Beth tamped down on that thought. She’d promised herself that she would be more positive and focused. She had changed her clothes and grabbed some food from the kitchen for her and Finn, and she had promised herself along the way that she’d be strong.
“Like I said, they should be right through here,” Finn said for the hundredth time.
“That’s a bookcase.”
“I know.”
“There’s nothing on the other side, just castle wall and the rose garden.”
“I know. I checked.” Finn resumed pacing back and forth by the bookcase. He’d been doing so for about an hour. It was full night. The castle was way too quiet and empty, both things that Beth would have normally liked but now didn’t. She thought Finn might be going a little crazy with this tracking thing. He’d never failed at finding someone before, but now he couldn’t find five someones, including his sister, with whom he had some secret twin connection. They’d gathered hair and tooth brushes for Ari, Tyson, and Bryan. Even armed with those extras, though, Finn still couldn’t move beyond the bookcase.
“Finn,” Beth spoke softly, not knowing how to settle him but needing to try. “I know every inch of this castle. I’ve spent the last nine years exploring it.”
“There’s something we’re missing, Beth.” The plaintiveness of Finn’s voice brought her to her feet — she’d been curled up in a high-back chair by the fire — and she crossed to him. They both stood and stared at the bookcase.
“Let’s say you’re correct.”
“I always am.”
“Right.” Beth laughed at his tone and his boyish grin. Finn bumped her with his shoulder. “The trail leads you here, but doesn’t stop, and doesn’t continue into the rose garden.”
“Right.”
Beth stepped up to the bookshelf and began to run her hands along the shelves. She moved slowly and methodically, not knowing what she was looking for but not wanting to miss anything. Finn was still as he watched her. It was a relief to have him stop pacing and muttering over hair and toothbrushes for a moment.
“I feel more than stupid doing this, you know,” she muttered.
“You don’t look stupid,” Finn murmured behind her, the admiration in his voice obvious even to her.
“Oh, yeah? You just like the weird haircut,” Beth teased. He laughed.
Her hand hit something. An object her eyes couldn’t see. She peered closely as she retraced her movement, back and forth over the side of the shelf at about shoulder height.
“What is it?” Finn asked.
“Something here.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“I know.” Beth curled her fingers behind the object and gave it a slight tug forward. It moved.
“It’s a latch,” she whispered. Excitement, rather than the constant dread of the day, rushed through her.
“A door latch? Locked?” Finn stood as close to her as possible without actually touching her, practically looming over her shoulder, but Beth didn’t mind at all.
“Not for long.” She envisioned a door before her. A door built of shelves and books, and then she saw it open in her mind as she toggled the invisible latch with her fingers again.
Something clicked.
An edge of darkness appeared around a section of the bookcase, a secret door of some sort. Beth reached to pull the bookcase door open farther, but Finn pulled her back behind him and unsheathed his sword.
He slowly pulled the door open. Darkness yawned from a rapidly descending stone tunnel before them. Finn held his sword aloft as if challenging the darkness, and they waited. The air from the secret tunnel wasn’t as musty as Beth would have expected … it smelled of … nothing.
No sound emanated from the tunnel. Tired of waiting, Beth tried to cross past Finn.
“I can’t see in the dark,” he said.
“Right.” She turned to grab one of the candles from the mantel, but was stopped from doing so by a soft touch on her cheek.
She turned her head back to find Finn staring at her intensely, as if trying to memorize her face. “If we go in there …”
“We might be going to our deaths,” Beth said, finishing his thought. Finn nodded and let his hand, which had been hovering by her cheek, fall to his side. “They’re our siblings.”
“I wasn’t saying I wasn’t going,” Finn said. “I … I have … I’m not easy to kill. Neither is Calla for different reasons, but still, you’re very … very …”
“Fragile.”
“No,” he laughed, as if it was impossible for her to be so.
“Very what, then?” she snapped; impatient to move forward.
And then Finn was kissing her. Just like that.
He didn’t start with a hesitant request, and Beth couldn’t even recollect the exact moment he pressed his lips to hers … just that he was kissing her like she was something precious, and she was wrapping her arms around him like she did it every day … like the world revolved around his lips on hers … like nothing mattered more in this moment than kissing each other …
She sighed and melted into him, aligning her body all along his. The sides of their right feet and ankles touched, as well as the inner and outer calves of those legs, their thighs pressed against each other, then bellies and chests. Her arms were wrapped around his broad shoulders, his hand heavy at the small of her back. He held the other, finger-splayed, along the left side of her neck, his fingertips touching from her jaw to her collar bone.
Finn opened his mouth ever so slightly, and Beth touched her tongue to his. The kiss turned less precious, more demanding.
She twisted the hair at the back of his head in her fingers — there was just enough length to hold and tightly grab — and he gripped her waist and pressed the back of her head.
She let everything else go. She felt safe and cherished in his arms. She felt like this moment had just begun, but also that they’d been here forever.
He moaned so quietly that if it wasn’t for the fierce edge in his voice, she might have missed it.
Suddenly, Beth could see it all stretched out before and behind her. All these moments of her life with and without Finn. Kissing him … yelling at him … loving him … so many moments fanned out before her like echoes through time. In each moment, she was slightly different, as if in different points in her life …
She felt overwhelmed by the epic power of it all.
She pushed Finn away.
He didn’t move far, just enough to give her breathing room. Beth panted as she stared, so shocked, into his deep green eyes. She wasn’t sure what she was seeing anymore. Was this him here … now … or before … or after?
“What is it? The kiss?”
She shook her head no, and then yes, but she couldn’t yet speak; couldn’t articulate what she’d seen or felt.
Was that the future? Her with Finn through the years? Was that some sort of fate or destiny clicking into place?
Beth shook her head trying to shake the images out of her mind while she pressed her hand to her belly, hoping to retain the warmth Finn had generated there.
“Beth?” he asked again, twining his fingers in hers. His thumb brushed against Theo’s bond mark on her wrist, and she tried to not shudder at the feel of his touch running up her arm.
“I’m sorry. I saw … you, me, endless … years stretched out …”
“Oh, yeah? You, me, endless years? Is that a proposal?” he teased, and she couldn’t help but laugh.
“It was weird, is what it was.”
“Shall we try one more time, before we go to our deaths?”
“Potential deaths.”
“The question still stands.”
Beth grinned at him, and this time — very deliberately — she stepped into him, stepped right up to his chest, but not touching, just enjoying having him near. Firelight danced in Finn’s eyes as she tilted her head up to him. And he obligingly, though frustratingly slowly, lowered his lips toward hers.
Bethany ap
peared over his shoulder so suddenly that Beth couldn’t even begin to scream.
The Time Walker slipped a metal circlet onto Finn’s head before he even registered her presence. The tracker crumpled to the ground. Beth tried to catch him, but he went too heavily.
He began to convulse. She flung herself over him, pressed her knees into his chest to still him, and grabbed for the circlet set across his forehead.
“Stop!” Bethany snapped. Her knife was at Finn’s exposed neck.
“You’re killing him!” Beth screamed at her older self.
“It’s a side effect. He’s fighting the inhibitor. It’ll wear off once it connects to his magic.”
Beth lunged forward over Finn toward Bethany, but stopped short when Bethany raised the knife to Beth’s throat. Even though she was sure Bethany wouldn’t kill her, Beth couldn’t force herself to press farther.
“Is he the reason you haven’t brought me the sword? He is beneath us!” Bethany spat. “Bryan is waiting for you, and you dally with a common warrior. You make me ill.”
Bethany slammed her open palm across Beth’s face, before she even saw her move. She sprawled backward with the force of the blow.
“I’m tired of this game. Go get the sword, and bring it to me.” Bethany nodded toward the tunnel while Beth pressed her hand to her smarting cheek. “I see you’ve figured out where I’m holding the others. It took you long enough.”
Finn suddenly stilled at Bethany’s feet. A moment of utter fear swept through Beth, but eased when she saw his chest rise and fall. His sword was still in its sheath at his side, he must have sheathed it before he kissed her, and hadn’t even had a moment to draw it at Bethany’s appearance. Beth wondered if she could get to the weapon quicker than Bethany. A sword easily trumped a knife, even if she had no idea how to use it. She imagined that stabbing was stabbing no matter the length of the blade. But Bethany stepped over Finn to block Beth’s path to the sword. She’d dithered too long; it was the story of her life, it seemed.
“If you run, I’ll kill him. If you go for help, I’ll kill them all. I’ve got nothing more to lose at this point. I’ve made my play, and I’ll follow through. You deviate one extra step between here and the tower, and I’ll know.”
Bethany lifted up her right foot and deliberately ground her boot heel into Finn’s chest. Finn didn’t react, but Beth moaned at the sight.
“I am you, remember.”
Bethany and Finn disappeared.
∞
Beth didn’t remember much from her childhood before Theo had brought her to the castle. She knew this was odd, seeing as how she’d been about eight at the time and Rose had memories of things that had happened when she was two, but Beth never questioned Theo about it. She never asked her powerful mind mage of an adoptive mother to help her reconnect to those old memories. She was happy being tucked away in the castle, learning, and exploring. She loved her new siblings — she’d never had siblings before — and she loved her new life. She didn’t want to remember.
Sure, she fretted that everyone else was so much more powerful, and therefore more useful, than her. But really, she didn’t want to be the center of attention. She didn’t want all the responsibility that seemed to come with great power. Look at Theo and Hugh, all the meetings and people needing guidance. Look at all of her siblings, who Theo and Hugh had to adopt because of the backlash of Theo’s magic.
So Beth was happy, surrounded and protected by her adoptive family. Cocooned in a life that had always given her just enough challenge, just enough safety … until now.
It had all unraveled right before her very eyes, and by her own hand … though Beth still had a difficult time wrapping her head around that possibility. The castle, which had provided such comfort in the past, contained secrets that she didn’t want to know. Her family, who were all so powerful that she had never worried for one moment about her own safety, were all gone. Taken by her future self of all people.
Everything was a lie.
Everything she’d thought to be true about herself and her place in this world was a lie.
She wasn’t the loyal, stalwart sister who would bake cookies and listen to tales of magical adventures. She could walk through time and destroy people’s lives with a single action. She could take and hurt and manipulate.
And she could kill. Of this, Beth had no doubt, for why else would her future self need a sword like the one locked away in the tower?
Like she hadn’t in so long, Beth wondered about those first eight years and what her life had been like. She wondered how much of those eight years Bethany remembered. She wondered if that made all the difference. Was she hiding from something that had happened in the past? Was she actually just as evil as Bethany? Was she rotten, so rotten that everyone around her had been trying to protect her from herself, by denying her powers and hiding the results of her Rite of Passage reading?
She remembered nothing from before, but she could recall every moment since in vivid detail.
Theo’s smile when she brushed Beth’s hair off her forehead …
Hugh swinging her up onto his back as they hiked to the lake …
Bryan’s wonder when they had found an abandoned litter of bobcats in the woods. Beth had helped him carry them back to the castle even though she’d secretly been afraid …
Ari blowing bubbles at her in the bath …
Tyson’s booming laugh that had always seemed too big for his little body …
Rose bringing her wildflowers …
Finn … and Finn …
CHAPTER TEN
Beth was aware she was melting down, right into a puddle of useless goo.
She’d always known it would come to this. Ever since Bethany had shown up in the tower, she’d known. It would be her pitted against herself. What she didn’t know was how Bethany would strip everything away first. She didn’t know she would lose everything before having to face herself.
She was so scared that she couldn’t even feel scared. She was frozen in place — her hand was actually hovering in the air, still reaching for Finn — staring at the nothingness that was the now-empty library.
She wasn’t powerful.
She wasn’t smart.
She wasn’t strong or invulnerable.
Bethany had picked off all the most powerful people in her life as easily as one snatched a cookie from the jar.
And now, Beth, the weakest of them all, remained.
Gradually, she became aware of the yawning dark tunnel at her back. Somewhere down there her siblings were waiting to be rescued … or killed.
Theo and Hugh, and all the others, would eventually return. They might even be on their way right now. They might show up in time to save their children, or they might find them dying or dead.
All except her. She’d just be sitting here, completely useless as always.
They’d know she hadn’t even tried. That she let them be taken, one by one … that she let them be killed.
But … before all that, Beth could make one last play … she could try …
She was up and running before she even knew she’d made the decision to move. The lack of blood flow in her legs caused her to stumble as she fought to keep upright and moving forward. She ran, almost blindly, for the library doors.
She ran right over the magic carpet, which curled up and grabbed her right foot.
Beth sprawled through the open doors and into the hallway, face first across the stone floor. She twisted her wrist rather sharply trying to break her fall, and still managed to smack her cheekbone hard enough that pain lanced through her brain and clouded her vision.
She couldn’t breathe for a moment. She’d been right about that carpet all along! It had tripped her, and it was still gripping her leg somehow.
Actually, the carpet was slowly creeping its grip up her leg, as if trying to pin her. Beth thrashed, kicked at the carpet, and tried unsuccessfully to pull herself along the floor towards the grand staircase. The carpet fou
ght as if it had two arms and two legs. It wasn’t strong enough to hurt her — being made of woven fabric obviously had its disadvantages — but it could definitely stop her from moving.
It tried to curl around her, and roll her up inside of it as she reached down to her boot and yanked out her knife. She had just seen the blade’s twin at Finn’s neck, and couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought to pull it sooner.
She slashed at the carpet and it flinched back, though it still kept a hold on her leg. She thrust the knife forward, throwing her upper body weight behind it as she tried to pull her leg from the carpet’s twisted hold.
She snagged and severed some threads. The carpet let go. Beth gained her feet and then lunged forward to slash at the carpet again. It reeled backward. She pivoted, dashed for the stairs, and dove into the first shadow she saw. She turned back to see if she was about to attacked from behind …
The carpet was gone.
Not stopping to think any further than this moment, she sprinted up the stairs and then twisted and turned through the hallways until she came to the tower. She kept a wary eye out for lurking carpets as she skirted the pools of light. Then, keeping to the shadows, she mounted the tower stairs.
∞
A young warrior guard was stationed at the door to the tower’s top room.
Beth stood in the shadows to watch him for a moment. He was only a couple of years older than she was, though head and shoulders taller. He wasn’t sleeping, even though he had to be bored. He was new to duty — she hadn’t seen him before — but all the senior guards had gone with her parents to help in the city.
She stepped out of the shadow.
The guard started so badly that Beth was pretty sure he’d bitten his tongue, and she felt briefly sorry for not giving him any warning of her approach.
“The tower is secure, my lady,” he barked, and was careful to look over her right shoulder rather than into her eyes. A deference Beth always felt she had no right to, but she didn’t waste time correcting him.
“Thank you. You may go.”
The guard looked confused, and then torn. “Lord Bryan posted me here, my lady.”
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