“I did.” Valerie patted Dante on the arm. “When you gave me that poem, I felt like there was a moment, there at the end, when I could choose. I could let everything go, start over clean, like none of this ever happened. Or I could remember everything—the good and the bad.”
“There was something good about what happened to you?” I asked in amazement.
She tilted her head in thought. “My dreams were surprisingly vivid, which was kind of nice. And knowing my friends cared enough about me to try to save me—even when I felt like I was beyond saving—is worth remembering. And that moment when I was able to stand up to Zo—that felt really good.” She smiled at me, a vintage, authentic, honest-to-goodness Valerie smile with all her spark and sass. “Given the circumstances, I think I made the right choice, don’t you agree, darling?”
I laughed and wiped the tears from my eyes. “Yes, I agree completely.”
Chapter 30
The courtroom was dark and empty. I shivered and rubbed at my arms. Valerie was the first one to enter the room, but that was because she didn’t have the same kind of memories of this place that I had. Or that Dante and Orlando had, for that matter; they both hung back, hovering close to the walls, unwilling to draw too close to the black hourglass door that stood in the dead center of the room.
Dante’s trial had been held earlier that day; his sentence had been carried out. His future had forever changed.
Domenico had let us into the courtroom, warning us to be quick. Before the door closed, I saw Dante pull Domenico aside, whisper a few words, and then hand off a small packet of letters, which the clerk stashed in his ever-present satchel.
I quickly lit a handful of candles, enough to see by, but not enough to be seen from outside the room.
“This is . . . amazing,” Valerie murmured, her low voice carrying in the quiet room. She peered closer at the door, standing on her toes to examine every corner, every carving, every circle and crescent and star. She looked over her shoulder at Dante. “And you did this? By hand?”
“Didn’t you see it before?” Orlando asked. “When you came through from the other side?”
Valerie shook her head, her fingers hovering over the swirls as though she could read the lines like Braille. “The other times I’ve been around the door, I wasn’t quite myself. Plus, nothing beats the original. It looks brand-new.”
“Careful,” I warned, stepping up next to her. “Don’t touch anything.”
“I am being careful,” she said, her mouth turning down in the slightest of pouts. “Honestly, Abby, I’m not crazy.” Then she winked at me. “At least, not anymore.”
Dante joined Valerie and me by the door. We stepped aside so he could face his creation one last time. His eyes roamed over the wood, and I saw his hands twitch as though remembering how it felt to touch the surface, to carve it and change it and make it his own. Then his fingers curled into a fist, the gold chains rippling, and I knew he remembered, too, how he had been honed and changed and claimed in turn.
“It’s strange,” he said quietly, awed and a little afraid. “I’m inside the machine. Even now, I can feel that connection—that echo of being in two places at once. I’m walking and counting and wondering what exactly it is that I’ll see on the other side.”
Orlando spoke up from behind us. “You’ll see me. I’m waiting for you on the other side. That’s what you said, right? That I found you there and saved you.”
Dante turned his back to the door. Without a word, he reached out and pulled his brother into a crushing embrace. “I won’t say it enough then, so I will now. Thank you. Thank you, my brother, for being there for me—always.”
Valerie walked all the way around the door, examining it from all sides. “Dante, seriously, this is a work of art. It’s a masterpiece. It needs to be framed or something.”
“It needs to be destroyed,” Dante said firmly.
“What?” Valerie said, spinning on her heel. “But I thought this was the way home.”
Dante shook his head. “This is not your door. This one is ours.” He nodded to Orlando, who stood a pace away, his face pale in the candlelight. “This door won’t work for you. I don’t know what would happen to you if you tried to use it, and I don’t dare find out.”
“What about Orlando? Will it work for him?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Orlando is coming with us, right?” Valerie asked. “I mean, we can’t leave him behind.”
Orlando and Dante and I shared a look.
“We’re leaving him behind?” Valerie said in shock.
“We have to,” I said, though it broke my heart to hear the words come out of my mouth.
“No.” Valerie folded her arms and frowned. “That’s not fair.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Orlando said. “It only has to be what it is.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Valerie protested. “Why can’t he come with us?”
“Because you and Abby are going back to the time where you belong. Orlando is already where he is supposed to be. He only traveled a short distance through time.” Dante hesitated. “And also because the door works in pairs. The other half of this door was destroyed when I came through it from the bank after Zo and Tony and V.” Dante avoided Orlando’s gaze, keeping his attention on Valerie. “Once we destroy this one, Orlando will have nowhere else to go.”
“Then why are we here?”
“Like Dante said: to destroy the door,” Orlando repeated, a tone of finality in his voice. And relief.
Wiping away angry tears, Valerie aimed a kick at the door. The thud of contact sounded like striking rocks. “Fine. So how do we break this?”
Dante and I had talked about this moment, discussing what our options could be, but no matter what solutions we suggested for this impossible problem, there was clearly only one choice.
I stepped toward the door and hesitantly touched the gleaming brass hinge that bound the door to the frame. The metal seemed to quiver under my fingers, shivering like a struck chime. A trill of music sounded on the closed side of the door. I listened to it fade away, wondering if the other Dante walking in the darkness had heard it, and if so, if it had brought him any comfort.
I felt for the small depression in the center of the middle square and pushed. The hinge sprang free with a nearly silent click. The notes from the chime grew louder, playing a melody that resonated through me. With swift and sure motions, I collapsed the hinge down to its compact size. I could feel Orlando’s eyes on me, curious and cautious.
“Did you design it to do that?” he asked Dante. “It’s ingenious.”
“The door won’t work without the hinge,” Dante said as I cradled the mechanism against my chest.
“So, that’s it?” Valerie asked, looking from me to the door. “We came all this way to do that?”
Dante shook his head. “This is only the first part.”
“What’s the rest?” Valerie asked.
In reply, Dante turned to me. I had said that I wanted to be the one to do this, but now that the moment was here, I wasn’t sure if I could follow through.
I took a breath and crossed to Orlando. “You were there for me when I came through the door. You were there for me when my memory was stolen by Zo. You have been there for me every step of the way along this crazy, unpredictable journey. I would have been lost so many times over without you, Orlando.” I looked down at the hinge, my reflection distorted by the flickering candlelight and the polished brass. “And I hope you can be there for me one last time.”
Orlando’s eyebrows drew close together. “What is it?”
“For this to work—for all the circles to be locked closed and for the river to stay clean and stable—we need someone to guard this hinge until . . .” I choked on the words. How could I ask the impossible of Orlando? Of Leo? He was my friend. But he was also the only one who could do it. “Until we meet again more than five hundred years from now.”
I heard Valerie gasp. I fe
lt Dante’s hand touch my back lightly in quiet support. But my eyes were locked on Orlando, waiting to see his reaction.
He didn’t move. Not to breathe, not to blink.
“That is . . . a long time,” he said finally.
It was my turn to remain still. The hinge felt like a thousand pounds in my hands.
“If I say yes,” he offered up his words carefully, “then we will meet again.”
The way he said it made it sound less like a question and more like a wish. But I knew Orlando never made wishes; they were too painful.
I nodded. “Yes. We will meet again. We will actually become good friends.”
Orlando’s gaze flickered to Dante so fast, I would have missed it if I hadn’t been watching for it.
I swallowed, watching as Orlando’s decision moved across his face, the small lines of hope that had appeared around his mouth fading as his expression settled into a fixed determination.
He straightened his spine, tall and strong like a soldier preparing for battle or a lover fortunate to have been chosen. He placed his hand over his heart and bowed low. “I will help you however you need me to. I am yours to command, my lady.”
“Thank you, Orlando,” I said, touching his shoulder as relief and sadness flooded through me. “I will honor your vow.”
He stood quickly, moving his fingers from his heart to his lips before holding his hand out to me, palm up.
I met Orlando’s blue eyes, and I felt a spark of memory ignite inside me. We had stood like this once before, back among the scorched bones of the Dungeon, where he had—then, as now—sworn an unbreakable vow to me.
I knew what to do. I placed my free hand atop his, feeling the hard calluses on the pads of his fingers, the heel of his palm.
“There will come a time when I will need to ask you to honor this vow,” I warned.
“Then I will wait for the day, my lady of light,” he replied with dignity, “when I can fulfill my promise to you and make you proud of me.”
“Oh, Orlando,” I said, throwing my arms around his neck, the hinge still clutched in my hand.
He carefully folded his arms around me, hesitant at first, then tighter when he realized I wasn’t going to let go right away.
“I will always be proud of you,” I said in his ear. “Always.”
Dante cleared his throat and Orlando let go of me, stepping back and taking the hinge from me in the same motion.
“Keep it safe,” Dante said. “We’re all counting on you.”
“There’s one more thing,” Orlando said quietly, his gaze fixed on the hinge in his hands. “Before we destroy the rest of the door.”
“What is it?” I asked. We had asked so much of Orlando; if there was something we could do to make his burden easier, I wanted to know about it.
“Valerie chose whether or not to remember,” he said. “I want the same choice.”
“You want to remember this?” I asked.
“No.” Orlando looked up, not at me, but at Dante. “I want to forget. I don’t want to remember this.”
“Orlando—” Dante started, but his brother held up his hand.
“You said that in all those years to come, I’ll help Zo survive his journey. Zo and Tony and V. But I’ve seen what he did. I know how much he hurt all of you.” His eyes met Valerie’s. “I know how this story ends. And if I remember all that, can you still be sure I’ll help him? For this to work—for all the circles to be locked closed and for the river to be clean and stable”—he echoed my own words back to me—“I can’t remember everything.”
“He’s right,” I said. “His knowing his future could change it irrevocably. We can’t risk it.”
“But he can’t forget everything,” Dante countered. “He needs to know about the hinge—what it’s for, why it’s important.”
“Then let me remember that, but take the rest.” Orlando shook his head. “If I have that many years ahead of me, knowing the truth will kill me. You can’t ask that of me.” He swallowed. “Please don’t ask that of me.”
“You have to do it, Dante,” Valerie said. “It would be a mercy.”
Dante paused, looking to me for guidance. I nodded.
“All right,” Dante said, though his gray eyes had turned dark with pain. “If that’s what you wish.”
My chest felt tight. Dante had worked so hard to reconnect with his brother, saying good-bye like this must be agony.
Dante tightened his mouth into a thin line, gathering the stillness that helped him transform his poetry into power.
Valerie hugged Orlando, long and tight. “I’ll miss you. Be safe, okay?”
When she let go, I touched Orlando’s arm. “It’s going to be all right,” I told him. “Do you trust me?”
His fingers curled around the prongs of the hinge. His eyes held mine. He nodded.
“Then don’t look back,” I whispered. Standing on my toes, I kissed him on the cheek, something soft and sweet. Something to remember me by—for as long as his memory would last.
Dante gestured for me to step back. Then he reached out to grip his brother’s wrists, his strong hands covering the black chains. “Are you sure?” he asked one last time.
“I trust you,” Orlando said, closing his eyes. “Do what must be done.”
With a last look at me, Dante opened his mouth, and, to my surprise, the poem he offered to Orlando was one I knew. One I had heard in a long-ago dream. One I myself had recited on stage at the Dungeon.
In the darkness of night,
demons strut, taunting, goading.
In the light of day,
angels sing glorious songs.
In the time in between,
We live our lives alone and searching.
And sometimes, softly,
You understand damnation.
All is forgotten, all is lost,
All but forgiveness
And the memory of her kiss.
As the last word trailed off into silence, Orlando collapsed to the floor.
I gasped and jumped back. Valerie grabbed my arm.
“Is he okay?” I whispered.
Dante nodded, looking down at his brother with both sorrow and pride on his face. “When he wakes up, he won’t remember us being here. He’ll know he needs to leave—and quickly—and he’ll take the hinge with him. Domenico is waiting outside to help Orlando start his new life far away from here.”
“Then we’ve done all we can do,” I said.
“What about the door?” Valerie asked. “We can’t leave it like this, can we?”
Dante roused himself from his thoughts and picked up a lit candle from the table. He held the flame close to the black wood until the fire caught the carvings, outlining them with light. I wouldn’t have expected ordinary wood to catch so fast, but then again, this was no ordinary door. Before the door could entirely burn, however, Dante extinguished the fledgling fire. Smoke rose from the burn marks left behind. The markings that had once covered the center of the door—the point where the hourglass lines almost touched, the spiral nautilus shell, the hidden heart—had burned beyond recognition.
“Is it done?” I asked.
“It’s enough,” Dante answered, his words clipped. He blew out the candle and dropped it on the floor in front of the door that had been scorched black and stripped bare.
The time machine had been broken, and all that remained was a slab of wood in an empty room.
“Let’s go home,” I said. “It’s time.”
Chapter 31
The three of us stood in a row on the bank. The river looked like polished silver, a ribbon of light, smooth and sleek.
“Are you sure this is the way home?” Valerie asked.
“It’s the only way,” I said.
Dante inched the toe of his boot closer to the river, catching the reflection of time, which made him shine.
“And why are you doing this instead of him?” Valerie said to me but nodding toward Dante.
“Bec
ause she can speak the language of time,” Dante answered for me. “And I can’t.”
“I wish I had gotten that gift,” Valerie said. “It sounds way cooler than what I had.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You could see the connections between people and all the variations of their stories. That’s pretty good, too.”
Valerie shrugged. “I guess.” She turned to Dante. “You’re coming with us, right? I’m done with all this leaving-people-behind nonsense.”