That went without saying.
“You protect her with your life,” Max added. “That’s your role in all this. Understand?”
Again, Henry nodded, but a shudder washed over Pansy. For one brief instant, it was like touching starlight again.
“What? No. No one’s dying.” Her gaze went to Henry, then to her father, and back again, and he had to wonder what it was the Sight had shown her—for certainly it had shown her something—or, at least, had tried to.
“Someone dies, or everyone does,” Max said. “That’s the way this works. Understand that your mother was betrayed, a bargain was made without her knowledge, and that price has yet to be paid.”
Pansy went dangerously still in his arms. Henry prayed that the Sight hadn’t attacked. But then she pulled in a deep breath.
When she didn’t speak, he asked, “How was Rose betrayed?” He already had a good idea of who had done the betraying.
“I think you know, Darnelle,” Max said, “or are at least smart enough to figure it out.”
Pansy was shaking her head, but there was resolve in the gesture, a fierceness. “So, what now? How do we fix this?”
“Oh, sweetheart, I wish I knew. There are still too many threads, too many players. Each time I catch hold of one path, it splits and then splits again. But you’re here now. And that gives me more hope than I’ve had in a very long time.”
Max’s attention was fully on Pansy now, a deep, abiding love in his gaze. “I last saw you when you were four. Do you remember that?”
She nodded. Henry still had her around the waist, and when her breathing hitched, he felt her exhale against his chest. “I wanted to see you, and the lights told me where I could find you.”
“Yes. They would.” Max shut his eyes briefly, as if the memory itself was a wound. “Your mother was furious.”
“She put the bridge off limits.”
“For good reason. You’re half in your world and half in mine. At any moment, mine might assert itself, draw you to this side. That’s the danger.”
“What happens then?”
“Oh, sweetheart. I don’t know. You might fall all the way through to the other side, become a traveler there. Or you may simply end up here, somewhere in the stream.”
“Are you there forever?”
Max shrugged, although Henry wondered if Pansy’s father did know his fate, and it was this: an eternal guardian between worlds.
Slowly, the force that was tugging them toward the bridge was dissipating. Light fractured again, the colors receding, the expanse shrinking. The vortex was closing, folding in on itself, and taking Max with it.
“Will I see you again?” Pansy called.
“I hope so, sweetheart.” Max went gray, then faded from view until only the echo of his words remained. “I hope so.”
For a long time, Henry continued to hold Pansy as if that vortex might suddenly open and swallow her whole. She turned in his arms, her eyes wide with wonder.
“You knew?”
“I guessed,” he said. “Your Sight is simply too strong, too different from Ophelia’s.”
It occurred to Henry that no one else in the Enclave would have a basis for comparison. And Rose Little had made very certain that no one would. The Enclave’s renewed interest—no, Botten’s interest—in the Sight took on a more sinister implication. Had Botten been searching for Pansy all this time, and Ophelia had simply been caught up in that net? Or was there more, something about both of them?
“And this?” Pansy nodded toward the bridge, her question pulling him from his thoughts.
“Another guess.”
“An educated one.”
He managed a short laugh. “Perhaps. I suspected that your mother uncovered something significant here in King’s End.”
