For an instant, I think I see doubt flicker in her eyes. But it’s too late—was always too late. I know Caro, know that her desire to break me has burned away everything else in her mind.
“If you wanted me to have mercy,” she growls, “you shouldn’t have taken my immortality.”
And she draws a deep red line across Roan’s throat.
I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. All the air in my lungs has turned to lead. Someone has their fist in my chest and is pulling my heart out.
As Caro steps back from him, Roan lifts his hands to his throat. His brow furrows, and he looks bewildered at the blood seeping between his fingers and spilling down his chest. His mouth closes and opens and closes again; silent, helpless words that are lost to me, lost to everyone living.
Then he tips forward, landing facedown beside the Queen, and is still.
For a long moment, I think that time has stopped again, and I will it to turn back, will all of this to be undone.
But there’s blood spreading over the floor. Time hasn’t stopped. It’s just that the room is utterly silent, as silent as the tomb it has become.
Caro stares at me, waiting—for me to break, for power to flow back into her. But nothing happens. And nothing happens. She tilts her head to the side, a small frown twisting her face—an expression of contained disappointment.
A spark of rage like I’ve never known in my life ignites in my chest. The fury sears through me as I stagger to my feet. It tells me that I am alive—and unbroken.
“You really didn’t love him,” Caro says. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find the one to break you, if I have to kill every single person in Sempera. And in the meantime, you’ll be caged again at Everless. How fitting.”
At these words, the rage pushes me into motion. I leap toward Caro and throw my hands out, willing time to freeze Caro in place long enough to lock my fingers around her throat. Power surges up through me and spills out, catching the air in the room, but only in strange bubbles. As the bubbles race toward her, I see Caro raising her hands, too, her head thrown back in laughter.
Her power and mine collide with a boom that seems to shake the world off its axis, and I’m blown backward onto the floor, my ears ringing. All around us, books fall from shelves, paintings crash to the floor. Glass shatters somewhere, and as I roll painfully up onto one elbow, dozens of jewels spill from the Queen’s dresser and rocket across the floor.
As the ringing in my ears gradually fades, I hear screams in the distance, and the heavy drumbeat of footsteps coming toward us. I haul myself into a sitting position as the door bursts open and Everless guards pour in. The first of them skids to a halt and cries out at the pool of blood on the floor, the bodies.
“Help!” Caro shrieks. I turn my head to see that she’s on her feet, pointing at me, her face a mask of horror. Ivan, silent and staring at Roan Gerling’s body, is by her side. Five minutes, I realize, when she wanted the guards to bear witness.
She keeps screaming as the guards converge on me, as they grab my arms and haul me upright. I don’t even try to fight. All the space inside me has been taken up with swirling horror and sickness, with no room left for resistance.
As they drag me away, Caro stops screaming long enough to smile, never once breaking my gaze.
EPILOGUE
Drip.
Drip.
Dri—
The drop of water freezes in midair, halfway through its journey to the floor. In the almost-pitch-black of the dungeons, I can hardly see it. But there it is, hanging in the air, a tiny globe reflecting torchlight from the hall. A small thing, like a jewel—pretty and useless.
I release my hold on time and let the drop fall to the ground. It adds to the patch of dampness on the stone that’s slowly spreading toward me, will eventually reach me where I sit huddled in one corner, shivering, my arms wrapped around my knees. My facility with time is worse than useless now. I can play with the drops of water in my cell, or make the torch outside pause midflicker. But I can’t make this cell any warmer, and I can’t escape.
I can hold time in my hands, but no matter how much I concentrate, I can’t make it flow backward. I’ve tried what seems like a thousand times.
The name Antonia sits in my mouth like a cavity. Something sweet once, now rotten. The Alchemist’s name, my very first. I finally know who I am, and I can feel the knotted mess of power and history locked inside me—but that only makes it more bitter that I will die here, that Caro, the Sorceress, has bested me. I have failed Antonia. I have failed all the past selves without even knowing who they are, how hard they fought. I’ve failed Roan, the boy I once loved. I’ve failed Sempera—leaving the land in her power, and Ina at her mercy.
My stomach clenches at the thought of Ina. My sister.
She must hate me, despise me with every fiber of her being. And why not? I’ve heard the guards whisper—I know the stories Caro has spread about me. That I’m the witch who seduced Roan, and used him to gain access to the Queen. That I murdered the Queen, and then Roan, too, when he tried to stop me. That Caro stumbled upon me there, standing over their bodies with the knife cast at my bloody feet.
For a moment, I consider letting my mind consume me. I could close my eyes and lose myself in a vision, fall into memories that are as pure and real and plentiful as an endless string of pearls. But I press my hands against the cold stone floor, trying to anchor myself to the present, this cell and nothing else. If I lose myself in pleasant memories, I might never return—but if I think about Roan’s blood on the floor, or imagine Ina’s face when she learned he was dead, despair will unwind me.
It would only be a further betrayal of Antonia and all my other selves to fall apart now. Instead, I focus on what I know.
Caro needs me alive, or I’d be dead already. She needs my heart to break to get at the power hidden somehow inside. This should comfort me, but I don’t trust my heart, already ragged with the loss of those I love the most.
Somewhere in the dark depths of my mind, a voice whispers that I should hope to die before she can break me. But the idea of giving up life now—when I finally understand who I am, when I can feel my power hovering just beyond my fingertips—makes every fiber of my being wail in protest.
No. I refuse to die.
The sound of boots on stone rings out in the cold, damp hallway. It grows louder with each step toward my prison. I don’t move. There’s no point—the guards never get close enough to the bars for me to reach them and grab the keys.
But something is different. The footsteps sound lighter than normal, and hesitant. They pause at intervals, as if someone is stopping to peer into cells.