CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Ceci
Old Hawarden Castle (Castell Penarlag)
Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales
For one suspended second, Ceci could not make her body move.
The red gate stood open beneath the old arch, wet paint dark as blood in the thinning dawn.
Beyond it, the air did not behave like air.
It shimmered in folds, pale and deep, showing no path, no grass, no ruined stone, only a wavering brightness with shadows moving inside it.
The future.
Or some version of it. Her world waited inside the breach. Ceci knew it, the way she knew her own name. Then Voss spoke, and the spell broke.
Duncan lifted the pistol.
“Step away from the gate.”
Voss gave him a patient look. “You are still mistaking position for power.”
Archie’s hand tightened around Ceci’s. The movement was slight, but it sent pain across his face before he mastered it. His breath caught, then steadied. Ceci felt every bit of it through their joined fingers. Duncan saw it too. His jaw hardened.
“Archie,” Ceci whispered.
“I’m here.”
“I know.”
“Such romance,” Voss said. “So much effort spent naming a weakness beautifully.”
Ceci’s fear narrowed into anger.
The anger helped.
She stepped forward, still holding Archie’s hand.
Duncan moved with her on the other side, pistol trained on Voss.
The ruins rose around them in broken black shapes.
The sky had begun to lighten behind the tree line, though dawn seemed reluctant to come closer.
Rain lingered as mist, fine on Ceci’s cheeks and hair.
The wet grass soaked the hem of her dress. The stones underfoot were slick.
Everything smelled wrong.
Ancient stone. Rain. Iron. Damp leaves. And beneath it all, impossible and sharp: hot pavement, petrol, electricity, machine-warm air. The scent of a century that had no business touching 1938.
The gate breathed.
There was no other word for it. The shimmer beyond the arch drew inward and then out again, as if some great invisible lung had filled behind the world. Archie made a low sound. Ceci turned. “You feel it?”
His eyes had gone wide, all the humor stripped from them. “Yes.”
Duncan looked from Archie to the gate. “What does it feel like?”
Archie swallowed. “Like every locked room I ever survived has opened at once.”
Ceci’s heart twisted.
Duncan’s face changed.
Voss smiled.
“There,” he said. “The bond speaks differently to each of you. Miss Bishop hears the threshold because she crossed it. Mr. Booker feels release because he wants escape. Captain Carlton feels nothing because denial is the one discipline he has mastered completely.”
Duncan did not take his eyes off him. “You know very little about discipline.”
Voss smiled. “You have spent your life mistaking self-denial for honor. How useful it must be, to wound everyone you love and still feel clean.”
Duncan fired.
The shot cracked through the ruins.
Ceci flinched, ears ringing, and Archie pulled her closer by instinct.
Stone burst near Voss’s shoulder. He had moved before the bullet struck, too quickly, as if the shimmer behind him had tugged him sideways.Voss looked at the shattered stone, then back at Duncan.
“Better,” he said. “But too slow.”Duncan’s hand remained steady on the pistol.
“The next one will not miss.”Voss smiled faintly.
“No, Captain. That was feeling with a pistol in its hand.”
Archie let out a breathless laugh. “You really are determined to die unlikable.”
Voss’s gaze flicked to him. “And you are determined to die laughing.”
Ceci stepped between Archie and Voss before she thought better of it. Duncan said her name sharply.
Voss watched the movement with satisfaction.
“Yes,” he said. “Again.”
Ceci went cold. “Again what?”
“That.” Voss’s eyes moved from her to Archie, then to Duncan. “Threaten Booker, and you move. Threaten you, and Carlton follows. Press one wound, and the others answer. I had wondered how close the bond had become.”
Duncan stepped forward. “What have you done?”
“Improved the conditions.”
The gate pulsed behind him. The old red boards shuddered in their frame.
“A traveler alone can tear a small opening,” Voss said. “Fear can shake it wider for a moment. Attachment holds the passage. Choice gives it direction.” His gaze returned to Ceci. “You have been exceptionally useful.”
Ceci’s mouth went dry.
“You thought I wanted you gone from Hawarden,” he said. “I did, for a time. You see too much. You teach them to see too much. But here, at the threshold, you are more valuable where you are.”
The gate flared.
A line of yellow light appeared across wet pavement. A car passed too fast. A brick wall flashed by, marked with modern signage. A plastic bin lay tipped against a curb.
Her world.
Ordinary, ugly, beloved because it had been lost.
The image shifted again.
A modern hospital corridor. Bright white. Clean floors. Machines blinking beside beds. Then a supermarket aisle, absurd and fluorescent, stacked with colors so loud Archie actually recoiled.
“What in God’s name is that?” he whispered.
“Cereal,” Ceci said, and almost laughed because terror had made the world ridiculous.
Archie stared at the gate. “The future has very aggressive groceries.”
Duncan did not smile.
His gaze had fixed on the shimmer with a new kind of dread. Ceci understood why. The future had stopped being a story she told. It stood in front of him now, bright and vulgar and impossible, offering survival at the cost of everything he had ever known.
Voss smiled as Duncan understood.
“Look at it, Captain,” he said. “Empires end. Houses are touched. Names fade. In that world, men like you become footnotes, then memorials, then searchable entries for bored women in archives.”
Ceci’s anger flashed.
“You do not get to speak about archives.”
Voss ignored her. “But you could enter it living.”
The words seemed to reach for Duncan.
His face had gone closed, but his eyes betrayed him. He saw the scale of the door now. The cruelty of being offered life by an enemy.
Voss lowered his voice. “You could keep him alive.”
Duncan’s pistol hand dipped by a fraction.
Archie felt it. “Duncan.”
Voss continued. “Mr. Booker wants to go. He admitted it. You heard him. He wants a century where his desire no longer makes him disposable. You would deny him that because duty flatters you?”
Duncan’s face tightened.
Ceci stepped closer to him. “Do not listen to him.”
Voss’s mouth curved. “Why not? I am only repeating the truth. Truth is most offensive when spoken by someone one dislikes.”
Archie released Ceci’s hand.
For a terrible second, she thought pain had weakened him.
Then he moved.
Fast, reckless, half-stumbling, he crossed the few feet toward Voss with the pistol Duncan had given him drawn from his coat. His face was pale. His hand shook. The gun did not.
“Archie,” Duncan snapped.
Archie stopped near the edge of the open gate, between Voss and Ceci. Too close to the shimmer. The light from it made his hair look silver-gold, his skin warm and strange in the impossible glow. He aimed at Voss’s chest.
“I want to go,” Archie said.
The words struck hard because he did not dress them in charm.
Voss watched him carefully.
Archie went on, voice low. “I want every vulgar, over-lit inch of that future. I want the ugly groceries. I want the hospitals. I want a life where loving him does not have to be hidden in careful rooms and careful silences. I want her. I want him. I want so much that wanting itself has become humiliating.”
Ceci’s throat closed.
Duncan looked shattered.
Archie’s hand trembled harder, but the pistol stayed up.
“And still,” Archie said, “I would rather die in this century than let you use that wanting to pull us through a door of your choosing.”
Voss’s expression cooled.
“Brave,” he said. “Briefly useful.”
The gate flared.
Ceci felt it before she saw Voss move. The shimmer caught Archie first. It seized the air around him, pulling at his coat, his hair, the loose edge of the bandage beneath his shirt. Archie gasped and staggered backward toward the opening.
Ceci screamed his name.
Duncan lunged.
Voss moved too, not toward Archie, but toward Ceci.
The trick revealed itself all at once. Archie as pain. Archie as bait. Archie as the body her love would chase before thought caught up.
Voss reached for her wrist. Ceci twisted away, but his fingers caught her sleeve.
The world cracked.
Pressure drove through the stones and into her bones.
The gate opened wider, and every point of contact became unbearable. Voss’s grip burned cold through her sleeve. Archie’s fear slammed into her chest. Duncan’s panic struck next, violent and disciplined and tearing through restraint. The ruins folded at the edges.
Ceci saw too much.
Duncan as a boy at Hawarden, pale after his mother’s death.
Archie at school, laughing too loudly in a room that did not want his grief.
Sabrina barefoot in a garden at midnight, telling a truth to Duncan because he could be trusted with it.
Grace alone in a room that had been kept for her too long.
Margaret setting a plate before a boy who pretended he was not hungry.
And herself, in another century, standing in a library office no one had decorated for love, mistaking a manageable life for a full one.
The gate fed on all of it.
Voss’s fingers tightened. “Now.”
Ceci understood.
He did not need her obedience. He needed the flare. He needed the three of them frightened enough, bound enough, desperate enough to make the passage stable. Then he could push through on the road their fear had made.
Worse, he could pull other things through.
The gate flashed again, and for one sick second she saw what waited behind his hunger: men with microphones, cameras, flags stripped of old vulgarity and remade with cleaner lines.
Lists. Broadcasts. Policies dressed as restoration.
Hatred taught to smile for donors. Violence laundered through speeches and dinner invitations.