by Kresley Cole
At the very least, I had to see for myself his . . . final resting place.
And so I gritted my teeth and climbed. Circe's flood had gouged this slope, making it much steeper.
What will I find at the top?
I'd told Sol to wait in the truck. Had I tied him down? I was so numb with grief that I couldn't remember.
As I searched for a handhold, I recalled the vision Matthew had given me before he'd disappeared. He'd shown me ten swords in my back--like the ten of swords Tarot card--vowing that the darkest days were ahead. He'd told me, "Matthew knows best."
On the way back from the Lovers' lair, I'd asked Selena what she made of his message. Her brusque answer: "That he's a freaking nutjob?" At my disapproving expression, she'd added, "I know that the ten of swords card means that somebody's about to be crushed by a merciless power--with no warning. I mean, totaled. It's supposed to represent rock bottom, when you can't sink any lower." Her dark eyes had grown serious. "Doesn't sound good, Evie."
Matthew had been preparing me for Jack's death. Or trying to.
The Fool had no idea. There was no preparing to have one's heart destroyed. Those ten swords had stabbed me through, piercing it.
He'd asked me what I would sacrifice. I hadn't been able to answer then, but I could now.
Not Jack.
I pulled myself higher. What will I find at the top of this rise?
The Fool had also begged me never to hate him. I would give him as much mercy as he'd shown me. He could have prevented Jack's and Selena's deaths, the entire army's.
All of those people had set off, filled with hope about a place called Acadiana. Jack would've made good on his promise of a refuge.
Matthew knows best? He'd ridden away like a coward before the Emperor attacked, telling Finn one last cryptic statement: I've made peace with it.
With letting my Jack die.
I blamed Matthew as much as Richter. One of those ten swords had been the Fool's. He had stabbed me in the back.
What will I find at the top . . . ?
I blamed myself as well. It should have been me. I had been fated to die.
At the very least, if I had listened to Circe's advice--leaving Selena in the hands of the Lovers--Jack and all those people might've been spared. Selena had died anyway.
I'd made those choices--I'd pretended to be a leader--so those deaths were on my head. Tess's was as well.
Last night, after I'd reburied her body, I'd run down to the shore outside the fort, where Circe and I had once talked. I'd yelled to the river, "I know you're here, Circe! Show yourself!" Nothing. "Have you seen Aric?"
She hadn't given me even a ripple on the surface. "You were right about taking out the Emperor!"
When she'd still refused to answer me, I'd waded into the river and kicked the water to provoke her. "Damn you! Why won't you appear?"
Silence. Even as my tears had spilled into her domain. . . .
Finally, I reached the top. Gasping for breath, I levered myself up on my feet--and stared in shock.
The peak was no longer a peak. Circe's tidal wave must have flash-cooled Richter's lava because a sea of smooth black stone stretched from the top of this mountain to a distant one, across what used to be a valley. The drizzle made the surface shine.
"Mark this image," Aric had told me as he'd pointed to the cauldron of bubbling lava. "Where will you search for him?"
A sob burst from my chest. I'd watched Jack's murder.
No, I refused this! There must've been a way for him to escape. I fought to clear my dazed mind, to recall what I'd seen before the attack.
The long line of the army's caravan had inched across that valley, a glowworm in the dark. Cars and trucks had sprawled for about a mile, a fraction of the valley's length. Jack and Selena would have been riding at the forefront, but had turned back toward me when I'd radioed.
Jack and I had marveled at the snow. At tiny drifts of white. He'd marveled that I'd chosen him.
He and Selena might have ridden a mile or two at most before Richter had struck. Lava had buried the line of trucks from front to back--as well as this entire valley and several rises all around.
Even if Jack and Selena had covered ten miles, they still would've been in the middle.
Selena, the girl who'd just endured the Lovers' hell, had died. Part of me had sensed that kill. Other Arcana had as well, and Matthew, in his own way, had confirmed it.
She'd had superhuman speed, agility, and senses, yet she'd perished. And she'd been right beside Jack.
He's dead.
No one could have survived this.
That battle had left behind a vast gravestone. Buried beneath it were hundreds of victims. My Jack was buried there.
Why had I made the decision not to fight in this game? Maybe the game was punishing me for daring to challenge it. Or the gods were.
By trying to reverse time and bring back Jack, I'd challenged fate as well. And I'd failed.
Did that mean I always would? Could a fate ever be changed?
In a daze, I trudged across the stone. Roughly halfway across, I stopped. Here the wind blew even harder, the rain stinging.
With a sob, I dropped to my knees to mark Jack's and Selena's graves. How could I sum up their lives in a few short lines? They'd been so much more.
Flaring my claws, I began to engrave the rock, starting with Selena.
Then . . . Jack. Sweating, bleeding, hyperventilating, I carved. Time passed. Who knew how long? Night rolled over into more night.
When I finished, I'd worn my bloody fingertips to the bone, and insanity beckoned as seductively as a blossom. I collapsed onto my back and lay between the two memorials, dripping blood on them.
I grew friendship ivy for Selena.
And honeysuckle for Jack.
I wondered if grief could be so strong it was fatal. My heart hurt so badly it must be bleeding out inside my chest. I must be bleeding to death. Ten swords pierced me through.
But something else was competing with my heartache, a thread of fury.
After Jack and I had watched the smoke plume from my mother's funeral pyre, he'd told me, "She died in grace. I only hope to go out so clean."
He hadn't. Because of the Emperor. Richter had laughed as he'd murdered Jack and all those people.
Richter would die. The red witch would annihilate him. Hatred made me rise. Hatred forced one foot in front of the other as I staggered away from the graves.
With each step, blood dripped from my ragged fingers, dotting a trail across the vast black gravestone. A tether from me to Jack.
As I neared the edge of the stone, I remembered those last moments with Aric, my new arm aching. What if he hadn't survived that searing flood? Maybe he wasn't invincible.
No! No Arcana had gloated over Death's death; none of us had sensed it.
Then I frowned. We were all disconnected now. And I didn't know when the switchboard had gone down.
What if he'd . . . drowned? He might've called for me as he'd died. His lifeless body could be washed up somewhere along the flood's path. Maybe that was why Circe's river wouldn't answer me.
I'd assumed Jack's death was the worst that I could endure. Matthew might have been preparing me for both of their murders.
Dear God. Both.
I shrieked with fury and pain. As I screamed and screamed, rose stalks burst from my trail of blood, spreading until they'd blanketed the gravestone and the surrounding mountains.
If Aric lived, I had to find him. But how, when I was dying from grief?
I pictured a tourniquet around my pierced heart, stopping the bleeding and keeping me alive long enough to reach Aric and then to get revenge. Yes, I would twist the tourniquet, tightening it to constrict my heart, starving it of blood. Strangling it.
A bloodless heart couldn't feel.
Twist, tighten, constrict.
Numbness settled over me. My emotions shut down. Like this, I reasoned that Aric must still live. He had fo
r so long. He was strong.
We might have simply missed each other over all this distance. The flood waters had parted often; he could have been carried in a different direction. I seized on that thinking.
Yes. This was what I needed. Numbness. Just until I'd completed my two missions:
Find Aric.
Annihilate Richter.
After that, I would release the tourniquet and let myself bleed out.
Jack and I had marveled at the snow.
11
The Fool
Whereabouts unknown
My eyes flashed open.
The Empress's screams had awakened the dark in me. Reverse, perverse.
The Dark Calling.
Her smile was broken. It was time. I always know best.
12
The Empress
Sol sat at the edge of the black stone. As I closed in on him, I tilted my head. "You followed me. You were watching me." The Sun's icon would look so good on my hand.
He stood, his gaze bouncing from my eyes, to my reddened hair, to my bloody fingers. "You, uh, get everything taken care of?" He backed up a step. And another.
I advanced. "You should have escaped me while you could."
"I considered it," Sol said, as I struggled not to slice him. "But I'm trying to earn your trust."
The red witch ached for a kill. Until the Emperor's turn, this card would do. "By spying on me?"
He stumbled backward, nearly falling. "What did you carve?"
"Epitaphs. Have you ever written one? Ever summed up someone's life in a few lines?"
"No, I haven't."
"I'm going to pay the Emperor back for these murders." Aric and my grandmother would teach me Richter's weaknesses, and I would figure out how to use Sol as well. Which meant I didn't get to kill him.
Seething with displeasure, the red witch receded.
I had to get the Sun to Death. Maybe with this card strengthening me--and the help of every player in our alliance--we could take out Richter.
But then, our small alliance had recently dwindled by two Arcana.
The game seemed to be speeding up, building on itself. Right around the deaths of Tess and Selena, I'd met the Sun.
Were we spinning to an end?
How stupid I'd been to think I could avoid fighting--that Jack and I could live happily ever after. The Arcana did converge; I'd face them for the rest of my life. Unless they all died.
That doesn't mean I have to take them out, I thought, even as my claws tingled for Sol's vulnerable flesh.
"What will you do to the Emperor?" he asked.
"Vines will grow through his body like veins, oh-so-slowly flaying him. Roots will burrow and feed on his organs. When he begs me to kill him, I'll force him to pick his next meal: thorns or pieces of himself."
Sol coughed. "Remind me not to get on your bad side."
"You and I are going on another little trip." Logically, getting to Aric's castle made the most sense. Then Lark could help me find him. I didn't exactly know the location of his home, but I'd made the journey from there to Fort Arcana not long ago. Matthew had given me directions; I would simply reverse them.
"Where are we off to now?" Sol said.
I smiled evilly. "Right to Death's door."
_______________
Day 396 A.F.
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" Sol asked for the third time this hour.
I ignored him and kept walking.
Two days ago, the truck had died, probably due to Sol's driving. I didn't miss the ride too much though. The roads had gotten so bad that we'd bottomed-out every other mile. Each time, Sol and I had freed it with the help of my vines and his Baggers.
Pushing the truck shoulder to shoulder with zombies had been bizarre.
We'd been forced to continue on foot, trudging through mountainous terrain. Sol had found some clothes and boots at Fort Arcana, so he wasn't slowing me down. He, Bea, and Joe had restocked our food and water from the supplies there, while I had . . .
I frowned. Huh. I didn't remember what I'd been doing.
Now Sol asked, "Pequena, can we stop for a moment?"
I kept walking.
Ever since the gravestone, he'd tried to be nice. He'd said consoling things. We'd politely shared food and water as we'd traveled the Ash together.
But I had nothing left. Bea and Joe showed more liveliness than I did.
Whatever burgeoning friendship--or at least understanding--between me and the Sun had disappeared.
Jack had been one of my last links to humanity. Without him, I was cruel.
Without Jack. I was already thinking about him in past tense. I might have sobbed, but my tourniquet was holding fast. Yet my mind suffered, making odd connections.
The whirlpool I'd been trapped in just days ago, spinning like a roulette wheel . . . roulette meant little wheel . . .
Tess reversing time as though on a backward-spinning carousel . . . carousel meant little battle . . .
Tourniquet came from the French word tourner, to turn or rotate . . .
Everything was turning; I was turning. I'd entered Fort Arcana one way; after finding Tess, I was changed forever. I no longer believed with certainty that I was in charge of my own destiny.
In the middle of a clearing, Sol stopped. "Empress, you're lost."
I faced him. "I'm not lost." I was completely lost. I never thought I'd miss the voices. I still hadn't heard any. I was relying on my own sense of direction--which sucked.
Even if I could navigate using the sun or stars, neither were visible. Dawn never came, and clouds concealed the night sky. Endless nights.
Now that I assumed Aric was alive, I'd started hailing every puddle for Circe, hoping she would help me, but she never did. I'd imagined I heard her whispers from every raindrop--until I thought I'd go crazy. Eventually, I would.
I just needed to hold off until I'd completed my missions.
Find Aric.
Annihilate Richter.
Sol rolled his head on his neck. "Please tell me where we're going. Por favor."
"I told you. I'm taking you to Death." Would Aric be immune to the Sun's powers? Would his armor protect him?
"What will he do to me?"
"Unless he knows something about you that I don't, he'll keep you cuffed, your movements limited." Aric had once kept me prisoner; I knew the drill. "I'll ask that your Baggers be put somewhere safe." Inside the castle's huge menagerie, Lark's animals now roamed free, their enclosures no longer needed since she'd come into her powers. I could borrow one of the cages. "You'll eat well and have a warm bed to sleep in."
In a quiet voice, Sol pointed out, "I don't get cold, and I was already eating well before--"
"Wait." I froze. A muted cry had sounded from somewhere. "Did you hear that?"
He shook his head.
Another cry, closer. An animal! A bird? I swept my gaze across the sky, spotting a falcon, one wearing a little leather helmet. "Lark! I'm here!" I jumped up and down and waved my arms. "Hey! Over here!"
The falcon banked, hovered, then dove for me.
"Thank God." It was flying in fast, straight for me. "Lark, you're coming in hot. Watch it!"
In a flutter of feathers, the bird leapt onto my shoulder, talons digging in.
"Enough! That freaking hurts." It swooped its wings, seeming to urge me in one direction. "Okay, okay, I'm coming!"
Behind me, Sol said, "It didn't have to be like this, Evie."
I frowned, turning. "How did you know my name--"
His arm was swinging toward me, a large rock in his hand.
Pain.
The falcon's screech.
Blackness.
13
I woke to a creepy sound. A slurping sound.
I managed to crack open my eyes, and almost lost what was left of my mind.
Four new Bagmen . . . drank me.
They'd bitten me. Had slashed at my clothes to get to my skin. They were greedily s
ucking my blood, jostling my limp body.
I strained to get away, to summon power . . . too weak. Couldn't move my limbs. Couldn't scream. Sol must've cracked my skull. Blood loss weakened me more.
The falcon tore at the Baggers' faces, its beak plucking at their eyes.
Another nightmare? Real? Unreal? This couldn't be happening. I wasn't supposed to go out like this!
Sol looked on with his two favored Baggers, their thorn collars gone. He'd called my bluff. The Sun wasn't gloating, didn't look pleased or displeased. But he was still doing this to me.
Killing me.
I choked out a word: "Why?" Though I hadn't trusted him, I hadn't expected this.
"Already in an alliance." He fiddled with that watch on his wrist. Then he raised his face to the night sky, and light flared from his eyes. Twin spotlights. A signal. He blinked, and the beams flickered in a rhythm.
To signal what?
I gasped, "Then just . . . kill me." The falcon still fought, but the Bagmen barely seemed aware of it.
"That's not the plan. I had them bite you because their mutation neutralizes an Arcana's powers." He intended to keep me alive? "At least, it did on the last player who attacked me."
Who? Sol had been in the game for a while.
He was right, though. I wasn't able to call forth a vine. Even my regeneration stopped working.
A Bagger above me released his bite, but only to sink his teeth into unbroken skin at my waist. I cried out, powerless to stop it. The falcon went crazy.
Would I join Jack and my mom and Mel on some other plane? Or would I become a Bagman myself, cursed to walk the earth? "You'll keep me around . . . like Bea and Joe?"
Had Sol flinched?
Despite the risk of turning, I should be glad of even the chance to join my loved ones. But I couldn't stop imagining Death's reaction to my horrific murder.
Had Aric believed me when I'd told him I loved him too?
Over the falcon's furious cries, I heard another sound: swoop swoop swoop. Familiar, but so unexpected; I needed a few moments to place it. A . . . helicopter?
Hadn't I heard one the night of the massacre? That's how Richter had escaped Circe!
Did the Emperor approach now? The Sun must have been working with him all along!
Spotlights flared as a copter came into view. The lettering read COAST GUARD RESCUE. It circled overhead, a metal buzzard. If Richter was in there, I needed to bring it to the ground!