I keep my face on the horizon as Pruinn drives the cart onward. I made the mistake of looking down into those empty crevices of earth once, seeing them gorged with whorls of mist, and the sight made me dizzy. Because in those huge cracks, there’s nothing—no darkness of shadow that tells me the core of the earth is below. Instead, there’s just the gray emptiness that goes on forever and ever. As if you could fall over and never stop falling, because whatever happened here was born of magic and not of nature, and these cleaves through the ground are an anomaly of destructive power.
And it doesn’t stop. That’s how this entire landscape has been, no matter how long we’ve been traveling. Somehow, Pruinn has used the map to guide us, knowing when to turn past different rifts and when to brave the pinched strips of land. So far, we haven’t ended up stranded, though I almost wish we would. I wish we had no option but to turn around.
But turn around to what?
That’s the question that has been tormenting me. As much as I have absolutely zero faith in Pruinn’s charlatan magic that this map can point me to my heart’s desire, where else do I have to go?
My husband sent an assassin to kill me. My own people rebelled against me. There’s nothing left for me in Sixth Kingdom anymore.
Perhaps that’s why I’m numb.
Who am I if not Malina Colier, Queen of Sixth Kingdom?
So we travel on.
I’m not even certain how the horses are still alive. It’s not as if we’re in a place Pruinn can forage for food, and I can’t believe he still has barrels of hay for them. This place isn’t just desolate, as parts of Sixth are. It’s sterile, empty. Creepy.
And yet, the further we go, the keener Pruinn seems to become.
“We’re not going to find anything,” I’ve told him again and again.
To which he always replies, “Trust the map.”
Fool.
I doze off, buried beneath the hood of my coat, lulled from the sway of the cart. I’ve since stopped being worried about one of the horses’ hooves slipping on one of the edges and sending us falling into the gray abyss. At this point, I can’t seem to drudge up the energy to care.
Perhaps that’s where my heart’s desire is—an endless end.
I get tugged out of my sleep when the cart comes to a sudden stop, and I hear a scrap of Pruinn’s voice over the wind. I turn to see why he’s stopped before nightfall, but I freeze in place when I see the silhouette looming before us.
At first, I think it must be one of the old icebergs I read about, except much larger than I ever imagined. It’s caught in a still sea of white snow, its jagged tips as sharp as canines sneering up toward the sky. It’s asymmetrical, as if three quarters of it were broken off and sunk into the ground, leaving only this last bit remaining.
Yet, as I continue to squint at it past the gray mist, I recognize the shape isn’t quite the deadened pronged berg I thought it was.
It’s…a castle.
What’s left of it anyway.
“Is that what I think it is?” I breathe, my eyes still locked on it.
Pruinn sits at the cart’s seat, holding the reins loosely in his hands, his short blond hair looking muted in the dismal daylight. “It is.”
I shake my head, disbelief rolling around beneath my skull. “How is this possible? I thought the castle was completely destroyed.”
“I suppose not.”
All this time, I was taught that the city and castle itself were swallowed up by the magical void, but as I stare at the decrepit form still standing, I realize that wasn’t true. Seventh Kingdom was broken and destroyed, yet it’s still here. Like a skeleton partially preserved.
Pruinn pulls us onward, toward the monolithic bones of what once was a pristine palace. When we’re so close I can actually see the scrape of stonework, raw and chipping on the sides of its remains, I also see what lies beyond.
My eyes were playing tricks on me before, because it isn’t just more flat, frozen ground stretching far beyond it.
I thought I saw giant fissures as we traveled here, but all of those combined are nothing compared to this. This isn’t just a cracked crevice left mangled in the earth. No, the land just beyond where the castle sits is gone.
As if a huge chunk of the flattened earth has simply been torn like a piece of paper and tossed away. Roiling clouds of colorless mist drag against the craggy lip of the land, and beyond, there’s nothing. Below, there’s nothing.
The hair on the back of my neck lifts, and I have the sudden and intense feeling I’m being watched. I glance all around us, but I don’t see a single speck stretched along the white snow. Perhaps it’s the magic that’s stalking me, like it knows life has dared to breach the void.