by Sara Holland
And yet, it’s not empty. As I draw nearer, the shapes of guards make themselves known all around the estate, crawling along the sides of the building and along the top of the walls, nestled in the castle’s various little outcroppings and passing before windows. My heart pounds. These are more guards than I’ve ever seen here before, even when Ina and the Queen first arrived at the end of winter. And immediately I know that they’re here for me. Waiting for the rabbit to return to the trap. Suddenly Ina’s cloak feels like scant armor.
But I force myself not to show any fear as I draw up to the courtyard that separates the lawn from the castle. The guards ringing the entrance regard me with the same fear at the gate. Once this might have given me a thrill of power, but now it only fills me with dread. I slide off my borrowed horse and hand the reins to the closest guard, who’s careful not to touch my hands as he takes them. When I finally pass into the castle, I breathe, and some of the tension flows out of my chest.
I’m home.
Besides the odd guard stationed at a corner or patrolling a stretch of hall, the corridors are completely empty. So much servants’ work happens at night—the halls mopped and swept, the fireplaces stocked with wood, the torches kept lit. But none of it is happening now. Everless has changed, even more than when I returned after ten years away. The estate was always harsh and cruel to those at the bottom, I know that. But this is different, the halls empty and dead, the doors closed against a threat darker and more dangerous than any aristocratic cruelty. Despite the emptiness everywhere, I feel seen—watched. A shiver runs up my spine, growing and growing until it swallows up all my plans.
Run, Jules, an old voice tells me. Run and don’t look back.
I push the voice down, but it remains to whisper at me from a dark corner of my mind.
I steady myself and walk down the main hall. The curtains drawn and dusty, the urns in the alcoves empty of flowers. It unnerves me enough that when I next come upon a guard, pacing the east wing, relief floods me. I catch his arm.
He starts and goes for his dagger but drops his hands when he sees my hood and mask. He’s young, the fuzz of a mustache on his upper lift, and the sigil of Shorehaven glitters on his vest. Caro’s man, not the Gerlings’.
“Where is everyone?” I ask without thinking, instinctual fear of soldiers driven down by a deeper kind of panic.
“My—my lady,” the man stammers. “The curfew you asked for. No resident of Everless is to be out of bed after sunset.”
I drop his arm, dread churning in my gut. How much have the people of Everless—nobles and servants alike—suffered in my name?
I move away from him, forcing myself to keep my head high and my pace even, no matter how unnerved I am. Names, demands drum through my mind—Tam, Bea. I feel torn, pulled in different directions—the kitchens, the servants’ dormitory, the stables. But one pull is sharper and more urgent than the rest, the certainty digging its claws into my chest. Liam.
I have to find Liam. Tell him what I know. Make sure that he’s safe.
Though everything in me screams to find the weapon first, I know that if things don’t go my way, this could be my last chance to see him, to tell him how I feel. To say good-bye.
When I’m sure the guard is out of sight, I break into a run. I don’t stop until I’m in the wing that holds all of the Gerlings’ chambers, as dark and silent as the rest of the estate.
I haven’t been up here since I was a girl, and even then only once or twice—when Roan was confined to his room after some small misdemeanor and he would enlist his servant friends to bring him treats from the kitchen. The memory surfaces out of nowhere, and grief for our lost childhoods hits me like a battering ram to the ribs. I lean against the door to weather it—and then freeze, as the sound of raised voices floats from the other end of the hall.
I look over to realize that the grandest, largest door, which can only lead to Lord Nicholas’s chambers, is ajar, and a faint light shines inside.
“I ask again,” someone growls, voice coarse with drink, who I recognize as Lord Nicholas. “How can you hope to command any authority after these events? The Gerling name is in shambles.”
“This is still my home, not Caro’s or Ivan’s.” Liam’s voice. Mingled relief and fresh fear flood in, and I drift closer to Lord Nicholas’s door almost without realizing. A terrible chill goes through me as something slams in the room, like a cup on a table. Then footsteps, and before I can think or move, Liam storms out into the hall. I only have time to note that he looks haggard, bruise-like shadows darkening beneath his eyes, before he turns down the hallway, occupied by some private grief, utterly oblivious to me.
I move without meaning to, chasing Liam’s shadow down the hall—and into his room. The door is wide-open to reveal a large room made smaller by the bookshelves lining every wall, their contents overflowing into stacks beneath the windows. When the door swings shut behind us, there’s a moment where all I can hear is the pounding of my own heart, the roaring of blood in my ears; all I can see is Liam turning to see me, his face shadowed in the shifting light of his bedside lamp, but not shadowed enough to hide the fear that blooms in his eyes before he tamps it out.
A shudder moves visibly through him, and he backs away into the center of his candlelit room. I follow almost unconsciously. I’ve never been in his room before, and with a pang, I remember how little I know of his life. A thousand greedy observations batter me at once. Everything is messier than I expected. The rug is turned up in one corner; he probably trips over it constantly, head buried in a book. There’s a desk and a nightstand, both heaped with papers, and a bed. The covers on his bed are worn but not ragged, and I wonder if he’s had them since he was a child. They’re also bunched and twisted, which combined with the dark circles beneath his eyes makes me think he’s not been sleeping.
“Liam,” I whisper.
“I thought I might see you here soon,” he says, his voice low and rough. “Come to kill me, my Queen? Or Caro, is it you?”
At first, I’m confused, but then I realize that Liam thinks I’m the Huntsman. He takes a step toward me, his hands open and empty at his side. He’s trembling ever so slightly, but his eyes burn with anger and life.
“It’s true what people are saying,” he hisses. “I helped Jules Ember escape Everless. I traveled with her. I love her.”
My breath stops in my lungs as Liam’s words land one by one, deep in my chest. Love. The impact of that one syllable shakes me, loosing my limbs from their freeze. The lump is still in my throat, but I raise my hands and unclasp my mask. Then lower my hood, taking both pieces down at once, and lift my face to the candlelight.
Liam rocks back. “Jules . . .” My name escapes him in a whisper. “I thought . . .”
My words come too fast, in one rushed breath. “This was the only way I could get in, I—”
In three swift steps, he’s crossed the distance between us and has folded me in his arms, pressing his face into my hair. My arms come up around his waist, and I hold him, feeling him shake. It feels like years since we parted—an entire lifetime between us, an eternity of words unspoken. My face into his chest, I breathe him in deep, then raise my head and find his lips with mine.
He gasps into my mouth, one hand flying out to grip the bedpost as the other wraps tighter around my shoulders, pulling me tight against him. I ball my fists in the back of his shirt and wrench it up, my knuckles brushing his bare back, warm, surprisingly soft. As our lips move together, he yanks at the Huntsman’s cloak, breaking the clasp, sending the black silk pooling around our feet. I gasp—I can’t help it—and he holds me still tighter.
Our last kiss took place in a dreamscape of panic for me and sleep for him, a sense of unreality wrapping around us both, blunting any sense of consequences.
It’s nothing like that now.
Dead of night as it may be, both of us are fiercely, achingly awake. This isn’t soft, isn’t slow. There’s something like desperation in the way Liam’s lips move again
st mine, shaping something that could be my name, but my blood is roaring too high to hear it. I answer him, though, catching his lip with my teeth, sinking my fingers into his back in an effort to pull him even closer to me. I can feel the whole of him, the shape of his body pressed against mine. And still I want him closer, for all the times I pushed him away.
I splay my hands on his back, feel his muscles moving beneath his bare skin. He breaks away from our kiss, and a whimper of protest escapes me—but then his lips are on my cheek, my jaw. He tips my head back with his hands in my hair and kisses my neck, his lips trailing fire over my throat, and all the reasons I feared him, feared for him, all the reasons I’d held us apart crumble to dust.
In this moment, I’m not the Alchemist. I’m only Jules, alone and frightened and hoping and wanting, and Liam Gerling is reaching out to me, a hand across the dark. It’s been there ever since I kissed him in Montmere—or even before that, perhaps since he found me at Shorehaven, when he rescued me from Everless. There is a part of my heart that is still human, wholly me, and somewhere along the way, that part has come to belong to him.
There’s trepidation, fear even, in the ragged breaths we exchange now. There are a hundred small and human ways he could break me. As many in which I could—and probably will—break him. Maybe that’s what love is, maybe there’s nothing to do except open my arms to it. And so I open my arms, unafraid of the thundering of his heart.
All I know is that I’ve had enough of waiting.
For a while, I sleep peacefully, the best sleep I’ve had in what seems like years.
But it can’t last.
Too soon, I wake up. For a moment, I don’t remember where I am or why—I only know that I feel safe. Happy. But it’s a conditional safety, a conditional happiness. An awareness that outside the boundaries of this little space, the world still waits, ready to catch me up again in its dangers.
Liam shifts beside me, and the rest comes flooding back. He’s on his side, turned away from me, his shoulders washed silver in the moonlight coming through the window. The sound of his breathing is soft in the dark, the warmth of him tangible even though I’m a few inches away, and I ache with his closeness. I put a hand out, rest it between his shoulder blades. He stirs but doesn’t wake.
I want to lie back down again. For once, let myself fall back into dreams. Let this moment last a little longer. But I can’t forget the truth. My time until Caro returns to Everless—maybe all the time I have left, I think with a shudder, because I don’t know what will happen when I face her—is winding down. And even if I did close my eyes again, I wouldn’t be able to sleep, knowing that the key to breaking my heart lies so close.
Awareness presses in on me, the threat of unknown pain tightening my lungs. I can’t forget what I must do—find the weapon that will kill Caro. But where do I start?
My heart slows down, each beat suddenly sounding like the ominous toll of some ancient drum.
Only it’s not my heart—a sound carries up into the room: the clanging of Everless’s gate followed by hurried shouts. I get up, run to Liam’s small window, and look out.
My blood runs cold. Caro, returned.
30
I bite back the rising panic as I step away from Liam’s window, my heart hammering. Caro is here. Caro is here and she is going to find me. Find Liam.
Think. I need to find some spot of significance, an embedded clue, as I found in the glade and the valley . . . but I have too many childhood memories of Everless—my feet would probably guide me to my favorite hiding spot from my games with Roan, or to the forge that we accidentally burned. Liam said he’d scoured Everless, too, and found nothing.
For a moment, I consider waking Liam. Even with Caro bearing down on me, he’d delight in the puzzle. I could drag him along on this journey, snatch every last bit of time with him I can before Caro arrives. But he looks so peaceful lying there, his brow smooth of the furrows and his eyes free of the shadows that have marked his face—even in sleep—for as long as I’ve known him. He’s lost nearly everything at my hands; I don’t want to take his rest from him too.
Besides: something in me is whispering that I have to do this alone.
So I slip out from under the covers. A chill wraps around me immediately, colder than it seems any spring night has a right to be. As if to urge me back into oblivion for another few hours. But this sense of opposition—like Everless itself is aware of me, and is trying to hinder me—just makes me more determined to search out the truth.
Stepping away from the bed, I hesitate. If Liam wakes up and finds me gone, I don’t doubt that he’ll come after me. He can’t be roaming the castle when Caro gets here. For all his bravery, he would be no match for her.
Before I can think better of it, I stretch my hands out toward Liam, letting the memories of a few hours ago sweep over me. I close my eyes and will time to descend on him softly, like a blanket, settling on his skin and stopping him where he is, midbreath. The gentle rise and fall of his back stills, and I shiver. But at least while he’s frozen, he’ll be safe. It’s the only protection I can provide until I kill Caro—or am killed myself.
I find my shift, my dress, my boots. I pick up the Huntsman’s mask and cloak and put them on again, closing the clasp as best I can and hoping no one will look too closely at how the cape hangs crooked. I glance back at Liam once more—longing firing every inch of my skin from the inside—but make myself turn away.
If I survive the coming encounter with Caro, the next time I sleep next to Liam will be all the sweeter for being safe. I tell myself this as I slip out into the hallway, taking the sole lantern from his room. If Caro does come looking for him, she’ll see the darkness and think the room empty.
I have to tell myself something, or else I’ll never walk away.
From the east-facing windows in the hallway, I can see it’s closer to dawn than I thought, the soot-colored sky lightening to the color of pale ash on the horizon. These windows look out over Laista and then a stretch of farmland, ringed by woods. I scan the horizon, as if I would be able to see Caro coming, larger than life. But the only movement is a few flickering lights in the windows of Laista’s early risers, and far in the distance, a quick flutter in the sky, a flock of birds against the coming dawn.
I turn away and start walking. As when I came in, the halls of Everless are empty of the servants who normally ought to be filling it at this hour. But I don’t see guards either; maybe there’s enough residual respect left for the Gerlings, in their grief, for Caro’s men to steer clear of this residential wing. Maybe.
I wander down two flights of stairs and find myself in the eastern wing of the main floor. I have a vague sense that I’m near the library, but the castle seems changed, making me unsure. The quiet is eerie. It seems as though there should be night sounds—the distant commotion of someone about their chores or pacing their room, the crackling of fireplaces and the creak of the walls as they settle. But there’s nothing, as though something has descended upon the estate and smothered all its little noises.
Or maybe it’s me. My senses seem to have been jumbled and rearranged, the extremes I’ve veered between in the last few hours—bliss with Liam, dread of Caro—pulling at me, opening cracks in my perception. My vision seems sharper, and every flicker of motion—a waving curtain, a guttering lamp—makes me whip around. But my hearing is muffled, and I can’t feel the floor beneath my feet or the cold air around me. As if my capacity for touch is still being taken up by the memory of Liam’s hands on me and mine on him, that wild warmth.
When I think to take stock of my surroundings, I realize I’m near the vault. The carved door to the Gerlings’ treasure stands at the other end of the hall, two guards on either side watching my approach with wide eyes. I remember with a sweep of gratitude that according to Liam, the vault is empty, the coffers drained, and hope they won’t think much of my being here. One nods to the other, a stiff, quick motion, and they turn smartly on their heels and walk of
f in the opposite direction.
And I am alone.
Hardly knowing what I’m doing, I drift up to the door of the vault and put my hands on the wood. It’s too dim to really see the carvings, but it doesn’t matter—I can feel their intricacy beneath my fingers, supplementing the images burned into my memory. The tumbling jewels, the dancing carved women with their flowing silks.
Papa’s face flashes through my mind. I never saw his body after he died, never saw the mava stains on his hands, the marks of his trying to enter this vault. His life given to retrieve one little book—or maybe, I think with a thrill, whatever’s hiding down there. And here it is, practically standing open.
The conviction fills me: this is where it all began.
Both my journey toward discovering that I was the Alchemist, and the story of the Alchemist—my story. Something draws me on past this carved, shining door, some almost animal instinct, issuing from somewhere deeper than my bones. I close my eyes and reach into my mind, knowing the feeling by now, that means I’ve been here before I was Jules. Long before.
What’s hiding there?
I see chains, I see the bars of some ancient cell. A man’s cruel face, heavy and lined, peering in at us through the gaps. But I can’t tell what’s just the story I’ve heard so many times, and what’s real.
And then, as I think, terror slams into me, surging suddenly from somewhere deep in my gut. Running just as deep as the urge to enter the vault—deeper. The images fly from my mind in a wash of darkness, the memory of a long-ago scream echoing in my ears. Like whatever lies behind this door in my memory is too terrible even to carry with me, like my mind is trying to protect me, hiding part of the memory away behind a thick curtain.
I snatch my hands from the door, my heart pounding in my ears, but the terror doesn’t fade. The castle seems to shift and rearrange itself around me, the faint light of dawn retreating, the walls looming closer, the world contracting around my body like I’m trapped in the belly of some great breathing beast. I hear low, feminine laughter as if through a long tunnel; I hear the thunder of horses’ hooves. As if Caro and all her soldiers are already here, barreling down the very hallways of Everless toward me.