Chapter 33 When the Clock Strikes Twelve #2
How different could it be? Beneath the desk, Sage unfurled a finger, and a trail of burgundy sparks shot out from between the table legs and headed straight down the tunnel of the labyrinth.
“I suspect there may be more pressing matters for you to handle, Prince Everald. Come back to me when you’ve seen to my friend, hmm?”
It happened surprisingly quickly. Sage would have assumed these things would take considerably longer to manifest themselves, that there would at least be some form of health-and-safety hoop to jump through.
But it was unmistakable. The clatter of claws scratching the gallery’s domed castle roof as the beast made its noisy landing.
An enormous rib-shaking, clattering thump, thick tail battering the side of a turret.
And, like nothing she had ever heard before, a roar so impossibly loud with a sudden rush of heat that both she and Casimir stumbled apart, her clutching onto the edge of the desk and him struggling to maintain his balance.
A look of horror painted its way across the prince’s handsome face, but Sage kept her cool.
“I’d run if I were you, Prince Everald. Sounds rather urgent.”
He hesitated only for a moment. “I’ll come back for you, witch.”
He meant it as a threat, but coming from him, it would only ever be a promise.
“I know you will,” Sage replied calmly.
With that, the prince tore back out into the labyrinth to face his foe.
People were foolish to think that dragons were not real.
Of course they were. She hoped that the one she had transferred in (there’d been several reported sightings at a cave in South Wales in the summer of 1978) didn’t mind her borrowing him for an hour or two.
Fortunately, this particular breed was vegetarian, distinctly pacifist and very friendly. Rather like an oversized cat.
Sage had only a moment to catch her breath before Lilara’s form came back into focus, gliding out in a rolling mist from the labyrinth walls.
“You love him,” Lilara said, scornful.
Sage sniffed out a laugh. “Yes. I suppose I do. It’s incredibly inconvenient.”
“That is what you have taken from this? From everything I have done for you? Despite it all, you choose a love that wasn’t there before?”
“It was always there,” Sage said calmly. “Please don’t think for a moment that you had any part in it.”
“This curse was supposed to horrify you! Show you these glittering temptations turned rotten!”
“And instead, all you’ve done is show me the very opposite.
” Now Sage was the one laughing. “I see it now! How could I have been so stupid?” She kicked back the desk chair, flipping it so it skidded over the snow-covered floor.
“Turning your back on magic, on joy itself, your truest self, is the very thing that has turned you bitter. That’s what’s made you wicked! ”
Lilara screamed. “I was trying to protect you! To catch you before you could fall.”
“No. Maybe in the beginning, but no. You used to be a good person with good intentions, but it was you who turned. You couldn’t stand the idea that any other witch should ever live happily.
You say that you saved me from heartbreak when my heartbreak was your fault.
Your curse was the cause of the greatest loss of my life. There’s no excuse for what you did!”
Lilara looked poised to burst with rage. “Revenge needs no excuse!”
The lines around her form were blurring more by the moment, the solidness of her shape turning to a smoky fade at the edges. Sage’s refusal to agree with her ways was ripping her open. This was not the outcome the witch had anticipated.
“Revenge doesn’t see reason,” Sage said.
“There was good reason! Yours was a worthy sacrifice if it could bring an end to this hideous town and its long line of heartbroken women crushed by the hands of magic. It had to end!”
A twisted combination of both generosity and selfishness plagued Lilara’s mind, clouding all sense of reason and clarity.
A part of Sage wanted to rain her own revenge down upon this woman in return.
Who was she to have directed her life down such a difficult course, to have impacted her with such venom and trouble only to feel comforted and less alone in her own sadness?
There was no valid excuse for such gnarled, deep-set bitterness.
But if she were to hit back, Sage would be following in Lilara’s footsteps even further. She had already wasted too many years trying to follow her. She did not want a legacy like that.
“I’m sorry, Lilara, that I couldn’t comfort you in the way that you needed me to,” Sage said firmly. “Bitterness begets bitterness, shared sorrow, Schadenfreude…I know them better than most.”
Lilara’s outline plumed. The same dark mist that had built the labyrinth, tendrils of dark vapour curling out in wisps, undulating, levitating her from the ground.
The trail of her cloak was beginning to fade into the air.
“I cursed you and everyone in this damned town to give them a taste of their own medicine!” Lilara was shouting between sobs.
“To echo how they made me feel, when they turned their backs on me. Left me alone with a broken heart!”
Lilara levitated higher still, the mist consuming more and more of her form into the darkness. “This villainous magic! Turn your back! Be my dear friend! Come back with me between the pages, to the confines of the book, before it is too late in your story! We are wicked!” she screamed.
“I have made mistakes, plenty of them,” Sage said, her voice steady. She felt effervescent, perfectly grounded and trusting. “But I am no wicked witch.”
It felt like the first laugh after grief.
Like a baffled smile from an exhausted new mother.
Like noticing a rainbow when the rain has been relentless.
It was all so bittersweet. Lilara had seen something that looked like love and, understandably, rushed to grasp it, sprinted for the conclusion that she so desperately wanted.
But nothing worth its weight in gold could be rushed.
If Lilara had only allowed herself time to mend and heal before landing the blame on a beautiful part of herself, she would have found the right love, waiting patiently to accept her for all that she was.
Magic would welcome that love with open arms in return.
It had taken Sage her whole life to learn such a lesson, but it had been worth the wait.
“My story is one where both love and magic live!” Sage shouted. “In fact, I’m not sure they’re so different at all. Things may change along the way, sadness and heartbreak will inevitably be smudged across my pages, but still, I trust my ending will be a happy one. And magic will be there.”
Her heart already knew it to be true. Scribbles and inky mistakes littered the pages that she had already turned, but she was deserving of all the good things among whatever came next.
Lilara’s fading form rose higher and higher up to the domed ceiling, the black clouds closing in around her at the edges, and then there was a dreadful piercing scream.
Her form blew entirely into darkness and mist. The silver highlights of her star-covered cloak gave one final, lingering glitter, and at the turn of midnight, as the clock struck the twelfth day of the enchantment, Lilara Mournfell and her curses faded from the world.
From the darkness where she had vanished, a tumble of crimson rose petals cascaded to the ground.
Sage’s whole body trembled, deep breaths of relief and exhilaration rushing through her. Then, not too long afterwards, there was the sound of running once again, boots shuffling at speed through the labyrinth, drawing closer and closer.
Then a call.
“Specs?”