You saved me?!”
Ebony’s shrill whisper—if such a thing exists—plunges a dose of oxygen into my chest. Is it a question? A statement? An accusation? With her, I never can tell.
My eyelids snap open. I’m lying on my back. My lungs expand and I breathe deep. Gasp. Cough. Choke. Gulp. Moonlight spills through the bay window at the other end of my suite. The chandelier above rattles and the drapes between my bedposts tremble. The earthquake seems to be ongoing, but the force of it is much less abrupt so high aboveground.
“Why would you do that?” She’s standing above me now, hands on her hips and toe tapping. Doesn’t she know any other way to stand?
I sit up, rub the back of my head. “Good question,” I rasp.
She reaches down and helps me rise. “We didn’t even exchange a Kiss of Accord. You basically just gave me a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
I scowl. “So leave then. Pass go. Collect two hundred dollars. Take the whole flippin’ bank, for all I care.” I turn my back on her, pace to the window, and cross my arms. I’m boiling, bubbling over with no way to lower the heat. I have more important things to worry about than Ebony Archer.
What’s happening to me?
Why was mirror walking . . . painful?
Why do I feel drained and weak and ready to sleep for a hundred years after traveling such a short distance?
Verity, where are you? Where’s your soothing calm? Why can’t I feel you? Did you abandon me?
Shuddering from the hollowness within, I gaze out over the Second. My suite is in the same wing as Stormy’s and I can just make out Dawn Lake from here, or the lack thereof. The ice is broken, bobbing about in chunks across the shallow water. Makai was right. The Threshold is draining. But why? My mind is a spinning record. Too many tracks. They tell a story, but they’re out of order. What’s the pattern, the rhythm to this album?
Ebony appears beside me. She mirrors my body language and I make a point to let my arms rest at my sides. We are not alike. No. Not at all. Nuh-uh.
“I should leave.” She just stands there.
I hurl a sideways glare. “So leave.”
“I will.” She doesn’t budge.
“Fine.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Five minutes pass. Neither of us moves.
“You stay then.” I push past her, making a point to bump her shoulder as I do. When I flop onto my bed, I bury my face in my pillow and scream. It’s all of three seconds before I hear the creak of the wood floor, the click of the door to the hall, and the rattle as it slams closed.
I turn on my side and hug my middle.
Should’ve known better than to turn to a traitor for help.
In my sleep I toss and turn. Throw the covers off. Drag them back on. My pillow is on the floor and the sheets are twisted around my legs. My dry mouth and throat beg for water, but my body is lead and I can’t bring myself to get up.
Wretched nightmares.
“El, come on, you’ve been in here all day.” Joshua’s shadow blocks the lamplight, casting a gray film over my work space in the back of the library.
My brows pinch and I subdue the annoyance begging to grunt from my throat. I don’t look up from the book laid out on the table in front of me. I skim my notes, trying to make sense of what I’ve found. My eyes are dry and itchy. My nose runny from the dust in the air. But my obsession—er, interest?—takes precedence. Where was I? Oh yes. Here. According to this author, the earliest record of the Void dates back to—
A hand reaches out. Snatches the book away. Tosses it onto an empty chair. “Enough is enough,” Joshua says. “It’s the first day of First Month. We should pause and celebrate.”
I want to ask him what we have to celebrate when the Void is still alive and well. When it isn’t destroyed—not really—it’s always hurting someone even if it’s not hurting everyone. Is it so easy to forget another’s pain as long as it’s not your own? How can Joshua ignore it? The Verity within keeps me calm, quelling whatever darkness I might feel from Ky. Does it keep Joshua at peace too? I’m still not quite clear on how this triangle-soul-connection thing even works.
I pick up my pen and scribble in the margin of my notes:
research soul links (also see Kiss of Infinity)
Joshua takes my writing hand, removes the pen, and kisses each finger soft and slow.
Breaths cease. Time? What is that?
He kneels and that crooked grin of his surfaces, making it impossible not to return the gesture. “One hour?” He lifts a brow. “I only ask for sixty minutes of the future queen’s time and then I promise, on my honor as interim king, I will return you to your task.” Now his eyebrows wag. “It’ll be worth it, I guarantee.”
This. This is the Joshua I remember. The one I’ve hardly glimpsed since arriving in the Second. How can I miss an opportunity to spend a moment with the boy I fell in love with? The one I was afraid, for a spell, had disappeared altogether?
I sigh. Blush. Defenses down. “One hour.” He helps me stand and our hands remain connected. “This had better be good.”
“Oh, it will be.” He winks then. Of course he does.
Outside it’s freezing, like ice-cubes-sliding-down-my-bones-and-turning-my-blood-reptilian cold. New York wasn’t this frigid, not even close. No, this is a whole new level of frostbite. My entire body quakes as we crunch through the snow toward the castle stables—the same stables Ky and I escaped through in November. The memory wraps me with an unwarranted chill and I shiver it away. Should’ve brought my coat. How is Joshua not an icicle in his meager long-sleeved button-down?
“Don’t worry,” he says as if reading my arctic brain. “You’ll be warm soon.”
Teeth chattering, I pick up my pace to match his longer stride. One of his steps is three of my hobbit ones. At the stables, which are U-shaped with their own sort of courtyard at the heart, I stop. Lively, Celtic-feeling music with an urban flair wafts through the entry arch. I glance up at Joshua. It’s city meets country, a Manhattan-slash-Second Reflection mash-up. Most days I wonder if he’s forgotten me—us. But then a pinprick of sunlight beams and I see . . .
He knows me all too well.
When we enter the courtyard, winter fades. Large space heaters are stationed throughout, and a bonfire blazes at the center where Reggie roasts marshmallows bigger than my fist. Couples skip and dance. Children race and tag and tumble. Band members play and slap their knees. Horses whinny and nod. A triple-row horse-drawn sleigh waits to one side where passengers board. There’s even a mini ice rink in the far southern corner. It’s like a Fairy tale come to life.
“This is all for me?” My jaw won’t stay closed.
Joshua chuckles. The sound has always teetered between an old man’s laugh and a child’s giggle. “It is tradition to ring in the New Year with a small gathering of family and friends. With a little light in the darkest of seasons. You will officially be our queen in less than a month. I thought it only fitting to amp the festivities up a notch and add a few of your favorite things.” He releases my hand and offers his arm.
I link mine through his, let him lead me toward the fire. My insides thaw and the Verity washes me with serenity. What was I so worried about? I almost can’t remember why I’ve kept myself holed up in the library. Life is here and now. How have I allowed myself to miss it?
Joshua twirls me around and around, the perfect gentleman. He knows every step and sway, never faltering or missing a beat. Everything about him is methodical and planned. Purposeful. He knows each move before he makes it, each word before it’s uttered.
With Joshua I am safe. With Joshua I am home.
Reggie’s deep laugh rises over the crackling fire. Mom and Makai join in the dancing, her smile brighter than a full moon. When the music slows, Joshua intertwines his fingers with mine once more and takes me to a stall where his white stallion (because, why not?) Champion waits, saddled and ready.
Joshua lifts me onto the back of the saddle, then mounts. I wrap my arms around his waist, inhaling his warmth and spice and all things Joshua. When we’ve cleared the stables, Champion transitions from a trot into a gallop. I hold fast to my knight on a white horse as we circle the castle. He’s quiet until we halt near the rose garden.
That’s when I stop breathing. Because holy Verity, how is this possible?
What was dead under Jasyn’s rule has now burst to life. Vibrant roses bloom everywhere, a maze of crimson and scarlet. Joshua dismounts, then helps me do the same, leading me along the rosebush-guarded path until we reach a marble bench at the center. And there, sitting on the bench, atop a pillow embroidered with purple thread, is the white gold, diamond-studded band I returned to him weeks ago. The one that hung from my necklace chain like an anvil. The one I asked him to keep until I was ready to wear it for real.
I guess he thinks a month is ample time to wait to re-propose.
How can I disappoint him? How do I tell him I’m still not ready?
My heart. Oh, my stupid, unsure heart.
I know the answer, but I won’t admit it aloud. Instead of A Tale of Two Cities, it’s a tale of two boys—men. But I have to believe my feelings for Ky stem only from wanting to save him as he saved me. That’s why I gave him a Kiss of Infinity. Because I didn’t want him to die. That’s why I search for a way to end the Void now. Because it’s not fair he’s taken on such darkness only to live with it, alone, while I act out my light and fluffy happily ever after.
Guilty much?
“El,” Joshua says, oblivious to my internal dilemma. “I think you know why I’ve brought you here.”
I swallow hard past the boulder in my throat. No need to panic. Cold feet are uncalled for. I expected this, even if later rather than sooner.
Joshua tilts my chin up and kisses me. The Verity dances, swirling and twirling around my pitter-pattering heart, weaving in and out of my soul. Why was I worried again?
“Cheer up, sleepy Jean,” Joshua sings in my ear, rocking me back and forth. He’s the bluebird’s wings I hide beneath. The six o’clock alarm that never rings.
I stir in my sleep, the memory begging to end there. Where it was good and perfect and right. But of course it doesn’t.
Before Joshua can get to his knees to ask for my hand, I’m on the ground. Aching, crying, and I don’t know why. It’s as if I’m being burned, seared to my core. What feels like a knife slitting my jaw forces a yelp from my lips.
Joshua joins me where I kneel, his face a contorted mess. My pain is his. And what’s worse? There’s no denying where my pain stems from.
Ky is in danger. And there is not a single thing I can do to stop it.
I bolt upright in bed, the clothes I’ve worn for the past day damp with sweat. It’s still night, the darkness casting an eerie quiet over every rug and drape. My room is static, the earthquake ceased. Moonlight no longer spills into the room. When I slide out of bed and move to the window, I can no longer spy Dawn Lake or its contents. Clouds fill the skies, making it too dark to tell how much water remains in the Threshold below.
I rub my jaw from ear to chin. The pain I felt that day was so real. Too real, making the ache in my knee a mere bruise in comparison. The brain is a funny thing. Dreams are merely devices that allow us to relive memories we don’t want to lose. They’re a way of idealizing relationships, of putting them in our perfect little boxes where no one can touch them. But this dream—this memory—has a dark side. All memories do, if you know where to look. This dream, this memory, always turns nightmarish. Except, instead of waking to find it was just my imagination, I feel as if a bucket of ice has been dumped over my head, reminding me what I must do. I twist Joshua’s ring around my finger and straighten the crown on my head.
I’ve scoured the library ten times over and have unearthed nothing of consequence. I’m making my way through The Reflection Chronicles, too, though the feat is slow and dull. Reading Mom’s words is one thing, but so far the other journals I’ve perused have been nothing less than the textbook definition of boring. There must be an account with more meat in it, but which one?
Even though Jasyn destroyed much, hundreds of volumes were still uncovered. The people worked together to stash and stow the accounts passed down to them. Then those accounts were brought here to be archived.
Problem is, even though each one is dated, they all seem random. I’ve no way of guessing who would know anything about the history of the Void. No starting point. And without a starting point, I’m lost.
I’ve read Mom’s account of The Reflection Chronicles so many times I have it memorized, along with Queen Ember’s “Mirror Theory.” I could recite the thing word for word and pass with flying colors. Have I missed something? Could there be a clue connecting me to another chronicle? The “Mirror Theory” and information on the Kiss of Infinity are the closest things I have to a beginning. My brain scans the uploaded information. Searching. Skimming. I squeeze my eyes and press my fingers to my temples.
And there it is, a single snippet of information standing out among the rest. How could I have missed it?
No time to waste.
I know where to look.
It’s time to pay an unscheduled visit to Joshua’s study.