I’m not even certain how the horses are still alive. It’s not as if we’re in a place Pruinn can forage for food, and I can’t believe he still has barrels of hay for them. This place isn’t just desolate, as parts of Sixth are. It’s sterile, empty. Creepy.
And yet, the further we go, the keener Pruinn seems to become.
“We’re not going to find anything,” I’ve told him again and again.
To which he always replies, “Trust the map.”
Fool.
I doze off, buried beneath the hood of my coat, lulled from the sway of the cart. I’ve since stopped being worried about one of the horses’ hooves slipping on one of the edges and sending us falling into the gray abyss. At this point, I can’t seem to drudge up the energy to care.
Perhaps that’s where my heart’s desire is—an endless end.
I get tugged out of my sleep when the cart comes to a sudden stop, and I hear a scrap of Pruinn’s voice over the wind. I turn to see why he’s stopped before nightfall, but I freeze in place when I see the silhouette looming before us.
At first, I think it must be one of the old icebergs I read about, except much larger than I ever imagined. It’s caught in a still sea of white snow, its jagged tips as sharp as canines sneering up toward the sky. It’s asymmetrical, as if three quarters of it were broken off and sunk into the ground, leaving only this last bit remaining.
Yet, as I continue to squint at it past the gray mist, I recognize the shape isn’t quite the deadened pronged berg I thought it was.
It’s...a castle.
What’s left of it anyway.
“Is that what I think it is?” I breathe, my eyes still locked on it.
Pruinn sits at the cart’s seat, holding the reins loosely in his hands, his short blond hair looking muted in the dismal daylight. “It is.”
I shake my head, disbelief rolling around beneath my skull. “How is this possible? I thought the castle was completely destroyed.”
“I suppose not.”
All this time, I was taught that the city and castle itself were swallowed up by the magical void, but as I stare at the decrepit form still standing, I realize that wasn’t true. Seventh Kingdom was broken and destroyed, yet it’s stillhere. Like a skeleton partially preserved.
Pruinn pulls us onward, toward the monolithic bones of what once was a pristine palace. When we’re so close I can actually see the scrape of stonework, raw and chipping on the sides of its remains, I also see what lies beyond.
My eyes were playing tricks on me before, because it isn’t just more flat, frozen ground stretching far beyond it.
I thought I saw giant fissures as we traveled here, but all of those combined arenothingcompared to this. This isn’t just a cracked crevice left mangled in the earth. No, the land just beyond where the castle sits isgone.
As if a huge chunk of the flattened earth has simply been torn like a piece of paper and tossed away. Roiling clouds of colorless mist drag against the craggy lip of the land, and beyond, there’s nothing. Below, there’s nothing.
The hair on the back of my neck lifts, and I have the sudden and intense feeling I’m being watched. I glance all around us, but I don’t see a single speck stretched along the white snow. Perhaps it’s the magic that’s stalking me, like it knows life has dared to breach the void.
With that eerie sensation I can’t quite shrug off, Pruinn brings us right up to the very front of the ruins. The structure has been fossilized in the freeze, preserving the abraded stone. I can’t make out where any windows or balconies may have once existed, but the general shape of a hacked off rooftop and reaching walls still remain.
Pruinn jumps off the driver’s bench of the cart and comes around, holding a hand up to help me get out. “This is where your map ends, Your Majesty,” he tells me, just as a grin widens over his face. “So let’s go find your heart’s desire.”
Somehow, Pruinn managed to find an opening so we could actually goinsidethe remains of the castle. It’s now nothing more than a shadowed cavern, collapsed in some places, the rubble frozen stiff.
It’s awful—like walking inside the chest of some giant beast long-since perished. Mist swirls around in here too, so the only real difference from outside to inside is the way our steps echo ominously. As I walk around, that tingling sensation happens again—the one that feels as if I’m being observed. As if the castle itself is watching me, finding me lacking.
Well, I find it lacking too.
“I hate to disappoint you, Sir Pruinn, but this is definitelynotmy heart’s desire.”
We stop just inside the middle of what I’m guessing used to be a grand entry hall, the ceiling at least thirty feet up, now covered in ash-colored frost.
Turning around to look at him, I clasp my hands in front of me. I’m travel weary, filthier than I’ve ever been in my life, and now all I have to look forward to is...the journey back.
