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Outside the small clearing, my eyes betray me. My tears evolve into sobs as I reach the carriage packed with eerily quiet babies, unaware of the fate they nearly met. Milo and the others are passed out too, slumped against the trees. I silence my sobs so I don’t wake them up while reliving moment after moment—the fear, the pain, the danger—all the way up to this very night, wrapped in Eli’s arms.

“I’m going to take you to your mothers where you belong. And they’re going to love you,” I assure the babies in a whisper. The only sign they’re alive is the tiny puff of fog below each of their noses.

I’ll push the carriage myself. I won’t make them wait or leave them alone in the village. Powered by the pain within, I plowthrough the cold mud around the wheels, my hands like spades, driving downward, scooping and flinging until they’re free from the stiff hold, and the carriage takes off.

Shit. I run after it, long, leaping strides. My hand catches the back, and I climb up. I find a gap between the wall of the carriage and the baskets and stuff myself inside. It careens along, swerving around trees and boulders. I hug myself tight through the sprinkling of rain. And I cry until I’m out of tears, my face streaked with salty, dry trails.

There’s no chance Kelter would want to live in Sonnet after all this. Being born here doesn’t mean this is where I belong. We’ll find a way to stop the Centress from using the elixir on Calderans, then I’ll take Kelter home.

I watch the scenery with swollen, burning eyes, a palette of brown and green brush strokes blurring by, then swaying golden grass. I’m all turned around. This doesn’t look like the way back to the Ring—because it’s not. Milo said the carriages take the elixir to the falls…

It steers along its predetermined path, splashing across a shallow stretch of river and weaving through woods at a sickening speed, putting more and more distance between Eli and me. There’s a reason I chose never to drive in Caldera, apart from the sudden visions that would surely kill me behind the wheel—I can’t handle the motion. Nausea wells in my gut. An hour or two must have passed by now. The pinks and purples of dawn play at the horizon.

Water roars in the distance, growing louder with the rickety clatter of the wheels. The same wheels laying against the wall in that stone room, the one that keeps coming back to me. Would Eli have really returned that morning if Kelter and I hadn’t gone through the wooden door? Would he have taken me straight to the castle, and Kelter too, pushing us both to harness the magic he needs? Would things have been different?

Without warning, I’m crushed by the air—flattened, life sucked out of me, edgeless and blurry—then it’s gone.

The border.

I have only seconds before we reach the waterfall outside the carriage window, but my useless mind chooses to spend the precious moments imagining my death instead of preventing it. The vision strikes just as the heavy mist rising from the falls sprays my face.

I’m falling, surrounded by the rushing cascade of elixir-tainted water, baskets at my side, blankets and babies floating free, all out of reach, waiting to meet the points of rocks below. They sleep, the sweet oblivion of magic on their lips as their tiny bodies make impact.

The carriage skids to a halt, and I’m pinched between the cabin wall and heavy bags of elixir, baskets sliding into my head, the vision becoming another nightmare memory, my senses awakened. I poke my head out the window and into the mist, then pull it right back in.

We’re on the edge of the falls, and the drop is worse than my vision.

Dawn flips to morning. The sunshine pelts my skin with dreadful warm rays I haven’t felt in a month and a half.

The Calderan sun.

Chapter

Forty-One

It’ll take forever to walk back to the southern part of Sonnet pushing the carriage, if I’m able. I can’t carry the nine babies that are inside, but I’m not giving up on them. Or Kelter.

The air is brisk, the rising mist thick enough to taste the minerals in the cyan water as it endlessly gushes over the edge and coats my face. The sun beats down on the river’s surface, and wildflowers line the banks leading up to the steep drop. The constant pounding of water on the rocks below drowns out any sounds of wildlife. Unlike Sonnet’s lack of non-magical creatures, the birds and squirrels and deer of the Calderan forest are as much a part of it as the trees and the dirt.

I’m home.

And all I want to do is leave.

A pair of pale arms reach into the carriage and steal a basket.

“Hey!” I unbury myself and tumble out. The ground is foreign under my feet after the carriage ride. I run around the back in time to see Cam toss the basket—baby and all—over the falls.

This can’t be real, but here she is—exactly the same, but older. Her rosy cheeks and pale skin. Her wavy midnight hair. My throat closes. I tear at the skin on my face.

Wake up wake up wake up.

I haven’t seen her since I was sixteen, since I burned down that house. For every wall that fell—flames to embers to cinders—I built a new one up around me. For every shred of innocence taken from me, I forged new meaning for such things as love and hope, intimacy and pleasure. If I defined them as impossible and traitorous, then I couldn’t be let down when they were exactly that. I didn’t need Cam anymore, not with my walls up. I left her behind.

But now, I’ve messed up—caring about Kelt, letting Eli get close. I set myself up to hurt again.

“Everielle? What are you doing here?” Cam looks at me like she didn’t just send an infant to its death. Like she hasn’t spent decades finding families and homes for parentless children. “You’re a mess. Are you wearing men’s clothes?”

“Wh-what—?” I can only point at the falls, the rest of my body refusing to act.