I fought to process what he’d just said. Max… Max was a fragment of McCane’s soul? The only part worth saving…?
Suddenly tears welled in my eyes. I tried to fight them, but they dropped against McCane’s wrist.
“It’s too late to cry for your sins, little Chi – your future is sealed. For you will seal it yourself.”
“Max is dead,” I said hollowly. “The Lonely King killed him.”
Max snorted. “You think I would let that happen? Though I can’t control Max completely – and only ever when I can access the curse in full – I would know if my doorway into the future had died. You see, Mary didn’t realize that. Thought she was getting back at me by sending a scrap of my soul into the future. But she forgot we’d be connected. Forgot it would give me a chance to finally get the seer I’ve always wanted.”
I shivered. But a part of me shuddered back in relief, too. “Wh-where’s Max?”
“Trapped by the one you call the Lonely King. But not forever. For Max, my shadow, will always venture to keep you safe, even if he does not know why. And he will always find the power to do so, for I will give it to him. I have waited centuries for you, Chi McLane. And it will be centuries more before I give you up.”
I swallowed.
I had to get out of here, find Max – the real Max – and save him.
Perhaps McCane somehow knew what I was thinking, because I heard his gruff laugh rumble through the room. “You can’t escape me now. Oh no, not ever again. I’ll keep you here, Chi, until you use those abilities of yours to find a way to open me a gate into the future. Into our future. For you will be forever by my side.”
Though all my heart wanted to do was break from the fear, I held on. I frigging held on.
No. There had to be a way to get out of here.
This was my vision. There had to be a way to end it and return to the future, even if that would be returning to the peril of the Lonely King.
I squeezed my eyes closed and concentrated.
Max merely tightened his grip around my middle, finally dropping the knife. I heard it clang against the stone floor, felt the tip brush against my shoe.
I had to break out of here.
But how?
How….
The same way I’d broken free of Mary’s body.
I began to pull in on myself.
But it wasn’t in time. “Time for you to use your abilities, Chi. I’m hungry for my future.” Max jerked one of his arms up and flattened his palm against my forehead.
Instantly, I felt the heat, the sheer, incalculable force. It was burrowing a hole through my head, trying to shove a path through my mind like an icebreaker churning up a glacier.
I fought. Fought. Fought.
And then the sparks came. They exploded through my mind’s eye, spilling into every crack of my mind.
The second I followed them, would be the second I fell into Max’s trap. I knew that. I knew that. But it was… was impossible to fight.
They were everywhere.
No. Fucking hold on. I begged myself.
I was Max’s only hope.
I tore my attention off those sparks and settled it back on my body. When I’d broken free of Mary, I’d done so by pushing against her sensations, almost like they’d been a brick wall. Now, stone by stone, I put that wall back up.
Max shoved his palm harder against my forehead. I heard him give a hiss.
And I ignored it. Instead, I anchored myself back in the future, back in my grandmother’s house, back with the witches, back with Max.
With Max.
I held onto the memory of him as if he were a buoy in a violent sea. And that was all it took.
I felt McCane slip away from me. Felt his grip around my middle flicker and disappear.
The last thing I heard was him scream – a vicious shout that seemed to echo through time itself.
….
I emerged from the vision. It wasn’t quick, wasn’t slow. It felt as if time momentarily slipped away from me, became an irrelevant side note as I struggled to pull myself from the past.
I felt like a drowning woman using the last of her energy to push towards the single mote of light above that signified the surface of the water.
I pushed. I pushed.
And broke free.
With an echoing gasp, my eyes punched open.
There, right in front of me, I saw the Lonely King’s shoes. And there, right in front of me, I saw the sacred knife. It glowed in anticipation of blood.
The rain pounded down on the roof above, hissing as it spilled through the hole in the roof and dashed against the charged magic of the time gate.
The look in the Lonely King’s eyes was… incompatible with humanity. It was something else, something so warped, no one would be able to tell this bastard had once been a human with a human heart.
He reached down, wrapped a hand around my collar, and pulled me to my feet.
I stared into his eyes, and I swore I saw McCane. The same flicker of rage I’d seen pulsing in his eyes when Mary had questioned his pursuit of power.
… Could this be the true cost of a sorcerer king? In attaining the heights of magical power, did they sacrifice their own sanity and lose everything they’d ever held dear? My body was still weakened, immeasurably so. And yet, I found the strength to open my lips. As I stared up into the Lonely King’s eyes, I whispered, “You won’t be able to bring her back. This is
