Chapter Fifty-Four
CHAPTER
Fifty-Four
WHEN THE SOUND of the river trickles back to life, Cassandra opens her eyes.
The mountainous walls of the cavern gleam at her, water underneath her once more.
The last of Roth’s ink washes harmlessly back and forth in the river, but there’s no sign of him.
Gone, to somewhere beyond time. Forever, she hopes fervently.
Then she recalls the motionless weight of Lowell in her arms and true, icy panic seizes her. She cradles his head, searching frantically for movement, a pulse—anything.
She’ll never be a thief again. She’ll never touch a book again.
She’ll do anything, as long as he comes back.
Then he gasps, coughing up a not-inconsiderable amount of water. Relief floods over her. She touches his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart. He leans his head against hers, forehead to forehead, nose to nose. Tears burn the back of her throat.
“I thought you were…”
She can’t complete the sentence. But he gives her hand a faint squeeze.
“I’m here,” he says, and exhales deeply. “I’m here.”
Cassandra helps Lowell to his feet. His face is pale, made paler by the bright splash of blood against his neck.
His shirt is ripped in half a dozen places from where Roth grabbed him.
He pulls out his glasses from his pocket and examines them; one of the lenses is cracked, and the left arm is missing.
“I’m okay, really,” he says, even though he’s clearly anything but.
He gathers her in his arms and for a moment, she leans her head against his shoulder. How warm he feels, against the chill of the river’s current.
“You can’t be here,” she says. “The river—the book—”
“He killed the Keeper.”
“You have to go, Lowell. If you don’t—”
Far behind her, something shatters. The world, already starting to unravel its decisions. Then she realises why she no longer feels the river’s chill so deeply. Because it’s no longer knee-deep, but skimming the soles of her shoes.
Because the river is fading.
“I’m not leaving you.” Lowell Sharpe, irrepressibly stubborn.
Hastily, she starts to pull the pages from the shallow riverbed. Despite spending an indeterminate time in the water, they come out dry and crisp, her handwriting still legible. The future she’s rewritten, the last chance in a series of last chances.
It has to be enough.
There’s just one more page to go when Cassandra reaches for it—and her fingers pass clean through. Not with the translucency of a wraith or the vagueness of a traveller. But as though she is simply… less.
Lowell meets her gaze, alarm in his eyes.
An awful, dizzy feeling washes over her. She reaches for it again, and there’s the lightest pressure before her fingers go through it. Then the compendium. Nothing.
Cassandra Fairfax, daughter of ghosts, of memories. Ink in her veins, typeface wrapped around her heart, her bones built from script.
Cassandra Fairfax, named after a woman whose words melted into thin air no matter how truthful they were, with the surname of a character in disguise from a novel by a long-dead author. Layers upon layers of insubstantiality.
Cassandra Fairfax… vanishing.
The river sprawls in front of her, and an infinite number of Cassandras look back.
An infinite number of possible selves, in all the worlds she’s envisioned, and all the ones she hasn’t.
She sees herself wearing a gold mask, on a ship with a fanciful woman’s name, twenty years older and still working at the same damn bar.
Cassandra Fairfax, working side by side with Chiron.
Cassandra Fairfax, who sees the contract with her name on it and flees.
Cassandra Fairfax, who goes up to Roth’s flat and never comes back down.
All these splinters of herself, everywhere and nowhere.
“Cassandra,” Lowell says, and the sound of his voice brings her back to the singular version of herself. “You have to fight it.”
He cups her face, presses his lips to hers, bites them bloody to keep her rooted in her own body. She feels his tears on her face, or perhaps they’re hers, and she can no longer tell because she can no longer feel his hands on her skin.
You never want to commit.
She wants this Cassandra, she tries to say. She wants this life that she has scraped and starved and hungered for. She wants Lowell Sharpe, frown lines and careworn hands and wry smile. She wants this world, with her boat the bookshop, the helm her desk.
“Lowell, I have to complete the reading,” she says, and her voice sounds like an echo. “Pick up the compendium for me. Put the pages in. It’ll be okay. The river will protect me.”
But she doesn’t really think that, not anymore.
She bends down, and this time she can’t feel the river when she fails to pick up the compendium. The book is slipping from her grasp because she’s slipping from reality. The river is failing. Taking Cassandra with it.
Just let go, the river commands, and her entire body shudders with the truth of it.
“No,” Lowell insists. “No, I can fix this.”
He glances at the entrance to the river, already collapsed, then at the book alongside the nearly empty ink bottle. A glimmer of liquid in the vial.
“There’s just enough ink left for one person,” he says. “And you’ve already written the pages. It just needs a reader.”
“But—what happened to Arthur—”
Arthur Sharpe, dying in front of her. His eyes glassy and distant, his mouth shaping the last words that she’d never understand.
“The bookshop must always have an owner,” Lowell says, and it sounds like destiny.
“Lowell, no—”
But she no longer has a working body to transmute oxygen into spoken word. She can feel herself floating further away with every second. Cassandra Fairfax, who should never have existed at all, is returning to her dream-stuff origins.
Around them, the walls disintegrate. The river is a roar in her ears.
Lowell picks up the compendium from what remains of the ground.
His hands, that have done so many things—fixed fragmented books, fought hard and bloody, glided down her collarbone to the hollow beneath—cradle the heart of the river.
Very gently, he places the last pages into the back and they sink, paper dissolving into paper.
When he’d first walked through the doors of the bookshop, she’d wondered why he looked so weary. Maybe he’d already known the fate of the world rested on his shoulders, and it was just the rest of time that had to play catch-up.
He speaks, and every word shimmers in the air. Language made tangible. Something like a heartbeat pulses through Cassandra.
“I invoke Lady Fate,” he says.
The remnants of the river light up, the shallow pool around them a dim glow that highlights the dark circles under his eyes. His hands clench around the book, ever so slightly, and she knows like a lance through her chest that he’s afraid, too.
She shakes her head, silent tears rolling down her face. They vanish before they even hit the ground. She feels faint, hollow. Like she could jump and never land because gravity only applies to real things.
“I defy her.”
He looks at Cassandra, and bites his lip. Even though she can’t feel it—and surely he can’t, either—his free hand hovers by her cheek, as if to wipe away a tear. As though he could hold on tightly enough to save them all.
“I choose another future,” he says.
And he starts to read.
The world collapses around her.