Fingers trembling, she flicked open its wings.
Nothing. The hands revealed nothing because they neither spun nor ticked but stood frozen, stalled by the bit of ocean water trapped behind the watch’s cracked glass face.
“Don’t,” Varen said and, closing his hand over hers, snapped the watch shut. “Don’t start doubting now. Or we’re all lost.”
Isobel looked up at him, and a wave of gratitude washed over her.
Because, even as desolate and fleeting as this moment felt, it was still a blip in time in which they were together. Not only aware but awake. Alive.
This time, she had needed Varen to remind her.
His warm fingers tipped her chin up to him, and he leaned down.
Relaxing her hand, Isobel let go of the ruined watch, allowing it to fall into the bed of ash at their feet.
Varen kissed her then, and Isobel’s hand, now free, went to grip the nape of his neck, holding him there.
“Hey!”
Isobel’s eyelids fluttered at the sound of Gwen’s voice. She turned her head toward its source, breaking the kiss, abashed at how, lost in the aftermath of this madness, she’d almost forgotten Gwen was there.
Through the thinning murk, she saw her friend’s narrow frame hurrying toward them, her frightened face now as smeared and dirty as theirs.
“Glad you two have the wherewithal to swap spit at a time like this, but I’m going to need for one of you tell me if that is something we need to be worried about.”
Though Gwen pointed, she didn’t need to.
Above, a throng of crows flooded the sky. As they grew in number, the mixture of flapping wings and hoarse caws rose in volume.
“Tell me there’s a way out of here,” Gwen said. “Because something tells me we need to go. Now.”
Isobel felt Varen step away from her side, but she didn’t turn to follow him.
Instead, she kept her gaze on the heavens, watching the horde of black birds swirl beyond the scraggly branches of the woodland trees. But these crows did not congregate into a vortex as Isobel expected them to. As they had done before . . .
Shrieking, their cries of “Tekeli-li” filling the air, they fled.
Though Isobel didn’t know what it meant, she had heard the Nocs screech the same strange string of syllables before.
They had done so when Isobel stood at the threshold of the reversed BEWARE OF BESS door, with Lilith on the other side. And they had dispersed in a similar flurry as soon as Isobel laid her hand on the tarnished knob.
Isobel had also heard the cry from Scrimshaw, during the memory of Poe’s death. The blue-haired Noc had hissed it before dissolving to smoke. Seconds later the white veils and equally white face had drifted through the open vat of black in the ceiling above Poe’s bed.
“Gwen’s right,” Isobel said, looking from the escaping flocks to Varen. “We need to—”
She stopped when she saw that he’d already made a door.
In his hand, Varen held the knob to an entrance Isobel had never seen before.
Tall, wooden, and nondescript, the portal gave Isobel little clue as to where it led. But when Varen opened the door, revealing a narrow set of descending stairs encased by peeling walls, she told herself it didn’t matter.
For the moment, the only thing that did was getting out. Away.
Varen glanced back at her, waiting, and Isobel snatched Gwen’s hand.
“Tekeli-li!” the birds continued to scream as Isobel pulled her friend toward the opening.
“What is that?” asked Gwen, her hand strangling Isobel’s. “What are they saying?”
“It means ‘Beware the White One,’” answered a voice from behind, its unmistakable tone causing Isobel to halt a foot from Varen and the open portal.
Through the haze, she focused on the familiar figure now striding toward them from the line of trees.
Isobel almost smiled to see Reynolds clad once more in his wide-brimmed hat and black cloak, his two swords drawn point-down at either side. He lacked only his concealing white scarf.
But slung low around his waist like the sash of a military sergeant, Reynolds wore a new garment in its stead.
Isobel’s ribbon.
Despite its muted pink, the tattered and bloodstained satin lent him an added air of authority. But most important, her ribbon’s presence on his person squelched the last of Isobel’s lingering doubts about his allegiance.
For Reynolds must have saved the sash from the ragged waves and kept it safe all this time. Just as he’d saved her. Then, and now again. She knew he wouldn’t have bothered with the sash if she’d been expendable to him—if he’d only saved her to use her later. If he hadn’t cared.