CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
My feet pounded against the dirt, the spring wind roaring against my ears. I hadn’t heard any screams of alarm yet, which was a relief, but that wouldn’t last forever. Thomas’s amphibious skin seeped through my dress, damp and slimy.
In the distance, a coach was being readied: a footman cleaned the carriage, and a driver checked his horses’ reins.
I needed a distraction. I begged the air to move, to make a scene. A tree nearby groaned, wobbling, fighting against my desires, my ambition.
You will fall, I told it, and the tree toppled. A thud shook the ground, branches sprawled out across the manor lawn. The coachman and footman ran to examine the damage, just as a guard shouted about escaped prisoners.
I beseeched the wind to speed me along as I hopped into the carriage’s box seat.
I took the reins. Behind me, the coachman yelled, his voice stolen by the wind as I prompted the horses to move, to run, to get out.
We were off, dirt flying from the horses’ hooves.
Thomas tucked himself into my lap as screams were muffled by the distance.
We careened down the lane, the lawn flying past. I clutched the reins tightly. When I looked back, Lee was little more than a blur of frantic movement and shouted orders. A groom rushed over to him with a large stallion at his side.
My stomach curdled.
“Now would be a good time for you to turn back into a man, future Grand Mage,” I told Thom through gritted teeth, urging the carriage to move faster.
He croaked in response.
We hit the main road and I snapped the reins with trembling hands. I searched the lane ahead for travelers, for anyone who could help, but no one appeared on the roads, the track hidden by thin forest.
A set of hoofprints pounded against the dirt behind me.
He’d eventually reach us. It will all have been for nothing.
But at least the idiot was alone for now. Still too proud of his abilities, still too unsure of mine. He didn’t realize wild magic flowed through the veins of the woman he dismissed as the prince’s mistress.
I could yet prove him wrong again.
A burning scent filled my nostrils, carried against the force of the wind. When I spared a glance back, a hungry flame ate through the carriage top, dancing across the canvas as it writhed amidst clouds of smoke. Behind us, Lee rode hunched, his arm outstretched, his face masked in concentration.
A sparking spell.
With no water nearby, my pulse spiked.
Think, Lyra.
I breathed deeply. I needed my time magic.
I needed the fire to leave us.
I thought of ripped shirts, torn parchments, split seams. Of all that had been destroyed, and everything time ruined in the end. I thought of the carriage top worn down by years of use, of rips, cracked leather, and stains….
Unmake the carriage. Tear it apart. My mind scrambled for the amplifier, the golden thread, thin but strong. I pulled with all my might.
And with that thought, the carriage was torn in half, the top ripping itself free.
A loud crack filled the air, then came a heavy thud as it crashed onto the dirt road.
I lurched, the coach stripped nearly bare.
Cold air whooshed against my backside. A yelp resounded behind us.
When I looked back, Lee’s horse had tripped over the smoldering carriage pieces.
Lee lay sprawled out on the dirt, fire climbing up his mage robes.
The horse cried out in pain, and my heart twisted—I hoped that it would be alright.
But when Lee cried out as well, I did not spare him the same pity.
I urged our horses to go faster, even as exhaustion weighed on my limbs.
I did not look back again to see if he survived.
When I reached the palace, dawn was just peering over the horizon, a glorious golden glow hovering over the landscape.
My legs shook as I descended what was now merely a blackened, sooty carriage frame. The shouts of men swarmed us. I cradled Thom even closer to my chest as one guard grabbed my arm and dragged me into the castle without a word.
“I have the prince,” I said, my voice slurred. “He’s here. He’s a frog.”
The guard paid me no attention, dragging me down stone steps into the dungeon.
I stumbled as the guard pushed me into a cell. The bars clanged shut.
“His Majesty is in an important meeting at this moment,” he told me. “But I’m sure he’ll be very interested in what you have to say about the missing prince when he is finished.”
“Thomas isn’t missing, he’s here!” I cried, pushing the frog in front of me.
The guard snorted. “Sure, girl.”
His footsteps echoed over the stone floors, and I was left in darkness but for the flickering torches hung on the walls. A distant, rattling cough rang out from the other side of the dungeon, but the darkness shrouded whoever sat there.
Goosebumps formed along my arms.
I sat down amidst cobwebs. A rat’s eyes glinted at me before skittering away. Thomas hopped off my lap onto the cold stone floor.
“Some rescue,” I said. “I hadn’t exactly planned this far. I hadn’t planned any of it, to be honest.”
Thom’s eyes retreated into his skull in a grotesque blink. I shuddered.
“I hope you’re still in there,” I said. “Otherwise, there might be no happy ending for the two of us. Not that I’m sure there was ever meant to be one.”
My head was beginning to throb, the edges of my vision darkening. My body desperately needed rest, and there was no way I’d be getting it before I found someone to help take care of Thomas.
Just a little more magic.
My eyes fluttered closed, and I reached for nausea, for dread, for all the premonitory feelings I’d once pushed away and shunned. Now, more than anything, I longed to know Prince Thomas would be okay.
“Please be alright,” I whispered, and in the distance, a thread’s tail swished. I caught its glimmer before it disappeared once more into the darkness.
In my mind, I bolted toward it. The blackness around me whipped past, the wind abrasive against my cheeks. I leapt, catching the end of the thread as it jerked in my grasp.
A flicker followed.
Prince Thom, human again, smiling and looking down at his hands.
And I was nowhere beside him. No hand in his, no shadow at his shoulder. Only absence.
My stomach twisted. The nausea abated, replaced by terrible certainty: there was a path forward, one that returned Thomas to himself immediately.
I knew how this must end. A commoner and a prince—a gap I once thought impossible to traverse. Who would have known the annoying royal snob across the pond would join me in a mission that would save the kingdom?
The gap I’d hated was one I now had to acknowledge: only one of us knew the cure for the Quiet Passing.
The other knew how to undo the past few hours, even if it cost her everything.
I sighed, dropping my head into my hands as the throbbing spread. Maybe there was another way. What was it that the potion did exactly? It wasn’t meant to turn him into a frog—Lee’s words were much more vague and unclear.
He’d said it was enchanted to help its drinker fit where they belong.
For Thom, that had been by the pond. I’d called him a princely toad once upon a time; apparently the words had rung true, or at least had sunken in. Unfortunately, he must have believed me.
“Do you really believe you’re no more than an ugly toad?” I asked. “Meant for nothing more than a dalliance by a pond with a girl like me?”
He croaked.
“You’re much more than that, Thomas.” I sighed.
“Without you, I could never be what I am today. Do you realize that? I admit, you’ve had your rude moments, and your bluntness could use some work but…
” I took another deep breath. “If you hadn’t kept telling me to try harder, to do better, to achieve more… I’m not sure I would have.”
Thomas hopped closer to me. I lifted an index finger to touch his back, trying not to shudder at the slimy skin.
“And many times, you were right to challenge me,” I said. “Anna told me Stephen seemed much happier over the holidays, gushing about life in the countryside. You knew your brother best—I shouldn’t have accused you otherwise.”
I held out my hands and he hopped onto them.
“You wrote me letters.” A smile formed on my lips, my eyes watering.
“You helped Ella and Prince Theodore find each other again. And you quit your treatise preparation, something I knew you’d worked your whole life for, to rush back when you heard my niece was sick.
” A tear slipped its way down my cheek. “And after all that, after discovering I’d never confessed my love to you at all, you still took the potion on my behalf.
” I sniffled. “Thomas, you better transform back.”
He shuffled between his froggy feet, blank eyes on mine.
Silence met my confession, and my tears fell faster.
“Please come back to me, Thomas. You wrote that you belonged to the night, where your flaws could be hidden. But I love you, flaws and all. I love you, Thomas, and you belong with me, not tucked away from the world, but shining by my side. I’d give anything to have you back.
” I leaned forward, crushing my eyelids closed and kissing his head, shuddering at the slimy feel, but too heartbroken to pull away.
Maybe it wouldn’t work at all. But even if he remained a frog all his life, I wanted him by my side. He’d done so much, more than even I knew possible, out of love for me. Taking care of him was the least I could do.
And if my magic did work? If it did what I thought it would? Well, it was a sacrifice for the kingdom, for him. He’d already sacrificed himself for me.
My lips lingered, and my heart yanked at the golden thread that sought my hands, no longer coy.
Exhaustion seeped into my bones, my limbs begging to rest, but I forced my fingers around my thread.
The spool of my soul unravelled, spinning and spinning, and steam rose and filled my nostrils with soot and burnt twine.
I tried to slow it, but I was too drained from the evening’s magic. I had little will left. Besides, it was too late—my eyes were magically sealed shut, the spool taking on a life of its own.
Master Carter’s words, his warnings, came to mind, but as much as I tried to stop the spool, as much as fear burst from my skin, the end of the thread was coming.
Destiny seemed to have its own plan as magic flooded my veins and seeped through my palms. The world was warm. Was this what death felt like?
Yet I would make it matter. Come back to me, Thom, I told my soul.
Let my magic matter—at least for this moment.
Let my Papa be proud.
I was made for more. For this. To be a hero of the kingdom. A woman who gave up everything for love.
The last of the thread whipped out of the spool, yanked from my hands, and I stumbled. My palms were blistered and red. The air rushed from my lungs.
I looked up into the blackness, which closed in on me slowly, like a fading sunset.
And suddenly, I could not look anymore.
I was gone.