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“Wait!” Kartik says. “We don’t know what we’ll find there. Perhaps I should run ahead to see.”
“Agreed,” I say. I would carry on, but there is truth to what he says, and I can scarcely breathe. Corsets were not meant for running.
“I’ll go wif you, mate,” Fowlson says, looking around in wonder.
Grudgingly, Kartik nods, and the two of them run ahead.
Exhausted and peevish, we sit and wait, hiding under the cover of a large rock. Ann hasn’t left the comfort of Felicity’s side. It is tenuous comfort but she craves it. Weary from the chase, I settle myself on the ground and stare out at the bleeding horizon.
“Why did you not tell us you’d seen such things?” McCleethy says, gasping for breath. But it is a rhetorical question. She knows why. Her dark hair is half free of its bindings. It blows wild in the gusty wind. “We created order out of chaos. We made beauty and shaped history. We kept the magic of the realms safe in our grasp. How has it come to this?”
“You’ve not kept it safe. You’ve kept it to yourselves.”
She shakes her head to dismiss the thought. “Gemma, you may still use the power for much good. With us to help you—”
“And what, pray, have you done to better the lot of others?” I ask. “You call each other sisters, but are we not all sisters? The seamstress ruining her eyesight to keep her children in porridge? The suffragists fighting for the vote? The girls younger than I who would ask for a living wage, whose working conditions are so deplorable they were locked in a burning factory? They could make use of your precious help.”
She holds her head high. “We would have done so. In time.”
I snort in disgust. “It is daunting to be a woman in any world. What good does our power do us when it must be kept secret?”
“You would prefer bold voices to illusion?”
“Yes.”
Miss McCleethy sighs. “We may shape the course of that struggle. But first we must secure our power inside the realms.”
“There will never be security here! Everywhere I turn, something new crawls up from the very rocks, grappling for this power! No one can remember where the magic came from or why; they only want to possess it! I am sick of it—sick to my very bones, do you hear?”
“Yes,” she says solemnly. “And yet, it is so very hard to let it go, isn’t it?”
She is right. Even now, knowing what I do, seeing what I have seen, I want it still.
Miss McCleethy grips my arm; her face is hard. “Gemma, you must safeguard the magic at all costs. That is our only concern. Many have fought and died to protect it over the years.”
I shake my head. “Where does it end?”
The men return from their lookout. Kartik’s face is grim. “They’ve been to the garden.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s gone,” he says.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
WE MAKE OUR WAY THROUGH A GARDEN THAT IS NO longer lush and familiar. The smell of scorched earth greets us. The trees have been burned to ash. The flowers have been trampled into mud. The silver arch that once led to the grotto has been battered and ripped from the ground. The swing I fashioned from silver thread hangs in tatters.
Tears bead in Miss McCleethy’s eyes. “I dreamed of seeing it again. But not like this.”
Fowlson puts his arm around her shoulders.
“What is happening?” Ann asks, cradling a handful of broken blossoms.
“Most High!” Gorgon slips into view on the river. She is alive and unharmed. I’ve never been happier to see her.
Fowlson takes a step backward. “Wot the ’ell is that?”
“A friend,” I say, running for the river. “Gorgon, can you tell us what is happening? What you’ve seen?”
