Live, you idiot, live,I thought as forcefully as I could. It was working. It had to work. I would not let him go. He kissed me back, finally, and I felt his smile. When we broke apart, I tore my gaze away from him to look down and watch the Other Kingdom’s spell work its devastating power on the magic-workers.
Sylvester’s sisters dropped, one by one, like a line of elegant dominoes, to lie beautifully pale and disheveled on the stones. A poisonous mist the king had summoned blew away like dandelion fluff, just as light and just as harmless.
And then I watched the king double over, as comically jerky as a marionette, and then try to right himself, and then fall to the ground as suddenly and heavily as if a giant palm had flattened him there.
Somewhere else in the kingdom, I imagined a great storeroom full of hearts was crumbling too, or perhaps finally succumbing to the mold, as the king’s last protections fell away. I hoped the vicious mist was melting, slowly opening our borders, welcoming us back to the wider world, and freeing all the souls trapped within.
The seal had worked like a charm, it seemed, and no one but Sylvester and I—and Da—knew what had happened. We lowered to the ground again as the magic unspooled around us, snatched away by the wind like leaves blown from a tree.
I almost laughed in relief and waited for him to laugh with me—but I knew the moment he died, the very moment, because his lips grew still and lifeless as wax against mine. He slumped to the ground. Da rushed over, and as he did, I felt the sorcerer’s spell lift off me—for good this time, and with none of the joy and lightness I had felt in the Weftwitch’s wood. He had done it—the noble, maddening, ridiculous fool—given his own heart in exchange for what remained of mine.
The dregs of the enchantment passed through me like a swift fever, burning me up and turning my bowels to water, and then it was gone, leaving me weak and bereft.
I was free, but I did not feel free. “Sylvester, you bastard!” I yelled through a raw throat—or tried to yell. My voice was hoarse and cracked and drowned out by someone else’s shout: “They’re dead! They’re all dead!”
The crowd, freed from the spell, surged forward, parting around me and Da where we crouched next to Sylvester’s body as if we were a rock in a rushing stream.
They ignored the king—who in death had seemed to shrivel and pale even further, curling up on himself like a corn husk left in the sun—and rushed to the corpses of the women.
As the last of the magic-workers’ spells passed, the villagers touched the sorceresses’ smooth cheeks and closed the lids over their still-shining eyes; let their silken hair trickle through their fingers, soft as water; fingered the fine clothing tentatively, hushed and awed by bodices and skirts that were worth more than our entire village put together.
I saw people slip rings from dead fingers, and snip locks of hair and swatches of rich fabric. There was an odd worshipfulness to the way they touched them, and a greed, a hunger, an impossible desire to consume the beauty that lay lifeless before them.
There was grief, too, and I understood it. There is sorrow whenever a lovely thing dies, no matter how dangerous it may have been in life.
My grief was of a more specific, personal kind: my own precious sorcerer lay dead. I shielded him from those who would have prodded and poked him as they were doing to the others, snarling at them like a dog. Da rested his big hand on my head, stroking my hair as he had done when I was a sprout.
“It is better this way, sweetheart,” he said. “Whatever world we have without them will be better, even if it is hard for a little while.”
I only realized Cornelius was on my shoulder when he licked the tears from my cheeks. He was kneading my neck with a frantic, urgent rhythm, trying to provide what comfort he could. I reached up to touch him.
“I’m sorry, Foss,” he said.
“You can still talk!” I felt a surge of excitement. If the House’s spell still held, did that mean . . .?
“Yes. But he’s dead, Foss. I’m sorry. Look, the carriages are all still here, and the horses. It looks like some spells go on even after the ones who cast them die.”
My small hope faded. “And Millie?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“She is alive. Asleep, but alive. I suppose she hadn’t turned into one of them yet.”
Such a small relief, but it was something to hold on to as the grief threatened to overtake me entirely.
Gradually, the crowd dispersed. I had no sense of the passing of time, but it must have been an hour or more before the last straggler left, leaving the magic-workers’ bodies where they had fallen.
There would be talk tomorrow, and commotion, but today had been so strange and so world-changing that I imagined most would sit in their front rooms, perhaps with a comforting cup of tea, staring into space.
The village felt very gray. I watched as Aron’s parents helped what was left of him to his feet, their faces wet with tears, and led him home. He would have the dubious honor of being the last person harvested, then.
I wish we had been in time to save the hundreds of others the king had harvested that day. I wish that everyone knew what we had sacrificed. I knew they were shaken, for now, by the spectacle of it all and relieved to have survived.
Our kingdom had been made anew—freed—but thrown into chaos. There would be confusion and recriminations, some of them directed at me. I would have to talk and talk until I was sick of it, explaining.
I didn’t want to face it all alone.
It started to rain.
“Foss ...” said Da, touching me on the shoulder.
