Chapter 19 #2
My slippers scuff against the uneven threshold, and the sound ricochets through the space, the echo stretching long and thin before fading into silence.
The air chills the deeper we’re pulled into the belly of the giant, the damp scent of stone wrapped in something richer, darker. It smells old, untouched, abandoned by time.
The fingers of sunlight that manage to stretch into the cavern flicker weakly against the walls that shimmer faintly, laced with veins of burnished silver, slick with condensation that drips in slow, measured rivulets against the stone.
As my eyes adjust to the dark, a faint, ghostly glow emerges from the center of the chamber, pale and cold as moonlight.
A monstrosity of silver and steel rises from the center of the cavern in a tangle of gears and pipes that sprawl outward from its wide base, twisting and coiling like serpents poised to strike.
Some plunge deep into the stone floor, disappearing into the earth.
Others stretch skyward, reaching, straining toward a ceiling lost in darkness.
Rust streaks down its sides like ancient wounds. Cobwebs sag in thick sheets between the gears, and dust lies undisturbed, dulling the once-bright gleam of metal.
A faint, hollow groan emanates from deep within it, as if it’s breathing in its sleep. As if something inside is still waiting to awaken.
A chill lances my spine. I swallow hard, my voice barely a whisper. “It’s like those machines outside the city…a massive version of the one inside the castle.”
The one that killed that woman.
“It doesn’t look like it’s worked in ages,” I murmur, but the words feel thin, as if the cavern itself is swallowing them before they can take shape.
Alder steps closer, his fingers drifting across a nearby pipe. The faint, spectral gleam catches on his face, blurring his features, making him look otherworldly, unreadable. Like he belongs here in a way that I don’t.
“It’s magick,” he says simply, and something in his voice prickles against my skin.
I move forward without thinking, drawn to the machine the way I had been drawn to the tower itself.
The air thickens as I step closer, the cavern pressing in on all sides.
Dust clings to my fingertips and spiderwebs catch on my sleeves, draping like ghostly threads across my arms as I brush the edges of the machine.
I exhale sharply, my pulse skipping. “I think…I think I walked right into a spell.”
Alder tilts his head, a question etched between his brows. “What do you mean?”
I drag my fingers through my hair before letting them fall helplessly to my sides as I try to form the words around the impossible truth. “When we did the cake pull… When I pulled out my ribbon, I didn’t get a charm.” I glance at him, throat tight. “I got a tarot card.”
He says nothing, so I keep going, even though the truth feels ridiculous, even though there’s a small voice inside of me screaming that I’m in for another round of disappointment.
“The figures on it…they moved,” I whisper. “The snake slithered, and the people…the people looked like us. They clung to each other. Their bodies moved together. Melted into each other.”
I brace for the disbelief. For the brush-off. For the casual dismissal that always follows any hint of my intuition. But then I remember he said he wanted to prove to me that he was the kind of man I need him to be. So I meet his eyes, hold my breath, and give him a chance.
“It was magick,” I continue. “I didn’t know it then, but I do now. That tarot card—it did something. It forced us here.”
Finally, softly, he says, “I believe you.”
I nod slowly, unable to speak, emotion crowding my throat.
He studies me for a long moment. “What if it didn’t force you anywhere? What if it simply revealed where you were always meant to go?”
The words hit me low and deep, blooming in the space behind my ribs like something inevitable.
Maybe it didn’t pull me off course. Maybe it pulled me into alignment.
Not just with this world—but with myself.
With the truth I’ve been running from, with the version of me I was too afraid to believe in.
My fingers brush the base of the machine, and a flicker of heat pulses beneath my skin. I lean closer, breath fogging against the cool stone, and blow away a layer of dust.
A carving emerges.
Two hearts, delicately entwined, their curves interlocking like the endless loops of an infinity symbol. It’s a language I don’t know but instinctively understand, and the longer I stare, the more the details emerge.
One heart is slightly larger, more dominant, its edges bold and smooth and deeply etched. The other, a breath softer, its lines more fluid, its form almost unfinished, as if it hasn’t quite decided what shape to take.
The longer I look, the less it feels like a symbol and the more it feels like a mirror.
Like me.
Like him.
Like us.
The hearts aren’t static. They’re in motion, circling each other, pulling and pushing in an unending dance. Not symmetrical, but balanced in their own imperfect way.
A shiver rolls through me as I glance up at Alder, his profile lit by the faint glow from the mouth of the cavern. His hand rests on the machine, steady, as if he’s grounding himself. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
I reach out. It’s not much. My fingertips brush the back of his wrist, barely there, barely anything at all. Just a question I don’t know how to ask.
His eyes find mine. And everything else—the hum of the tower, the weight of this world, even the tension in my own limbs—fades.
We simply look at each other.
Not in that earth-shattering, I-can’t-breathe kind of way. But in the way people do when they finally see each other without all the noise.
He doesn’t move at first. Neither do I.
And then, I whisper, “The carving. It feels like us.”
Alder’s throat bobs, and he nods. “It does.”
Another breath. Another beat.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask, my voice quiet but steady.
He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t joke. Instead, he tilts his head, eyes full of something that could crack me open if I let it.
“I’m trying to memorize you.”
I blink, startled.
He shrugs, like it’s the simplest truth in the world. “In case I never get to see you like this again.”
The moment stretches. The intimacy of it settles over us like dusk, gentle and certain.
A low, resonant hum rolls through the cavern, and the massive piston above us shudders faintly, releasing a curling wisp of steam. The vibrations beneath my feet intensify, their rhythm syncing to the frantic pounding of my heart.
Alder steps closer. His arms slide around my waist with the ease of someone who’s done this a thousand times, and yet still holds me like the act is holy. His hands settle low on my hips, anchoring me to the present, to him, to this impossible moment where everything in me finally stops struggling.
The machine hisses, a sharp exhale that feels like the room itself is bracing for what comes next.
I reach up, thread my fingers through his hair, and pull him down.
The kiss isn’t tentative. It’s wildfire—hungry and immediate and merciless.
He kisses me like he’s been starving for it, like I’m the first breath after drowning. Like he’ll never get enough. His mouth claims mine, teeth catching on my bottom lip, tongue sweeping in to taste, to take, to give. I press against him, desperate and gasping, and he meets me with equal force.
I feel the hard lines of his body everywhere.
His fingers sink into my waist. His chest rises fast against mine as he moans softly into my mouth when I deepen the kiss.
The machine roars—a guttural, grinding sound that vibrates through the walls, through the floor, through me. Gears shriek. Steam hisses. The whole Tower shudders, as if it’s been holding its breath for centuries and has finally decided to exhale.
It’s not just noise.
It’s response.
I flinch against Alder as metal clangs above us like a warning shot fired in the dark. My breath catches. We both freeze, still tangled in each other, eyes wide as the heat between us mixes with something ancient and awakening.
For one suspended second, I’m ripped back to where we are. To what this is. The Tower—this machine—is shifting, breathing, waking up.
“I thought it was broken,” I whisper, terrified of what this means and of the fact that I don’t want any of it to stop.
“So did I.”
Silence follows. Then his hands find the curve of my waist, and the moment is over. The pause between heartbeats ends. My body responds like it was built for him.
He kisses lower—along my jaw, down my throat—and each brush of his mouth is a spark to dry kindling. I shudder, breathless, helpless against the way he devours every inch of me.
“You’re delicious,” he growls against my neck, voice rough and reverent, a scrape of need that sets every nerve in my body alight.
My knees nearly buckle, and I clutch his shoulders.
“I want to taste every inch of you.”
The Tower moans again—stone grinding, metal clanking, steam rising like breath from the lungs of a sleeping god. The walls shiver. The air thickens, electric and charged and watching.
The machine isn’t just waking.
It’s bearing witness.
Still, I don’t pull away. I don’t ask questions. I don’t run. Because deep down, somewhere beneath the rational voice screaming at me to get a grip, I know this connection, this hunger, this impossible, dangerous thing between us is what I’ve been waiting for.
The boundary between us dissolves, melting into the kind of hunger, the kind of need, that doesn’t ask permission—it just takes.
And I let it.
For the first time since reuniting with Alder, I don’t want to be saved.
And then—
A scream.
Sharp, piercing. It splinters through the cavern like a crack in glass. The sound is so sudden, so wrong, it doesn’t register at first.
Another scream. Battered. Choked.
I jerk back.
The machine keens, a high, metallic whine that rakes down my spine like cold fingers.
There’s a screech of pain and terror and everything that should not be as the world crashes back into focus.
Something is happening outside these walls. Something we were never meant to hear.