The longer we spoke, the more the golden glow around Klaus faded, sinking back into his skin. Whatever she had done to draw his life out to ready him for the wheel was wearing off. The glassy look slipped from his eyes and then he was blinking, as though rising from sleep, and he took me in.
‘Your Highness?’ He looked around the room, seeing the wheel, the Witch, and not seeing them, the strangeness too much to accept.
‘Downstairs, now,’ I said, gesturing to the door. ‘Quickly.’
He seemed too dazed to question me, and descended the stairs with a dreamy lightness to his limbs.
The Witch was distraught. ‘What have you done? The wheel must be fed. I must spin. Fool,’ said the Witch, with no sting in her voice. ‘Hopeful idiot.’
I smiled. ‘Always, for you.’
I knew there were more important things to do but none of them seemed to matter as much right now as pulling her into my arms and kissing her again. So I did it, feeling her tense, then sink into me, kissing me with earnest need.
‘I thought you would hate me,’ she whispered against my neck.
‘If you are a monster it is only because they have made you one.’
Her lashes were stuck together and glossy, and she looked at me with such naked hope. I kissed her softly, slowly, savouring the salt of her lips, the line of her waist beneath my hand. ‘You know I love you, don’t you?’ She nodded but I pressed her. ‘Say it.’
‘You love me. I love you, too, Mina, I love you. I should have said it before.’
I stroked my thumb across her cheek, heart full and warm to hear it. She rested her head against my shoulder and we breathed together, the slow rise and fall of her chest with mine. The world felt heavy, like syrup. Behind her, I saw the last spindly smoke-like thread around the spindle fade.
It was time.
I held her face for one last moment, took in the specks of grey in her irises, the curve of her brows, the arch of her lip, the filigree of lines at the corners of her eyes.
‘Tell me everything will be well,’ she whispered. ‘Lie to me.’
I smiled, tears spilling down my cheeks. I loved her so, so much.
‘Everything will be well,’ I said. I smiled, a soft, fragile thing. ‘By oak, by ash, by bitterthorn, I swore an oath to you. I mean to keep it.’
And I reached for the wheel.
‘No!’
It was too late.
I placed my hand on the distaff this time, not the spindle; the distaff where I had seen that hazy cloud of golden light dwindle each day. I felt it hunger for me; like a river dammed, it longed to break, the weight of time bearing down upon the wheel. The same shimmering halo rose from my skin all along my body; the world turned golden and I saw my life pour down my arm to spool around the distaff.
I was dying.
My hand went cold, then numb, then my arm and my shoulder and neck and chest.
And then I was gone.
XXV
Time stood still.
The last of the spun thread faded, and the steady flow of time wound to a halt.
Above a strange, hidden valley nestled between mountains, a castle lay under perpetual winter. Around it had grown a vast bitterthorn hedge, as tall as a house and so thick little light passed through. The village below was a silent tableau; no birds sang, no voice broke the air. No tree swayed in the wind, and no breeze carried the smell of snow from the mountaintops. The sun sat at the cusp of the horizon, split in half by the sharp ridges and peaks, forever poised to rise again, or slip into darkness. Across the valley night lay suspended in the sky, reaching shadows that would never recede.
The castle stood alone. Still, unending and immediate. All of eternity in a moment, and one moment for all of eternity.
The Witch stood by the wheel at the top of the high Tower.
