He’d found me, and it would soon be over—but our love would remain timeless. I believed that with all my heart.
“One,” Silas whispered, and my body jerked. I was ready to jump to my feet and run and slam into the magic that was coming for us as certainly as the sun would climb higher in the sky.
But none of us even made it to our feet.
Instead, a voice came from somewhere behind us, behind the soldiers, behind the ruins.
“STOP!”
It was a voice I knew well, from before.
The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention when the realization hit me.
Calren had finally awoken.
42
The soldiers parted—not because the White Queen told them to. They all looked so confused, their eyes moving back and forth from the Red Queen who was now on the ground, motionless, and to the White, whose magic died down a little to allow her to see when Calren called for her tostopagain.
Whatever their reason, whatever had made them move back, I took it.
And when we all turned with our hearts in our throats and no words on our tongues, we finally saw him.
The Timekeeper moved like a force of nature, slow but unstoppable, and the soldiers moved farther back the closer he came.
Calren Hock.
“Call me Cal, or Ren, or anything that starts again.”
His voice, his easy smile, the warmth of his brown eyes came back to me so suddenly—but also like the memory of him had always been there. Like I’d known him even when I didn’t.
Such a strange, strange feeling, though he lookedverydifferent from the man he had been when he first came to pick me up at home.
Today, he looked like death walking.
His face was gaunt, his skin paper-white, his ginger hair matted to his skull. He was dragging his feet behind him, but his every step was somehow confident at the same time. His cane was gone. His hands were still wrapped in bandages, stained brown with old blood. His eyes were wide open.
And he lookedfurious.
“Would you look at that.”
The White Queen had lowered her hands even more, and the glow of her magic, white with ribbons of purple, was still around her fingers, but barely there. “The warden has awakened. How nice. I can get rid of you, too. So many birds with only one stone.”
Except…maybe it was just me, but she didn’t look tooeagerjust now. Not like she meant what she said, at least.
Calren kept walking. Past the soldiers, closer to us, his eyes on the White Queen, like he didn’t even see us kneeling there.
Only when he was ahead of us, just there in front of Silas, did he stop. Sway in place.
For a horrible second, I thought he might collapse, but he didn’t. His hands were fisted, shaking.
“Go on, now. Go kneel with the rest of them,” the White Queen said, her voice kind of…airyjust now as she waved him off toward us. “Just there, k?—”
“He’s yourgrandson.”
That’s what Calren said.
…that’swhat Calren said?
