Liv stayed by Peter’s side for three days.
The castle healer, a pretty traumatized-looking man who couldn’t seem to believe the wraths were gone from the city no matter how many times it was explained to him, had done all he could do. He’d told Liv that Peter’s leg was “bent, not broken.” She translated that to possible Caelum-speak for fractured, but honestly would have no idea until she got her brother home and to a modern-day doctor. He’d probably need a physical therapist, too, with how much he was struggling to walk.
But at least he was walking. He wouldn’t be running up any concrete stairs Rocky-style anytime soon, but he was making full laps around the healing room.
Which meant it was almost time to go home.
Liv was more than ready. For one thing, now that Cedric had won the castle and Liv had her brother back, she couldn’t shake the professor’s voice from her mind. His dire warnings about how the portals had hurt LA echoed through her thoughts. Of course, there was a chance he had been lying.
But there was also a chance he hadn’t been.
And that wasn’t the only reason Liv wanted to leave. She missed Shannon, and Joe, and her city. She’d had her fill of living in an honest-to-God castle, even with all the positive changes that had happened in the past three days. Through the healing room windows, she had seen the city bustle itself back to life. The whole city was filled with a mix of celebration and solemnity. The wraths had been defeated. Malquin was gone. The king was dead.
Liv had never met the king of Caelum, but her heart ached for Cedric when she heard what had happened. She hadn’t seen Cedric on the few trips she’d made into the castle interior, looking for food or clothes. But she figured he was where he needed to be now, with his family and his people, at last.
She had seen Emme, though. On her second day in the castle, she’d looked up from the bed where she’d been chatting with Peter to see a silent figure standing in the doorway. Emme was dressed all in black, her long, brown hair combed straight and hanging limply past her shoulders. Her face was chalk white, her eyes red and swollen.
Surprised, Liv had stood up immediately, but was unsure of what to say. She’d been so angry at Cedric’s sister for stealing Peter and putting him in danger, but all that anger seemed to have burned itself out. Peter was safe, and would go home with Liv soon. Emme had acted to protect her family, and now her father was dead.
“I am sorry,” Emme said, her voice low, her eyes not meeting Liv’s. “I never meant for him to get hurt.”
Liv nodded, but she wasn’t sure what to say. No matter Emme’s intentions, Peter had gotten hurt. But it felt wrong to yell at the grieving girl in the doorway, her miserable eyes fixed on the floor.
Peter spoke first, pulling himself up into a sitting position behind Liv.
“Emme?” he asked. “Do you want to come in?”
But Emme simply shook her head, retreating so quickly from the doorway it was like she’d never been there at all.
“Man, she looked wrecked,” Peter said, his eyes on the space where Emme had been.
Liv sat down next to him again. “Don’t forget you wouldn’t be in this mess at all if it weren’t for her.”
“That’s not totally true,” Peter replied. “I mean, yeah, I wish she’d let me know that going through the portal might squeeze my leg bones till they split, but it’s not like she pushed me through. I jumped, pretty willingly. More than willingly.”
Liv sighed, looking down at Peter’s bandaged leg. He’d given her some version of that speech at least ten times since she’d found him in the healing room. If he’d come through the portal looking for adventure and some storybook idea of destiny, it hadn’t taken him very long to get over that idea. Reality had hit him hard, in more ways than one.
Peter absently reached to adjust his glasses on his face, seemingly remembering too late that the glasses had been lost in the portal, too. Liv’s heart ached again. Of course, she’d been mad at Peter along with Emme. Mad at him for acting so rashly, for being selfish, for basically forcing her through a portal to another world to come rescue him. But he looked so diminished lying in that cot. It wasn’t just his body that had been hurt. A piece of him was missing, and it was a piece Liv had barely gotten a chance to know before it was gone forever.
“Anyway, I’ll be okay,” Peter said, then gave a small laugh. “I mean, probably. Bones heal, right? But losing a parent . . . Liv, we both know what that is.”
“I know,” she whispered. She thought of how dazed Emme had looked, as though she couldn’t tell if the world around her was real, and her mind went immediately to Cedric. For the hundredth time, she wondered how he was doing.
On the third day in the castle, another black-clad girl stepped into the door frame of the healing room. This time, it was Kat.
She gave Peter one crisp nod and set her eyes on Liv.
“Liv, I require you for a moment. If you please.” She added the last part hastily.
“Of course,” Liv murmured, rising.
She followed Kat out into the cool hallway of the castle. The walls and portraits were covered in thick black banners, giving the corridor a solemn look. But the halls were also full of people—people carrying platters of food, throwing open doors, cleaning windows. The whole place was simultaneously mourning a death and coming back to life.
Kat walked slowly, seemingly not in any particular direction. Her shoulders were stiff, but her hands fidgeted at her sides.
“I am sorry I did not come sooner—” Kat started.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Liv interrupted. “You had bigger things to worry about.”
“Yes,” Kat said simply.
“I’m glad to hear your parents were safe. How are they doing?”
Kat’s mouth stretched into a small smile. “Well, thank you. They are resting after their ordeal.”
An awkward silence fell over them. Kat cleared her throat.
“I see you have found some new clothes.”
Liv looked down at the loose-fitting tunic and trousers she’d begged off the castle healer.
“Oh yeah, my jeans were getting pretty disgusting. At first all I could find in the castle were dresses, but I couldn’t figure out how to tie them on, let alone walk around in them.”
Kat gave another small smile. “It does take some finesse.”
They walked past a large arched doorway in the hall, and Kat stopped suddenly, facing Liv. She reached into the pockets of her skirts and held out a pair of small black devices—the walkie talkies.
“These belong to you.”
“Oh,” Liv said, surprised. “No, you should keep them. Who knows, might come in handy again, right?”
Kat nodded, looking pleased as she tucked the walkies back into her skirt. “I am sure they will. Now that you are free to return to your home and retrieve Merek, you might send some—what are they, batteries?—back with him.”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
Kat nodded again, her expression growing more serious.
“I have never really liked you very much, Liv Phillips.”
Liv let out a small, abrupt laugh, which seemed to confuse Kat.
“Uh, yeah, I know,” Liv said.
“And I assume you feel the same toward me.”
“I guess there were times you weren’t necessarily my favorite person.” Liv had a flash, briefly, of Cedric’s fingers in Kat’s long hair, when he was kissing her behind the pub in Duoin. She pushed it aside and shrugged. “But you’ve saved my life a ton of times, which makes you kind of too awesome to totally dislike.”
Kat looked a bit startled at Liv’s words, her mouth opening and closing before she got herself back under control. Even though Liv had meant what she said, she did take a little bit of satisfaction in getting a flustered reaction from the unflappable Kat.
“Yes, well . . . ,” Kat sputtered, trying to get back on track. “I do not bring this up to spite you, but so that you understand the import of my next request.”
“Um . . . okay.”
Kat looked around the hallway, exhaling. Whatever she had to ask of Liv, it was taking a lot out of her.
“Speak with Cedric. Please. Before you leave.”
Liv swallowed, not sure what to say.
“We both know he has feelings for you, but this is not about that. What he is going through is something I . . . I cannot help him with. Though I have tried. We all have tried.”
Kat looked at the ground then, her eyes holding something like defeat. It was at that moment that Liv realized how much this was costing Kat, to ask for her help. How much she must truly care for Cedric to come to Liv at all.
“King James is gone,” Kat continued. “And the kingdom needs Cedric more than ever before. They need to mourn their fallen king and place faith in their new one. And Cedric needs to do the same. But instead of honoring his father or looking to the future, he is . . . fixated on Malquin. I fear he plans to track him down and end him once and for all.”
Liv thought about Malquin in LA, and what he might be up to there. She felt a pang of sudden fear.
“Isn’t that a good thing? Malquin should be stopped. He should pay for what he did.”
“I agree,” Kat said. “But revenge is not what Caelum needs right now. It is not what Cedric needs right now, either. He cannot run from his responsibilities here, just as he cannot run from his father’s death.” Kat’s voice lowered a bit. “I believe, Liv, that you know this to be true.”
Liv didn’t say anything. She had no idea what it was like to be suddenly made a king. But she did know what it was like to lose a parent. Putting off your grief to fixate on other things might feel good at the time, but you couldn’t outrun grief, or fight it. It would always come back to you in the end and force you to deal with it.
“He refuses to talk about his father with anyone, not even with his mother and Emme.”
Kat kept her eyes fixed on the floor.
“Not even with me.”
Kat looked up then, her dark eyes meeting Liv’s. Her face was pale and taut, beautiful and determined. She looked like more than a warrior princess—she looked like a queen.
“And you think I can . . . h-help him somehow?” Liv stammered.
“Liv, I think you are the only one who can.”
Liv finally found Cedric on top of a castle turret, his back to her as he leaned forward against a waist-high balustrade. He looked out over the city below, the wind ruffling his dark hair.
Liv hadn’t seen him in days, and just taking in the set of his shoulders, his posture, the familiar hard line of his jaw—it stopped her short.
“I will come down in a few moments, Kat,” he said, not turning around.
“Um . . . it’s not Kat.”
Cedric’s head turned sharply to the right, though he didn’t move from his spot against the stone railing. Liv slowly made her way over to him. She took a spot a respectful few feet away, then peered over the edge of the turret wall. Being this high was sort of like looking out over Los Angeles from the top of the Griffith Observatory. Except with horses in the place of bumper-to-bumper traffic, and tall city walls in the place of the Hollywood sign.
Cedric was still next to her, and silent. She didn’t know what to say. Sorry? Of course she was sorry. Everyone was sorry. Whenever people heard that her own parents were dead, the first thing they said was, “Sorry.” They meant well, but pity never made it better, and she vowed not to say sorry if she could help it.
What did make it better? What possibly could, short of bringing the dead back where they belonged? Talking about her parents’ deaths never made her feel any better—in fact, it always seemed to take them one step farther away from her. But talking about their lives . . . that sometimes brought them back, at least for a few minutes.
“What was he like?” she finally whispered. “Your father?”
Cedric looked up at her briefly, surprised. He swallowed before turning his eyes back to the city.
“He was . . . ,” he started, his voice rough and scratchy. It sounded like he had either worn it out, or not used it in days. “He . . .” His Adam’s apple worked its way up and down in his throat, and his hands shook where they gripped the stone balustrade.
Liv’s heart squeezed inside her chest. She reached a tentative hand up, and put it on his back. He let out a shaky breath.
“He was larger than most men, in every single way,” Cedric said. He gave a small, watery laugh. “Or at least he seemed that way to me. He used to eat roasted meat three times a day. When he issued commands to men, they would drop what they were doing and immediately obey.”
“It sounds like he was a strong person,” Liv whispered.
“He always wanted me to be better than I was. I used to resent that, but now I think . . . I think he believed I could be better, even before I believed it.” Cedric’s head hung down. “Maybe he just knew more about me than I did, because he was a king.”
“Or because he was your dad.”
Cedric turned to Liv, and the pain in his face was so raw, so sharp, that it propelled her forward before she could think. All she knew was she wanted him closer, she wanted to take that pain away. She pulled him against her, wrapped both arms around him and held him tight.
“Will it ever stop feeling like this?” Cedric asked, his lips in her hair.
“Yes,” she said. “And no.”
“I miss him, Liv.”
She nodded against him. “I wish I’d gotten to meet him.”
“He would have liked you,” Cedric said. “Though he would not have admitted it.”
She smiled, and he held her tighter. Wrapped up into him, she could barely feel the wind.
“I cannot believe I will never see him again,” Cedric murmured. “I know it, but I cannot believe it.”
For a few moments they stood there together, not moving or speaking. His body seemed to get warmer by the second. He pulled back suddenly, situating his two hands on Liv’s shoulders. He looked straight at her, his eyes heavy with a pain all too familiar to Liv.
“And soon I will have to say the same about you,” Cedric said.
Liv didn’t quite know how to respond.
“I have known, Liv, since the moment you stepped through that portal to my world, that it would have to end this way. But now that the time is approaching, I cannot seem to face it.” His eyes dropped to the ground. “I cannot lose you, too.”
Liv was still speechless.
“I would not ask you to stay out of pity for me—”
“Stay?” The surprise finally forced Liv’s mouth to work, but just barely. “But Kat said . . . she said you wanted to go after Malquin.”
If Cedric was surprised that Kat and Liv had been discussing him, he didn’t show it. Instead, his eyes darkened at Malquin’s name.
“Malquin deserves to pay for what he did. And I want nothing more than to find him and—” He stopped himself, closing his jaw together so tightly the edges pulsed a bit. The naked pain was slipping from his expression, hardening into something else.
“I hate him,” he said suddenly. “I hate him so much that I can feel it. It’s like a rock that’s growing inside me, squeezing out from the inside. I feel it more than . . . anything else.”
He closed his eyes then, and took a deep breath. “But what I feel . . . it doesn’t matter. I know that now. As much as I want to go find him, to end him once and for all . . . I know I need to be here. I will be—I am—a king.”
Liv swallowed, barely sure how to react. “Oh,” she said, her voice small.
“But Malquin is still dangerous,” Cedric said, words tumbling quickly out of his mouth. He put his hands on her shoulders, looking urgently into her eyes. “And I couldn’t stand the thought of you going back there, of him hurting you, too—”
“Cedric,” Liv interrupted him, shaking her head. So this was why he wanted her to stay.
But he barreled on before she could continue. “I know you need to get your brother home to the healers there, and to see that your world is okay. And someone needs to make sure Merek has not got into too much trouble and send him home. But it is not safe for you there, Liv. I don’t think Malquin will ever leave you alone.”
Liv shook her head. “I can’t live my life in fear of Malquin. Besides, he already lost Caelum. What could he possibly need me for now?”
Cedric shook his head. “He did not tell me why he wanted another scroll, but I do not think it had anything to do with Caelum.”
“Well, if he wanted to, he could find me here as easily as there. Easier, probably.”
“I could protect you here. You and your brother and sister. If you stayed, we could—”
“Cedric,” Liv said, trying to make her voice gentle. “Being afraid of Malquin . . . that’s not a good enough reason for me to stay.”
Cedric swallowed. His hands were still on her shoulders, and his fingers curled against her gently. “Then what about me? What if I were the reason?”
“But . . .” Liv shook her head, still trying to convince herself this was actually happening. “When I told you, on the pier, that I wanted to be with you, you said it was impossible. There were too many reasons why it would never work—”
“There are still reasons. More, now that I am a king.”
Cedric looked out over the balustrade’s edge, over the city and the land beyond its walls. Liv still didn’t even know how much of it was his. She didn’t even know what his life would be like now, as an actual king. Cedric looked back at her again, his eyes blue and aching and fierce. He looked so vulnerable but also so sure at the same time.
“What is the point of being a king if you cannot be with the one person who matters most?”
There was a bravery in Cedric’s expression, one that Liv recognized. The only time she’d ever really opened herself up like that was on that pier with Cedric, in a conversation much like this one. She remembered how much it had hurt to put it all out on the line and be shut down.
“Do you feel the same?” he asked. His eyebrows rose a fraction, and his voice did as well. He was nervous, Liv realized. Afraid of what she was going to say.
So was she.
“Of course I do,” she said. She reached up to take his hands from her shoulders, clasping them instead in her own hands. “That hasn’t changed.”
Cedric’s eyes lit up then, with so much hope that Liv had to look away.
“But other things have.”
Cedric shook his head slightly, not deterred. “I know that, but if we want to be together, then what else matters?”
Liv sighed. “Everything else. Everything else matters.” She bit her lip, trying to pick her words. Cedric’s hands were hot in hers. “I know how much you’re hurting, and that right now, it feels like you’re just losing everything, that your whole world is upside down . . . but, Cedric, things will right themselves again. Your life will eventually go on, the way it was supposed to.”
“But what if my life was supposed to have you in it?”
“Cedric,” Liv said, her voice lowered, “I don’t belong here.”
His grip on her hands slipped, just a bit. But he shook his head, his eyes still bright.
“I’ve never been away from Los Angeles before,” Liv continued. “Going to a new place was exciting, and you know, terrifying, with the monsters and battles and everything, but this place isn’t for me.”
Cedric shook his head again. “I thought that about Los Angeles at first. My only desire was to go home. But the longer I stayed there, the more I came to appreciate it, the more I wanted to stay—”
“You did? You never said that before.”
“That is because it did not matter how I felt. My responsibilities were here. But, Liv, you do not have those same responsibilities. You can do whatever you want, live wherever you want.”
“Wherever I want,” Liv murmured. She looked down at the stone floor she was standing on. The floor that was attached to an actual castle. So many people would give everything for the chance to be here, to see this other world.
But Liv already had the world she wanted—she’d been lucky enough to be born into the exact place she belonged.
“That’s the thing, Cedric. I never wanted to live in a fantasy story. I wanted to make them. I still do. And LA is the only place I can do that. It’s my home, Cedric. Being away has only made that more clear.”
She took a deep breath.
“I can’t stay here. I have to go home.”
The light went out of his eyes—she saw it happen. He stepped back from her slowly, his hands slipping out of hers until only their fingertips were touching, and then they weren’t.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, finally uttering the words she’d vowed not to say.
“Me too,” he said back. His body was rigid, and he looked past Liv at the sky and mountains beyond.
“I’ll miss you,” she whispered, not trusting herself to speak louder without releasing the tears stuck in her throat. “So much.”
“Me too,” he said again.
She believed him, but she knew it wouldn’t change anything.
It was time to go.
Liv was nervous to go through the portal, even more so now that she knew what it felt like. A handful of people gathered around her in the walled-in courtyard deep in the back of the palace. Peter, of course, was at her side, his arms shaking a bit as he supported his own weight on a pair of rough-hewn crutches. Emme stood off to one side of the courtyard, her eyes on the ground. Kat was next to her, watching Liv, her expression unreadable in the weak sunlight.
Rafe stood across from them, his arms crossed over his chest. He’d given Liv a note for Merek, and made her promise to send him home safe. She’d agreed, of course, though she also wished Rafe hadn’t come to see her off. Every time she saw his face, she couldn’t help but think of the professor. Of his empty eyes in the cave, and of the warning he’d given her before that.
Had anything he’d said been true? What awaited her at home?
And then there was Cedric. Standing right before her, looking at the dark tear in the sky just behind her back.
Without saying anything, Cedric took a knife and drew it across his palm. The blood that rose up looked ordinary—human—but Liv knew it was tainted with some mixture of whatever ran through the wraths. She tried not to think about it as Cedric reached out to touch her hand, then Peter’s.
“This is really all it will take to keep us safe?” Peter asked. He looked back at the portal and swallowed hard.
“It’ll work,” Liv said, taking his hand. “Cedric’s blood is what got me through okay the first time.”
Peter nodded, but his face was white as paper.
Cedric cleared his throat, then looked up at Liv.
There had to be some important words to say, didn’t there? Something profound for him to remember her by, since that was all they could hope for now. They belonged in different worlds, literally. She would never see him again.
She had to say something.
But they’d already said everything.
“Good-bye,” she murmured, her voice sounding weak and thin to her own ears.
“Good-bye,” he said.
And she knew she had to turn away then. The second she did, he would be just a memory. Not someone she could see or talk to or laugh with or fight with in real time. A pit of sadness opened in her stomach, but it didn’t change what she had to do.
She turned away. And she jumped.