I took a deep breath and tried to let the power of the Temporis Porta flow into me. I needed to feel
something other than shock. But they felt like two regular wooden doors, even if they were about a
thousand years old and framed with Niadic script, an even older lost language.
I pressed my fingers against the wood. It felt like Sarafine’s blood was on my hands in this
world, as my blood had been on hers in the last. It didn’t matter if I had tried to stop her.
She had sacrificed herself so I would have a chance to make it to the Great Keep, even if hate
was her only motivation. Sarafine had still given me a shot at getting back home to the people I
loved.
I had to keep going. Like the officer at the Gates said, there was only one way into the one
place I needed to go—the Way of the Warrior. Maybe this was how it felt.
Awful.
I tried not to think about the other thing. The fact that Sarafine’s soul was trapped in Eternal
Darkness. It was hard to imagine.
I took a step back from the broad wooden doors of the Temporis Porta. It was identical to the
doorway I found in the Caster Tunnels beneath Gatlin. The one that took me to the Far Keep for the
first time. Rowan wood, carved into Caster circles.
I placed my palms against the rough exterior of the paneling.
Just like always, they gave way beneath me. I was the Wayward, and they were the Way.
These doors would open for me in this world as they had in the other. They would show their
pathway to me.
I pushed harder.
The doors swung open, and I stepped inside.
There were so many things I didn’t realize when I was alive. So many things I took for granted. My
life didn’t seem precious when I had one.
But here, I’d fought through a mountain of bones, crossed a river, tunneled through a
mountain, begged and bargained and bartered from one world to another, to get myself this close to
these doors and this room.
Now I just had to find the library.
One page in one book.
One page in The Caster Chronicles, and I can go home.
The nearness of it swirled in the air around me. I had experienced this feeling only once before,
at the Great Barrier—another seam between worlds. Then, just like now, I had felt the power
crackling in the air, too, the magic. I was in a place where great things could happen and did
happen.
There were some rooms that could change the world.
Worlds.
This was one of them, with its heavy drapes and dusty portraits and dark wood and rowan
doors. A place where all things were judged and punished.
Sarafine had promised that Angelus would come for me—that he had practically led me here
himself. There was no use trying to hide. He was probably the reason I was sentenced to die in the
first place.
If there was a way around him, a way to get to the library and The Caster Chronicles, I hadn’t
figured it out yet. I just hoped it would come to me, the way so many ideas had in the past when
my future was at stake.
The only question was, would he come first?
I decided to take my chances and try to find the library before Angelus found me. It would
have been a good plan if it had actually worked out. I had barely crossed the room when I saw
them.The Council Keepers—the man with the hourglass, the albino woman, and Angelus—appeared
in front of me.
Their robes fell around them, pooling at their feet, and they barely moved. I couldn’t even tell if
they were breathing.
“Puer Mortalis. Is qui, unus, duplex est. Is qui mundo, qui fuit, finem attulit.” When one
spoke, all their mouths moved like they were the same person, or at least governed by the same
brain. I had almost forgotten.
I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t move.
They looked at one another and spoke again. “Mortal Boy. The One Who Is Two. He Who
Endeth the World That Was.”
“When you say it that way, it sounds kind of creepy.” It wasn’t Latin, but it was the best I
could come up with. They didn’t respond.
I heard the murmuring of foreign voices around me and turned to see the room suddenly
crowded with unfamiliar people. I looked for the telltale tattoos and gold eyes of the Dark Casters,
but I was too disoriented to register anything beyond the three robed figures who stood in front of
me.
“Child of Lila Evers Wate, deceased Keeper of Gatlin.” The choral voices filled the great hall
like some kind of trumpet. It reminded me of Beginning Band with Miss Spider back at Jackson
High, only less off-key.
“In the flesh.” I shrugged. “Or not.”
“You have taken the labyrinth and defeated the Cataclyst. Many have tried. Only you have been
—” There was a hitch, a pause, like the Keepers didn’t know what to say. I took a breath, half
expecting them to say something like exterminated. “Victorious.”
It was almost like they couldn’t bring themselves to say the word.
“Not really. She kind of defeated herself.” I scowled at Angelus, who was standing in the
center. I wanted him to look at me. I wanted him to know that I knew what he’d done to Sarafine.
How he’d chained the Caster, like a dog, to a throne of bones. What kind of sick game was that?
But Angelus didn’t flinch.
I took a step closer. “Or I guess you defeated her, Angelus. At least, that’s what Sarafine said.
That you enjoyed torturing her.” I looked around the room. “Is that what Keepers do around here?
Because it’s not what Keepers do where I come from. Back home they’re good people, who care
about things like right and wrong and good and evil and all that. Like my mom.”
I looked at the crowd behind me. “Seems like you guys are pretty messed up.”
The three spoke again, in unison. “That is not our concern. Victori spolia sunt. To the victor
go the spoils. The debt has been paid.”
“About that—” If this was my way back to Gatlin, I wanted to know.
Angelus raised his hand, silencing me. “In return, you have gained entry to this Keep, the
Warrior’s Way. You are to be commended.”
The crowd fell silent, which didn’t exactly make me feel all that commended. More than
anything, it felt like I was about to be sentenced. Or maybe that was how I was used to things
going down in here.
I looked around. “It doesn’t really sound like you mean it.”
The crowd began to whisper again. The three Council Keepers stared at me. At least I think
they did. It was impossible to see their eyes behind the strangely cut prism glasses, with the
twisting strands of gold, silver, and copper holding them in place.
I tried again. “In terms of spoils, I was thinking more about going home to Gatlin. Wasn’t that
the deal? One of us goes to Eternal Darkness, and one of us gets to leave?”
The crowd burst into chaos.
Angelus stepped forward. “Enough!” The room fell silent again. This time he spoke alone. The
other Keepers looked at me but said nothing. “The bargain was for the Cataclyst alone. We have
made no such pact with a Mortal. Never would we return a Mortal to existence.”
I remembered Amma’s past, revealed through the black stone I still had in my pocket. Sulla had
warned her that Angelus hated Mortals. He was never going to let me walk away. “What if the
Mortal was never meant to be here?”
Angelus’ eyes widened.
“I want my page back.”
This time the crowd gasped.
“What is written in the Chronicles is law. The pages cannot be removed,” Angelus hissed.
“But you can rewrite them however you want?” I couldn’t hide the rage in my voice. He had
taken everything from me. How many other lives had he destroyed?
And why? Because he couldn’t be a Caster?
“You were the One Who Is Two. Your fate was to be punished. You should not have brought
the Lilum into matters that were not hers to resolve.”
“Wait. What does Lilian English—I mean, the Lilum—have to do with any of this?” My English
teacher, whose body had been inhabited by the most powerful creature in the Demon world, had
been the one who showed me what I had to do to fix the Order of Things.
Was that why he was punishing me? Did I get in the way of whatever he was planning with
Abraham? Destroying the Mortal race? Using Casters as lab rats?
I always believed that when Lena and Amma brought me back from the dead with The Book of
Moons, they had set something in motion that couldn’t be undone. It started the unraveling that
ripped the hole in the universe, which was the reason I had to right it at the water tower.
What if I had it backward?
What if the thing that was supposed to happen was the unraveling?
What if fixing it was the crime?
It was all so clear now. Like everything had been lost in darkness, and then the sun came out.
Some moments are like that. But now I knew the truth.
I was supposed to fail.
The world as we knew it was supposed to end.
The Mortals weren’t the point. They were the problem.
The Lilum wasn’t supposed to help me, and I wasn’t supposed to jump.
She was supposed to condemn me, and I was supposed to give up. Angelus had bet on the
wrong team.
A sound echoed through the hall as the great doors on the far side pushed open, revealing a
small figure standing between them. Talk about betting on the wrong team—I wouldn’t have made
this bet, not in a thousand lifetimes.
It was more unexpected than Angelus or any of the Keepers.
He smiled broadly; at least I think it was a smile. It was hard to tell with Xavier.
“He-hello.” Xavier glanced around the intimidating room, clearing his throat. He tried again.
“Hello, friend.”
It was so quiet, you could’ve heard one of his precious buttons drop.
The only thing that wasn’t quiet was Angelus. “How dare you show your defiled face here
again, Xavier. If there is anything of Xavier left, beast.”
Xavier’s leathery wings shrugged.
Angelus only looked angrier. “Why have you involved yourself in this? Your fate is not
intertwined with the Wayward. You are serving your sentence. You don’t need to take a dead
Mortal’s battles on as your own.”
“It is too late for that, Angelus,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because he paid his way, and I accepted the price. Because”—Xavier slowed his words, as if
he was letting them fall into place in his mind—“he is my friend, and I have no other.”
“He’s not your friend,” Angelus hissed. “You’re too brainless to have a friend. Brainless and
heartless. All you care about are your worthless trinkets, your lost baubles.” Angelus sounded
frustrated. I wondered why he cared what Xavier thought or did.
What is Xavier to him?
There had to be a story there. But I didn’t want to know about anything that involved Angelus
and his minions, or the crimes they must have committed. The Far Keep was the closest thing I’d
ever found to Hell in real life—at least in my real afterlife.
“What you know of me,” said Xavier slowly, “is nothing.” His twisted face was even more
expressionless than usual. “Less than I know of myself.”
“You are a fool,” Angelus answered. “That I know.”
“I am a friend. I have in my possession two thousand assorted buttons, eight hundred keys,
and only one friend. Perhaps it is not something you can understand. I have not often been one
before.” He looked proud of himself. “I will be one now.”
I was proud of him, too.
Angelus scoffed. “You will sacrifice your soul for a friend?”
“Is a friend different from a soul, Angelus?” The Council Keeper said nothing. Xavier cocked
his head again. “Would you know if it were?”
Angelus didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to. We all knew the answer.
“What are you doing here, then? Mortali Comes.” Angelus took a step toward Xavier, and
Xavier took a step back. “Friend of the Mortal,” Angelus snarled.
I resisted the urge to insert myself between them, hoping that Xavier, for both our sakes, didn’t
try to run away.
“You seek to destroy the Mortal, do you not?” Xavier swallowed.
“I do,” Angelus answered.
“You seek to end the Mortal race.” It wasn’t a question.
“Of course. Like any infestation, the ultimate goal is annihilation.”
Even though I was expecting it, Angelus’ answer caught me off guard. “You—what?”
Xavier looked at me like he was trying to shut me down. “It is no secret. The Mortals are an
irritant to the supernatural races. This is not a new concept.”
“I wish it was.” I knew Abraham wanted to wipe out the Mortal race. If Angelus was working
with him, their goals were aligned.
“You seek entertainment?” Xavier watched Angelus.
Angelus looked at Xavier’s leathery wings, disgusted. “I seek solutions.”
“To the Mortal condition?”
Angelus smiled, dark and joyless. “As I said. The Mortal infestation.”
I felt sick, but Xavier only sighed. “As you wish to call it. I propose a challenge.”
“A what?” I didn’t like the sound of it.
“A challenge.”
Angelus looked suspicious. “The Mortal defeated the Dark Queen and won. That was the only
challenge he will face today.”
I was annoyed. “I told you. I didn’t kill Sarafine. She defeated herself.”
“Semantics,” Angelus said.
Xavier silenced us both. “So you are unwilling to face the Mortal in a challenge?”
There was an uproar in the crowd, and Angelus looked like he wanted to tear Xavier’s wings
off. “Silence!”
The chatter stopped immediately.
“I do not fear any Mortal!”
“Then this is my proposition.” Xavier tried to keep his voice steady, but he was obviously
terrified. “The Mortal will face you in the Great Keep and attempt to regain his page. You will
attempt to stop him. If he succeeds, you will allow him to do with it as he likes. If you stop him
from reaching his page, he will allow you to do with it as you like.”
“What?” Xavier was suggesting that I face off against Angelus. My odds were not good in this
scenario.
Angelus was aware that all eyes were on him as the crowd and the other Council Keepers
waited for his response. “Interesting.”
I wanted to bolt out of the room. “Not interesting. I don’t even know what you’re talking
about.”
Angelus leaned toward me, his eyes sparking. “Let me explain it to you. A lifetime of servitude
or the simple destruction of your soul. It doesn’t really matter to me. I’ll decide on a whim, as I
like. When I like.”
“I’m not sure about this.” It sounded like a lose-lose proposition to me.
Xavier let one hand fall on my shoulder. “You don’t have a choice. It’s the only chance you
have to get home to the girl with the curls.” He turned to Angelus, holding out his hand. “Is it a
deal?” Angelus stared at Xavier’s hand as if it was infected. “I accept.”
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