Chapter 54
THE TWELFTH HOUR
Shadow binds my wrists. I try to squirm out of them as I’m pulled through the Overlay against my will, grappling with the truth.
Jude was right.
All along.
I should have never trusted Rafe.
He made a deal with the devil.
“This is how you got out,” I say, spitting the words. They taste like bile on my tongue. “This is why you saved me.”
But he doesn’t answer.
He refuses to even look at me.
An explosion bursts through the twisted trees, illuminating the gnarled canopy. A flock of winged creatures circle above it.
With a hair-raising howl, the hounds race ahead.
I want to run with them.
I want to know why an incendiary was required.
I also want to run away.
I want to give them more time.
But Simon drags me onward and when we step into the clearing, my heart plummets.
Blood-red vines thrash and screech like the birds in the sky.
Despite the blazing fire, they refuse to recoil. They refuse to relinquish the prisoners.
Only a few have been freed.
I try to make quick sense of who. I don’t see Kate.
I don’t see Lola Hayes. Harper drags an unconscious Ivy Winslow into the trees.
Further behind, Twig carries Emma in his arms. Juniper, Lainey, and Griffin are unconscious and bound as Jude fires his blowtorch at the vines wrapped around Brady Keller.
Caleb, Sienna, and Harrison are still here, too.
Naomi screams.
She backs away to the very edge of the water as a hound stalks toward her with bared teeth and a rumbling growl. She fires her blowtorch, but the beast only snaps at the flame. Then it pounces, tackling her to the ground.
Jude scoops up his bow, nocks an arrow, and shoots.
It streaks through the air and hits its mark.
With a keening wail, the hound falls.
I shout Jude’s name, hoping he will nock another arrow.
Hoping he will turn and draw his bow and shoot at Vorat’s throat.
But his eyes catch mine and before he can do anything, before he can even register the sight of me bound by shadow and Rafe, completely free, the ruby surges with brightness and Simon throws out his hands.
Everyone is blasted off their feet.
Twig crashes to the ground, the unconscious Emma tumbling with him.
Jude is slammed into a tree, the bow knocked from his hand.
Vines lash and whip, quickly snagging Jude, snagging Twig, snagging Naomi and Emma, too, while Vorat directs the chaos like a conductor.
They are dragged into the vacant spots. Replacing Kate.
Replacing Lola. And Ivy, who escaped with Harper.
I pray she doesn’t return.
A pair of screeching birds break away from the flock.
They dive at Vorat.
With another surge of brightness from the ruby, they are blasted into nothing, and something about Jude is lost. His form is vague and ill-defined, as though here, in this nightmarish world, the truth of his condition is laid bare.
Vorat has stolen too much.
“Please,” I beg. “Stop!”
Miraculously, he does.
The ruby goes dark.
The shadow releases my wrists.
He turns to me—sinister and slow—his face hidden beneath his hood once again as his hounds close in. I stumble backward, looking from one to the next, servants forced to do his bidding.
Which one is Lily?
Simon moves across the pond like shadow pulled through air.
He stands inside the pavilion, but the tomb is no longer there.
The cage of bones and the glowing orb is gone, too.
The thorny nest remains. So, too, does the creature within, blinking its round, luminous eyes, and beyond it, the flickering filament trapped inside a vial.
There is only one now. Two of the vials have been emptied.
The creature scrambles out of its nest. It scrabbles up the wall and snags the vial from its niche. It scurries to Vorat. It crawls up his arm, across his shoulders, and down the opposite length of him before returning to its home.
Vorat holds the vial.
He beckons Rafe closer with one long, sinewy finger.
The flickering filament thrashes wildly, beating against the glass as though stirred by Rafe’s approach.
“I am a man of my word,” Simon says, a trail of whispers following his proclamation. He opens the vial and holds it beneath Rafe’s nose like a snifter of cognac. “Your debt has been paid.”
The filament unfurls in a curl of smoke.
Rafe closes his eyes and inhales deeply.
The glowing string of gossamer slides up his nostril and the scars on his chest ignite. They burn like the sun.
I shield my eyes as the brightness fades and the marks disappear.
Rafe slides his hand over his smooth, untarnished skin.
“You are free,” Simon tells him.
Naomi shouts in surprise, a startled objection as Rafe slips into shadow and the rest of us remain.
Nausea crawls up my throat.
My classmates are still bound. Only three have gotten away and my friends have replaced them.
I have led them to their deaths, and I have no trick up my sleeve.
No brainwave to execute. I scramble for more time, for a Plan C as the hounds creep closer, their necks bent, their hackles raised.
I back away, onto the bridge where I am elevated over the pond with Jude across from me on the opposite bank.
Harrison to my right. Juniper Vale to my left.
Both are unconscious—stuck in their frozen states. Orbs pulsing in their chests. Vines wrapped around them like a threat.
“Where is Scout Mercer?” I ask.
The other hiker.
Is this who we buried in Ivy’s grave?
“I got a little hungry,” Vorat says. “I decided to use the mishap to my advantage. A starving ecosystem cannot birth a new reality, and this one does love to feed on grief. Nobody would have grieved for Scout. Ivy on the other hand? There was plenty of grief for her.”
I swallow my disgust. “What have you done with my mother?”
There is a rush of air.
A whisper of fabric.
And Simon is right beside me on the bridge speaking from the slit in his mouth. “She is waiting for the show to begin.”
Vines slither around my ankles.
I try to lift my feet, but I am locked into place, unable to do anything but watch as those same vines crawl inside Jude, crawl inside Naomi, crawl inside Twig, crawl inside me.
It is so cold, I gasp and double over. My heart erupts in pain, like muscle separating from bone.
Blue orbs flare to life inside Jude’s chest, inside Naomi’s and Twig’s.
All of us are connected in a web of vines that twinkle like starlight.
Twelve prisoners equally spaced around Simon’s pond like hours on a clock.