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Gunter, whom I killed because I couldn’t get control of Farin.
Gunter, whom I failed.
Just like I failed Zora.
As Blaise and I carry Gunter’s sacks of flax up the dungeon stairs and to the wagon we parked just outside the entrance, the incense follows me, reminding me of the male who raised me when my father couldn’t. The male whose blood I drained from his veins.
He’d begged for my forgiveness when he died. I didn’t know at the time that he’d been apologizing for weaving Zora’s mind into the Fabric, for placing her in an indefinite slumber.
As we grab the last of the sacks, Blaise must sense my discomfort being back here, because she says, “He wrote about it in his journals. I think he feared what Abra might have done to Zora if he disobeyed her.”
My throat goes dry as I scan the room. Gunter’s organized chaos. His piles of journals and books. His desk in the corner, the candle atop it burned to its base. The spinning wheel in the corner, which he used to put my sister to sleep.
My chest clenches, because it doesn’t matter—the one secret Gunter kept from me.
In the end, he could only protect us in the way he knew best.
I forgive you, I think on the way out.
And as Blaise closes the door behind us, I think I hear him reach from the past and whisper it back.
We’re silent as we wind our way up the staircase that leads to the abandoned ballroom. The door, left ajar, creaks, beckoning us into the glittering space that held Zora’s body for so many years.
We don’t know where she is.
The last anyone still living saw her was Asha, when she was being dragged from the Rip in Az’s wagon.
We don’t know what Az did with Zora once they returned to Naenden.
Blaise still feels guilty about it—ending him before she made him tell where he hid Zora’s body. I’ve told her not to.
Because I already know what happened.
And I doubt it had anything to do with Az.
Because I left Zora alone with Farin. Meaning Zora is dead.
I always wondered what would happen if you died in the Fabric.
If I had to guess, there was no body for Az to hide.
The ballroom is too stunning to have been a prison. The floor still sparkles with flecks of multicolored light through the stained glass windows.
Still, even though I’m confident Zora is gone, that I failed her one last time, Blaise convinced me to come back. To collect the tapestries at least.
“To honor her many lives,” is what Blaise had said.
So here we are.
They line the far wall, tapestries of black, woven with Zora’s story in multicolor fabric. I’ve never really looked at them closely. Even when I believed Gunter was weaving the tapestries for me, I couldn’t bear a glance at them. Not when it was my fault my sister was being held captive.
Now it’s my fault she’s dead, and you would think that would make me want to look less. It does, in a way. But I feel it’s my duty. That even if it hurts, I owe her to look.
I owe my sister that—seeing her.
“You know,” Blaise says, slipping her hand through mine, “when I was trying to change your ending, the Fabric kept altering the color of the thread. Like the Fates themselves were controlling it. Like they wanted to be the ones to write the ending.”
A knot swells in my throat. “Good to know they prefer me dead.”
