When I turn to face her, the chains on my own limbs clink and drag. But I reach out to her. Touch her shoulder. We will, I tell her. I have an idea.

And I do. It glitters beneath the surface of my mind, there but indistinct, like stones at the bottom of a rushing river.

Then, the light of a candle. Under my arm is a book, at my fingers a spindly quill. Vaguely, I feel my arm ache, and notice a splatter of blood on the corner of the cream-colored page. Though the book’s leather is newer—still warm, almost, from the animal’s hide—I know it’s the same book that I hold in my hands, trembling in the Gerling vault. The connection grounds me; I look down at my own hand furiously scribbling as if at a distance. The nib begins to spell out a familiar name: Briarsmoor.

Briarsmoor. It’s the only word that makes sense. I cling to it.

Then I’m running, running through an ancient forest, branches tearing at my face and roots seeming to reach up and grasp at my ankles. Behind me, the baying of hounds, the shouting of hunters, the girl’s wrath and hunger, eternal, inescapable. Ahead of me, I can picture the town, the sweeping green lawn, the statue of the Sorceress in the square. Everyone I love is there. Briarsmoor, a voice whispers in my ear. If I can get there, I can save them, I can save myself.

The terror in my heart is threaded through with stinging grief, with betrayal. Every footfall, every heartbeat, every gasping breath sounds the same: my friend, my friend, my friend, my friend. What have you done?

Then another noise reaches me, something from outside the world of visions. My eyes flutter open, still heavy with visions, and it takes me a moment to remember why I’m lying on my side on a blanket of blood-iron, a jewel pressing painfully into my cheek.

But then the sound of footsteps on stone snaps me back to alertness. I scramble into a sitting position as torchlight brightens the stairwell, and I see men’s shadows against the wall. I hear voices. Everless guards.

I left the door open for anyone to see. What a foolish thing to do, a foolish way to die.

As they appear in the doorway, I throw my hands up, my panicked mind insisting, like a child, that if I can’t see them they can’t see me. Silence falls, and I flinch, waiting for the shouts that will mean my doom, for hands to fall on me and drag me away.

But they don’t come. I lower my hands to see a man looking out over the doorway, torch raised high, his hand on the pommel of his sword. But he’s—still. He doesn’t breathe or blink; not even the flame topping his torch flickers. Behind him, the pattern of brightness and shadow cast on the wall is eerily stationary—as if someone has painted the stone with firelight and shade.

I don’t stop to think about what I’m seeing. Instead, I creep over the carpet of riches and ease around the man, my body tight with tension. I weave around the other three guards behind him on the stairs, careful not to accidentally brush any of them, and then practically throw myself down the stairs and out into the hallway. Noise erupts behind me.

It’s only when I’m out on the lawn, halfway to the stables, that I realize I’ve left the book behind.





25




The wind pries its way beneath my cloak, chilling me to the bone. The mare beneath me gallops hard, pebbles flying up from under her hooves as we charge down the empty road. My whole body aches—I should have stopped to consume the blood-iron that I couldn’t give to Caro—but my need to get out of Everless overpowered everything else. It wasn’t easy to even haul myself onto the horse’s back, or to stay upright as I lied to the guards at the gate, but urgency and terror gave me a wild kind of energy.

Now the adrenaline is sliding away and I’m so exhausted I worry I will fall asleep right here on the mare’s bare back, despite the jolting ride and the freezing air sparking along my arms and neck. But somehow I know where to guide her, and it seems like only a few minutes pass before the horse comes to a violent halt.

Empty fields stretch out on both sides of the road, untouched snow gleaming in the moonlight. A hundred yards ahead sits a cluster of derelict-looking houses and buildings, scattered haphazardly on either side of the road. But they are strange—they shimmer slightly in the light of the moon and snow as if it were summer and steam were rising between us and the village. The houses seem to glow, though the streets look empty and the windows dim.

No matter how I nudge, the horse won’t go any farther. She’s prancing nervously, stamping at the frozen earth and tossing her head. And I understand why—the sight of Briarsmoor ahead of us seems wrong. I realize I’m grinding my teeth, resisting the urge to turn and run.

I’ll have to walk the rest of the way. I try to swallow my fear as I tie the horse to a post along the side of the road and face Briarsmoor, hitching my bag up my shoulder. With one last worried glance behind me, I walk.

Now the journey to the town seems to drag, and the strange shimmer hanging around Briarsmoor only intensifies as I approach. By the time I reach it, the distortion is such that the buildings behind it are only vaguely lit shapes against the night, as if I am on the outside looking into a fogged window. My heart pounds in terror. Everything about this seems wrong, but there is no going back now, so I reach out toward the boundary between Briarsmoor and the outside world. Warmth spreads through my hand where I touch it, but nothing else happens, so I step through.

And blink in the sudden sunlight, inhaling sharply.

My head spins as I take in the sight around me. A moment ago, the night sky stretched above me, scattered with stars; now the sky is the thin grayish blue of a clear winter day, a pale sun casting the hint of warmth on my cheeks.

The stories are true.

At first I can’t see anything, then my eyes slowly adjust. The glare fades, and I see the remains of a town: a road pockmarked with missing cobblestones, a collection of falling-down houses, dark windows edged with broken glass. I turn around to see the same boundary hanging between me and the rest of Sempera like a curtain of fine gauze. Beyond, all I can see is the faint line of the dark, snow-covered horizon, intersected by a long gray-white cut that is the road.

Goose bumps break out over my body. The orphanage clerk’s talk about the town twelve hours behind the rest of the world was one thing, but seeing this place in the flesh is another thing entirely. Wind whistles through the empty houses.