But I don’t say any of that.
Instead, I look at his mouth.
It’s reckless, stupid—but I can’t help it. My gaze rises to his lips like they hold the answer to the question my body keeps asking. His breath brushes my cheek, and I don’t step back. My hands twitch at my sides, desperate to reach for him. My lips part on an inhale I never finish.
He kisses me, warm and honey-sweet, and I forget everything but the taste of him.
The world tips beneath my feet, and a low hum rolls through the air, vibrating through my skin, through my very being. The ground pulses as if something beneath us is stirring, awakening.
My eyelids flutter open, and I catch a shadow moving beyond the trees. I gasp against Alder’s mouth, breaking the kiss as my gaze lifts over his shoulder. The massive trees groan as they shift, pine needles rustling and branches swaying, their ancient trunks bending like weary giants parting to reveal a long-buried secret.
A stone tower rises from the earth, its craggy surface weathered. It’s a relic half-swallowed by the trees as if the island itself has tried to erase it from memory. The twisted boughs of dead apple trees cling to its sides, brittle branches curling like skeletal fingers, strangling the stone in their lifeless grip. Deep cracks wind through the stone like old wounds long scarred but never truly healed.
The hum grows stronger, vibrating in my chest, rattling through my teeth.
Alder’s narrowed eyes are fixed on the tower, brows furrowed and posture rigid.
I step back, my heart still racing from the kiss, from the energy pulsing in the air, from the way he looks at that tower like it’s a piece of himself.
“You know what this is.” My words barely rise abovethe hum.
His jaw tightens, his throat working as he swallows. “A doorway,” he says finally, his voice rough. “A forgotten one.”
His fingers drift to his stomach, brushing absently over the gold buttons of his shirt. His gaze flickers, distant for a moment, before he exhales and walks toward the structure.
“It’s the tower,” he murmurs, voice laced with something almost reverent. “The heart of the Kingdom of Cups.”
While I’ve been busy trying to keep up, trying to find some footing in a world I don’t belong to, Alder’s been in meetings gathering knowledge. He’s been putting the pieces together.
Dry, withered leaves float down as he pushes aside a low-hanging tree bough before trailing his fingers along the rough stone, slow and searching.
“There’s one in each kingdom,” he continues, his voice almost lost beneath the rhythmic whisper that seems to rise from the very earth. “They were once connected by magick—gateways that could transport the people of Towerfall from one end of the realm to the other.”
I blink at him, at the tower, at the moss that clings to the crumbling stone like it’s trying to keep it whole.
“So, this thing was like a…a wormhole?”
A couple days ago this would have sounded ridiculous, but I’ve seen too much to laugh at magick. I’ve watched a girl die in a chamber full of chanting and silver light. I’ve felt the air thrum when someone speaks the right words. I’ve tasted honey that made me forgetmy own name.
I’ve seen it. All of it. And somehow, this is just another piece.
I swallow, heart thudding in my chest. “But this can’t be how we got here…” My gaze drifts to the tower, but my mind is already somewhere else—on Mackenzie’s wedding. On that card. The Lovers. The pull. The dock on the lake.
There was no tower at Mackenzie’s wedding.
Only the card.
And Alder.
The magick wasn’t in the stone. So, was it in the card, or was it in us?
“This magick only exists within this realm.” He presses his palm flat against the rock, his fingers splaying as if feeling for a heartbeat beneath the surface. “Or it did. Until it was outlawed. Until the ruling families severed the connections, and the towers and their magicks were left to wither and die.
“But now…” He turns to me, his blue eyes shadowed, their teasing glint dulled by something heavier, something that settles deep in my chest and refuses to let go. “They’re waking up.”
I step closer to the Tower, drawn by a pull I don’t understand. Like a thread tightening in my ribs, tugging me forward, demanding I listen, I feel it. Ancient. Beckoning. Familiar in a way that makes my skin prickle.
“Like your story about the king.” My voice is light, teasing, but the words taste of strawberries and honey, of his fingers brushing against my lips, of the warmth that curled through me as he fed me. My body still remembers,still purrs with the ache of something unfinished.
