by Sara Holland
I nod furiously. The tears press at my eyes again. “Ina, do you know the story where the Alchemist offered the Sorceress her heart back and gave her twelve stones to eat?”
She nods curtly. Yes. Her hand lowers a little.
“The twelve stones were the Sorceress’s heart, broken down into twelve parts. When I was killed, I was born again.”
Ina’s eyes flicker.
“I am the Alchemist,” I say, with none of the ringing authority that should come with those words. I take my hand back from her and wrap my arms around my waist, like I can stop myself from falling apart. “The twelfth one, the last one. Caro wants to kill me and take back what I stole from her in my first life.”
“Her heart,” she answers.
“Yes. But first she has to break it. That’s why . . .” But I can’t go on. The tears that have been threatening finally break free and roll down my cheeks, one after another.
“That’s why she killed Roan,” Ina finishes for me, her voice soft and unbelieving. “Because you cared for him.”
I nod. I can’t do anything more, can’t ask her again if she believes me and risk her saying no.
“Jules . . .” She takes a step toward me. Reaches her hands out, not touching me, but something has changed in her, between us. Her eyes are soft, still uncertain, but the hatred that burned so brightly has dissolved. Leaving her not the Huntsman, not the Queen, but just a girl, just my friend, pale and bereft.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I say, voice thick with tears. “I should have, I should have tried harder, but I didn’t realize, I . . .”
Confusion flickers in her eyes. “Why me? Why would you tell me?”
I almost laugh at that, because it’s this part of the truth that feels the most frightening. But I steel myself and continue.
“When we met, you confided in me—you wanted to know the secrets of your birth. Do you still want to know?”
She gives a hesitant nod. “I suppose.”
“Do you remember when we went to the orphanage, and the man there told me about Briarsmoor? We were born there, Ina, both of us, on the same day. To the same mother.” I draw a ragged breath. “We’re twins, and our parents were lost during the time disturbances we were told about.”
“The Queen found me there,” Ina says. Her voice is still flat, empty of feeling, but I have to count it as a victory that she hasn’t run yet, or lashed out at me. She’s still here, she’s still listening, and that has to mean something. “I had a stone in my mouth.”
“A sign of the Alchemist,” I say. “And it was me, I had the stone, if there ever was one. But Papa—my uncle—our uncle,” I realize with a jolt of grief at what Ina never had, “he took me away. He didn’t realize the Queen would take you instead, he must not have.”
“So Caro thought,” Ina says, tripping over each word. “She thought—I—”
“Yes.” I dare to take a step closer, close enough to touch Ina, and she doesn’t move away. “She was going to kill you, until she found out I was the Alchemist, not you.”
Ina regards me for a long moment, fear and disbelief and something else flickering beneath the transparent curtain of her face. My heart aches for how close to the surface all her feelings are. How terrible these last few weeks must have been for her, and I’ve been running all over Sempera chasing my memories, abandoning her to Caro. But then, swiftly as a gathering storm, her features twist into rage.
“Liar. Liar.” The knife is once again at my throat. “Did you think I’d believe that?”
I close my eyes. Maybe this is the end—grimly, I think that dying by Ina’s blade is far better than dying at Caro’s. Perhaps the fear of dying addles my brain, because another idea occurs to me. “Ina, can I try to show you the truth? If I can do that, will you believe me?”
She blinks. “How?”
Ina wants to believe me, I’m sure of it. I close my eyes, and gently take Ina’s hand in mine. Memory is moments, and moments are time, I think, channeling Stef’s words, and imagine pulling Ina in.
Slowly—slowly—it begins to work.
Ina in hand, I wade into memories, one after another sifting in and out of focus on the surface of my mind. Caro at Everless, watching the liquid gold of my time dance across the floor; Briarsmoor, first the skeleton of it, then the high keening scream of our mother, Naomi; Roan on his knees, Caro’s blade pressed to his throat—
I yank my hand from Ina’s and lurch forward, back in the graveyard. In front of me, Ina is staring at me, eyes wide and glassy.
“I’m sorry, Ina,” I say, and touch her arm lightly, feeling the hardness of armor beneath the Huntsman’s cloak. I know the words can’t possibly convey everything I feel, my regret and sorrow over Roan and even the Queen, and how sorry I am that she was drawn into it, that she’s been wounded in the fallout. “I’m so sorry for everything.”
Her eyelids drift shut for a moment, her chest rising and falling fast beneath her cloak. I can see her trying to master herself, and it twists at something in me. But finally she gives in and lets the emotion spill onto her face. Legs going out from under her, she collapses into my chest, in a way that makes me certain she’s been waiting a very long time to fall.
I catch her. I catch her and I don’t let go.
28
We sit for hours on the Gerlings’ plot. I tell Ina what’s happened since the night we visited the hedge witch in Laista. She tells me that Elias will recover—and if only because of her sheer force of shining will, I believe her. By the time we’ve run out of things to say, the day is faded, the bright moon rising. A dry part of me marvels that twelve lifetimes and everything I’ve been through since escaping Everless can be detailed in so brief a time.
Ina continues, “I always thought there was something about you. Ever since I met you at Everless. Some secret, some sadness.”
The reminder of our time together at Everless—so simple compared to now—makes my heart twist, and I lower my eyes. Maybe, like Ina, I carry my emotions on my face, too, only I haven’t experienced any but secrets and sadness, so I wouldn’t know the difference. “I didn’t know then about . . . about myself. My father had just died. I was starting to understand, but I didn’t know.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I don’t completely understand about the Alchemist and the Sorceress, but I believe you.”
I almost ask her why. The most unbelievable thing of all is this little bit of trust that she’s given me. But tears clog up my throat, and I don’t say anything.
“At least that explains why Caro’s changed since my mother died,” Ina says. “All she speaks of now is revenge. She wants me to raise an army, Jules, take soldiers from every town and village in Sempera. She’s talked about invading other nations, spreading blood-iron to their shores. She bled time from innocents. She never used to be so bloodthirsty.”
“She was.” Suddenly I can’t meet Ina’s eyes, so I look down at the grass. “She just didn’t show it until now. Caro said she’d kill until she found the one who would break me. Anyone who I love, or who loves me, is in danger. So many people who have tried to protect me have died for it.”
Ina looks at me, then away. “Do you think all of it was a lie?”
“I don’t know.” My friendship with Caro only lasted a few weeks before I discovered who she truly was at Everless, but Ina had known her for years. I call up the face of the little girl who approached me at the river. Sweet, open. But no matter how hard I try to hold on to the picture of her, an older Caro dispels it.
Ina manages a sad smile. “When I think of what we shared, I’m sure it was real. Some of it, at least. She cared for me.”
“She put you into danger, sending you out as the Huntsman.”
Ina shakes her head. “I wanted to go out and find you. It was my idea to put on this costume.” She looks away from me as she speaks. “Whatever terrible things she’s done, Caro always saw a part of me that others didn’t. She was the only person who didn
’t treat me like I was some glass doll. It’s like . . . she saw the power in me.” She pauses, thinking. “That’s probably because she thought I was the Alchemist for so long.”
“I’m sure it’s not,” I say quickly, meaning it with every fiber of me.
Ina sighs. “Knowing that it wasn’t all a lie makes it worse. She was supposed to be my friend,” she whispers, her voice soft and broken. Her cheeks shine with tears.
I stare into Ina’s face for a beat too long, still overwhelmed by the knowledge that she believes me—somehow, despite everything, she believes me, like Amma did. She’s looking at me with trust and expectation in her face, like I might know what to do next. A sudden, fierce longing for Liam stabs through me. Liam, who always knows what to do next.
“What are you going to do about Liam?” she asks. Can she read the thoughts on my face? “You care about him, don’t you? You love—”
“Don’t say that,” I cut in, hurriedly, and the naked fear in my voice silences her. “Please.”
But Ina’s never been one to stay silent. Softly she asks, “Do you think he’s the one whose death will break your heart?”
I swallow. “I don’t know.” Though everything in my gut screams that my words are false.
“But what now, Jules? How can I help you?”
“I need to find the weapon that will kill her,” I say quietly.
Ina’s jaw clenches. “You have to go back to Everless.”
I squeeze her hand, wanting nothing more than to ground myself there, next to my sister. It’s not that I don’t want to go—I want to more than anything—but I also want to stay with Ina for a little longer, not knowing what wrath Caro may bring down on me, when I face her. “You only want me to see Liam,” I grumble, to hide what I’m really thinking. Caro knows me. She must know that sooner or later I’ll return to the place this all started.
Ina laughs, lets her head rest on my shoulder.
A thread of smoke catches my eye, rising in the air in front of Roan’s headstone. Intrigued, I walk forward to see that Stef’s gifted stone is sitting in a pool of spilled wine. Dissolving.
Ina follows. “Is that blood-iron gone off?”
“No. It was a gift, passed down from the Alchemist long ago. A token to show you the true face of evil.” The smoke hangs in the air above it, unmoving. Seized by an idea, I gather a few more cups of wine from around Roan’s grave, pour them into a single cup, then drop what’s left of the black stone inside. Just as I would do if I were putting a day-iron into Lady Sida’s afternoon tea.
Immediately, the wine begins to sizzle and spark. The smoke becomes thicker, twisting. To my utter shock, the smoke seems to take shape in the air in front of us, crawling slowly into the visage of a man’s face. His lips are thin. There are deep, dark sockets where his eyes should be. Ina and I inhale at the same time.
“Is that— Who is that?” Ina asks, breathless. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“The face of true evil,” I reply, recoiling as the face seems to open its mouth to laugh—then fades all at once, winking out of existence as if it were never there. I blink.
Who else could it be but Ever?
Ina squeezes my hand. It pulls me out of my thoughts. “You’re right—I’ll go back to Everless,” I say, putting intention into the words this time. “If the weapon isn’t there, then there might be some other truth there that will help me defeat her.”
It makes a grim kind of sense. I need to end this where it all began—both my understanding of all this; and the story of the Alchemist and Sorceress.
“And then what, Jules?”
I look at Ina, and see my own fear and hope reflected in her eyes.
“And end this,” I whisper.
Ina looks solemn. “You don’t have to face her, not yet, not if you’re not ready. You can come back to Shorehaven with me—”
“I’m sure.” It’s the only thing I am sure of, and I cling to it, even as it makes terror roll through me. The thought of what Caro might do if she discovers that Ina knows the truth rattles me to my core. “I’m ready.”
“Well, I’ll help you.” Ina is still for another beat, then she takes her hands from me. She unclasps something at her chest and then sweeps the black cloak from her shoulders, a shadow made material. Underneath, she’s wearing a simple tunic and leggings, like anything Amma or I would have worn back in Crofton. She drapes the cloak over her arm and reaches around to the nape of her neck, to untie the piece of dark silk that had covered her nose and mouth—and holds her old disguise out to me.
“So you can get into Everless,” she says in response to my blank look. “They won’t stop the Huntsman.”
Warmth sweeps through me. No one’s ever questioned me so little as Ina just now, even though returning to Everless is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. “That’s brilliant, Ina. Thank you.”
She bites her lip, thinking. “I’ll send a message ahead to call Caro away. I’ll think of something. I can’t guarantee you long, but—it’ll be better than nothing. It’ll give you time to search, at the very least.”
I look at Ina, really look at her. She’s not the guileless, laughing princess who arrived at Everless scarcely a month ago. There’s a gravity to her now, an iron in her square shoulders and the way she holds her chin high.
Even in this simple outfit, she looks like a queen.
I realize I don’t need to fear for her—or rather, that I might fear for her, but she’s not a child to be protected.
My sister holds my gaze, steady and strong. “Be safe, Jules. Sorcer—” She stops short, cutting herself off with a little laugh, then pulls me into a tight embrace. “I suppose I don’t need the Sorceress anymore, Jules. I have you.”
By the time I mount my horse, Ina has ridden off, the confidence she brought with her blown away with the snapping wind. Everless hovers in the distance, a black stain on the sky. This is where we first bound time to blood. Since then, some ancient, inexorable power has pulled me back to the estate—maybe has been luring me back, over and over, ever since Papa and I stepped outside its walls all those years ago. A silk thread woven through those gardens and towers and corridors, the other end sunk deep into my heart, reeling me back in now.
If there is an answer anywhere in all of Sempera, any weapon buried, any way to end Caro hidden, it feels right that it should be there.
I give the horse her reins and urge her forward, toward the Gerling estate.
29
I ride alone and steady through the dark space between Everless and me. The estate’s pull grows stronger and stronger behind my breastbone with every step forward. An odd quiet has pushed every other feeling, every other weakness out of my body. As if my very bones know that I’m nearing the end of the road.
After so much skulking in the shadows, it’s strange to travel openly, albeit in the uniform of the Huntsman. The costume fits perfectly: the black cloak is cool and light, and the hood covers my eyes. I travel along the road for the first time in ages as day fades into night. The people and carriages that pass give me a wide berth.
Thoughts swirl through my head, plans and contingencies about what will happen when I reach the Gerling estate. Of everything that passed between Ina and me at the graveyard, one answer sticks at the center of the maelstrom, a center that everything else swirls around.
Everless’s secrets will put an end to this, forever.
The sight of the Gerling estate still takes my breath away after all this time, even what I’ve seen. My first home as Jules, the place where the Alchemist and Sorceress suffered and broke at that first lord’s hand, according to the stories. I push the lingering childhood memory away. I have to focus on what’s ahead, not what’s behind.
I scarcely realize I’ve stopped riding, stopped dead in the middle of the road at Everless’s feet. It looks so dark, so empty, only a few lights guttering in its windows. Chaos, Liam had said, the coffers emptied and the servants who haven’t been dismissed ex
ist in limbo as the vultures he has for relatives jockey for power. Is he inside there, somewhere? Now that only he and his father and mother are left, what is it like to walk those halls, filled with the echoes of his dead brother?
A cold breeze wraps around me, and my heart twists. Liam, inside now. I focus on a dim, flickering light in his tower of Everless and all at once, my feelings turn into something pure and clean and simple.
I love him.
My horse plunges forward.
It’s as Ina said it would be. Cloaked in the Huntsman’s uniform, I ride straight up to the Everless gates. Six guards in the familiar green and gold flank the entrance, three on either side. They snap to attention when the sound of my horse’s hooves on the cobblestone reaches them. I feel a bit like I’m floating outside of my body, like I’m observing the scene from a distance, as often happens when I control time. I can see their fear as I come into view—a figure has just emerged from the dead of night. The fear doesn’t dissolve when I get near enough for them to see the Huntsman’s hood.
Thankfully, before I worry about needing to speak, they salute as one. Another of the guards signals frantically to his compatriots atop the wall. A moment later, the great gates open only for me.
And straight-backed and alone and in the shape of a warrior, I ride inside.
The castle seems to breathe before me, its dark shape like something alive as I cross the lawn, the sound of my horse’s footsteps swallowed up in the silence. It’s spring—there should be flowers, rioting from the window beds and in the gardens that skirt the castle. Gardeners should be moving through them even now, working their pretty magic in the night so that the Gerlings wake up to a pristine lawn, a seamless quilt of flowers and green. But instead, everything is dark and almost-silent. So quiet that I can hear the muted sound of the lake on the other side of the castle, waves slapping dull and steady against the rocky shore where only a month ago, I mourned Papa’s death.