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With one last gesture, I touched Clara’s shoulder with my blessing, then turned and walked to the Fountain.
Legend said he who dipped in the pool would have eternal life. But that’s all it was—a legend. Who knew what would become of me once I truly immersed myself in the glistening water before me? Something told me it wasn’t quite that simple. But I had no way of knowing what would happen once my body touched the water. I only knew somehow, some strange way, Katrina was calling me to her, wherever that was. And the only way to her was through the Fountain.
With my back to the past, I stood over the pool filled by the fountain, its swirling silvery nature tempting me with its unnatural draw. My reflection was as clear as a mirror in its surface.
Come in.
The siren song took hold now, leaving me no choice but to let myself fall into the magical waters below in order to follow it. The last sound I heard was the shrill slice of a sword being unsheathed, and I knew Clara would take excellent care of Thane.
32
Across Time
Milo
Idropped into the water. From above it appeared no deeper than a crystal puddle, but once within, I found there was no end to its depth. I couldn’t see here. My good eye was only so useful here, but I doubted even with working vision in both, it wouldn’t have saved me from the blinding white that filled my surroundings. Every direction I turned weighed on my muscles like swimming through tar, but I could see nothing around me. It was a void, with no east or west, no up or down.
In a moment of panic, I fought to escape, but realized the pool surface behind me no longer existed…or if it did, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see anything. Somehow I could breathe, but that was all the luxury this place of nothingness afforded me. I felt around in my blindness, half-swimming, half-walking through this muddled abyss. The Fountain of Youth was certainly a myth. This was something else entirely. I only prayed Clara wouldn’t follow me and trap herself here too. But deep in my chest I knew she was smarter than that.
Visions of Katrina filled the dark blindness before me. I would never make it back to her. Even if I managed to escape this place, it would be too late. And even if she managed to find Bastian and the Crown, he’d never let her win. He was too powerful. And I’d played her right into his hands.
As I stumbled blind through whatever this was…I stopped, dropping to my knees as the hopelessness set in. I couldn’t give it anymore. The ocean had certainly spoken its authority over my fate. I thought back to the night I stayed with Katrina in her room for the first time. How I’d fought to resist the pull she held over me, knowing it was never meant to work. But I gave in. And now here we both were, separated by oceans of time forever.
I remembered the night I told her that fate had decided against us. And though I thought maybe I’d proved it all wrong, now I realized I was the one who was wrong. Katrina and I were never meant to meet. I was never meant to live long enough to meet her. Finding her once was a blessing enough. But I was always meant to die without her.
As I resigned myself to this void of emptiness, a faint sound rose through the silence, chiming like a bell in the distance. The melody grew louder with each passing second, but it still sounded distant. It was the siren song, but no longer in my head. It was here—truly here somewhere in this hollow void. The sound of it washed over me like some last drop of warmth, urging me one last time to rise.
With tears burning the backs of my eyes as they threatened to fall, I waded through the nothingness, desperate to follow the singing. Completely blind, I clung to my only map—a sound. Her song continued, a voice filling the silence with a frail thread of hope I fought to grasp before it was gone. The melody surrounded me, like a blanket of reassurance in my darkest hour, holding me as I trembled in fear of never escaping this place.
I might have wandered an hour or a day. There was nothing resembling the passing of time. Nothing here granted me a semblance of humanity. For a moment I even question if I was still alive or I had already died, and this might be the holding place for my unworthy soul.
But then, after however long it was that I followed the voice, I found it right in front of me, clear and so loud it sounded mere inches from my ears. My feet stopped on instinct, and I stood, listening to her aria as I stretched out a hand before me into the blank space before me. I nearly leapt backwards when my fingers touched something—a hand.
I took the hand, the song still calling, and stepped forward. Arms wrapped around me. I heard my name from various voices. And then I heard hers…Katrina.
“Milo,” she sang softly. “I’m here. You’ve made it.”
My eyes fluttered as they adjusted from whatever magic hold I’d just stepped out from. The light hit, and I could finally focus on those blue eyes that drew me to them with their song. And then I breathed a sigh of relief as they faded back into beautiful brown ones staring back at me. The song had stopped. And it was no longer Katrina’s siren who spoke to me. It was her.
Both of us without words, I fell into her arms, clutching her like she was the only solid harbor in a storm. She pulled me into her and held me as I toppled forward from a combination of exhaustion and disbelief. Pressed against her chest, I drowned in the sound of her heartbeat and breathed in her sweet scent.
“You found me,” she whispered with trembling in her words. “You heard me all the way across time.”
I pulled back to look in her face, brushing back her loose strands of hair behind her ear. “I swore I’d always find you, my North Star.” The lump in my throat burned as I swallowed it down, unable to tear my gaze from her.
She placed a hand on my face, her thumb gently sweeping along my beard, across my jaw, and finally over the big scar over my left eye.
“You’re…older,” she stammered, staring into my eyes. “How long?”
“Some two years.” I uttered.
She pressed her head against my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“No, shhh,” I kissed her head, as I took her face in my hands. I pressed my lips to hers and kissed her for what could never have felt long enough. “It might as well have been a minute. Every moment of every day of those years, there wasn’t a day I didn’t think of you.”
I glanced across her shining eyes to her lips, a quick glimpse catching the faded scar along her cheek. It was hardly noticeable now, but I’d always remember the reason it was there. My embrace around her tightened protectively as the sickening things Thane had said replayed in my head. “When Thane caught you back in Nassau…did he…did he hurt you beyond this…before I found you?”
Katrina looked confused by the question, but shook her head. “No, no, he had just grabbed me right before you came. Why?”
