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Wayfarer by Alexandra Bracken (18)

ALICE HAD TOLD ETTA ONCE that in order to become a concert violinist, she would need to protect four things above all else: her heart, from criticism; her mind, from dullness; her hands, so she would never falter in eking out the notes; and her ears, so that she could always judge the quality of the sound she was producing.

But in that moment, Etta couldn’t hear anything over the sharp, painful ringing that jabbed like knives into her head. The weight of the world pressed down on her chest and shoulders, smothering her next few breaths.

She forced her eyes open, gagging on the thick air.

The cloud of smoke masked everything, creating a dreamlike haze, even as fire raced up the silk panels hanging from the wall, scorching the plaster. The chandelier above the table had shattered, glass raining down like ice on the wreckage below. And the table…the table and a section of the floor beneath it had caved in, leaving a jagged, gaping hole. Etta’s eyes stung as she blinked, searching for the others through the embers rising up.

They were gone—the tsar, Winifred, Jenkins. The waiter. They’d gotten out, then—rescuers had already taken them to get help—

No.

A chill of sudden certainty crept over her, stifling the scream in her throat.

No.

They hadn’t gotten out. There would have been no time to move away from the blast. Which meant that…

They fell through the floor. Or they…their bodies had…the blast…

Etta gagged again, her chest too tight to breathe. There was a stabbing in her side that seemed to drive deeper and deeper each time she shifted, trying to push the crushing weight off her chest and bring air into her lungs. One hand was pinned beneath her back, the other between her chest and the warm mass on top of her.

Henry.

“Henry…” Etta felt the word leave her throat, but couldn’t hear it above the ringing in her ears. “Henry! Henry!”

He’d managed to throw himself over her, covering her almost completely. Her heart began to ricochet around her rib cage, beating so fast, so hard, she was terrified it might burst.

His face was turned away from her, one arm drawn up over it protectively. But he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t moving.

Etta dragged her hand out from where it was trapped between them, her still-healing shoulder screaming in protest. Without the benefit of her hearing, with the smoke still churning around them like waves, Etta felt like she was moving underwater, watching the distorted images of life beyond the surface. Her hand flopped around, touching the exposed, raw skin of Henry’s back; he’d been burned by the blast. She began to tremble as she felt up his neck, searching for a pulse.

Don’t die, don’t die, please—

It took her a moment to sort her own shaking from the faint murmur beneath his skin, but it was there. He was alive, if just barely.

With as much care and strength as she could muster, she rolled his weight off her, just enough to slide out from beneath him, but not enough to flip him onto his scalded back. The stench of burned flesh and hair made the bile rise again in her throat. She had to press a fist against her mouth to keep from retching when she looked over and saw what remained of Winifred. Oh my God, oh my God—

Iron—Jenkins had shouted Iron, unable to finish the word, to fully name the assassin. Ironwood. The waiter, the assassin, had shouted a word she hadn’t been able to make out, but she’d recognized the moment when the timeline had shifted again.

Henry had been right—Cyrus Ironwood had sent agents out to push the timeline back to his version…but this wasn’t what had happened in the timeline she had grown up in. This couldn’t be Ironwood’s timeline. Which would make it…a new one?

Her hatred made it feel as though her whole soul had caught fire.

The floor beneath her feet was still crumbling; she felt a section of it collapse and realized she’d lost both shoes in the explosion. It wasn’t safe—Etta felt a wave of panic swelling, threatening to wash away whatever rational thoughts she had left as she surveyed the room. Its bright, glorious colors and shining gold had been replaced by shards of glass, splashes of blood and cinders.

She was alive. She had to stay alive. She had to—just breathe—just get out—

The ringing was so piercing that she could think of nothing else. She reached down on unsteady legs and got her arms under Henry’s, circling around his chest. The open wounds on his back oozed blood onto her dress, and the mere touch was enough to make him groan; Etta felt the vibration move through his body.

The jagged mouth of the floor revealed the smoldering room below. The fragments of metal and wood that had flown like shrapnel sliced through her stockings, lacerating her heels and ankles. She winced as Henry’s long legs butted and bobbed helplessly against the ground. The only way she could move him was through sharp, short surges of strength, and she could already feel herself fading when a door appeared through the smoke. It had been left open, a tray of food overturned nearby.

The smoke had already drifted into the hall, but Etta felt herself take her first real breath as she put Henry down, carefully laying him out on the plush carpet. She knelt, searching his face again for signs of life. He’d cracked his forehead against something—a knot had formed on his right temple, and blood continued to trickle down his cheek.

She should have surged up onto her feet and started to run back the way they had come through the palace, but Etta found herself rooted there, unable to move when parts of her felt like they were fading.

She’d only just found him, and now…

Etta choked on an unwelcome sob, unwilling to release that last bit of control she had over herself until she could think.

What would it have been like, she wondered, to stay with the Thorns? Her mind played scene after scene, waltzing through the possibilities. To be with a father who wouldn’t use her, who appreciated her talent, who explained their way of life, who showed some sliver of interest in her beyond some task he was saving her for in the future. To strike back against Ironwood until his grip on their kind dissolved into memory. To find Nicholas, and bring him to a group that might appreciate and respect him the way he deserved. To see the whole of time, the scale of everything her beautiful world could offer….

“Etta.”

With the piercing whine in her ears from the explosion, Etta would never be certain if she’d actually heard her mother, or imagined her voice the instant she felt the deadening weight of Rose’s presence. She turned slowly, and a moment later her mother took shape in the smoke.

When she’d been taken by Ironwood, drawn into his net of deception, Etta would have done anything to see her mother and have her explain what was truly happening. But now she knew, and it had come only through loss and the most devastating of betrayals. Staring at Rose now, truly seeing her, Etta wondered how she had ever missed the tremor just below the surface of cold calculation Rose projected. As if the wild delusions skimmed just beneath her skin.

She would be here now for a reason. Rose always had a reason.

“Did you do this?” she demanded, shouting to hear herself.

Her mother wore man’s pants tucked into tall boots and a loose white shirt. Her long blond hair was braided back away from her bruised left eye and right cheek. Etta’s heart gave an involuntary clench at the sight, before she let the anger back in to harden it. At Etta’s question she flinched.

That’s right, Etta thought, I know what you’re capable of. What you want.

Her gaze lowered from Etta’s face to Henry’s and she took a step back, as if only seeing him now. When she came closer, making as if to kneel, Etta felt the last of her self-control snap. “Do not touch him!”

“All right, all right, darling.” Rose’s face looked strained as she spoke loudly, holding out her hand. The other strayed to the gun at her side. “You need to come with me now.”

God, how Etta had prayed for this exact moment—how desperate she had been for any sign that her mother was alive and coming for her.

A sign that she wanted me.

“Henrietta,” Rose said, her voice scalding. “You don’t know what’s coming, what’s been chasing me for years! I’ve kept them off your trail for weeks, from the moment you were taken, but the Shadows—!”

Shadows. Etta let her lip curl back in disgust. That last, small hope in her that Henry had been wrong, that they’d jumped to the wrong conclusion, turned to dust.

Beneath her hands, Henry shifted, and Etta grabbed him by his lapel as if she could hold him there, conscious. As a child, she had always hidden her tears from her mother, too aware of how little patience Rose had for them, but she didn’t care now—not when Henry’s eyes opened. They moved from her face to Rose’s.

Her mother’s hands went slack at her side. Neither moved, but Etta felt his heartbeat as it began to drum harder and harder against his ribs. She leaned down, straining to hear him. “Come…to finish me off, Rosie?”

Her mother’s face was stone. She stood, unflinching, even as her voice iced over.

“You never understood. You never believed me—”

“I understood…me…” he rasped out. “But Rosie…Alice? Why…why did she have to die?”

Alice.

“Etta, she’ll protect you…go now—” He clutched her hand, trying to get her to look at him.

Alice.

Rose’s face appeared in front of her own, still speaking loudly, urgently, “I can explain as we go, but—”

Alice.

Etta stepped back, out of her mother’s reach.

She’d been taken and manipulated and shot and nearly lost her hearing for Rose. Everything Etta had ever done had been to earn a smile, squeeze a measure of respect, from her. She’d made excuses for her mother time and time again, even as the material she was using to build those protests dwindled down.

Etta turned, gripping her elbows, trying to fold in on herself. Disappear.

She killed Alice.

Had she watched Etta go through the passage with Sophia? Had she smiled, knowing she’d won that round, too? All Rose had to do was pretend to believe in her, just one time, and Etta had let her shape her future.

She left Alice to die alone.

Her eyes pricked with shame and a humiliation that would not quiet. She’d been so proud of herself, so defiant, so ready to show everyone in this hidden world that Rose’s daughter could be just as strong and sharp and cunning as the woman herself. But she wasn’t Rose’s daughter—she was her tool. Years spent fighting for her love, her praise, for some kind of acknowledgment…

“You—” she choked out. She pressed a hand to her eyes, felt the fat, hot tears spill over her fingers. Look up, Etta ordered herself. Look and see who she is. Who she’s always been. “It was you—”

Rose met her gaze. Defiant.

Denying nothing.

It was Alice’s face now that she saw, freckled and young, in the uniform that brought her so much pride; in her apartment on the Upper East Side, smiling as Etta learned her first scales; upturned in the audience, as she watched Etta perform from the front row. Her life.

I was raised by a stranger. The words roared through her mind, barbed and scalding. I never meant anything more than what I could do for her.

Maybe this was the reason her mother hadn’t told her about their hidden world, about her father—because she knew Etta’s soft heart would twine her together with the Thorns, and she would lose the best hope she had of seeing this fantasy through.

No more.

Alice, the woman who had raised her, who had given her love, attention, focus, everything of herself—Alice had been her true mother, and this was the woman who had taken her from Etta. Murdered her.

She straightened at the sound of pounding feet, and looked up in time to see two figures in black cloaks race down the edges of the hallway, long, curved daggers in their hands. Rose spun, swore viciously, and without a second’s hesitation raised her gun and fired. The attacker on the right dove into a marble table to avoid it, but Rose fired again, and this time did not miss. Her aim, as always, was perfect.

Until she ran out of bullets. She fired again at the other attacker, but the gun clicked in her hand, the chamber empty.

Henry watched, riveted, still trying to summon his strength to rise. His mouth was moving, he was saying something, but Etta couldn’t hear anything over the sound of her own furious heartbeat, the static of the blast.

Rose threw the gun aside and charged the remaining attacker, slamming him to the ground. When she rose to her feet again, the man sprang up as well, his blade arcing up as if to pierce beneath her chin.

Etta kept her focus on the soldiers charging down the hall, the footmen that rushed in behind them. By the time they were within reach of the dining room, Rose had already run past her, shoving her aside as the attacker leaped forward to follow.

The impact of slamming into the wall jarred the grief from Etta’s mind, leaving nothing but pristine, pure hate. Fury would have to be enough to carry her for now.

“Etta—” Henry was trying to sit up, choking on his own breath. She could barely hear him over the ringing in her ears, as he was surrounded and lifted by four of the soldiers. One tried to grab her, but she slipped away again and again, pulling out of their reach. “Listen—listen to me—!”

This has to end. If her mother had started this, then Etta, the only other living Linden, would take the responsibility of righting it. Any doubt she’d had was gone now, blasted away. The original timeline had to be restored. It was the only hope she had of salvaging everything, possibly even the lives that had been taken.

The choice was offered to her. It should have been frightening, the weight of it, but as Etta shook off the past, the unbearable questions and the uncertainty, it freed her instead.

She looked at Henry and made a promise. “I’m going to finish this.”

“No—no!”

She tore herself away from Henry, from the soldiers, and bolted down the wide hall, until only a trail of bloody footsteps on the carpet was proof she had ever been there at all.

Reaching down, Etta gripped where the hem of her dress was torn, ripping it further to give her legs a better range of movement. She made a sharp left around the next corner. Her ears had begun to pop and crackle in a way that frightened her, but the ringing was fading enough to give her a warning.

Her feet slid to such a sudden stop that the Oriental runner bunched beneath them. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of people were charging down the narrow hall toward her, chanting, shouting in fragmented Russian—“Ochistite dvorets!”—over and over and over. The man in front held a bloodred flag in one hand and a gun in the other. Behind him, a variety of tools and weapons were waving in the air.

They’re taking the palace, clearing it out. Etta struggled for her next breath, limping heavily. Ironwood’s plan here went beyond mere assassination. No doubt his men had been here all along, sowing the seeds of discontent, greasing the revolutionaries’ wheels before setting them on a path toward violence. Had he known Henry would come with the other Thorns? Had he ordered them to wait for his arrival?

She turned and doubled back the way she had come, taking a left rather than a right. Etta couldn’t stop herself from looking back over her shoulder one last time. But she could not make anything out through the heavy cover of smoke.

A hand reached out, snatching her arm. Etta felt a shriek tear out of her throat as she was yanked off-balance and dragged through a doorway. She kicked, clawing at whoever had grabbed her. The door slammed shut and she was slammed up against it, knocking the breath out of her again and smearing black over her vision.

“—ta, what’s happening? Etta!

She jerked away from the hands holding her in place, rubbing at her eyes.

“What…that…can…me…?” The words were broken up by the pulsing in her eardrums. Etta looked up, surprised to find Julian’s face tight with worry as he touched the side of her cheek, his fingers pulling away red with blood.

“Explosion!” She had to shout the word to hear it herself. Julian cringed, nodding.

“Thought as much.”

Etta pulled away from him, going for the door again. “Attackers!”

He said something that might have been “revolt” or “revolting.”

“Run,” she told him.

“Where are you going?” he shouted back, finally loud enough for her to understand.

“Search the palace—find astrolabe—”

“It’s not here!” He grabbed her shoulders, turning her back toward him. “They found his body—stuffed in a bloody wardrobe, no astrolabe in sight. They were going to tell your father after dinner—”

If Etta had taken a knife and stabbed it deep into her belly, it would have been less painful than this. He’d killed his enemy; he’d taken what he wanted most. Her mind shaved down each of her wild thoughts, until only facts remained: Ironwood has it. Need to find Ironwood. Need to finish this.

Julian opened his mouth to say something else, but Etta pressed her finger to her lips and opened the door a crack, peering out of it. There was a dull roar coming from down the hall, but she couldn’t pick out any one word. Satisfied that the men and women who’d flooded the palace were heading toward the dining room, Etta grabbed Julian’s arm and pulled them both back outside.

Even before she began to run, she felt him dig in his heels, resisting. Etta sent him an incredulous look over her shoulder, which was met, to her surprise, with genuine fear. Julian seemed flummoxed by what was happening—at least until a man at the edge of the crowd turned and shouted something at them that made the others turn as well. Then survival instincts kicked in, and suddenly he was the one running, the one dragging her.

Etta wasn’t sure it mattered whether or not he knew where he was going. The palace was large enough for anyone to get lost on a good day, with countless halls and rooms and closets to duck into. But that didn’t seem to be the plan. Etta looked back again, just in time to see a man raise a gun. The bullet slammed into the face of a golden angel statue, splintering off the cap of its skull.

“Cripes!” Julian yelped.

How did anyone ever find their way out of this place without help? She blew the loose hair out of her face, trying to assess her options. They needed an exit, any sort of exit—a door, a window that could be smashed, a sewage pipe, she didn’t care, as long as it was in the opposite direction from the mob. Neither did Julian, who had taken to running blindly forward, his arm thrown up over his head like that could somehow protect him.

There were hallways that served as large arteries to the palace, but those seemed to be clogged with soldiers, staff trying to flee, and the plainclothes people who’d come storming in from the outside. Right now, the only thing guiding Etta’s steps was silence; she found herself searching for it beneath the throbbing and whistling in her ears, reaching for some part of the palace that was still, that hadn’t been engulfed by the fury pouring through its gilded veins like acid.

Revolution. Her mind spun the word out, with all of the disaster and destruction and promise it encompassed. In a different year, in a different form, but revolution all the same, this time stirred up by the Ironwoods.

She drew them around a corner and, in the next instant, felt a blow to her chin, a knee to her leg. The breath wheezed out of her, and when she finally inhaled, dazed and on the floor, there was the smell of laundry and starch. A young girl, a maid, was sprawled out on the floor in front of them, her uniform ripped at the skirt and slightly askew from where she’d slammed into Etta.

Julian had managed to stay upright and say something to the maid in halting Russian. The maid pointed, her whole arm shaking, toward a door at the end of the hallway.

The maid took the opportunity to scamper off, picking up her small valise and all but running down the hall in the opposite direction, her blond braid streaming out behind her. It was the last clear sight Etta had before the electric lamps around them surged with brightness, and, with a hiss, flashed out completely, leaving a few scattered candles in sconces to light a hall bigger than Etta’s whole apartment building in Manhattan.

“Well, that was bloody ominous. She said to go this way,” Julian told her, jerking a thumb up ahead, to where the small hall dead-ended at the nondescript door Etta had seen before.

“You speak Russian?” Etta asked as they began to run again.

“Er, just barely. She either said this was some sort of inner servant hall, or their quarters, so I guess we’ll be in for a surprise, won’t we?” Excitement bubbled out of him, giving him a slightly breathless quality.

The door flew open then; the sudden light momentarily blinded Etta, who threw up an arm to shield her eyes. The silhouette of a man appeared in the doorway, a box-shaped flashlight in his hands—it wasn’t until he made a noise of surprise and turned the light away that Etta saw it was one of the men who had met them outside, still wearing the palace’s ornate livery. He adjusted his grip on the light so they could see him press a finger to his lips and wave them forward.

Etta and Julian exchanged a look.

“What are the chances…” he began.

“…we’re about to be murdered?” Etta finished as they made their way forward. “The better question is, what do you have on you to defend yourself?”

“Um…besides you? Did I need something else?” he whispered. “You won’t let them take us alive, will you, kiddo?”

At any other moment Etta might have laughed, but the truth of it landed hard: there was only so much Julian could do to contribute to their survival. If it came down to it, she would be the one fighting. And she had no doubt that if things went badly, he’d leave her to deal with the mess.

But she also knew that if anyone was going to help them get back to the passage in the woods, it would be him.

In exchange for something else, I’m sure, she thought grimly. Not for the first time, she felt her heart crimp at the thought of how much easier this would be, how much safer she would feel, if it were Nicholas at her back. Even if neither of them knew where to go or how to find the passages, there would have been an equality between them. The thought of putting herself in the hands of a born-and-raised Ironwood again, even temporarily, made her feel sick to her stomach.

“Come, come, this way—” the man said in heavily accented English. “This way—”

Julian’s pace eased off long before Etta’s; she reached the man first, her fingers curled into fists at her side, trying to read his face in the darkness. The man studied her with open horror. “Is he dead?”

Etta hesitated before nodding. The man closed his eyes, turned his face upward to steal a calming breath. Then he stood at his full height and pressed the handle of the flashlight into her hands.

“Follow this hall to the end,” he said haltingly. “There is a window left open. Go now.”

“Wait a tick—” Julian started, but the man pushed past them both, and went the opposite way.

“All right,” Julian said after a beat of silence. “Have to admit, I’m still waiting for the firing squad to spring up and take us out, Romanov-style.”

“That is not funny,” Etta said sharply, stalking down the hall.

“Lighten up, Linden-Hemlock-Spencer,” he whispered back, jogging to catch up to her. The inner hall muffled the chaos outside of it, but only just. The gunfire was endless, blurring into thunder. “Maybe we should just hide—stay here until the trouble passes?”

“Until someone finds us and finishes us off?” Etta said, catching the first hint of the open window’s freezing draft curling toward them. The way they probably grabbed Henry. Every time she blinked, the explosion seemed to set off again behind her eyes, blinding, disorienting, incinerating her from the inside out.

Did I really leave him?

With a start, she realized she was crying.

Did I leave him there to die?

“Come now, old girl, it’s not as bad as all that,” Julian said. “We’ll be fine. I can get us out of here in a jiff. There’s a passage at the Imperial Academy of Arts, just across the Neva River. How do you feel about sunlight and warmth and a charming lack of Gatling guns?”