Alder tilts his head, watching me closely, like he hears what I’m not saying.
I swallow and drag my attention back to the tower. The moss-covered stone looms over us, its deep cracks rough and pitted as I press my palm against its cool surface. The moment my skin meets stone, something inside me shifts.
A pulse. Deep, reverberating.
It rolls through the air, through me, through every nerve in my body, sinking into my veins like a second heartbeat. The very stone beneath my hand groans, as if stirred from an impossibly long slumber, a beast shaking itself awake.
Bits of rock and moss tremble loose, drifting down like the tower is shedding old skin. Alder’s arm locks around my waist, and he pulls me against him, all warmth and unwavering strength as he shields me.
A thunderous crack as stone grinds against stone. Another bone-rattling roar, and a jagged fracture tears the tower’s surface. A dark void yawns open, exhaling a gust of air thick with the tang of iron and forgotten things.
I feel the pull of this place carve a path beneath my skin, around my heart, a whisper of what I’ve lost and desperately want to find. Like iron drawn to a lodestone, like breath to starving lungs, I am pulled forward, every part of my body responding to an unseen force, my feet moving before I can command them not to.
The hum rises, no longer a distant beat but a living force that vibrates beneath my skin, in my ribs, sinking deep, curling into something inside me that has alwaysbeen there, waiting.
Alder stiffens, but he doesn’t fight it either. There’s a shift in his breathing, but his body moves just as mine does—as if neither of us has a choice.
My slippers scuff against the uneven threshold, and the sound ricochets through the space, the echo stretching long and thin before fading into silence.
The air chills the deeper we’re pulled into the belly of the giant, the damp scent of stone wrapped in something richer, darker. It smells old, untouched, abandoned by time.
The fingers of sunlight that manage to stretch into the cavern flicker weakly against the walls that shimmer faintly, laced with veins of burnished silver, slick with condensation that drips in slow, measured rivulets against the stone.
As my eyes adjust to the dark, a faint, ghostly glow emerges from the center of the chamber, pale and cold as moonlight. A monstrosity of silver and steel rises from the center of the cavern in a tangle of gears and pipes that sprawl outward from its wide base, twisting and coiling like serpents poised to strike. Some plunge deep into the stone floor, disappearing into the earth. Others stretch skyward, reaching, straining toward a ceiling lost in darkness.
Rust streaks down its sides like ancient wounds. Cobwebs sag in thick sheets between the gears, and dust lies undisturbed, dulling the once-bright gleam of metal.
A faint, hollow groan emanates from deep within it, as if it’s breathing in its sleep. As if something inside is still waiting to awaken.
A chill lances my spine. I swallow hard, my voicebarely a whisper. “It’s like those machines outside the city…a massive version of the one inside the castle.”
The one that killed that woman.
“It doesn’t look like it’s worked in ages,” I murmur, but the words feel thin, as if the cavern itself is swallowing them before they can take shape.
Alder steps closer, his fingers drifting across a nearby pipe. The faint, spectral gleam catches on his face, blurring his features, making him look otherworldly, unreadable. Like he belongs here in a way that I don’t.
“It’s magick,” he says simply, and something in his voice prickles against my skin.
I move forward without thinking, drawn to the machine the way I had been drawn to the tower itself. The air thickens as I step closer, the cavern pressing in on all sides. Dust clings to my fingertips and spiderwebs catch on my sleeves, draping like ghostly threads across my arms as I brush the edges of the machine.
I exhale sharply, my pulse skipping. “I think…I think I walked right into a spell.”
Alder tilts his head, a question etched between his brows. “What do you mean?”
I drag my fingers through my hair before letting them fall helplessly to my sides as I try to form the words around the impossible truth. “When we did the cake pull… When I pulled out my ribbon, I didn’t get a charm.” I glance at him, throat tight. “I got a tarot card.”
He says nothing, so I keep going, even though the truth feels ridiculous, even though there’s a small voice inside of me screaming that I’m in for another round of disappointment.
“The figures on it…theymoved,” I whisper. “Thesnake slithered, and the people…the people looked like us. They clung to each other. Their bodies moved together. Melted into each other.”
I brace for the disbelief. For the brush-off. For the casual dismissal that always follows any hint of my intuition. But then I remember he said he wanted to prove to me that he was the kind of man I need him to be. So I meet his eyes, hold my breath, and give him a chance.
“It was magick,” I continue. “I didn’t know it then, but I do now. That tarot card—it did something. It forced us here.”
Finally, softly, he says, “I believe you.”
I nod slowly, unable to speak, emotion crowding my throat.
