Chapter 41 Saskia #3
Does the Wall hurt you? I ask through each drumming beat of my heart.
Does the Wall hurt me? Lucan repeats, disbelief cracking in his voice.
Do you really think I wouldn’t have clawed through it if my limbs didn’t lock up when I touch it?
Do you think I wouldn’t have spent every second trying to climb it if it didn’t make me go blind with pain?
Do you think I wouldn’t have torn it apart to get to you?
Yes, it hurts me. But this is the most painful thing of all.
This as in my death. I know he means it, deep down, even though his mind refuses to conjure up the possibility. His heartbreak winds its way into my veins, fracturing my own heart more and more with every breath.
Lucan thinks I’m going to die.
And if he does, then I guess I have no hope left.
But if today’s my last day, I’m going to leave this world as close to the sun as possible, hoping that Claudia and Eleni are able to complete their tasks while I draw the Third Guardian’s attention elsewhere.
I fling myself onto the next terrace, where even more statues sit between bright pink and purple hyacinths, the stone busts coated in thick layers of moss.
Some have weeds growing from them. Some are broken in half, crumbled from years, possibly decades, of neglect.
Something about them makes me pause, even more dread sinking deep into my gut as I realize…
But no. Arad’s too close behind, so I don’t stop to investigate, to confirm if my suspicions are true. I just keep sprinting up, up, up, Lucan’s presence keeping my arms and legs pumping, my muscles working, my bones from shattering.
It isn’t until I’m five flights up, on a terrace with too many statues to count, that I have to double over and scrape in deep breaths right in front of one of them.
This statue isn’t formed regally, like the Guardians in the great hall.
The face is frightened, eyes squeezed shut, lips parted like it’s eternally about to say one last thing.
And although the surface is as gritty as gray stone, there’s too much texture, too many realistic dips and curves of the face to have been made by a mason.
This is a Chosen One.
Fossilized.
They’re all Chosen Ones, fossilized.
This isn’t just a garden. It’s a graveyard. The graveyard, where thousands of victims of vampire venom are stretched out before me, below me, and most likely above me. Some of their faces are etched in fear, others peaceful, as if they’re only sleeping.
A sob tumbles out of my mouth, just as Arad emerges from the staircase behind me, not even a hair out of place.
He’s not panting like I am, not doubling over in an attempt to catch his breath, but his eyes glitter with calm malice.
He knows I can’t go anywhere, not really. He’s just chasing me into exhaustion.
Don’t give up, little nightmare, Lucan begs. Keep going for me. Until the very last moment, keep fighting.
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. If I was alone here, I’d probably curl into a ball right now and accept my fate, but his soul feeds mine, and I spring into another run.
Up, up, up, until I finally burst onto the topmost terrace, where the last rays of daylight beat against my face as the open sky welcomes me, and the statues of the Chosen Ones stand so close together, there’s no more room for flowers or anything beautiful at all.
The end of this terrace doesn’t run into the Wall here—it bleeds into the spikes themselves, like a morbid railing, a final rounded balcony jutting out over the edge of Xantera itself.
For a moment, I gape at what I see beyond: trees upon trees coated with mist, the smell like a zap to my senses, waking me up. Moss and pine and freedom.
And the Monster.
I’m closer to him than ever before. Nothing separates us—no stone Wall or ancient locked doors. Just air.
But just as I’m drifting toward the scenery, my foot snags on a crack in the terrace and I almost stumble into a statue that stabs me with pain all over again.
Familiarity constricts my throat. The curve of her cheeks, the slant of her nose. Even if I haven’t seen her in eight years, it’s almost as if only a second has passed.
My mother.
Time slows to a drip. I can tell it’s her, even though her time in the palace must have drained her of all nutrients, her face clearly gaunt even in its fossilized state, her shoulders bony, her arms raised as if she was trying to defend herself.
Her mouth open in an everlasting silent scream, and I crash to my knees as my greatest fear stabs me in the chest.
“Mom,” I cry. “No, no, no. I’m so sorry.” I grip the edges of her statue, my fingers digging into the rubble. “I wanted to be Chosen sooner. I wanted to save you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I…”
Clinging to her, I sob into the rock of her shoulder, thick tears falling and soaking into the stone.
I don’t know what to do to ease the pain forever engraved on her face.
The woman who wasn’t required to love me, but did anyway.
The woman who sang me lullabies to ease me out of the nightmares I’d wake up from in a cold sweat.
The woman who must have rebelled against the system long before me, since she was Chosen and dragged away from the daughter she loved…
Now, I can’t even reach up and close her eyelids to give her peace.
But I can sing her to sleep, like she used to do for me.
“On and on the girl must march,” I sing against her fossilized stomach now, each syllable cracking in my throat, “starved for an end to the night. Beware the M-Monster in her heart, for even she can b-bite.”
“Touching,” a cool voice reaches me as my tears splatter at her feet.
I scramble to a stand and wipe the wetness from my cheeks with the back of my hand, unaware of how long he’s been standing there watching me. Backing up at the sight of Arad emerging onto this final terrace, I glance around wildly, searching for a door, an escape, anything that can help me.
Arad’s lips tilt up and he cocks his head at me, eyes bright as blood.
“Looking for this?”
Then, like a scene in a dream, he reaches into his collar and pulls out a chain that makes my heartbeat freeze, sure, suddenly, that he somehow stole Lucan from me.
But—I’m still here, baby, Lucan whispers, and when Arad pulls the rest of the necklace out, it isn’t a glistening red vial dangling from the end, but a…
“Key,” I whisper.
The key to the Wall. A small, simple, silver key, tarnished with age.
No, I zero in on it, realizing with a jolt that it’s laced with the same spiderwebbing veins as the Wall—almost like it was cut from the stone itself.
It was around the Third Guardian’s neck this whole time.
“We have cameras everywhere, you know,” Arad says, stepping toward me with the key clutched in his fist, “including in the north wing. I don’t know how you snuck in, but I saw you in the white drawing room.
Looking under a very particular glass cloche that used to hide our way in and out of the city. ”
I exhale, a sense of numbness crawling up my legs at the realization that the way out—and the way for Lucan to get in—is right in front of me.
So close, the reflection of the sunset glints off the key and bounces right back into my eyes.
That same silver chain I remember from Sylvia’s memories.
That key was settled against Arad’s chest along with the blood of Lucan’s ancestors.
It’s okay, Saskia, Lucan breathes. You tried. You tried harder than I could have ever dreamed. You are a dream, and I’m so sorry I woke you up.
The words tug at something in my bones, a kind of determination that has my hands closing into fists as Arad steps even closer. Because I’m awake. And I’m above the city that has imprisoned me now. And this is the end.
I’d better make it count.
“I’m sure all your fellow Guardians are so happy about the fact that you’ve taken the one and only key,” I say. “Wasn’t it there, where everyone could access it, because you’re all equal? Or are you trying to become a dictator over them, too?”
If the cameras are everywhere, even in this graveyard, I hope Claudia is recording this very exchange, so that all of Xantera can hear every word.
Arad’s eyes narrow at my sudden change in tone, at the hardness in my gaze. His pupils sharpen into slits that slice into me like twin blades.
“I’m just protecting them, like I protect all of you. Ever since the Thirteenth Guardian tried to steal the key to let the Monster in—to destroy everyone—we’ve all agreed it’s safer in my hands.”
I blink at him, now certain he’s slipped far past all reason and logic… because he just confessed, without even realizing it, that the Thirteenth Guardian didn’t die in the war. The rest of the Guardians must have found out what he was planning to do with Lucan’s father and murdered him for it.
Arad tilts his head at me, oblivious of my thoughts. “What I can’t figure out is why? Why are you looking for the key? How did you know it was once there?” When I don’t answer, and I’m sure my eyes are gleaming with satisfaction, his jaw clenches. “I would never set the Monster on you, Saskia.”
I snort, the irony of those words resurrecting a manic kind of humor within me.
“I wish you would.”
He narrows his eyes. “And why is that?”
“I would love to feel his teeth scrape against my neck. Yours are far too tiny for my taste.”
Lucan stirs within my heart. Arad freezes, his expression clouding over with an earnest confusion that makes a laugh bubble from my throat as I back away a few more steps.
“Oh, and his name!” I add. “I’d love to find out the Monster’s name so that I can moan it while I dream of him. I’m sure he’d make all mine come true.”
“Don’t taunt me,” Arad hisses. “The Monster is a cruel, mindless beast who would rip you limb from limb as soon as it sunk its claws into you.”