Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 35

The toes of my Chucks hung over the white metal edge, a town sleeping hundreds of feet below
me. The tiny houses and tiny cars looked like toys, and it was easy to imagine them dusted with
glitter under the tree with the rest of my mother’s Christmas town.
But they weren’t toys.
I knew this view.
You don’t forget the last thing you see before you die. Trust me.
I was standing on top of the Summerville water tower, veins of cracked white paint spreading
out from under my sneakers. The curve of a black heart drawn in Sharpie caught my eye.
Was it possible? Could I really be home?
I didn’t know until I saw her.
The fronts of her black orthopedic shoes were lined up perfectly with my Chucks.
Amma was wearing her black Sunday dress with the tiny violets scattered all over it, and a
wide-brimmed black hat. Her white gloves gripped the handles of her patent-leather pocketbook.
Our eyes met for a split second, and she smiled—relief spreading across her features in a way
that was impossible to describe. It was almost peaceful, a word that I would never use to describe
Amma.
That’s when I realized something was wrong. The kind of wrong you can’t stop or change or
fix.
I reached for her at the exact same moment she stepped off the edge, into the blue-black sky.
“Amma!” I reached for her, the way I used to reach for Lena in my dreams when she was the
one falling. But I couldn’t catch Amma.
And she didn’t fall.
The sky split open like the universe was tearing, or like someone had finally picked that hole in
it. Amma turned her face toward it, tears running down her cheeks even as she smiled at me.
The sky held her up, as though Amma was worthy of standing on it, until a hand reached out
from the center of the tear and the blinking stars. It was a hand I recognized—the one that had
offered me his crow so I could cross from one world to another.
Now Uncle Abner was offering that hand to Amma.
His face blurred in the darkness next to Sulla, Ivy, and Delilah. Amma’s other family. Twyla’s
face smiled down at me, charms tied into her long braids. Amma’s Caster family was waiting for
her.
But I didn’t care.
I couldn’t lose her.
“Amma! Don’t leave me!” I shouted.
Her lips didn’t move, but I heard her voice, as sure as if she was standing next to me. “I could
never leave you, Ethan Wate. I’ll always be watchin’. Make me proud.”
My heart felt like it was collapsing in on itself, shattering into pieces so small I might never find
them. I dropped to my knees and looked up into the heavens, screaming louder than I ever thought
possible. “Why?”
It was Amma who answered. She was farther away now, stepping into the sliver of sky that
opened just for her. “A woman’s only as good as her word.” Another one of Amma’s riddles.
The last one.
She touched her fingers to her lips and reached them out to me as the universe swallowed her
up. Her words echoed across the sky, as if she had spoken them aloud.
“And everyone said I couldn’t change the cards….”
The cards.
She was talking about the spread that predicted my death so many months ago. The spread she
had bargained with the bokor to change. The one she swore she’d do anything to change.
She’d done it.
Defied the universe and fate and everything she believed in. For me.
Amma was trading her life for mine, protecting the Order by offering one life for another. That
was the deal she had made with the bokor. I understood now.
I watched the sky knit itself back together one stitch at a time.
But it didn’t look the same. I could still see the invisible seams where the world had torn itself
in half to take her. And I would always know they were there, even if no one else could see them.
Like torn edges of my heart.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 36

As I sat on the cold metal in the darkness, part of me wondered if I imagined the whole thing. I
knew I didn’t. I could still see those stitches in the sky, no matter how dark it was.
Still, I didn’t move.
If I left, it would be real.
If I left, she would be gone.
I don’t know how long I sat there trying to make sense of everything, but the sun came up, and I
was still sitting in the same spot. No matter how many times I tried to work it out, I kept getting
stuck.
I had this old Bible story in my head, playing over and over, like a bad song from the radio. I’m
probably getting it wrong, but I remember it like this: There was this city of people who were so
righteous, they got picked right up off the earth and taken to Heaven. Just like that.
They didn’t even die.
They got to skip dying, the way you pass Go and head directly to Jail if you pull the wrong
card in Monopoly.
Translated—that’s the name for what happened to them. I remember because Link was in my
Sunday school class, and he said teleported, then transported, and finally transportated.
We were supposed to act real jealous about it, like those people were so lucky to get plucked
up and taken into the Lap o’ the Lord.
Like it was a place or something.
I remember coming home and asking my mom about it, because that’s how creeped out I was.
I don’t remember what she said, but I decided right then and there that the goal wasn’t to be good.
It was to be just good enough.
I didn’t want to risk getting translated, or even teleported.
I wasn’t looking to go live in the Lap o’ the Lord. I was more excited about Little League.
But it seemed like that’s what happened to Amma. She was lapped right up, transported,
transportated—all of it.
Did the universe, or the Lord and his lap, or the Greats expect me to feel happy about it? I had
just been through hell to get back to the regular world of Gatlin—back to Amma, and Lena, and
Link, and Marian.
How long did we have together?
Was I supposed to be okay with that?
One minute she was there, and then it was over. Now the sky was the sky again, flat and blue
and calm, as if it really was just painted plaster, like my bedroom ceiling. Even if someone I loved
was trapped somewhere behind it.
That’s how I felt now. Trapped on the wrong side of the sky.
Alone on the top of the Summerville water tower, looking out over the world I had known my
entire life, a world of dirt roads and paved routes, of gas stations and grocery stores and strip malls.
And everything was the same, and nothing was the same.
I wasn’t the same.
I guess that’s the thing about a hero’s journey. You might not start out a hero, and you might
not even come back that way. But you change, which is the same as everything changing. The
journey changes you, whether or not you know it, and whether or not you want it to. I had
changed.
I had come back from the dead, and Amma was gone, even if she was one of the Greats now.
You couldn’t get more changed than that.
I heard a clanging on the ladder beneath me, and I knew who it was before I felt her curling around
my heart. The warmth exploded across me, across the water tower, across Summerville. The sky
was striped with gold and red, as if the sunrise was reversing itself, lighting up the sky all over
again.There was only one person who could do that to a sky or my heart.
Ethan, is that you?
I smiled even as my eyes turned wet and blurry.
It’s me, L. I’m right here. Everything’s going to be okay now.
I reached my hand down and wrapped it around hers, pulling her up onto the platform at the
top of the water tower.
She slid into my arms, falling into sobs that beat against my chest. I don’t know which one of
us was crying harder. I’m not even sure we remembered to kiss. What we had went so much
deeper than a kiss.
When we were together, she turned me completely inside out.
It didn’t matter if we were dead or alive. We could never be kept apart. There were some
things more powerful than worlds or universes. She was my world, as much as I was hers. What
we had, we knew.
The poems are all wrong. It’s a bang, a really big bang. Not a whimper.
And sometimes gold can stay.
Anybody who’s ever been in love can tell you that.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 37

Amma Treadeau has been declared legally dead, following her disappearance from Wate’s Landing,
the home of Mitchell and Ethan Wate, on Cotton Bend, in Central Gatlin’—” I stopped reading out
loud.
I was sitting at her kitchen table, where her One-Eyed Menace waited sadly in the mason jar on
her counter, and it didn’t seem possible that I was reading Amma’s obituary. Not when I could still
smell the Red Hots and the pencil lead.
“Keep readin’.” Aunt Grace was leaning over my shoulder, trying to read the print that her
bifocals were ten strengths too weak to read.
Aunt Mercy was sitting in her wheelchair, on the other side of the table, next to my dad. “They
best say somethin’ about Amma’s pie. Or the Good Lord as my witness, I’ll go down there ta The
Stars ’n’ Bars and give them a piece a my mind.” Aunt Mercy still thought our town newspaper
was named after the Confederate flag.
“It’s The Stars and Stripes,” my father corrected gently. “And I’m sure they worked hard to
assure Amma is remembered for all her talents.”
“Hmm.” Aunt Grace sniffed. “Folks ’round here don’t know a lick about talent. Prudence
Jane’s singin’ was looked over by the choir for years.”
Aunt Mercy crossed her arms. “She had the voice of an angel if I ever heard one.”
I was surprised Aunt Mercy could hear anything without her hearing aid. She was still carrying
on when Lena began to Kelt with me.
Ethan? Are you okay?
I’m okay, L.
You don’t sound okay.
I’m dealing.
Hold on. I’m coming.
Amma’s face stared out at me from the newspaper, printed in black and white. Wearing her
best Sunday dress, the one with the white collar. I wondered if someone had taken that photo at my
mom’s funeral or Aunt Prue’s. It could’ve been Macon’s.
There had been so many.
I laid the paper down on the scarred wood. I hated that obituary. Someone from the paper
must have written it, not someone who knew Amma. They’d gotten everything wrong. I guess I
had a new reason to hate The Stars and Stripes as much as Aunt Grace did.
I closed my eyes, listening to the Sisters fuss about everything from Amma’s obituary to the
fact that Thelma couldn’t make grits the right way. I knew it was their way of paying their respects
to the woman who had raised my dad and me. The woman who had made them pitcher after
pitcher of sweet tea and made sure they didn’t leave the house with their skirts hitched up in their
pantyhose when they left for church.
After a while, I couldn’t hear them at all. Just the quiet sound of Wate’s Landing mourning,
too. The floorboards creaked, but this time I knew it wasn’t Amma in the next room. None of her
pots were banging. No cleavers were attacking the cutting board. No warm food would be coming
my way.
Not unless my dad and I taught ourselves how to cook.
There were no casseroles piled up on our porch either. Not this time. There wasn’t a soul in
Gatlin who would have dared bring their sorry excuse for a pot roast to mark Miss Amma
Treadeau’s passing. And if they did, we wouldn’t have eaten it.
Not that anyone around here really believed she was gone. At least that’s what they said.
“She’ll come back, Ethan. ’Member the way she just showed up without sayin’ a word, the day
you were born?” It was true. Amma had raised my father and moved out to Wader’s Creek with
her family. But as the story goes, the day my parents brought me home from the hospital, she
showed up with her quilting bag and moved back in.
Now Amma was gone, and she wasn’t coming back. More than anyone, I knew how that
worked. I looked at the worn spot on the floorboards over by the stove, in front of the oven door.
I miss her, L.
I miss her, too.
I miss both of them.
I know.
I heard Thelma walk into the room, a hunk of tobacco tucked under her lip. “All right, girls. I
think y’all have had enough excitement for one mornin’. Let’s go on in the other room and see what
we can win on The Price Is Right.”
Thelma winked at me and wheeled Aunt Mercy out of the room. Aunt Grace was right behind
them, with Harlon James at her feet. “I hope they’re givin’ away one a those iceboxes that makes
water all on its own.”
My dad reached for the newspaper and started reading where I left off. “ ‘Memorial services
will be held at the Chapel at Wader’s Creek.’ ” My mind flashed on Amma and Macon, standing
face to face in the middle of the foggy swamp on the wrong side of midnight.
“Aw, hell, I tried to tell anyone who would listen. Amma doesn’t want a service.” He sighed.
“Nope.”
“She’s fussing around somewhere right now, saying, ‘I don’t see why you’re wastin’ good
time mournin’ me. Sure as my Sweet Redeemer, I’m not wastin’ my time mournin’ you.’ ”
I smiled. He cocked his head to the left, just like Amma did when she was on the rampage. “T.
O. M. F. O. O. L. E. R. Y. Ten down. As in, this whole thing’s nothin’ but hodgepodge and
nonsense, Mitchell Wate.”
This time I laughed, because my dad was right. I could hear her saying it. She hated being the
center of attention, especially when it involved the infamous Gatlin Funerary Pity Parade.
My dad read the next paragraph. “ ‘Miss Amma Treadeau was born in Unincorporated Gatlin
County, South Carolina, the sixth of seven children born to the late Treadeau family.’ ” The sixth of
seven children? Had Amma ever mentioned her sisters and brothers? I only remembered her talking
about the Greats.
He skimmed the length of the obituary. “ ‘By some count, her career as a baker of local
renown spanned at least five decades and as many county fairs.’ ” He shook his head again. “But no
mention of her Carolina Gold? Good Lord, I hope Amma’s not reading this from some cloud up on
high. She’ll be sending lightning bolts down, left and right.”
She’s not, I thought. Amma doesn’t care what they say about her now. Not the folks in Gatlin.
She’s sitting on a porch somewhere with the Greats.
He kept going. “ ‘Miss Amma leaves behind her extended family, a host of cousins, and a circle
of close family friends.’ ” He folded up the paper and tossed it back onto the table. “Where’s the
part where Miss Amma leaves behind two of the sorriest, hungriest, saddest boys ever to inhabit
Wate’s Landing?” He tapped his fingers restlessly on the wood tabletop between us.
I didn’t know what to say at first. “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re going to be okay, you know?”
It was true. That’s what she’d been doing all this time, if you thought about it. Getting us ready
for a time when she wouldn’t be there to get us ready for all the times after that.
For now.
My dad must have understood, because he let his hand fall heavily on my shoulder. “Yes, sir.
Don’t I know it.”
I didn’t say anything else.
We sat there together, staring out the kitchen window. “Anything else would be downright
disrespectful.” His voice sounded wobbly, and I knew he was crying. “She raised us pretty well,
Ethan.”
“She sure did.” I fought back the tears myself. Out of respect, I guess, like my dad said. This
was how it had to be now.
This was real.
It hurt—it almost killed me—but it was real, the same way losing my mom was real. I had to
accept it. Maybe this was the way the universe was meant to unravel, at least this part of it.
The right thing and the easy thing are never the same.
Amma had taught me that, better than anyone.
“Maybe she and Lila Jane are taking care of each other now. Maybe they’re sitting together,
talking over fried tomatoes and sweet tea.” My dad laughed, even though he was crying.
He had no idea how close to the truth he was, and I didn’t tell him.
“Cherries.” That was all I said.
“What?” My dad looked at me funny.
“Mom likes cherries. Straight out of the colander, remember?” I turned my head his way. “But
I’m not sure Aunt Prue is letting either one of them get a word in edgewise.”
He nodded and stretched out his hand until it brushed against my arm. “Your mom doesn’t
care. She just wants to be left in peace with her books for a while, don’t you think? At least until
we get there?”
“At least,” I said, though I couldn’t look at him now. My heart was pulled so many different
ways at once, I didn’t know what I was feeling. Part of me wished I could tell him that I’d seen my
mom. That she was okay.
We sat like that, not moving or talking, until I felt my heart start to pound.
L? Is that you?
Come out, Ethan. I’m waiting.
I heard the music before I saw the Beater roll into view through the windowpanes. I stood up
and nodded at my dad. “I’m going up to Lena’s for a while.”
“You take all the time you need.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
As I turned to leave the kitchen, I caught one last sight of my dad, sitting alone at the table with
the newspaper. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave him like that.
I reached back for the paper.
I don’t know why I took it. Maybe I just wanted to keep her with me a little while longer.
Maybe I didn’t want my dad to sit alone with all those feelings, wrapped in a stupid paper with a
bad crossword puzzle and a worse obituary.
Then it came to me.
I pulled open Amma’s drawer and grabbed a #2 pencil. I held it up to show my dad.
He grinned. “Started out sharp, and then she sharpened it.”
“It’s what she would have wanted. One last time.”
He leaned back in his chair until he could reach the drawer and tossed me a box of Red Hots.
“One last time.”
I gave him a hug. “I love you, Dad.”
Then I swept my hand across the length of the kitchen windows, sending salt spraying all over
the kitchen floor.
“It’s time to let the ghosts in.”
I only made it halfway down the porch steps before Lena found me. She jumped up into my arms,
circling her skinny legs around mine. She clung to me and I held on to her, like neither one of us
was ever letting go.
There was electricity, plenty of electricity. But as her lips found mine, there was nothing but
sweetness and peace. Kind of like coming home, when a home’s still a shelter and not the storm
itself. Everything was different between us. There was nothing keeping us apart anymore. I didn’t
know if it was because of the New Order, or because I’d journeyed to the end of the Otherworld
and back. Either way, I could hold Lena’s hand without burning a hole in my palm.
Her touch was warm. Her fingers were soft. Her kiss was just a kiss now. A kiss that was
every bit as big and every bit as small as a kiss can be.
It wasn’t an electrical storm or a fire. Nothing exploded or burned or even short-circuited.
Lena belonged to me, the same way I belonged to her. And now we could be together.
The Beater honked, and we broke off kissing.
“Any day now.” Link stuck his head out the window. “I’m gettin’ gray hairs sittin’ here
watchin’ you kids.”
I grinned at him, but I couldn’t pull myself away from her. “I love you, Lena Duchannes. I
always have, and I always will.” The words were as true today as the first time I’d said them, on
her Sixteenth Moon.
“And I love you, Ethan Wate. I’ve loved you since the first day we met. Or before.” Lena
looked straight in my eyes, smiling.
“Way before.” I smiled back, deep into hers.
“But I have something to tell you.” She leaned closer. “Something you should probably know
about the girl you love.”
My stomach flipped a little. “What is it?”
“My name.”
“You’re not serious?” I knew Casters learned their real names after they were Claimed, but
Lena was never willing to tell me hers, no matter how many times I asked. I figured it was hers to
tell when she felt like the time was right. Which, I guess, was now.
“Do you still want to know?” She grinned because she already knew the answer.
I nodded.
“It’s Josephine Duchannes. Josephine, daughter of Sarafine.” The last word was a whisper,
but I heard it, as if she had shouted it from the rooftops.
I squeezed her hand.
Her name. The last missing piece of her family puzzle, and the one thing you couldn’t find on
any family tree.
I hadn’t told Lena about her mother yet. Part of me wanted to believe that Sarafine had given
up her soul so I could be with Lena again—that her sacrifice was about more than just revenge.
Someday I would tell Lena what her mother did for me. Lena deserved to know Sarafine wasn’t all
bad.
The Beater honked again.
“Come on, lovebirds. We gotta get to the Dar-ee Keen. Everyone’s waitin’.”
I grabbed Lena’s other hand and pulled her down the front lawn to the Beater. “We have to
make a quick stop on the way.”
“Is this gonna involve any Dark Casters? Do I need the shears?”
“We’re just going to the library.”
Link leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. “I haven’t renewed my library card since I
was ten. I think I’d have better odds with Dark Casters.”
I stood in front of the car door and looked at Lena. The back door opened by itself, and we
both climbed in.
“Aw, man. Now I’m your cabdriver? You Casters and Mortals have a really screwed-up way a
showin’ your appreciation to a guy.” Link turned up the music, as if he didn’t want to hear
whatever I had to say.
“I appreciate you.” I smacked his head from behind, good and hard. He didn’t even seem to
feel it. I was talking to Link, but I was looking at Lena. I couldn’t stop looking at her. She was
more beautiful than I remembered, more beautiful and more real.
I curled a strand of her hair through my fingers, and she leaned her cheek against my hand. We
were together. It was hard to think or see or even talk about anything else. Then I felt bad for
feeling so good when I was still carrying The Stars and Stripes in my back pocket.
“Wait. Check it out.” Link paused. “That’s exactly what I needed to finish my new lyrics.
‘Candy girl. Hurts so sweet she’ll make you want to hurl—’ ”
Lena put her head on my shoulder. “Did I mention that my cousin’s back in town?”
“Of course she is.” I smiled.
Link winked at me in the rearview mirror. I smacked him in the head again as the car pulled
down the street.
“I think you’re gonna be a rock star,” I said.
“I gotta get back to workin’ on my demo track, you know? ’Cause as soon as we graduate,
I’m headin’ straight to New York, the big time….”
Link was so full of crap, he could pass for a toilet. Just like the old days. Just like it was
supposed to be.
It was all the proof I needed.
I was really home.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 33

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.”

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 34

Angelus swept out of the room, the other Keepers right behind him.
I let out the breath I was holding. “Where are they going?”
“They have to give you a chance, or they will be perceived as unjust.”
“Perceived as unjust?” Was he serious? “Are you saying no one’s caught on to that before?”
“The Council is feared. No one questions them,” Xavier said. “But they are also proud.
Especially Angelus. He wishes his followers to believe he is giving you a chance.”
“But he’s not?”
“That depends on you now.” Xavier turned to me with something resembling a sad expression
on what was left of his human face. “I can’t help you. Not beyond this, my friend.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not going back there. I can’t,” he said. “Not to the Chamber of the Chronicles.”
Of course. The room that housed the book. It had to be close.
I looked at the row of doors beyond us, bordering one side of the room. I wondered which one
led to the end of my journey—or to the death of my soul.
“You can’t go back there? And I can? Don’t chicken out on me now.” I lowered my voice.
“You just took on Angelus. You made a deal with the Devil. You’re my hero.”
“I am no hero. As I said, I am your friend.”
Xavier couldn’t do it. Who could blame the guy? The Chamber of the Chronicles must have
been some kind of house of horrors for him. And he had put himself in enough danger already.
“Thanks, Xavier. You’re a great friend. One of the best.” I smiled at him. The look he gave me
in return was sobering.
“This is your journey, dead man. Yours alone. I can go no farther.” He put his arm on my
shoulder, pressing heavily.
“Why do I have to do everything alone?” As soon as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true.
The Greats had sent me on my way.
Aunt Prue made sure I got a second chance.
Obidias told me everything I needed to know.
My mom gave me the strength to do it.
Amma watched for me, and believed it when she found me.
Lena sent me The Book of Moons, against all odds and all the way from the other side of the
universe. Aunt Marian and Macon, Link and John and Liv—they were there for Lena when I
couldn’t be.
Even the River Master and Xavier had helped me move forward, when all along it would have
been so much easier to give up and go back.
I had never been alone. Not for a minute.
I may have been a Wayward, but my way was full of people who loved me. They were the
only way I knew.
I could do this.
I had to.
“I understand,” I said. “Thanks, Xavier. For everything.”
He nodded. “I will meet you again, Ethan. I will see you when next you cross the river.”
“I hope it’s not for a long time.”
“I hope this as well, my friend. For you more than me.” His eyes seemed to twinkle for a
second. “But I will keep busy collecting and counting until you return.”
I didn’t say anything as he slipped through the shadows and back into the world where nothing
ever happened and the days became the same as nights.
I hoped he would remember me.
I was pretty sure he wouldn’t.
One by one, I touched the row of doors in front of me with my hand. Some felt as cold as ice.
Some felt like nothing, like plain wood. There was only one that pulsed beneath my fingertips.
Only one burned at my touch.
I knew it was the right door, before I saw the telltale Caster circles carved into the rowan
wood, just like the Temporis Porta.
This was the doorway to the heart of the Great Keep. The one place any son of Lila Jane Evers
Wate would instinctively find his way, whether or not he was a Wayward.
The library.
Pushing my way through the massive doors directly across from the Temporis Porta, I knew it
was time to face the most dangerous part of my journey.
Angelus would be waiting.
The doors were just the beginning. The moment I stepped into the inner chamber, I found myself
standing in an almost entirely reflective room. If it was supposed to be a library, it was the strangest
one I’d ever seen.
The crumbling stones beneath my feet, the stubbled cave walls, the ceiling and floor that grew
into stalactites and stalagmites as the room circled back upon itself—they all seemed to be made of
some kind of transparent gemstone, cut into a thousand impossible facets that reflected the light in
every direction. It looked like I was standing in one of the eleven jewelry boxes in Xavier’s
collection.
Except less claustrophobic. A small opening in the ceiling let in enough natural light to catch the
whole room in a dizzying glow. The effect reminded me of the tidal cave where we’d first met
Abraham Ravenwood, on the night of Lena’s Seventeenth Moon. In the center of this room, there
was a pond of water the size of a swimming pool. The body of milky white water churned as if
there was a fire beneath it. It was the color of Sarafine’s sightless opaque eyes, before she died….
I shuddered. I couldn’t think about her, not now. I had to focus on surviving Angelus.
Defeating him. I took a deep breath and tried to get my bearings. What was I dealing with?
My eyes fixed on the bubbling white liquid. In the center of the pool, a small stretch of earth
rose above the water, like a tiny island.
In the center of the island was a pedestal.
On the pedestal was a book, surrounded by candles that flickered with strange green and gold
flames.
The book.
I didn’t need someone to tell me which book it was, or what it was doing here. The reason
there was an entire library devoted to only one book, and with a moat around it.
I knew exactly why it was here, and why I was.
It was the only part of this whole journey I understood. The only thing that was perfectly clear
from the moment Obidias Trueblood told me the truth about what had happened to me. It was The
Caster Chronicles, and I was here to destroy my page. The one that killed me. And I had to do it
before Angelus could stop me.
After all I’d learned about being a Wayward and finding my way—this was where it led. There
was no way left to go, no more path to find.
I was at the end.
And all I wanted was to go back.
But first I had to get to that island—to the pedestal and The Caster Chronicles. I had to do what
I’d come here to do.
A shout from across the room startled me. “Mortal Boy. If you leave now, I will leave you
your soul. How’s that for a challenge?” Angelus appeared on the other side of the pool. I wondered
how he got over there, and I wished there were as many ways to leave this room as there were to
enter it.
Or at least, as many ways home.
“My soul? No, you won’t.” I stood at the edge of the pool and chucked a rock into the
bubbling water, watching it disappear. I wasn’t stupid. He would never let me go. I would end up
like Xavier or Sarafine. Black wings or white eyes—it didn’t make a difference. In the end, we were
all bound in his chains, whether you could see them or not.
Angelus smiled. “No? I suppose that’s true.” He gestured with his hand, and at least a dozen
rocks rose into the air around him. They fired themselves at me, one after another, hitting with
uncanny accuracy. I flung my arms across my face as a rock sailed past.
“Very mature. What are you going to do now? Tie me up and stick me in your old boneyard?
Blind and chained like an animal?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t want a Mortal pet.” He twisted his finger, and the water began
to spin into a kind of whirlpool. “I’ll just destroy you. It’s easier for all of us. Though not much of
a challenge.”
“Why did you torture Sarafine? She wasn’t a Mortal. Why bother?” I shouted.
I had to know. It felt like our fates were tied together somehow—mine, Sarafine’s, Xavier’s,
and those of all the other Mortals and Casters Angelus had destroyed.
What were we to him?
“Sarafine? Was that her name? I had almost forgotten.” Angelus laughed. “Do you expect me
to concern myself with every Dark Caster who ends up here?”
The water churned violently now. I knelt and touched it with one hand. It was freezing cold
and sort of slimy. I didn’t want to swim through it, but I couldn’t tell if there was another way
across.
I looked up at Angelus. I didn’t know how this whole challenge thing was going to take shape,
but I thought it was better to keep him talking until I figured it out. “Do you blind every Dark Caster
and make them fight to the death?”
I looked back at the water. It rippled where I had touched it, turning clear and calm.
Angelus folded his arms, smiling.
I kept my hand in the water as the transparent current spread across the pool, though my hand
was going numb. Now I could see what was really beneath the milky surface.
Corpses. Just like the ones in the river.
Floating upward, their green hair and blue lips looked like masks on their bloated dead bodies.
Like me, I thought. That’s what I look like, right now. Somewhere—where I still had a body.
I heard Angelus laughing. But I could barely hear, barely think. I wanted to vomit.
I backed away from the water. I knew he was trying to frighten me, and I resolved not to look
at it again.
Keep your mind on Lena. Get to the page, and you can go home.
Angelus watched me, laughing harder. He called to me as if I was a child. “Don’t be afraid.
Your final death doesn’t have to happen like this. Sarafine failed to achieve the tasks entrusted to
her.”
“So you do know her name.” I cracked a smile.
He glared. “I know she failed me.”
“You and Abraham?”
Angelus stiffened. “Congratulations. I see you’ve been digging around in matters that are none
of your concern. Which means you’re no smarter than the first Ethan Wate who visited the Great
Keep. And no more likely to see the Duchannes Caster you love than he was.”
My whole body went numb.
Of course. Ethan Carter Wate had been here. Genevieve told me.
I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “What did you do to him?”
“What do you think?” A sadistic smile spread across Angelus’ face. “He tried to take something
that did not belong to him.”
“His page?”
With every question, the Keeper looked more satisfied. I could tell he was enjoying this. “No.
Genevieve’s—the Duchannes girl he loved. He wanted to lift the curse she brought upon herself and
the Duchannes children who would come after her. Instead, he lost his foolish soul.”
Angelus looked down into the churning water. He nodded, and a single corpse rose to the
surface. Empty eyes that looked too much like my own stared back at me.
“Look familiar, Mortal?”
I knew that face. I would’ve known it anywhere.
It was mine. Or actually, his.
Ethan Carter Wate was still wearing the Confederate uniform he died in.
My heart dropped. Genevieve would never see him again, not in this world or any other. He had
died twice, like me. But he would never get back home. Never hold Genevieve in his arms, even in
the Otherworld. He had tried to save the girl he loved, and Sarafine and Ridley and Lena and all the
other Casters who would come after her in the Duchannes family.
He’d failed.
It didn’t make a guy feel better. Not about standing where I stood. And not about leaving a
Caster girl behind, the way we both had.
“You will fail as well.” The words echoed across the cavern.
Which meant Angelus was reading my mind. At this point, it was the least surprising thing
happening in the room.
I knew what I had to do.
I emptied my mind the best I could, picturing the old baseball diamond where Link and I used
to play T-ball. I watched Link throw a bum pitch in the ninth inning as I stood on home plate
punching my glove. I tried to picture the batter. Who was it? Earl Petty, chewing gum, since the
coach had outlawed chaw?
I struggled to keep my mind on the game while my eyes did something else.
Come on, Earl. Knock it out of the park.
I glanced at the pedestal, then at the corpses floating at my feet. More bodies continued to rise,
bumping into one another like sardines packed in a can. It wouldn’t be long until they were so close
that I wouldn’t even be able to see the water.
If I waited, maybe I could use them as stepping stones….
Stop! Think about the game!
But it was too late.
“I wouldn’t try it.” Angelus watched me from the other side of the pool. “No Mortal can
survive that water. You need the bridge to cross, and as you can see, it’s been removed. A security
precaution.”
He held his hand in front of him, twisting the air into a current I could feel all the way across
the water.
I had to brace myself to stay on my feet.
“You will not retrieve your page. You will die the same dishonorable death as your namesake.
The death all Mortals deserve.”
“Why me, and why him? Why any of us? What did we ever do to you, Angelus?” I shouted at
him over the wind.
“You are inferior, born without the gifts of Supernaturals. Forcing us to stay in hiding while
your cities and schools fill with children who will grow to do nothing more than occupy space.
You’ve turned our world into our prison.” The air picked up, and he twisted his hand further. “It’s
absurd. Like building a city for rodents.”
I waited, picturing that stupid baseball game—Earl swinging, the crack of the bat—until the
words formed, and I spoke them. “But you were born a Mortal. What does that make you?”
His eyes widened, his face a mask of pure rage. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.” I turned my mind to the vision I’d seen, forcing myself to remember the
faces, the words. Xavier, when he was just a Caster. Angelus, when he was just a man.
The wind increased, and I stumbled, the edge of my sneaker splashing at the edge of the pool
of bodies. I braced myself, willing my feet not to slip.
Angelus’ face had turned even paler than before. “You know nothing! Look what you
sacrificed—to save what? A town full of pathetic Mortals?”
I closed my eyes, letting the words find him.
I know you were born a Mortal. All those experiments can’t change that. I know your secret.
His eyes widened, hate raging across his face. “I am not a Mortal! I never was, and I never will
be!”
I know your secret.
The wind picked up, and rocks flew again through the air—harder this time. I tried to shield
my face as they pelted my ribs, smashing against the wall behind me. A trail of blood ran down my
cheek.
“I will tear you to shreds, Wayward!”
I screamed over the din. “You may have powers, Angelus, but deep down, you’re still a
Mortal, just like me.”
You can’t harness Dark forces like Sarafine and Abraham, or Travel like an Incubus. You
can’t cross that water any more than I can.
“I am not Mortal!” he screamed.
Nobody can.
“Liar!”
Prove it.
There was a second, one terrible second, when Angelus and I stared across the water at each
other.Then, without a word, Angelus flung himself into the air, lunging across the corpses in the pool
—as if he couldn’t contain himself a moment longer. That’s how desperate he was to prove he was
better than me.
Better than a Mortal.
Better than anyone else who ever tried to walk on water.
I had been right.
The rotting corpses were packed so tight that he ran right over their bodies until they started to
move. Arms reached for him, the hundreds of bloated hands rising up out of the water. This was
not like the river I had crossed to get here.
This river was alive.
An arm slithered over his neck, weighing him down.
“No!”
I shuddered as his voice echoed against the walls.
The corpses tore at his robe desperately, pulling him down into the abyss of loss and misery.
The same souls he had tortured were drowning him.
His eyes locked on mine. “Help me!”
Why should I?
But there was nothing I could do, even if I’d wanted to. I knew those corpses would drown
me. I was Mortal, just as Angelus was—at least part of him.
Nobody walks on water, not where I come from. Nobody except the guy in the picture frame
in Sunday school class.
Too bad Angelus wasn’t from Gatlin; he would’ve known that.
His hands clawed at the surface of the water until there was nothing left but a sea of bodies
again. The stench of death was everywhere. It was suffocating, and I tried to cover my mouth, but
the distinct odor of rot and decay was too strong.
I knew what I’d done. I wasn’t innocent. Not in Sarafine’s death, and not in this one either. He
was reading my mind and I had pushed him to this, even if his hate and pride had propelled him into
the pool.
It was too late.
A rotted arm slid around his neck, and within seconds he disappeared under the sea of bodies.
It was a death I wouldn’t have wished on anyone.
Not even Angelus.
Maybe just him.
Within moments, the pool turned milky white again, though I knew what was lurking
underneath.
I shrugged. “Wasn’t much of a challenge after all.”
I had to find the bridge, or something I could use to cross.
The splintering plank wasn’t well hidden. I found it in an alcove only a few yards from where
Angelus stood moments ago. The wood was dry and cracked, which wasn’t reassuring,
considering what I had just witnessed.
But the book was so close.
As I slid the plank over the surface of the water, I could practically feel Lena in my arms and
hear Amma hollering at me. I couldn’t think straight. All I knew was I had to get across that water
and get back to them.
Please. Let me cross. All I want is to go home.
With that thought, I took a breath.
Then a step.
Then another.
I was five feet from the edge of the water now, maybe six.
Halfway across. There was no turning back now.
The bridge was surprisingly light, though it creaked and wobbled with my every step. Still, it
had held up so far.
I took a deep breath.
Five more feet.
Four—
I heard a crash like a wave behind me. The water began to thrash. I felt a shooting pain in my
leg as it gave way beneath me. The old board snapped like a broken toothpick.
Before I could scream, I lost my balance, falling into the deadly water. Only then there wasn’t
any water—or if there was, I wasn’t in it.
I was in the arms of the rising dead.
Worse.
I was face to face with the other Ethan Wate. He was as much a skeleton as he was a man, but
I recognized him now. I tried to pull away, but he grabbed me around the neck with a bony hand.
Water poured out of his mouth, where his teeth should have been. I’d had nightmares less
terrifying.
I turned my head to keep corpse drool from my face.
“Could a Mortal Cast an Ambulans Mortus?” Angelus pushed past the dead who crowded
around me, pulling my arms and legs in every direction with such force I thought my limbs would
rip right out of their sockets. “From under the water? To wake the dead?” He stood triumphantly on
the land, in front of the book. Looking crazier than I’d thought even a crazy-looking Keeper could.
“The challenge is over. Your soul is mine.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t speak. Instead, I found myself staring into Ethan Wate’s empty
eyes.
“Now. Bring him to me.”
At Angelus’ command, the corpses rose from the stinking water, pulling me with them up onto
the shore. The other Ethan tossed me onto the dirt like I was weightless.
As he did, a small black stone rolled out of my pocket.
Angelus didn’t notice. He was too busy staring at the book. But I saw it clear enough.
The river’s eye.
I had forgotten to pay the River Master.
Of course. You couldn’t just expect to cross the water anytime you wanted. Not around here.
Not without paying a price.
I picked up the rock.
Ethan Wate, the dead one, whipped his head toward me. The look he gave me—if that’s what
you’d call it, considering the guy barely had eyes—sent a shiver down my spine. I felt sorry for
him. But I sure didn’t want to be him.
Between the two of us, we owed each other that much.
“So long, Ethan,” I said.
With my last remaining bit of strength, I hurled the rock into the water. I heard it hit, making
only the tiniest sound.
You wouldn’t have noticed it unless you were me.
Or one of the dead.
Because they disappeared a few seconds after the rock hit the water. About as quickly as it
took a rock to sink all the way down to the bottom of a pool of bodies.
I fell back on the tiny stretch of dry land, exhausted. For a second, I was too scared to move.
Then I saw Angelus standing there, glued to the book, reading in the light of the flickering
green and gold flames.
I knew what I had to do. And I didn’t have long to do it.
I pulled myself to my feet.
There it was. It was open on the pedestal, right in front of me.
In front of Angelus, too.
THE CASTER CHRONICLES
I reached for the book, and it burned my fingers.
“Don’t,” Angelus growled, grabbing my wrist. His eyes were shining, as if the book had some
strange hold on him. He didn’t even look up from the page. I’m not sure he could.
Because it was his page.
I could almost read it from where I stood, a thousand rewritten words, one crossed out over
the next. I could see the quill, ink-stained at the tip, almost twitching in his fingers next to the book.
So this was how he’d done it. How he’d forced the supernatural world to bend to his will. He
controlled the story. Not just his, but all of ours.
Angelus had changed everything.
One person could do that.
And one person could change it back.
“Angelus?”
He didn’t answer. Staring into the book, he looked more like a zombie than the corpses did.
So I didn’t look. Instead, I closed my eyes and pulled on the page, as hard and as fast as I
could.
“What are you doing?” Angelus sounded frantic, but I didn’t open my eyes. “What have you
done?”
My hands were burning. The page wanted to rip free from me, but I wouldn’t let go. I only
held on tighter. Nothing was going to stop me now.
It came off in my hands.
The ripping sound reminded me of an Incubus, and I half expected to see John Breed or Link
appear next to me. I opened my eyes.
No such luck. Angelus reached for the page, shoving me in one direction while pulling my arm
in another.
I grabbed a dripping candle from the pedestal stand and lit the bottom of the page on fire. It
began to smoke and flame, and Angelus howled with rage.
“Leave it! You don’t know what you’re doing! You could destroy everything—” He threw
himself at me, punching and kicking, almost ripping my shirt off. His nails raked my skin, again and
again, but I didn’t let go.
I didn’t let go when I felt the flames sear their way down to my fingers.
I didn’t let go when the ink-smeared page crumbled into ash.
I didn’t let go until Angelus himself crumbled into nothing, as if he was made of parchment.
Finally, when the wind had blown every last trace of the Keeper and his page into oblivion, I
found myself staring at my burnt, blackened hands.
“My turn.”
Ducking my head, I flipped through the delicate pages of parchment. I could see dates and
names at the top, penned by different hands. I wondered which ones Xavier had written. If Obidias
had changed anyone else’s page. I hoped he wasn’t the one who changed Ethan Carter Wate’s.
I thought of my namesake and shuddered, fighting to keep the bile down.
That could have been me.
Halfway through the book, I found our pages.
Ethan Carter’s was right before mine, the two pages clearly written by different hands.
I skimmed Ethan Carter’s page until I reached the part of the story I already knew. It read like
a script of the vision I had witnessed with Lena, the story of the night he died and Genevieve used
The Book of Moons to bring him back. The night that started it all.
I stared at the edge where the page met the binding. I almost tore it out, but I knew it wouldn’t
have made a difference. It was too late for the other Ethan.
I was the only one who still had a chance to change his fate.
Finally, I turned the page to find I was staring at Obidias’ script.
Ethan Lawson Wate
I didn’t read my page. I couldn’t risk it. I could already feel the pull of the book on my eyes,
powerful enough to Bind me to my page, forever.
I looked away. I already knew what happened in the end of this revision.
Now I was changing it.
I tore the page, the edges pulling away from the binding in a flash of electricity stronger and
brighter than lightning. I heard what sounded like thunder in the sky above me, but I kept tearing.
This time, I kept the candles as far from the parchment as I could.
I pulled until the words came loose, disappearing like they had been written in invisible ink.
I looked down at the page again and it was blank.
I let it drop into the water around me, watching as it fell through the milky depths, vanishing
into the endless shadow of the chasm.
My page was gone.
And in that second, I knew I was, too.
I stared at my Chucks beneath me
until they were gone
and I was gone
and it didn’t matter anymore….
because
there
was
nothing
beneath
me
now
and
then
no
me

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 31

I don’t remember what I saw when I walked into the Far Keep. What I remember are the feelings.
The pure terror. The way my eyes couldn’t find anything—not one familiar thing—to rest on.
Nothing they could understand. I was prepared in no way, by any world I’d ever encountered, for
the one I was encountering now.
This place was cold and evil, like Sauron’s tower in The Lord of the Rings. I had that same
feeling of being watched, the feeling that some sort of universal eye could see what I was seeing,
could sense the innermost terrors of my heart and exploit them.
As I stepped away from the Gates, tall walls loomed on either side of me. They extended
toward an overlook, where I could see the greater part of a city. It was as if I was looking into a
valley from a high mountaintop. Beneath me, the city extended toward the horizon in a great recess
of structures. As I looked more closely, I realized it didn’t resemble a regular city.
It was a labyrinth, a massive, interlocking puzzle of paths carved from cut hedges. It threaded
through the whole of the city between me and the golden building that rose steeply toward the
horizon ahead.
The building I needed to reach.
“Have you come here to face the labyrinth? Are you here for the games?” I heard a voice
behind me, and I turned to see an unnaturally pale man, like the Keepers who had appeared in the
Gatlin Library before Marian’s trial. He had the opaque eyes and prismatic glasses I had come to
associate with the Far Keep.
Over his thin frame hung a black robe like the ones the Council members had worn when they
sentenced Marian—or whatever they had planned to do, before Macon, John, and Liv stopped
them.Those were the bravest people I knew. I couldn’t let them down now.
Not Lena. Not any of them.
“I’m here for the library,” I answered. “Can you show me the way?”
“That’s what I said. The games?” He pointed to a braid of gold rope around his shoulder. “I’m
an officer. I’m here to make sure all who enter the Keep find their way.”
“Huh?”
“You want to gain entrance to the Great Keep. Is that your desire?”
“That’s right.”
“Then you’re here for the games.” The pale man pointed at the overgrown green maze below
us. “If you survive the labyrinth, you’ll end up there.” He moved his finger until he was pointing at
the gold towers. “The Great Keep.”
I didn’t want to find my way through a labyrinth. Everything about the Otherworld felt like one
gigantic maze, and all I wanted to do was find my way out.
“I don’t think you understand. Isn’t there some kind of door? A place where I can walk inside
without having to play any games?” I didn’t have time for this. I needed to find The Caster
Chronicles and get out. Get home.
Come on.
He slapped his hand against my arm, and I struggled to stay standing. The man was incredibly
strong—Link and John strong. “It would be too easy if you could walk into the Great Keep. What
would be the point of that?”
I tried to hide my frustration. “I don’t know? How about to get inside?”
He frowned. “Where have you come from?”
“The Otherworld.”
“Dead man, listen well. The Great Keep is not like the Otherworld. The Great Keep has many
names. To the Norse it is Valhalla, Hall of the Lords. To the Greeks it is Olympus. There are as
many names as there are men who would speak them.”
“Okay. I’m down with all that. I just want to find my way inside this one library. If I could just
find someone to talk to—”
“There is but one way into the Great Keep,” he said. “The Warrior’s Way.”
I sighed. “So there’s no other way? Like, a doorway? Maybe even a Warrior’s Doorway?”
He shook his head. “There are no doors to the Great Keep.”
Of course there weren’t.
“Yeah? What about a stairway?” I asked. The pale man shook his head again. “Or maybe an
alley?”
He was finished with this conversation. “There is only one way in, an honorable death. And
there is only one way out.”
“You mean I can be more dead than this?”
He smiled politely.
I tried again. “What’s that, exactly? An honorable death?”
“You face the labyrinth. It does what it will with you. You accept your fate.”
“And? What’s the one way out?”
He shrugged. “No one leaves unless we choose to let them leave.”
Great.
“Thanks, I guess.” What else was there to say?
“Good luck, dead man. May you fight in peace.”
I nodded. “Yeah, sure. I hope so.”
The strange Keeper, if that’s what he was, went back to guarding his post.
I stared down at the massive labyrinth, wondering once again what I’d gotten myself into and
how I could possibly get myself out.
They shouldn’t call death passing on. They should call it leveling up.
Because the game only got harder once I lost. And I was more than a little worried it had only
just begun.
I couldn’t put it off any longer. The only way to get through this whole labyrinth thing, like most
other crappy things, was to just get through it.
I would have to find a path the hard way.
The Warrior’s Way, or whatever.
And fight in peace? What was that about?
My guard was up as I stumbled my way down a staircase cut out of rock. I moved deeper into
the valley below, and the stairs widened into layers of steep cliffs, where green moss grew between
the rocks, and ivy clung to the walls. When I reached the base of the walled stairwell, I found
myself in an immense garden.
Not just a garden like the ones folks in Gatlin grew their tomatoes in, out behind their swamp
coolers. A garden in the sense of the Garden of Eden—and not Gardens of Eden, the florist over on
Main Street.
It looked like a dream. Because the colors were all wrong—they were too bright, and there
were too many of them. As I moved closer, I realized where I was.
The labyrinth.
Rows of hedges tangled with so many flowering bushes that they made the gardens of
Ravenwood look small and shabby in comparison.
The farther I walked, the less it seemed like walking and the more it felt like bushwhacking. I
pulled branches out of my face and kicked my way through the waist-high brambles and brush.
Root hog or die. That’s what Amma would have said. Keep trying.
It reminded me of the time I tried to walk home from Wader’s Creek when I was nine. I had
been poking around in Amma’s craft room, which wasn’t a craft room at all. It was the room
where she stored the supplies for her charms. She gave me a piece and a half of her mind, and I
told her I was walking home. “I can find my own way”—that’s what I told her. But I didn’t find
my way, or any way. Instead, I wandered deeper and deeper into the swamplands, spooked by the
sound of gators’ tails thrashing in the water.
I didn’t know Amma was following me, until I dropped to my knees and started to cry. She
stepped out into the moonlight, hands on her hips. “Guess you shoulda dropped some bread crumbs
if you were plannin’ to run off.” She didn’t say anything else, just held out her hand.
“I would’ve found my way back,” I’d said.
She nodded. “I don’t doubt it for a minute, Ethan Wate.”
But now, yanking dirt and thorns out of my face, I didn’t have Amma to come find me. This
was something I had to do on my own.
Like plowing the Lilum’s field and bringing the water back to Gatlin.
Or taking a dive off the Summerville water tower.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I was pretty much in the same boat I’d been in that
day in the swamp when I was nine. I was walking down the same pathways over and over, unless
some other guy was wearing the same size Converse as me. I might as well be lost on the way
home from Wader’s Creek.
I tried to think.
A maze is just a big puzzle.
I was going about this wrong. I needed to mark the pathways I had already taken. I needed
some of Amma’s bread crumbs.
I stripped the nearest bush of its leaves, stuffing them in my pockets. I reached out my right
hand until it touched the wall of bushes, and I started walking. I kept my right hand on the wall of
the maze and used my left to drop the waxy leaves every few feet.
It was like a giant corn maze. Keep the same hand on the stalks until you dead-end. Then
switch hands and go the other way. Anyone who’s ever been stuck in a corn maze can tell you that.
I followed the path to the right until it dead-ended. Then I switched hands and bread crumbs.
This time I reached out with my left hand, and I used stones instead of leaves.
After what felt like hours of winding my way through this particular puzzle, hitting one dead
end after another and stepping over the same rocks and leaves I had used to mark my tracks, I
finally reached the very center of the maze, the place where all pathways came to an end. Only the
center wasn’t an exit. It was a pit, with what looked like enormous mud walls. As thick rolls of
white fog spread toward me, I was forced to confront the truth.
The labyrinth wasn’t a labyrinth at all.
It was a dead end.
Beyond the fog and dirt, there was nothing but the impenetrable brush.
Keep moving. Keep your bearings.
I walked forward, kicking waves in the dense mist that clung to the ground around me. Just as
I made some progress, my foot hit something long and hard. Maybe a stick or a pipe.
I tried to navigate more carefully, but the fog made it hard to see. It was like looking through
glasses smeared with Vaseline. As I moved closer to the center, the white mist began to clear, and I
tripped again.
This time I could see what was in the way.
It wasn’t a pipe or a stick.
It was a human bone.
Long and thin, it must have been a leg bone, or maybe an arm.
“Holy crap.” I yanked on it, and it pulled free, sending a human skull rolling toward my feet.
The dirt around me was piled high with bones, as long and bare as the one I was holding in my
hand.I let the bone drop and backed away, stumbling over what I thought was a rock. But it was
another skull. The faster I ran, the more I tripped, twisting my ankle in the loops of an old hip bone,
catching my Chucks on a piece of spine.
Am I dreaming?
On top of that, I had an overpowering sense of déjà vu. The feeling that I was running toward
a place I’d been before. Which didn’t make sense, because I had no experience with pits or bones
or wandering around being dead, until now.
Still.
It felt like I’d been here, like I’d always been here, and I couldn’t get far enough away. Like
every path I’d ever taken was here in this maze.
No way out but through it.
I had to keep moving. I had to face this place, this pit full of bones. Wherever it was leading
me. Or to who.
Then a dark shadow emerged, and I knew I wasn’t alone.
Across the clearing, there was a person sitting on what looked like a box, perched on a
gruesome hill of human remains. No—it was a chair. I could see the back rising higher than the
rest, the arms jutting wider.
It was a throne.
The figure laughed with impossible confidence as the fog parted to reveal the corpse-ridden
waste of the uneven battleground. It didn’t matter to the person on the throne.
To her.
Because as the fog rolled back to reveal the center of the pit, I knew immediately who was
sitting tall on a hideous throne of bones. Back made of broken backs. Arms made of broken arms.
Feet made of broken feet.
The Queen of the Dead and the Damned.
Laughing so hard her black curls slithered through the air, like the snakes on Obidias’ hand. My
worst nightmare.
Sarafine Duchannes.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 32

Her dark cloak flapped in the wind like a shadow. The mist swirled around her black-buckled
boots, disappearing into the darkness, as if she could draw it to her. Maybe she could. After all, she
was a Cataclyst—the most powerful Caster in two universes.
Or the second most powerful.
Sarafine pushed back her cloak, letting it fall off her shoulders, around her long black curls. My
skin went cold.
“Karma’s a bitch, wouldn’t you say, Mortal Boy?” she called across the pit, her voice confident
and strong. Full of energy and evil.
She stretched luxuriously, clasping the arms of the chair in her own bony claws.
“I wouldn’t say anything, Sarafine. Not to you.” I tried to keep my voice even. I hadn’t wanted
to see her in one lifetime, let alone two.
Sarafine beckoned with one curving finger. “Is that why you’re hiding? Or are you still afraid
of me?”
I took a step closer. “I’m not afraid of you.”
She cocked her head. “I don’t know that I blame you. After all, I did kill you. A knife to the
chest, in warm Mortal blood.”
“Hard to remember back that far. I guess you weren’t that memorable.” I folded my arms
stubbornly. Trying to hold my ground.
It was no use.
She rolled a ball of mist toward me, and it wrapped around me, closing the gap between us. I
felt myself moving forward, powerless, as if she was dragging me by a leash.
So she still had her powers even here.
Good to know.
I stumbled over the ridge of an inhuman skeleton, something twice as big as me, with twice as
many arms and legs. I swallowed. More powerful creatures than a guy from Gatlin County had met
their fates here. I hoped she wasn’t the reason why.
“What are you doing here, Sarafine?” I tried not to sound as intimidated as I was. I dug my feet
into the dirt.
Sarafine leaned back in her throne of bones, examining the nails on one of her claws. “Me?
Lately I’ve spent most of my time being dead, like you. Oh, wait—you were there. You watched
when my daughter let me burn to death. A real charmer, that one. Teenagers. What are you going to
do?”
Sarafine had no right to mention Lena. She’d surrendered that right when she walked away
from a burning house with her baby daughter inside. When she tried to kill Lena like she’d killed
Lena’s father. And me.
I wanted to throw myself at her, but every instinct I had left told me to stay back. “You’re
nothing, Sarafine. You’re a ghost.”
She smiled when I said the word “ghost,” biting the tip of one of her long black nails.
“Something we have in common now.”
“We don’t have anything in common.” I could feel my hands clenching into fists. “You make
me sick. Why don’t you get out of my sight?”
I didn’t know what I was saying. I wasn’t in any position to be ordering her around. I didn’t
have a weapon. No possible means of attack. No way past her.
My mind raced, but I couldn’t find an advantage—and you couldn’t let Sarafine get the upper
hand. Kill or be killed, that was her style. Even when it seemed like we should have moved past
something as Mortal as death.
Her mouth curled into a snarl. “Your sight?”
She laughed, a cold sound that rippled down my spine. “Maybe your girlfriend should have
thought about that before she killed me. She’s the reason I’m here. If it weren’t for that ungrateful
little witch, I would still be in the Mortal world. Instead of stuck in the dark, battling the ghosts of
lost and pathetic Mortal boys.”
She was close enough now that I could see her face. She didn’t look too good, even for
Sarafine. Her dress was ragged and black, the bodice charred into tattered pieces. Her face was
smudged with soot, and her hair smelled like smoke.
Sarafine turned toward me, her eyes glowing and white—milky with an opaque light I had
never seen before.
“Sarafine?”
I took a step back—just as she struck me with a bolt of electricity, the smell of burnt flesh
traveling faster than her body possibly could.
I heard a psychotic scream. Saw her face, contorted into an inhuman death mask. Sharp teeth
seemed to match the dagger she held in her hand—only inches from my throat.
I winced, pulling back from the blade, but I knew it was too late. I wasn’t going to make it.
Lena!
Sarafine stopped short, as if smashed backward by an invisible current. Her arms stretched
toward me, her blade shaking with anger.
Something was wrong with her.
I heard the sound of chains as she fell, stumbling back toward her throne. She dropped the
blade, and her long skirt kicked open, and I saw the manacles around her ankles. The chains holding
her to the ground and pinning her to the throne.
She wasn’t the Queen of the Underworld. She was an angry dog trapped in a kennel. Sarafine
screamed, beating her fists against the bones. I moved to the side, but she didn’t even look at me.
Now I understood.
I picked up a bone and tossed it at her. She didn’t react until it hit the throne, falling harmlessly
into the pile of debris at her feet.
She spit at me, shaking with rage. “Fool!”
But I knew the truth.
Her white eyes saw nothing.
Her pupils were fixed.
She was blind.
Maybe it was from the fire that had killed her in the Mortal world. It all came flooding back to
me—the terrible end of her terrible life. She was as damaged here as she was when she burned to
death. But that wasn’t all. Something else had happened. Even the fire couldn’t explain the chains.
“What happened to your eyes?” I watched her recoil when I said it. Sarafine wasn’t one to
show weakness. She was better at finding and exploiting it.
“My new look. Old blind woman, like the Fates or the Furies. What do you think?” Her lips
curved over her teeth, into a growl.
It was impossible to feel sorry for Sarafine, so I didn’t. Still, she seemed bitter and broken.
“The leash is a nice touch,” I said.
She laughed, but it was more like the hiss of an animal. She had become something that didn’t
resemble a Dark Caster, not anymore. She was a creature, maybe even more of one than Xavier or
the River Master. She was losing it—whatever part of our world she’d known.
I tried again. “What happened to your sight? Was it the fire?”
Her white eyes burned as she answered. “The Far Keep wanted to have their fun with me.
Angelus is a sadistic pig. He thought they would even the odds by forcing me to battle without being
able to see my opponents. He wanted me to know how it would feel to be powerless.” She sighed,
picking at a bone. “Not that it’s slowed me down yet.”
I didn’t think it had.
I looked at the circus of bones surrounding her, the bloodstains in the dirt at her feet. “Who
cares? Why fight? You’re dead. I’m dead. What do we even have left to fight about? Tell this
Angelus guy to go jump off a—”
“Water tower?” She laughed.
But I had a point, if you thought about it. It was starting to feel like those old Terminator
movies between us. If I killed her now, I could imagine her skeleton dragging itself across this pit
with glowing red eyes until it could kill me a thousand more times.
She stopped laughing. “Why are you here? Think about it, Ethan.” She lifted her hand, and I
felt my throat beginning to close. I gasped for air.
I tried to back away, but it was pointless. Even with her dog chain, she still had enough power
to make my not-quite-a-life miserable.
“I’m trying to get into the Great Keep.” I choked. I tried to inhale, but I couldn’t get a real
breath.
Am I even breathing, or am I only imagining it?
Like she said herself, she’d already killed me once. What was left?
“I just want to take my page. You think I want to be stuck here forever, wandering through a
maze of bones?”
“You’ll never get past Angelus. He’d die before he’d let you near The Caster Chronicles.” She
smiled, twisting her fingers, and I gasped again. Now it felt like she had a hand around my lungs.
“Then I’ll kill him.” I grabbed at my neck with both hands. My face felt like it was on fire.
“The Keepers already know you’re here. They sent an officer to lead you into the labyrinth.
They didn’t want to miss out on the fun.” Sarafine twisted around at the mention of the Keepers, as
if she was looking over her shoulder, which we both knew she wasn’t. An old habit, I guess.
“I still have to try. It’s the only way I can get home.”
“To my daughter?” Sarafine rattled her chains, looking disgusted. “You never give up, do you?”
“No.”
“It’s like a sickness.” She rose from her throne, crouching on her heels like an evil, overgrown
little girl, dropping the hand that was choking me. I collapsed onto a heap of bones. “You really
think you can hurt Angelus?”
“I can do anything if it will get me back to Lena.” I looked straight into her sightless eyes.
“Like I said, I’ll kill him. At least part of him is Mortal. I can do it.”
I don’t know why I said it that way. I guess I wanted her to know, in case there was any small
part of her that still cared about Lena. Any part of her that needed to hear I really would do anything
under the sun to find a way back to her daughter.
Which I would.
For a second, Sarafine didn’t move. “You actually believe that, don’t you? It’s charming,
really. Shame you have to die again, Mortal Boy. You certainly amuse me.”
Light flooded into the pit, as if we really were two gladiators competing for our lives.
“I don’t want to fight. Not with you, Sarafine.”
She smiled darkly. “You really don’t know how this works, do you? The loser faces Eternal
Darkness. It’s simple enough.” She sounded almost bored.
“There’s something Darker than this?”
“Much.”
“Please. I just need to get back to Lena. Your daughter. I want to make her happy. I know that
doesn’t mean anything to you, and I know you’ve never wanted to make anyone happy but
yourself, but it’s the only thing I want.”
“I want something, too.” She twisted the fog around her in her hands until it wasn’t fog at all
but something glowing and alive—a ball of fire. She stared right at me, even though I knew she
couldn’t see. “Kill Angelus.”
Sarafine started to Cast, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Fire shot from the base of
her throne, spreading in all directions. It moved closer and closer, turning from orange to blue and
purple flames as it ignited bone after bone.
I backed away from her.
Something was wrong. The fire was growing, spreading faster than I could run. She wasn’t
trying to stop the flames.
She was the one making them grow.
“What are you doing?” I shouted. “Are you crazy?”
She was in the very center of the flames. “It’s a battle to the death. Absolute destruction. Only
one of us can survive. And as much as I hate you, I hate Angelus more.” Sarafine raised her arms
over her head, and the fire grew, as if she was pulling the flames up with her.
“Make him pay.”
Her cloak caught fire, and her hair started burning.
“You can’t just give up!” I shouted, but I didn’t know if she could hear me. I couldn’t see her
anymore.
I hurled myself into the fire without thinking, falling toward her through the flames. I wasn’t
sure I could stop, even if I wanted to. But I didn’t want to.
It was Sarafine or me.
Lena or Eternal Darkness.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to sit there and watch anyone die chained like a dog. Not even
Sarafine.
It wasn’t about her. It was about me.
I reached for the manacles around her ankles, beating on the iron with a bone at the base of her
throne. “We have to get out of here.”
The fire had completely surrounded me, when I heard the screaming. The sound tore across
the barren dirt, rising into the air over the pit. It sounded like a wild animal dying. For a second, I
thought I saw the distant golden spires of the Great Keep flicker at the sound of her voice through
the flames.
Sarafine’s burning body arched back, writhing in pain, and started to crumble into tiny pieces
of burnt skin and bone. There was nothing I could do as the flames consumed her. I wanted to
close my eyes or turn away. But it seemed like someone should bear witness to her last moments.
Maybe I just didn’t want her to die alone.
After a few minutes that felt more like hours, I watched as the last bits of the Darkest Caster in
two worlds blew into cold white ash.
It was too late to get out.
I felt the fire crawl up my arms.
I was next.
I tried to picture Lena one last time, but I couldn’t even think. The pain was unbearable. I knew
I was going to pass out. This was it.
I closed my eyes….
When I opened them again, the pit was gone, and I was standing in front of a quiet doorway in a
still hallway, in a building that looked like a castle.
There was no pain.
No Sarafine.
No fire.
Exhausted, I wiped the ash out of my eyes and sank into a ball at the foot of the wooden doors.
It was over. There were no bones beneath my feet, only marble tiles.
I tried to focus on the doors. They were so familiar.
I’d seen all of this before. It was even more familiar than the feeling I had when I saw Sarafine
coming toward me.
Sarafine.
Where is she now? Where is her soul?
I didn’t want to think about it, and I closed my eyes and let the tears fall. Crying for her felt
impossible. She was an evil monster. No one ever felt sorry for her.
So that couldn’t be it.
At least that’s what I told myself, until I stopped shaking and stood up again.
The pathways of my life had doubled back on me, as if the universe was forcing me to choose
them all over again. I was standing in front of the unmistakable doorway to all other doorways, to
all other places and times.
I didn’t know if I had the strength to go any farther, and I knew I didn’t have the courage to
give up. I reached out and touched the carved wood of the ancient Caster doorway.
The Temporis Porta.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption