Chapter Thirty-Six
CHAPTER
Thirty-Six
CASSANDRA IS IN the front of the bookshop, finishing up with a customer, when Byron appears behind her. The customer looks up at Byron, then to the book on the desk.
“This… will give me courage?” she asks. “To—to ask him?”
Cassandra glances at the book. It’s a long-forgotten collection of Victorian poetry from an anonymous writer.
But every poem is a romance letter to an unnamed friend, who had clearly become something more.
Whether they had sent it and fulfilled their expression to the friend is a question whose answer has long vanished into time. But the magic inside is sound enough.
“It will give you clarity on what you need to do next,” she says.
The door closes, the bell chiming softly.
Cassandra stretches out, letting herself luxuriate in a rare good mood.
She’s spent the last two days revisiting Lowell’s kiss with all the giddiness of a teenage crush, replaying every burning touch.
Even though she hasn’t seen him since, a note appeared on her desk in his familiar writing, a paw print smudged in the corner.
An address and a time. I thought I might take a nice girl on a date.
Nothing about this is a good idea. But it’s never stopped her before.
“Cassandra,” Byron says.
“I know, I know—I sound like a fortune teller,” she says. Then she sees Byron’s expression and a deep foreboding stirs within her. “What?”
“There’s something—well, you’d better take a look at this.”
Cassandra follows Byron to the back, unease creeping down her spine. She turns the corner—and stops.
The rocky pond at the back of the bookshop is barely more than a silty trickle, with none of the river’s musicality. It’s simply… gone.
Cassandra opens her mouth, but for the first time, she can’t think of anything to say. She’d thought that, somehow, the river would stay safe in Chiron’s bookshop. She’s not spent its power on a paradox book, nor neglected the bookshop above. Errata twines around her legs anxiously.
“This has never happened before,” she says eventually.
Byron chews her lip. “We have to give these to the river somehow.”
Cassandra looks at the pile of offerings: a locket enclosing a childhood curl of hair; a luminous rock; the fragile skeleton of a songbird. Prices from their latest batch of customers.
“I’ll take care of this,” she says.
That afternoon, Cassandra finds herself walking to a secret park outside of London, beyond the last stop on the northern line of the Tube.
She ducks two fences, the offerings to the river tucked carefully into a bag.
Her other hand holds a faded map, the lines shifting delicately across fragile paper.
Although it’s not an unfamiliar walk, the destination changes just a little, every time.
After a muddy journey and one harrowing dash through a field of cows, Cassandra pushes open a wrought-iron gate and steps inside a verdant green park, with an open-air folly. The trickling sound of the river echoes reassuringly amidst the rustle of trees.
Even when Cassandra was a thief, and she’d set aside the bookshop for good, she’d still come here.
She might not have considered what river price was paid before its books passed through her hands, but she’d always brought something back here, however small, to pay tribute in her own way.
And sometimes she’d come without any reason at all.
If she closes her eyes and listens, it’s almost as though she’s back in the bookshop.
The folly sits on a dais, cradling a deep well of water.
Above it, a statue of Lady Fate rises, her compendium in one hand and a set of scales in the other.
Water pours in a gentle waterfall from the scales at varying intervals, tipping them one way or another.
To her surprise, there’s the dark outline of several books at the bottom of the well.
She knows other booksellers come here to pay their respects, or to occasionally give books back to the river when their usefulness has reached its end.
But it seems like more than a few people have visited recently.
Cassandra leans over the water, her reflection rippling in front of her. The dyed blonde in her hair has grown out significantly in the last few months, leaving behind ink-dark roots. With the water muddying the colours, she could almost pass for the Keeper.
It was Chiron who’d taken her to this shrine, years ago, and explained what happened when an ordinary person became a bookseller. To be inducted is to drink deeply from the river, and feel the flow of time move within them. And it works—mostly.
“When will I be inducted?” she’d asked.
To her surprise, he’d only ruffled her hair and smiled. Chiron had never been a particularly tactile person, and she could count on one hand how many hugs she’d received over the course of their time together.
“You already have the river inside of you,” he said. “Born to the job, I guess.”
She’d held on to that compliment for months afterwards.
Born to be a bookseller—and born to be Chiron’s protégé.
She smiles ruefully at the memory. It’s true that she’s never had to drink from the river, and that the books’ language of ink and magic has always felt akin to her own.
But the thought that she would be so suited to the role of owner was always laughable.
Yet perhaps Fate is having the last laugh.
Because isn’t that exactly where she’s ended up?
Only with the river running dry, and a society desperate to get their hands on Chiron’s bookshop.
And Chiron himself, a ghost chasing ink and the edges of her nightmares—a poltergeist that she thought she’d known as a man.
But the Chiron she knew had never consorted with thieves, never snuck around or clung to mystery.
It’s hard to picture the two versions and imagine them ever overlapping.
Cassandra looks at the statue of Lady Fate again, her gaze lingering on the stone effigy of the compendium.
The past and future set forever. Maybe Lady Fate had always intended for the river to vanish.
Or maybe there’s no singular point to return to, no paradox book that could unravel to a time when the river could be saved.
They’ve been trying so hard to rewrite their history—and maybe that’s the problem.
If only they could rewrite the future, instead of the past.
Her phone rings, an unusual sound even in the city. It takes a moment for Cassandra to fish it out of her bag, and when she sees who’s calling, she almost doesn’t pick it up. But some problems are better headed off at the source, so reluctantly, she answers.
“What do you want, Edmund?”
The line crackles with static, Edmund’s voice barely audible.
Cassandra starts walking away from the shrine, further into the woods.
Edmund is obviously upset about something because his rant persists, incomprehensible.
She’s just past the sight line of the shrine when his voice comes through in a whoosh of noise.
“… told you, I told him—”
Cassandra cuts him off. “I’m going to ask again: what do you want?”
This time, his anger is clear and crisp. “You told me you would stay away from Lowell. You swore.”
Cassandra’s stomach swoops, unsettled, before she steadies herself. It’s no surprise that Edmund’s discovered her continued contact with Lowell. She can manage Edmund, just as she’s managed everything else; it’s just a matter of tone.
“I lied,” she says, falsely casual. “Was there anything else?”
The silence on the other end of the line stretches long enough for Cassandra to hear birds flitting through the trees.
“I’ll tell him everything.” Edmund’s voice is low, a new note of steel in his tone. “The whole bloody truth. And what will he think of you, then?”
Cassandra’s heart stutters. Lowell, knowing her as the thief, the nobody that she is. A terrible, cold part of her surfaces: Cass Holt, against the wall and making sure every single word ensures her escape because no one’s coming to save her.
You are not worthy of the river.
No, she thinks again, drowning out Chiron’s echo.
“Fine, go ahead,” she says, and she almost doesn’t recognise her own voice. “Tell Lowell. Tell him everything, in fact. Because if I know one thing about Lowell, it’s that he’s going to have a hell of a lot of questions for you. I wouldn’t be worrying about me. What’s he going to think of you?”
“Lowell is my brother,” Edmund replies immediately, but she knows that she’s touched a nerve.
“Not by blood.”
The part of her that knows she’s being unspeakably cruel—that she will regret this, as she’s regretted so much—rouses briefly. But the rest of her shoves it back down. She can’t afford to show sympathy, or let herself be softened by Edmund’s slight intake of breath as he contemplates this truth.
“You’ve already taken everything from him,” she says. “If you take this, too, what will be left?”
Unspoken, the question hangs between them: will Lowell forgive the man who’s not his blood brother? They are all child tributes to the river, prices paid for a heart’s desire. But he knows just as well as her that bookseller doesn’t mean friend, or even ally. Let alone family.
“Whether Lowell likes me or not is irrelevant. He is my brother, do you understand? You can’t begin to comprehend what I’ve already done for him.
And I’d do the same and more.” Edmund is quiet on the other end of the line.
“You know, I’ve been wondering what the appeal of changing your name was.
Whether it was a mask to put on so you could feel better about your dirty work.
But you’re the same all the way through. ”
Cassandra doesn’t say anything. But her hand tightens on her phone.
“Mention one word about me to Lowell, and I will so thoroughly ruin you, you’ll wish all Cass Holt did was steal from you,” she snarls. “I mean it. I did my research—and I know what you’ve done. Those two days in Edinburgh? That incident on Skye? Like I said, scum floats to the top.”
Edmund is quiet on the other end of the line. “And that’s a warning, is it?”
Bile tinges the back of her throat, but she pushes it down.
“That’s a certainty. And who’s he going to believe? Me, or the brother who already resents him simply for existing?” She pauses, long enough for him to play out the implication. “I’ll make sure the last person he ever hates is you.”
Before he can reply, she ends the call. A second later, sudden nausea roils in her stomach.
She throws up, half-staggering against the nearest tree.
Her stomach heaves once, twice more before it settles enough for her to straighten and wipe her mouth shakily.
Her entire body is wound tight with more than tension: fear.
She takes deep breaths of the sweet forest air, trying to ground herself.
What she did just now is no worse than what she might have done a year ago as Cass Holt.
Edmund Sharpe is just another criminal masquerading as a bookseller, a man she would have no qualms about climbing over or cutting loose.
He would do the same to her in a heartbeat.
Except he’d talked to her at the bar. He’d helped her escape.
Cassandra shakes her head, dispelling her thoughts. She doesn’t have time to debate Edmund Sharpe’s motivations, or how much of a hold he seems to have on his brother’s life. She did what she had to do—and he’ll leave her alone if he wants to preserve the shreds of his relationship with Lowell.
Focus on Chiron. Focus on the river.
Forget everything else.