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39
I step onto the terrace, lift my face to the sky, and inhale a wisp of chilled night air with a top note of fresh blossoms and sea brine.
Above me, the heavens glitter with stars, more than I’ve ever seen in my life.
Before me lies an enchanting walled garden so abundantly lush, it’s like I’ve wandered right into a painting.
“Is this—” I approach a vine of jasmine woven around a wrought iron trellis, no longer able to tell what’s real and what’s a hologram.
Braxton reaches past me, pinches off a single white bloom, and lifts it to my nose. In an instant, I’m overcome by its heady aroma.
“Arthur has been able to replicate all of this, right down to the scent. But I guess I’m a purist, because for me, nothing compares to the real thing. Which explains why the Moon Garden is one of my favorite spots in all of Gray Wolf.”
He arcs his arm wide, so I turn in a slow circle and survey the space. Nearly every inch of it appears to be in bloom, but the only parts I can clearly make out are the ones that the moon shines on.
“It’s truly spectacular under the glow of a full moon,” he says. “Arthur wanted to add artificial light so it could be enjoyed every night of the year, but I managed to talk him out of it.”
“You have that much sway over him?”
“Hardly,” he says, the word carrying an edge.
I turn my focus to a marble sculpture in the distance, and I’m reminded of something I once read. “Leonardo da Vinci said:A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark, except where exposed by the light.”
“Leonardo is a genius,” Braxton says as he moves toward the far wall and peers through a lookout. When I join him, a twist of wind strikes at my cheeks as the same turbulent waters that carried me here crash against a bed of jagged rocks far beneath our feet.
“Was.” For some reason, I feel the need to correct him. “He’s been dead for more than five centuries.”
Braxton faces me then, his gaze as stormy as the waters below. “I’ve been here nearly eight years,” he says, voice thick with urgency. “I come from a nowhere town an hour outside of London, but I was living in a dump near Boston when Arthur found me.”
“That explains the accent,” I say, tacking a nervous laugh onto the end that only increases the gnawing unease in my belly. I’m not sure why I felt the need to interrupt him, other than it’s starting to seem like this confession of his might lead to a place I’m not quite ready to visit.
But Braxton will not be deterred. “Don’t be fooled by my Queen’s English,” he says, cracking a mere hint of a grin that fades before it can really take hold. “I’m not nearly as posh as I sound. My home life was shit, I was getting in fights—the usual spiral. And then, through a series of events much like your own, I ended up here.”
“Why are you telling me—” I start, but he lifts a finger, and the words die on my tongue.
“When I saw you laughing before your grave, I was intrigued. I broke protocol then, just as I’m breaking it now. You want to know what really happened back at Arcana?”
I nod, unable to speak, my ears filling with the sound of my pulse pounding as violently as the sea.
“You were hypnotized.”
In an instant, I’m laughing. But when I see the look on Braxton’s face, I fall silent.
“Hypnosis is real. It’s science. And while there are those who might debate that, it’s certainlynotmagic. In your case, it was simply a matter of bypassing your conscious mind to get to your unconscious and put you into a trance state. And yet, there’s nothing simple about it. It doesn’t always work, but it worked rather quickly on you.”
I remember the strange room, the song like a lullaby, the clocks with the hands spinning backward before dripping down the walls like a Salvador Dalí painting…
And then I lost all sense of…
Time.
“It was the clocks.” My voice is a strangled whisper, my heart beginning to race. “This—” I gesture widely. “This whole place…it’s about time…or stopping time…or manipulating time…or…”
I gaze at Braxton with what I’m sure are wide, frightened eyes. I’m so close. My toes curled over the edge of the precipice. I can see it on his face.
Yet I can’t bring myself to say it.
Can’t utter the actual words.
Because if it turns out to be true, if he confirms my worst suspicions, then what?
