strength into their shaking limbs. “But not tonight. Tonight we’ll rest. Tomorrow, we’ll plan.”
I found myself leaning into the rumble of her voice, letting it beat back the tide of guilt and horror that threatened to swallow me—until her eyes met mine, and I watched all the warmth flow out of her face like dye running in the rain. It left nothing behind but bitter regret. Regret that she’d ever seen my father, perhaps, or ever offered Arcadia as a refuge; regret that she’d let me set foot in her fragile kingdom with monsters on my heels.
She turned away and addressed the woman still bent over Jane. “Will she live, Iris?”
Iris ducked her head. “Likely, ma’am. Except it’s deep in some places, and messy, and…” I saw the pink dart of her tongue as she moistened her lips, the fearful flick of her eyes toward the feathered curtain. “And we’re out of iodine. Even salt water might do the job, but we, we can’t…” Her voice trailed to a racked whisper.
Molly Neptune rested a hand gently on her shoulder and shook her head. “No use worrying now. You’ll do the best you can for her, and that’s it.” She called for two young men to help roll Jane onto a sheet and carry her into a nearby house. Iris trailed behind them, hands hanging bloody and empty at her sides.
Molly’s eyes raked over us once more and her lips rippled as if she wanted to say something, but she turned away and followed the last trailing group of Arcadians back up the dark streets. Only now, when her people couldn’t see her, did she allow her shoulders to bow in defeat.
I watched her until she disappeared into the depths of her doomed, beautiful city. I wondered how long they could last without supplies from their home world, and if a second city would die here among the bones of the first.
I closed my eyes against the weight of guilt settling on my shoulders, heard the click of claws and the scuff of worn shoes as Samuel and Bad approached. They settled on either side of me, warm and constant as a pair of suns. What would happen to them, trapped in this starved world? I pictured Bad with sharp ribs and dull fur; Samuel with the ember-glow gone dull in his eyes. Jane might be swallowed by fever before she could even feel the desperate bite of hunger in her belly.
No. I wouldn’t let it happen. Not when there was a chance—even the slimmest, wildest chance—that I could prevent it.
“Samuel.” I was hoping to sound brave and resolute, but I just sounded tired. “Will you please go back to the house and get my father’s book for me? And an ink pen.”
He went very still beside me, and I knew he understood what I intended to do. A small, treacherous part of me hoped he would grab my hands and beg me not to do it, like an actor in a moving-picture romance, but he didn’t. I supposed he didn’t much want to die in Arcadia either.
He stood, slowly, and left the square. I sat beneath the half-moon, arm tight around Bad, and waited.
He returned with the leather-bound book and a pen clutched in his hands. I flipped to the last rustle of blank pages in the back and tore them gently away from their binding, not looking at Samuel’s worry-dark eyes, his solemn mouth. “Would you—will you come with me?”
He reached for my hand in answer and I hesitated—I’d never accepted his offer, never told him yes—but then I reflected that we were both trapped in a dying world for the rest of our short lives, and laced my fingers through his.
We walked together out of the city and into the deep blue night, with Bad slipping like an amber-eyed ghost through the grass ahead of us. It was so late the moon was skulking near the horizon and the stars seemed to hang low and close around us.
The tree emerged from the darkness like a gnarled, many-fingered hand reaching toward the sky. Neat planks of wood nestled among its bulbous roots, looking strangely forlorn—a Door, now reduced to a mere door. A heavy stink of smoke and char filtered through it, and I knew the lighthouse was burning on the other side. I imagined that my father’s final Door had the same funeral-pyre reek.
I walked until I was so close I could have stroked my fingers along the