I shield my eyes as the brightness fades and the marks disappear.
Rafe slides his hand over his smooth, untarnished skin.
“You are free,” Simon tells him.
Naomi shouts in surprise, a startled objection as Rafe slips into shadow and the rest of us remain.
Nausea crawls up my throat.
My classmates are still bound. Only three have gotten away and my friends have replaced them. I have led them to their deaths, and I have no trick up my sleeve. No brainwave to execute. I scramble for more time, for a Plan C as the hounds creep closer, their necks bent, their hackles raised. I back away, onto the bridge where I am elevated over thepond with Jude across from me on the opposite bank. Harrison to my right. Juniper Vale to my left.
Both are unconscious—stuck in their frozen states. Orbs pulsing in their chests. Vines wrapped around them like a threat.
“Where is Scout Mercer?” I ask.
The other hiker.
Is this who we buried in Ivy’s grave?
“I got a little hungry,” Vorat says. “I decided to use the mishap to my advantage. A starving ecosystem cannot birth a new reality, and this one does love to feed on grief. Nobody would have grieved for Scout. Ivy on the other hand? There was plenty of grief for her.”
I swallow my disgust. “What have you done with my mother?”
There is a rush of air.
A whisper of fabric.
And Simon is right beside me on the bridge speaking from the slit in his mouth. “She is waiting for the show to begin.”
Vines slither around my ankles.
I try to lift my feet, but I am locked into place, unable to do anything but watch as those same vines crawl inside Jude, crawl inside Naomi, crawl inside Twig, crawl inside me. It is so cold, I gasp and double over. My heart erupts in pain, likemuscle separating from bone. Blue orbs flare to life inside Jude’s chest, inside Naomi’s and Twig’s.
All of us are connected in a web of vines that twinkle like starlight.
Twelve prisoners equally spaced around Simon’s pond like hours on a clock.
55
A WORLD BUCKLING
Simon removes his hood. He sets his hands on the railing and stares at his reflection in the glassy water below. “Soon, she will no longer cower in fear of me.”
I grit my teeth against the pain. “She won’t love you either.”
“You forget what I have.” He fondles the ruby, which is not only an amulet pulsing with Jude’s life. It’s an amulet with the power over human hearts. “Her love will be restored one way or another.”
He runs an icy finger down the side of my face. I try to jerk away from him, but I can hardly move. One wrong step and it feels like my soul will be yanked from my chest. “I have spent yearsresenting your existence. Hating you for distracting her. But without you, the curse would not have been broken. So I suppose you served a purpose after all. And now I must thank you for bringing all the pieces together. One might call it fate, our love written in the stars.”
He gestures to the sky like there are stars overhead instead of a churning, terrifying void. With a snap of his fingers, my wrist sears with heat.
Eleven others ignite around the pond.
We are marked, branded with glowing patterns of dots, each with our own unique constellation that together, forms the night sky as it was in April of 1995.
But choices cannot be undone.
Even if time moves backward, even if one reality is replaced with another, Simon can’t escape his past.
