Oliver placed both hands on the stones, ran his fingers and palms over them, and again thought about entropy. About the loss of cohesion. More than anything, he thought about his mother, and wished he could have known her true self.
Once again, the mortar sifted down. He gave the wall a shove and the stones tumbled into the cell. Oliver stepped over the rubble and into the cell.
“I’ve tried,” Collette said.
Their eyes met. He took her hands. “It isn’t about breaking things. It’s about letting them rest. Making them surrender.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Julianna asked.
But Oliver kept his focus on Collette. “You did it before, when you weren’t thinking about it, or when you were so exhausted you couldn’t think straight. Now you’ve just got to…no, believe isn’t enough. You’ve got to know what you are.”
He went to Julianna and slid one hand behind her head, fingers tangling in her hair. They kissed, and he felt like he could just crumble into her arms.
“You ready to go?”
Julianna stiffened, eyes full of pain. “I can’t cross the Veil. You know that.”
“Screw that. We’re out of here, one way or another.”
He turned to Collette. Pointed to the wall behind her. “You take care of that wall. We’ve got maybe thirty seconds, if that, to do something. I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” Julianna asked.
But Oliver had already jumped back into the hall. His heart raced and he could not erase the grin on his face as he sprinted down the corridor. He ran so quickly that when he had to slow down to make the turn toward the stairs, he nearly lost his footing. But he recovered, and a good thing, too, for as he went through the arch toward the bottom of the stairs he heard the iron gate slam open above and the shouts of Atlantean soldiers berating the Yucatazcan guards.
Oliver ran to the stairs. He took them two at a time, and made it halfway up before a guard rounded the curving stairwell above him and shouted. Oliver heard the scrape of metal upon metal as the Atlantean drew his sword.
He laughed, crouching, and reached out to lay his hands on the stairs just above him. They started to shift and crack immediately. Oliver scrambled backward down the stairs, dragging his hands over the stones as he went.
And the stairs gave way, leaving an empty pit behind.
Oliver leaped the rest of the way to the bottom, but the soldier fell through the gap. The others rounded the corner on the stairs and stopped short, staring at the chasm that separated them from Oliver. He grinned and shot them the middle finger, then ran back down the corridor toward the cells.
Julianna and Collette weren’t there, but the rear wall of the cell had collapsed. Oliver whooped with joy and ran through the opening into the next cell. That one had been opened as well, but in this case it had not been the wall that Collette had taken down. It was the door.
Oliver stepped into the far corridor. The hall was filled with a cold mist, and the stone walls were rimed with ice. He shivered, teeth chattering, as he turned to see Collette and Julianna standing in front of a door that glistened with ice crystals.
Frost.
Collette put her hands on the door and hissed, pulling away from the ice that must have seared her. Julianna glanced at Oliver-past Oliver-and he knew she was remembering the last time she’d been here, and the horrid promises that Ty’Lis had made if they were ever caught again.
Collette tried again, putting her hands against the wall of the cell instead of the door. Oliver ran to join her. The guards would figure out a way to reach them soon, he was sure.
He put his hands on the door. The ice was so cold it burned. His eyelashes stuck when he blinked and his breath plumed in front of him. But the metal bands on the door fell off, and the bolts holding the hinges on pulled loose from the frame. Where Collette touched the wall, the stones began to shift.
“Push,” Oliver said.
Together, they brought down the whole front wall of the cell, door and all. Stones and wood crashed inward. Ice shattered. Frigid air rolled out, and then the three of them stood staring at the winter man. Frost had been placed in a kind of stasis within a dark sphere of magic. At least three quarters of the sphere had been covered with an outer layer of ice and snow. Deep within, where the sphere was not covered, they could see Frost. From what Oliver could tell, he did not look shattered anymore.
“What’s going on?” Julianna asked. “Is he trying to get free?”
“Repairing himself, maybe. And working his way out,” Collette said.
Oliver shook his head. “We don’t have time to wait.” Hesitating only a moment, he glanced back at Julianna and then put his hands on the purple-black sphere.
It crackled at the touch.
Nothing happened.
“What’s wrong?” Collette asked.
Oliver frowned. He could try to concentrate, but what little he knew of the power he and his sister shared told him that it didn’t work like that.
“I don’t know.”
“Magic,” Julianna said, sounding almost dazed. She stared at them both. “You’ve dealt with things that have a real substance before. The sand. The walls. Maybe magic isn’t like that.”
Collette threw up her hands. “Great. What now?” She poked her head out into the hall to scout for guards.
Oliver worked his way around, peering through the sections of the sphere that weren’t covered in ice. Finally he found an angle at which he could see the winter man’s face.
Frost glared at him with blue-white eyes. Long, dagger fingers seemed aimed at a place where magic and ice met. Oliver took a closer look, and saw that that ice seemed to have passed through the sphere at that point, slicing like a knife, instead of having simply formed outside the sphere.
He put his hands on the ice. They were still numb from the door, and now he could barely feel them at all.
Entropy took hold. The ice began to crumble and sift into a fine, powdery snow. With a loud crack, a fissure formed in the thick ice shell. It ran down through the mystic sphere, cracking the ice inside as well.
A frigid wind burst through that fissure and knocked Oliver to the ground. He sprawled there, looking up as wind howled in the cell. All of the ice seemed to flow into the air at the center of the room, churning into a tiny blizzard that drew all of the snow and ice from both within the sphere and without, and from the walls as well.
The blizzard slowed and took form.
The winter man glanced at Collette and Julianna, then stared down at Oliver. He cocked his head, long, icicle hair clinking together.
“Another week and I would have been free,” Frost said.
“Yeah. You’re welcome,” Oliver replied, climbing to his feet.
“From your entrance, it seems you’ve claimed your inheritance. Excellent. Now we must-”
“No time,” Oliver interrupted. Julianna and Collette flanked him, so that the three of them stood before Frost as though trying to bar his exit. “Julianna can’t go through the Veil. Collette can. Take her with you, now. Get back to Euphrasia and help Hunyadi against Atlantis.”
Collette looked at him sadly, but did not protest. She had known this was coming. There was no other way.
Julianna took his hand. Oliver squeezed her fingers in his own.
“And what of you?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure something out. Anyway, you only need one of the Bascombes to fulfill your prophecy, right?”
Frost blinked, then glanced away, and Oliver was surprised to see that the winter man even had the capacity to feel guilt.
“You don’t understand.”
Shouts came down the corridor. Collette looked out. “They’re coming.”
“Go!” Oliver shouted.
Frost reached out and opened a rift in the Veil. It seemed so simple for him, like parting curtains. Oliver felt the lure of that easy safety, but he tightened his hold on Julianna’s hand as Frost and Collette stepped through.
“See you soon,” Collette said. She blew him a kiss, and then they were gone.