“WHAT?” I’d misheard—or Gabriel had. That couldn’t have happened.
Another of Jack’s bellows carried across the night.
Gabriel flinched. “And again.”
The earth seemed to go atilt. No, no, no. Not happening. My claws shredded my palms, blood pouring.
“He’s blind,” Gabriel murmured in a daze. “They laugh. It’s done. They’ve left him for now.”
I’d . . . failed.
I’d failed Jack. Rose stalks burst forth all around me. The ground began to move, roots growing, like snakes roiling beneath the surface.
The red witch ached to make her enemies pay! To rain down thorns and poison on the Lovers and every soul in this camp.
But what I really wanted was not to have failed Jack.
Why hadn’t I moved faster? Fought the Priestess faster? Why had I run from the soldiers instead of taking bullets?
I imagined Jack’s pain and shrieked my fury. When the twins were removing his second eye, he would have known he was about to be blinded forever. And he’d been helpless to stop the mutilation.
A hot spoon.
I felt like my heart had stopped. My world had. . . .
Through the chaos of my mind, a memory whispered. Something Matthew had said.
I pushed aside fantasies—of forcing Vincent and Violet to gouge out each other’s eyes, to wear each other’s scalps—and focused on that one fragile sprout of a memory pushing through to the surface.
A breath left me.
I wanted not to have failed Jack?
I turned to Tess, my lips curling as vines surrounded the unsuspecting girl. I strode up to her, my thorns enveloping the two of us. “You have work to do, World.” I stabbed my claws into her shoulders.
She gave a cry. “Evie?”
From behind me, Gabriel growled, “Unhand her, Empress.” But he could never breach the barbs.
Tonight, Matthew had said, “Sometimes the world spins in reverse. Sometimes battles do too.” He’d meant the World Card could spin in reverse.
She could make time do the same.
“Please d-don’t hurt me!”
“You know what you have to do, Tess. I won’t inject you with poison, if you let the carousel spin and turn back time.”
Her jaw slackened. “I don’t have my staff to ground me!”
I’d seen her carrying one months ago. “Oh, I’ll ground you.”
“Each second I go back drains me of life. I don’t know how to prevent that. It c-could destroy me.”
Merciless, I tightened my claws in her flesh. “Then we’d better hurry.”
10
I stared into Tess’s dark blue eyes as her power began to manifest.
Her skin heated beneath my hands, and a dull buzz sounded. A breeze blew in a circle around us. From my thorns? No, the current of air flowed clockwise.
Her power stoked, the heat from her body increasing till it scalded me. But I refused to release my hold. The buzz grew in volume. Louder. Louder.
Our hair was dragged straight upward. When her body started levitating, I sank my claws deeper. If I hadn’t been here to anchor her, would she have floated away?
The noise had gotten so loud her ears bled. Wet warmth slicked down my neck as well.
Suddenly Tess threw back her head and screamed. I could perceive the earth—or our existence or reality or something—stilling for one airless instant . . . before grinding into motion. The wrong way.
We were rotating backward! The World Card, Quintessence herself, was making time flow in reverse.
First rotation. Below us came a splash as the Priestess first attacked. The leftover arsenal I’d used against her began to vanish—but within Tess’s circle, I remained the same, wet and bloodied.
Tess met my gaze. Her skin paled, her cheeks thinning.
Second rotation. Previous versions of me and Tess fled from the soldiers through the rock gully.
Beneath my claws, she was shedding weight at an alarming rate. “Please, Empress.” The whites of her eyes were red, vessels blown. From pressure?
Jack’s own eyes were gone. Brutally stolen. So I clawed her harder.
Third rotation. The soldiers had just begun giving chase.
Tess’s breathing grew labored. Her face was haggard, her cheekbones jutting sharply. Patches of her raised mane of hair came out, long sections plucked away into the ether.
Fourth rotation. Four disguised Arcana meandered through the camp, almost at the twins’ tent.
Tess’s sunken red eyes pleaded. She looked like one of my famine victims from a past game. Brittle. Dying.
Her arms deflated in my grip, my bloody claws scraping over bone.
Scrape, scrape . . .
Would I kill this girl to save Jack’s sight? “Not yet, Tess! Not yet!”
Fifth rotation. Still disguised, Gabriel and an earlier version of Tess landed on this bluff, meeting up with Selena and the earlier version of me. The beginning of our mission.
“No more!” I screamed.
As if at the end of a car wreck, the spinning abruptly . . . stopped. Tess’s head lolled, the remains of her hair hanging over her face.
The earth righted itself in fitful movements, seeming to gasp from exertion. With a shudder, the rotation ground forward once more.
Those earlier versions of me and Tess disappeared—leaving us, two girls aware of the near future, but physically changed. I’d been drained of power, with no arsenal to show for it.
And Tess . . . I released her arms, catching her as she collapsed, unconscious. Her now baggy clothing swallowed her emaciated body. Her teeth chattered, and she shivered for warmth. Would she survive?