family, we’re ambassadors of sorts. Scholars as well, though, yes. We had special dispensation from your Queen to enter Sempera when no one else could.” Elias stretches his legs out in front of him. I stay quiet, not wanting to give away that I had no concept of such a family. “For centuries, almost all the children in our family have spent time in another land of their choosing, learning about customs, history, trade, before returning to our own shores in order to take up our official duties. The practice is said to make our country stronger. Safer. Better,” he adds quickly.
“Better?” Suspicion kicks in me. I can see the reason in it—even through the envy I feel—but, in another way, what Elias describes sounds vaguely like what Gerlings do with blood-irons. In a way, it sounds like stealing.
Elias points outside, toward a large, ivy-covered building with a peaked roof, windows glowing gold in the dark. “Look, you can see the library. Where I’ve spent most of the past six years.”
“What do you study?” I say, a bit too eagerly. But I find myself wanting to know everything about Elias, and this place, his life here. The life he shares with Liam. It’s a strange kind of want, part tenderness, part envy.
“Officially?” Elias raises his eyebrows. “Philosophy.”
I scoff. I’ve never heard of a philosopher in Sempera. “And . . . unofficially?” I prompt.
He considers the question, tracing his finger around the wine glass. “Yours is not the only country to be infected by magic. Ours was once too—and we vowed long ago not to let it happen again.”
“Infected?” It’s an odd choice of words, so similar to Stef’s.
He pauses, sips his wine. “Centuries ago, two Connemorians were born with the ability to change forms. It’s said that this was only the beginning—that when they were children, they honed their abilities and sought to increase them. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that they succeeded. The power consumed them completely. They became nothing but pure evil.”
I nod, rapt. I can’t imagine Caro becoming more consumed by magic, more evil than she already is. I shiver at the thought.
Elias continues. “Connemor prevailed against them—eventually, and with great sacrifices. I chose to come to your land to study what I could of blood time. It’s best to be aware of what magic lurks in the dark corners of the world.”
I think of Caro—how the more I try to learn about her, my past, the more rapidly any knowledge I think I have slips through my fingers. I remember the Queen descending, burning the Thief’s Fort as a message, that the secrets of time were hers alone. Slaughtering the scholars who worked here. “I can’t imagine that you think being in Sempera is very safe now.”
Elias’s teeth flash again in that smile. “Don’t you know, Jules? Everything worth doing is dangerous.”
“A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have agreed with you,” I mutter. My old ambitions flash through my mind: a little, well-kept cottage on the outskirts of town. A plot of land fertile enough to keep me and my family fed, and walls to keep us warm and safe in the winter. “So—you’re here out of duty?”
“Well, it’s not only duty that keeps me here now. It’s more . . . personal.” Elias takes a swallow of wine, again staring at me like he’s taking measure of me.
“Why?” I ask warily.
Elias lets out a bemused sigh. “Because,” he says, “my best friend is in lo—”
I half shout “Stop” before the word leaves his mouth. I rock backward on my knees, Elias’s words impacting me like something physical.
I sit silently, this information sinking in, the enormity of what I still don’t know washing over me. Liam’s face flashes behind my eyes. Eventually, I find my voice, though it comes out slow and quiet. “Don’t say that. I’ve lost so many people already, I can’t . . . I can’t think of that.”
Elias scrutinizes me. We sit in silence for a while, sipping our wine and watching the moon rise outside the window. I can almost feel his words settling into me, like black ink mixing with my blood, writing itself into my bones. As if uttering them sends up a beacon to Caro, to the Huntsman, marking Liam for death.
Elias breaks our silence. “I’ve always thought that maybe if we know the past, we can change the future. But you, Jules, are in a unique position to do exactly that.”
“What do you mean?” I tense, uncomfortable by how close his words land to my innermost thoughts.
Elias is quiet for a long moment, his face still in the moonlight; our lamps are burning low. I instinctively feel that he’s making some sort of decision, weighing a choice. “You of all people know that the past has a habit of repeating itself—”
A bitter laugh escapes me.
“But that doesn’t mean the past has to repeat itself. We have to believe that we can change the future. Otherwise, what’s the point of anything?”
I open and close my mouth, still unable to find words. His speech stirs something in me, but I’m afraid to look closely at it. Caro’s face forms in my mind and floats there, her eyes the deep green of bottle glass, her lips curved into a smile. The thought of breaking the cycle of death sends a shudder through me, deep as my bones.
“At the very least, just know that I want to help you, Jules. Because Liam is family.” He takes a sip of his wine. Another roguish smile alights on his face. “Or maybe I’m just bored. Still, think of what might be possible, what things you could achieve,” Elias says, playfulness and deadly seriousness tangling together in his voice. There’s something familiar in his speech. I realize with a lurch that Caro said similar things to Antonia. “If I had your abilities—”
“You don’t,” I say sharply. “You don’t have my abilities, and you have no idea what it’s like.”
I expect Elias to laugh again, but he doesn’t. Instead, he stares at me, inscrutable as ever. “Then, Just Jules,” he says calmly, “what will you do with them?”
An image materializes, fast and sharp, like a hot poker to my skin. A future—but a future where I’ve failed, where Caro has her heart and life back, where the bodies of everyone I’ve ever tried to love are buried underneath the cold earth.
If there’s a purpose to my being alive, it’s to stop that future. I take a deep breath. “I’m going to find the weapon that will kill Caro. And if Caro finds me before I do, I’ll die before she can capture me again.”
Elias’s brow creases, but his face at my words isn’t the abject horror that Liam’s would have been. And all at once I realize why I need him.
“Promise me,” I say fervently. “Promise me that if she finds me, you’ll kill me before she can take me away to experiment on, to drain my blood, to torture anyone I love in the hopes of breaking me, until finally, she does.”
Elias shifts uncomfortably. “Jules—”
“I just—” I stumble, throat hot with feeling. “It’s only a matter of time before Caro figures out that he’s been helping me, if she hasn’t already. You must know that if she breaks me, she’ll have her powers back; her reign might never end. And who knows to how many shores it will spread.”
Elias blinks, looking stunned for the first time. He casts his eyes down. But he doesn’t say no.
“Promise me. If not for Sempera, then for your family. I know that you want Liam to survive this,” I say in a forceful whisper.
He takes several large gulps of his wine while my heart beats wildly in my chest.
“It’s possible to survive and not truly live, and I don’t know if Liam would truly live without you,” he says softly. He drains the rest of his wine and a drop spills onto his shirt, leaving a trail of red. “But all right, Jules. You have my word.”
After his words fade from the air, it seems there is nothing left to say. But it turns out that I don’t have to say anything, because something small and glittering materializes from nowhere and arcs above our heads, cutting the heavy silence. For an instant, I think it’s a shooting star, but then it hits the tapestry across the room and drops to the floor with a clink. The face of the late Queen, etched in blood and iron and time, stares up at us.
A blood-iron.
Elias pushes back from the table and retrieves the coin. A look of wonder and fear slides across his face as he flips it over and back again in the palm of his hand.
Elias goes to the edge of the floor, looking down into the night. But he shakes his head. “It’s too dark—”
Soft footsteps sound from below, then on the stairs. A shiver runs up my spine.
Then someone pounds on the door.
19
“Who else knows about this place?” I ask, seized by a strange mixture of fear and possessiveness.
“No one.” Elias stands fluidly, impossible to startle as always. But I don’t miss his hand going to the dagger handle underneath his fine waistcoat.
He crosses to the open wall, looks down, and shakes his head. No one there.
I turn to the door, my heart beating fast. For the first time, I feel vulnerable here, the fort’s enchantment suddenly seeming scant protection. I hear faint footsteps through the stone walls, light, quick. Then a knock at the door. I glance at Elias, thinking that the Huntsman is at Bellwood.
He shrugs. Up to you, his eyes seem to say.
My mouth is dry, but I won’t hide like a field mouse in the Thief’s Fort, the Alchemist’s home. Whoever is coming must have something of mine.
I reach down to touch the knife handle at my belt and close my eyes for a brief moment, calling on the time in my blood, readying myself to lash out if I have to. Then I open the door and step back, everything in me freezing up for a heartbeat when I see a slender female form in the shadows. Caro.
But no, I realize as I make out her details—tall, dark-skinned, dressed in a scholar’s robe. Not Caro. Not the Huntsman. Stef. She cocks her head at me, her eyes traveling down my arm to my hand, poised on my knife handle.
I drop my hands hastily. “Sorry,” I say. “You startled us.”
Stef lifts one shoulder, a silent apology. “I thought the coin would be warning enough. I didn’t want to interrupt a private moment with Liam Gerling.” My mouth gapes open. Stef turns to Elias. “Connemor. Not too wrinkled yet, I see.”
Elias grins, though his posture is still tense. “Not for a few years yet, witchling. Liam’s stepped out.”
Stef grins at me. “So has Linfort. Which is why we’re holding a small gathering in the tunnels. Would you like to break out, now that your warden is gone?”
Defensiveness curls through me, and I draw breath to defend Liam—he’s only trying to do what he thinks is best—but Stef raises an eyebrow at me before I can speak, as if she knows what I’m going to say and she’s not impressed.
“Come on,” she says. “It’s a neat trick you did with time in here, but it’s what, ten steps across, with a load of ec
hoing, empty hallways?” She paces to prove her point, her cloak sweeping the floor as she reaches the wall and exaggeratedly pivots. “Don’t tell me you’re not itching to get out,” she adds.
I nod hesitantly. I can’t help but be a little pleased that she wants to spend time with me after the disaster of last night, and after reading the strangeness of my journal. What’s more, she’s right—my skin is itching with the desire to get out of the Thief’s Fort, to forget about the river of red and the memories it carried, and the Huntsman. Stef grins and looks over her shoulder at Elias.
“I wouldn’t mind,” Elias says, one corner of his mouth tugging up. “But there’s the minor problem that Jules is the most wanted person in all of Sempera—”
“And nobody knows she’s here,” Stef cuts in. “And they certainly won’t expect to see her at a party. Look.” She rummages through her satchel, until she comes out clutching a bundle of velvet. Crossing to the table, she unrolls it. At first I think it’ll be more hedge witch magic, but the fabric unfolds to reveal a set of glass vials filled with face paint and compacts of powder, brushes strapped into pockets.
“You can join us,” she tosses over her shoulder to Elias, “but I’m not wasting any of my paints on you. You’re too pretty already.” She turns back around to me and grins. “Sit down.”
I grip the back of the chair, nervous energy thrumming through me. “Do you really think that will work?” I want more than anything else to get out of the Thief’s Fort, but the idea of stepping out with just a little face paint to disguise me feels like being naked.
“I know so,” Stef says.
She pulls out the chair impatiently, and I sit down. Elias looks on, a small unreadable smile on his face, as Stef works this mundane kind of magic. I don’t have a mirror, so instead I watch a satisfied smile gradually crawl onto Stef’s face, and onto Elias’s an expression of bemused appreciation. I can’t help but think of the day I joined Ina and Caro to go to Laista to celebrate Ina’s wedding, how they painted my face and transformed me. The warmth that existed between us, before I found out the truth and everything splintered.