The portal took my lunch first.
The heel of bread in my coat pocket tore free in the white current and vanished somewhere between one place and the next. I had just enough time to feel offended before the ground hit me.
I landed on my left shoulder. The bag of swords came down beside my head with a crash, and a potion bottle bounced off my back without breaking.
Small mercies.
"Count!" Roxxy shouted.
Boots scraped over stone. Behind us, the portal shrank to a bright oval, snapping at the edges.
Captain Halden counted his five knights, the mage, the princess, and me. He counted me separately, which felt accurate.
"All through."
Magister Pell sat on the ground with both hands over his mouth. He made it to the edge of the return circle before vomiting.
Roxxy turned on me. "Why are you lying down?"
"I arrived poorly."
"Get up."
I rolled onto my knees, keeping my right arm close. The bandages beneath my sleeve had survived the crossing. Whether the arm had was a different question. I could feel four of my fingers.
I had five.
The princess stood at the road's edge, staring into the valley. I followed her gaze and forgot about my missing lunch.
An orchard covered the slope below us. Low stone walls divided hundreds of bent trees into rows. Some were bare; others carried flowers or red fruit swollen almost to bursting.
On the nearest branch, a blossom shed its petals and became a hard green apple. The apple ripened, dropped onto the road, and split apart.
Then the pieces jumped.
Seeds, flesh, and skin pulled together. The fruit sprang back onto its branch. Green returned to its skin, and it shrank into a bud.
Above the valley, the Barrier filled half the sky. From the city it had always looked faint, almost harmless. Here, lines of gold ran through it in uneven pulses. A crack stretched from the western ridge to somewhere beyond the clouds.
Pell joined us, wiping his mouth. Three needles trembled inside the brass instrument in his hand.
"Localized temporal collapse," he said.
Halden adjusted his shield. "Words soldiers use."
"Things are getting older and younger when they shouldn't."
A grinding sound rolled across the valley. Half the orchard lost its leaves, then flowered again.
Dorothy had been ash for less than a day. Now we were standing under this.
I didn't know whether killing her had caused the breach. I hadn't known there was anything to ask. From that roof, I had seen one woman stealing years from a beggar and decided I understood enough.
Tobin shifted beside me. His armor rattled as he adjusted a strap. I looked away from him and back at the crack.
Pell watched the needles. "Seven minutes until the palace opens our return window. I'll have to hold this end. They can keep theirs open for one minute."
"And if we miss it?" Roxxy asked.
"They can't promise another connection."
She looked down the road. "Anchor station?"
Pell pointed to a round stone building among the trees.
"Two hundred and forty yards. Install the reserve core, ignite it, and the station should close the breach enough for the central array to recover."
Roxxy faced the group. Her hands had stopped trembling now that everyone was watching.
"Shields at front and rear. Pell stays with me. Nobody leaves the road. Ren in the center."
"The center sounds safe."
"It is where we put the things we cannot afford to lose." She pointed at the case strapped to my bag. "The core, Ren."
"Of course. I also care deeply for it."
"Walk."
We walked.
Grass pushed through the paving stones, each clump moving through its own season. Sweet fruit, frost, and damp leaves came and went too quickly for my nose to settle on any of them.
My left eye began to burn. I lowered my head so my bangs fell across it.
Even through my lowered eyelid, the Lens showed me thin currents beneath the road. Pale gold fouled with oily black ran through the orchard's roots toward the crack overhead.
Fine threads trailed from the knights. Brighter ones clung to Pell and Roxxy. The case on my back was wrapped in so many that I could barely make out its shape.
"Your Highness."
"Not now."
"Something's wrong with the case."
Pell checked the latches without stopping. "Seal's intact. Keep it upright."
I couldn't tell him what I saw. Instead, I pointed past his shoulder.
"The branches are leaning toward the crack."
Roxxy glanced across the rows. "Wind."
"From both sides?"
She stopped. The trees on either side of the road curved toward the same point in the sky.
"How did you notice that?"
"I work with trees. At the Academy."
"Valerius sent a gardener?"
"When you say it like that, it sounds poorly managed."
She looked at the case again. "Pell, check the charge when we reach the station. Keep moving."
I had taken three steps when a cracked buckle gave way. A potion bottle rolled off the road and into the grass.
Sir Tobin moved before anyone could stop him. He was the youngest knight, and he had been watching Roxxy rather than his feet.
"I have it."
His boot left the road. The grass around his ankle flashed white.
The leather cracked. Rust spread over his greave, and his leg jerked, but he could not pull it free.
"Tobin!"
Roxxy caught his arm. Halden seized the back of her armor and hauled her away as the white patch spread beneath her boot.
Tobin screamed. His knee buckled. Grey appeared in his hair, and the plate over his shin split into flakes.
Pell dropped beside the road and drove two silver rods between the stones. Both blackened at once.
"Chronal sink. Don't touch the edge."
"Get him out," Roxxy ordered.
"I'm trying. Captain, rope. Around his chest, not the leg."
Halden uncoiled a line. Tobin was less than six feet away, beyond a widening strip of whitening stone.
Through the Lens, I saw a root beneath the road. Too smooth, too black to belong to the orchard. It pulsed with the crack overhead. Strands curled around Tobin's leg, drawing the years out of him.
"I can reach him," I said.
Roxxy shook her head. "You have no armor."
"Neither will he in a moment."
Tobin's breastplate buckled against his ribs. Roxxy took the rope from Halden.
"Under your arms. Stay on the stones. If they change color, we pull you back."
"And Tobin?"
"We pull harder."
Halden tied me off while Pell hammered a third rod into the road. I lay flat and pushed toward the edge.
Shadow Step would get me across the gap. It would also leave a royal captain and the king's daughter asking where an Academy gardener had learned it. I needed Tobin free without giving them a good look at how I did it.
The rope tightened beneath my arms. Halden braced a boot against a stone and told the others to take the slack.
Tobin reached for me. Loose skin bunched around his knuckles, and his arm shook too badly to cross the gap.
"Don't grab yet. You'll pull me in."
"I'm dying!"
"I noticed. Give me a second."
My left hand fell two feet short. I slid my right between the paving stones.
Cold punched through the torn bandage as my fingertips found the root. I buried my face against my other sleeve.
"Rot."
Pain crawled up my arm. The veins tightened as the curse passed through my fingers. Beneath them, the black surface wrinkled and began to crumble.
Something pulled back from the other end. For a second, the Touch stopped moving outward. Then heat raced past my wrist. I bit down on my sleeve, feeling fresh wetness spread through the bandage.
The root broke. The white grass collapsed into brown weeds.
"Now!" Pell shouted.
Tobin fell forward. I caught his wrist with my left hand, and Halden dragged us across the stones. My chin bounced off the road twice. The second impact improved nothing.
Tobin lay on his back, staring at the sky. The worst changes had receded with the white patch, but grey remained above his ears. His damaged leg looked older than the rest of him.
Pell checked his pulse, then held the brass instrument over his chest.
"How much?" Roxxy asked.
"Eight years. Ten, perhaps."
"Can you restore them?"
Pell did not answer.
"Can you?"
"No."
Tobin reached for his ruined greave. Halden stopped him and began undoing the straps.
"Don't look at it yet," the captain said.
Tobin looked anyway. He put his hand over the patch of grey at his temple, then lowered it before Roxxy could turn around.
I pushed myself upright. My right sleeve had gone dark from wrist to elbow. Roxxy noticed at once.
"You're bleeding."
"Old injury."
"From what?"
"A rosebush with political connections."
She stared at me. I tried a small smile. It did not help.
Pell's instrument began to scream.
"Return window in four minutes. We need to move."
Halden helped Tobin stand. The knight could put weight on his leg, though not much.
Roxxy looked from the station to the return circle behind us.
"We finish."
The orchard accelerated as we moved. Fruit burst on the branches. Leaves flashed from green to gold and vanished. The road cracked and repaired itself beneath our boots.
By the time we reached the station, frost covered half its copper roof and rain ran from the other half. Halden hauled the swollen door open. We crowded in behind him.
The room was barely larger than a chapel. Gold lines covered its walls, converging on a waist-high pedestal. A hollow in the surface waited for the reserve core.
Through a gap in the roof, I could see the crack in the Barrier.
Pell unstrapped the brass case from my bag and broke the royal seal. He lifted out a fist-sized crystal, turned it over, then pressed it between his palms.
"Well?" Roxxy demanded.
"It's empty."
"Check again."
He did. Nothing happened.
Her gaze settled on the broken wax.
"That was packed in the palace," Halden said.
"Yes." Roxxy took the core and placed it in the pedestal.
Pell shook his head. "Without a charge, it can't close the breach."
The building shuddered. Dust fell from the roof.
"Connect it anyway."
He moved to the wall, muttering through the sequence under his breath.
I let the Lens open. Crimson washed across my vision. The station's remaining power was being dragged down through the floor rather than up toward the Barrier. A black strand ran beneath the pedestal, swelling with every pulse.
So that was where the gold was going. The threads around our case had looked just like it. Perhaps we had carried a charged core through the gate, only to feed this thing on the way here.
"The floor," I said.
Pell kept his palms against the wall. "Not now."
"The mortar's black. Around the pedestal."
Roxxy followed my pointing hand. A stain ringed the base, darker than the soot on the walls.
"Halden."
The captain drove his shield's edge into the floor. Two blows split the slab, exposing another length of the same black root.
"That is not part of the array," Pell said.
Halden drew his sword and cut down. The blade rusted on contact. Before he could lift it, the steel snapped near the hilt.
He stepped back, holding what was left.
Wind plunged through the roof. The knights raised their shields against falling stone. Pell shouted something about the core, but I could barely hear him.
I crouched beside the broken floor. My right hand had stopped shaking. That worried me more than the pain.
I pressed it to the root.
The station vanished.
For a heartbeat, there was no sky or ground. Vast shapes moved at a distance. I could not tell whether they were coming toward me or going away, only that each step took centuries.
Something turned. I felt its attention settle on my hand.
There you are.
The voice did not enter through my ears.
I tore at the curse before the thing could pull me closer.
"Wither."
The root fought me. Decay spread across it in patches, stopped, then spread again. Every inch cost me. The pain crossed my elbow. Skin split beneath my sleeve, and something colder sank toward the bone.
Luna would see how far the damage had spread the moment I returned. She would go very quiet, which was worse than shouting. I needed to survive long enough to disappoint her properly.
Mostly, I wanted to keep my arm.
The root split with a sound like green wood in a fire. Its exposed length collapsed into ash, and gold surged back through the floor.
The gold that had been feeding the root backed up through the channels. One by one, the crystal's grey facets lit from within. There had been power left in the station after all—just none reaching the place that needed it.
The core flared inside its socket. Pell slammed both palms against the wall. Lines of light raced around the station, climbed the broken roof, and struck the Barrier.
The crack did not close. It narrowed.
Outside, the orchard stopped changing. One last apple fell from a branch and remained on the ground.
Then something pressed against the far side of the Barrier.
A shape like a hand covered half the sky. Too many joints bent inside each finger.
The voice came again, no longer inside my head.
"Gardener."
Pell's instrument slipped from his hand and swung on its wrist cord. Halden looked from the Barrier to the ash at my knees.
Roxxy looked at me.
I was still kneeling beside the ruined root. Blood ran from my sleeve and dripped between my fingers.
Her gaze moved from the ash to my hand.
"Ren," she said quietly. "Show me your hand."