Page 36 of Fated to the Wicked King

Chez had said as much, but I didn’t realize how a misunderstanding like this might prove perilous for me. I was only trying to help, but I suppose it wasn’t difficult to be persuaded whose side I was on.

“It’s my fault,” he mumbled.

Startled, I shot him a look. I wasn’t expecting him to admit any such thing. It almost sounded like he was trying to appease my guilt, trying to make me feel better.

“I should have locked you up better,” he went on.

My expression collapsed into a grimace.

Perfect.

I shook my head in disbelief. Served me right to expect anything more from the Wicked King. I ought to just take him at his word. He was simply here to settle his life’s debt. Now, we were even.

With a soft grunt, I got to my feet. “What is this place?” I tried to make out our surroundings in the dim light. A low grassy hill ran along one side, past where rushing water flowed. “We’re at the river, aren’t we?” I hadn’t been to the River of Tears in months. Too curious to stay still, I walked past the fire pit to investigate.

There was a pause before his response. “The river is just beyond that hillside.”

I sidestepped cloaks and bundles strewn haphazardly across the dry ground. The camp was a mess. There was no blood, though. No dead bodies. Or if there had been dead bodies, the king had already disposed of them.

Perhaps he remembered how horrified I had been at the sight of the man he’d hacked to pieces back at the castle.

If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought he had even waited until there were fewer people to kill before coming to rescue me.

Of course, that was all hopeful nonsense on my part. That would have been way too considerate of him.

Not caring that my hands were still bound, I eagerly made my way up the hill. While news of the river’s mysterious condition had reached my clock tower, there had been no further information on why or how.

Once I reached the summit of the hill, my breath caught. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to see, but it surely wasn’t this.

One moment, there was only a void-like haze hovering over the blackened water, and the next, an elegant steamboat appeared, its smokestacks coughing out slowly, spiraling plumes that did not rise so much as drift sideways, folding back into themselves.

Eerie as mist, its hull was accented in gold and iron, and assembled from curling vapors. Its massive paddle wheel dragged through the water, sending ripples outward in warped, elongated waves.

Beyond the windows, the river no longer resembled water. The distant horizon curved inward, light from unseen stars smeared across the sky in long, distorted streaks.

Ghostly velvet chairs and brass fittings scattered. The heavy curtains of the riverboat’s smoky casino spun lazily in mid-air all along the length of the river. All the while, its occupants remained oblivious to the anomaly that ensnared them—stretched, bent, halting mid-motion like glass sculptures before collapsing seconds later.

All caught at the edge of syrup-thick time, spiraling slowly toward a vast and invisible devouring center.

Twelve

MACHINE

My heartbeat thudded in my chest amidst the keening hum in my head. It all felt familiar and wrong at the same time. No wonder the River of Tears was deemed unpassable all this time.

The anomaly stretched across its length, seeming to reach all the way up to the unforgiving sky. There were no gaps, absolutely no way around it, or over it. It was a complete barrier from this side and the other.

My mouth hung open. I turned back to ask, “What… What the hell happened here?”

With a steady crunch of his footsteps, the king was making his way closer. His face was blank. Perhaps he’d already seen the view before. His shoulders lifted almost imperceptibly. “I do not believe anyone has an answer yet.”

Looking back, I squinted at a large object sitting by the riverbank.

A dense, faint shape in the dark, not of nature, took on the form of a freight crate. Half the size of a coach, its riveted steel frame was worn with age, while thick panes of clouded glass covered half of its surface, allowing a peek at the gears and valves of every size assembled within. The whole machine hummed with a quiet, eerie energy.

My curiosity itched all over again. It was almost as if the rows of tarnished buttons and bone-handled levers jutting outward installed upon its exterior called out to me.

Twisting to one side, I wiggled my wrists against my bindings. “Can you take these off, please?”