Beautiful Chaos(114)

And the exhaustion. He was making a good show of it, but he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. And now that he did sleep, I was always surprised to find he needed it as much as the rest of us. “But Marian is back home with us, safe and sound.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t look up.

“For now.” I wanted to go back, bash down the Temporis Porta, and beat the crap out of everyone in that room. I couldn’t stand to see Marian like this.

Macon sank into the chair next to her. “For now. Which is all I can say for any of us, these days. We have a week until the sentence—since she was found guilty of treason. It should take that long for a Perfidia Proclamation to take effect. I won’t let anything else happen to her, Ethan. That is more than a promise.”

Liv slumped at the study table, an inconsolable mess. “If someone is going to make sure nothing else happens to Marian, it’s me. If I hadn’t gone with you—if I had stayed in the library, like I was supposed to…”

“Now who’s the emo Caster girl?” Lena poked Liv in the arm. “That’s my thing. You’re supposed to be the chipper blond brainiac, remember?”

“How rude of me. I do apologize.” Liv smiled and Lena smiled back, drawing her arm around Liv, as if they were friends. I guess, in a way, they were. These days, we were bound by the common threat of our fate. Because the Eighteenth Moon was almost here, and none of us had any answers.

John sat down next to Liv, protectively. “It’s not your fault.” He shot me a dirty look. “It’s his.” So much for friendship.

I stood up. “We’ve got to get Aunt Marian home.”

For the first time, she looked up at me. “I… can’t.”

I understood. She wouldn’t be sleeping alone, not anytime soon. That was the first night Liv and Marian were under one roof again, only this time it was in Liv’s room, and their roof was the ceiling of the Tunnels. I wondered if Concealment Casts worked against Keepers, too. Mostly, I just hoped they worked.




There was one place we could go, no matter how badly our worlds were spiraling out of control. The place where it had all started for Lena and me. The place that was ours.

The morning after Marian’s trial, we went to find it again.

The crumbling garden at Greenbrier was still black and charred, but you could see where the grass had started to grow. The tiny stems weren’t green, though. They were brown, like everything else in Gatlin County. The invisible walls that protected Ravenwood from being ravaged didn’t extend here.

Still, it was our place. I led Lena through the garden to the hearthstone where we first discovered Genevieve’s locket. It seemed like it had all happened years ago, instead of the year before.

Lena sat on the stone, pulling me down after her. “Do you remember how beautiful it was here?”

I looked at her, the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. “It still is.”

“Do you think about what it would be like if this was all gone? If we can’t fix this, and there’s no New Order?”

I barely thought about anything else, beyond heat and bugs and dried-up lakes. What would be next? A flood? “I don’t know if it would matter. Maybe we’d be gone, too, and we wouldn’t even know the difference.”

“I think we’ve both seen enough of the Otherworld to know that’s not true.” She knew I was trying to make her feel better. “How many times have you seen your mom? She knows what’s happening, maybe better than anyone.”

There was nothing I could say. Lena was right, but I couldn’t let her shoulder the burden of all this alone. “You didn’t do this intentionally, L.”

“I don’t know if that makes me feel any better about destroying the world.”

I pulled her against my chest, feeling the gentle rhythm of her heartbeat. “The world isn’t destroyed. Not yet.”

She picked at the dry grass. “But someone’s life will be. The One Who Is Two has to be sacrificed to create the New Order.” Neither one of us could forget it, though we hadn’t gotten any closer to figuring it out.

And if the Eighteenth Moon really was on John’s birthday, then we had only five days left to find the One. Marian’s life—all our lives—hung in the balance.

Him.

Her.

It could be anyone.

Whoever it was, I wondered what they were doing now—if they had any idea. Maybe they weren’t worried at all. Maybe they would never even see it coming.

“Don’t worry. John bought us some time. We’ll think of something.” She smiled. “It was cool to see him doing something for us, instead of against us.”

“Yeah. If he was.” I don’t know why, but I still couldn’t give that guy a break. Even if Lena was willing to give Liv a chance.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lena sounded annoyed.

“You heard Macon. What if he was using the opportunity to siphon off all of your powers?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we have to take it on faith.”

I didn’t want to do that. “Why should we?”

“Because people change. Things change. Everything and everyone we know has changed.”

“What if I don’t want to?” I didn’t.