Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
Sand whips at my calves as I sprint away from the stage, the pyre, the court—away from the only person I almost let myself believe would stay. I don’t stop at the camp’s edge. I push into the moonlit dark, lungs burning, feet sinking into loose sand.
I run for the dunes because that’s where the Tower woke, because if anything in this place can help, it’s there. I run because I’m desperate and afraid, and desperation is a tool if it’s used the right way.
I crest the final dune, lungs raw, and the Tower rises out of the pit in the sand like broken matchsticks, its columns blackened, splintered, reaching for the sky. My hands go cold and clammy, and I have to close them into fists so they won’t shake.
“Shit. How am I supposed to get down?” My throat tightens at the thought.
I can’t climb down the way Declan and I came up. Not alone. The only reason I didn’t end up splattered on the stone before is because he was there to catch me. He kept me from falling. He kept me from breaking.
Tears burn at the corners of my eyes, but I won’t cry.
“I’m fine,” I tell the dark as I shrug away the memories. I don’t have time to untangle them properly. Right now I have to find a way down, trust the magick on fire inside me that’s screaming that the Tower can help, or watch everything that matters go up in smoke.
“Whatever magick is here, Fortune or whatever energy brought the Tower back to life, I need your help. I was brought here for a reason. I can’t fix it from up here. Give me a way down. Please.”
The sand shifts under my feet. It melts, soaking into itself like water through cloth. The ground exhales a low groan. A staircase pushes out of the wall. Each steep step is rimmed in gold and orange sparks that hang in the air like tiny, impatient fireflies.
I lean down and press my palm to the first step. It’s warm and solid and buzzes with the same current that lives in my chest. The vibration rolls through me, familiar and fierce. An invitation.
The sandy steps are soft but steady beneath my feet. My lungs burn as I race down the stairs. The air cools as I descend. By the time I reach the bottom and drop to my knees on the shadowed stone, my breath comes in jagged bursts.
My purse is where it fell, dusted over with sand.
I snatch it up, unzip it, and dump it out.
It gives up what’s left of the life I used to have: a half-crumpled pack of gum, a receipt for groceries I’ll never eat, an empty tube of lipstick, along with the last of my witchy tools—a bundle of rosemary, a box of matches, a vial of salt, and the expensive green fluorite crystal cluster Alder gave me.
The fluorite is a gleaming piece of home. The proof that I exist somewhere other than this sand. That I have friends, a life.
The idea that I might never get home, that I might never see Gemma again, never sit on her couch with too much wine in my glass, retelling this wild adventure while she makes me laugh through my tears and helps me make sense of what Declan means to me—the grief at it is sharp enough to buckle me. Tears press in, hot and relentless.
“I’m fine.” My voice snags on a cry as I brush my fingers over the glittering green cubes pushing out of their bed of ice. “I’m fine. I have to be fine. Falling apart now will get Declan killed.”
The Wheel of Fortune card slips free and flutters onto the stone. I scoop it up. The edges are soft, the wheel stamped in glinting gold, a ring of symbols orbiting like little planets.
“Nice of you to show up.” I wipe the tears from my cheeks and grab the card, feel the weight of that mocking promise—change, destiny, divine timing.
A laugh claws out of me, jagged and accusing. “Speaking of the Wheel of Fortune—where is she, anyway? What good is an omen, a goddess, if she doesn’t bother to show up when she’s actually needed?”
Remember…
Fortune’s voice coils through my mind, echoing between my ears.
“Remember what?” My voice cracks between a shout and a sob, bouncing off the Tower’s columns. “How do I remember something I’ve already forgotten?”
The Tower hums around me, low and steady, and the silence it and Fortune offer is worse than any answer.
The word keeps drifting through my thoughts—remember, remember, remember—like it should unlock something if I hold on to it long enough. I scan the scattered contents of my purse as if they’re the pieces of a puzzle. Nothing screams salvation. Nothing whispers instructions.
I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes, furious at the wetness there.
“Remember what? My past? A ritual or a spell I’ve read? Some hidden meaning in the tarot?”
The fist-sized cluster of fluorite catches the moonlight, a green wink flashing through the dark.
Remember…
The word reverberates inside me, and this time it lands. I know how to find what I’ve forgotten. I’ve always known. The answer was in my purse all along. I’ve just been too tangled in my emotions, too distracted to see it.
Fluorite cuts through fog. It steadies the spin, clears the static, makes the truth bright enough to see. It’s a stone that will break open the third eye and connect straight to intuition, to deeper meaning, to whatever’s real beneath the noise.
“Of course.” I blow out a shaky breath and blink away the press of tears. My magick has been flailing, pulled in a dozen directions by every messy, jagged feeling inside me. “I don’t need more power. I need focus.”
I curl my fingers around the crystal, pressing it into my palm until the edges bite.
“Oh, Alder. You billionaire angel. If I get out of this, I swear I’ll forgive you for being such a douche.”
My hands move on their own, the choreography etched into muscle and bone. I strike a match and touch the flame to the rosemary. Smoke rises in fragrant curls, bitter and sweet.
“Cleanse me,” I whisper. “Make me mine again.”
I waft the smoke over my arms, my chest, my face, the way I’ve done a hundred times before. I drag the scent deep into my lungs, begging it to scour out the ache. To still my pulse. To free me from the throb of heartache and make me strong enough to hold what’s coming.
The fluorite waits in my other hand. I know I can’t use it, can’t focus, until I strip away the mess inside me. I cling to the ritual’s rhythm. Inhale, sweep. Exhale, sweep.
“Calm me. Cleanse me. Give me strength.”
Tears sting, and grief digs in like it has no intention of ever leaving. But if I fall apart now, I’ll never put myself back together.
“I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine—”
The last one catches, snagging in my throat. My lips keep moving—I’m fine, everything is fine. I grit my teeth and force the words back into the air, as if sheer volume can hammer them into reality.
“I’m fine!” The shout ricochets off stone. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I am fine!”
The syllables rip from my mouth in sparks—bright, angry comets that hiss into existence and burn hot against the night.
They streak through the dark, spitting embers as they go, until they slam into the altar.
Ash stirs and lifts at the impact, and the whole bowl catches, fire leaping higher as if the Tower itself is feeding on the sound of my lie.
Fortune’s voice swirls around me.
Remember…
“Shut up!”
I sink to my knees and sob, shoulders heaving, lungs wheezing, the noise filling the hollow until it sounds like the whole place is breaking with me. The sobs are proof. I am anything but fine.
Fear begins to take hold. It combs through my insides, twirls my veins around cold fingers, and whispers that this is all I’ll ever get. This is what I’m worth. That I have broken something in myself that won’t stitch back together.
Remember…
“I can’t! I don’t know how!”
Remember…
Fortune’s haunting me now, mocking me with something she knows I can’t reach. I am falling apart, and I cannot stand it. So I stop being small, stop trying to decode the magick, stop letting this realm run over me, and I let the anger move in.
Rage burns through me, scorching the edges of my despair until it becomes something sharp.
I welcome it as it sears a path through me.
Anger for letting Declan into the parts of me I shouldn’t have given.
Rage for the universe for dangling hope like it was ever mine to keep.
Contempt for myself for ever believing the tease.
My voice tears raw as I curse it all—every affirmation, every magickal card, every single thing that’s ever put me on my knees like this.
“You ruin everything!” I shout at the fire, at the Tower, at the universe, myself. “I am done! I am fucking done! Do you hear me? Done with all of it!”
Movement flickers in the corner of my eye. The Wheel of Fortune card lies where I left it. The wheel in its center turns slowly, mocking me.
“Oh, fuck you.” I snatch it up, strike a match, and feed the card to the flame.
The paper hisses and curls. Gold flakes blister and fall away in sparks.
The stone vibrates beneath me as the altar fire expands, and the flames swell and stretch into a single column of heat that claws the sky.
Shapes emerge within the inferno. Faces swim into focus before collapsing into ash. From the flames their voices take shape. They hum at a pitch just shy of pain, the sound crawling over my skin like static, pressing against my teeth, making the hairs at the nape of my neck rise.
Control…burns. Worthiness…rage… Love…unlovable… Died with lies in our mouths.
The figures begin to circle, every movement scattering a shower of embers that whip between them like snapping chains.
My gaze jerks from one spectral face to another, never certain if I’m looking at the same figure twice or if they’re shifting between forms to keep me unsteady.
Remember… Fortune’s voice fills me, pressing in until my heartbeat rattles my ribs like a cage.
Part of it clicks. I’ve heard these specters before—when I touched Fortune. The cryptic riddles, the sense of being chosen. It felt like I was being handed a key I didn’t yet know how to use. Now it feels like they’re furious I never figured out what it unlocked.
Remember!
And Fortune is too.
…waited for the right moment…called it fate. …stayed small…called it safe.
The spiral of apparitions tightens. Their heat pulls at the hairs on my arms, and I taste ash on my tongue.
…nothing changes if nothing changes…
The ghosts lean in, their forms stretching taller, their faces flickering in and out of focus. The heat surges, a blistering wave that forces me to take a step back.
“You don’t get to cast stones, tell me this is my fault. I have done everything I can. I always do! Some people are just unlucky.” My voice is ragged, but I don’t stop. “Some people are disappointments. Some people get stuck.”
…nothing changes if nothing changes…
Their judgment circles back, insistent, like I missed the words the first time. They land heavy, searing against my skin like hot iron, branding me with shame I already carry.
“I didn’t make the world this way,” I snap, my voice cracking. “I just live in it.”
One breaks from the circle, its form flickering violently as it glides closer. The face it wears is almost human before the flames take it again. Its voice is layered with all the others, the words resonating through my very being.
Fear…lies…feed the flames.
The fire writhes higher, twisting with the smoke until the two are indistinguishable, a serpent of gold and black coiling skyward.
I open my mouth to shout back, to swear I’m not afraid, not a liar, but the words wither before they leave my tongue, singed to nothing by the heat pressing in from all sides.
Lies!
The specter spits the word. Its body splinters into a shower of sparks that rain across my shoulders, stinging as they land.
The others fly toward the middle of the Tower in a single, furious rush, their forms unraveling into ribbons of flame that fold into the altar’s heart.
The column of fire surges, roaring with the sound of a thousand breaths exhaled at once.
Then it fractures, bursting apart in a storm of embers that spit from the altar and streak outward, arcing toward the sand walls that encircle the Tower.
They wriggle through the air like something newly hatched, and when they land, they burrow into the grit with a hiss, disappearing beneath the surface.
The ground bucks beneath me, the low tremor swelling into a deep, rolling quake that rattles my teeth and thrums up into my bones.
The crystal in my hand shatters. The rosemary crumbles into blackened ash.
The sand walls shiver. Each grain glows as the buried embers take root.
Heat pulses out, lashing my skin with waves of smoke.
The breeze turns feral, kicking up grit and fire.
The walls ripple like muscle, then lift from the ground.
In a rush of wind and fire, the sand surges out into the open desert in a blazing storm.
My heart hammers in my throat as I stumble forward, bare feet skidding on loose sand. I sprint up the low slope the tempest left behind, lungs filling with smoke until every breath scrapes my lungs raw. Grit lashes my cheeks. The air tastes of ash, hot enough to scald my tongue.
Ahead, a monstrous, towering wall of fire-streaked sand devours the horizon as the storm barrels straight for the heart of the Kingdom of Wands.
This magick isn’t Towerfall’s. It’s mine. It’s been mine all along. My emotions gave it teeth. My lies gave it form. And I’ve just set it loose.