Ending Maker novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Torn Tablet

The broken tablet lay in pieces between us.

I did not need to read it.

I only needed to look at his face.

"You know what it says," I said.

"Greer."

"You knew what it said before we walked in."

"I knew the shape."

"You said that about the Twin Bond."

"It was true."

"It was a lie with a true edge. Like all the others."

I put the lantern on the floor and stepped toward him.

He didn't move.

I took his left wrist and turned it over, so the seal mark faced up, glowing faintly in the dark.

Three gaps shone.

"Seal Two," I said. "The sound of the other. It opens a door. You've been holding it shut with your hand."

"Yes."

"You can't hold it forever."

"I can hold it until the Gate."

"Not when I'm pushing from my side."

I closed my eyes.

I had never done it on purpose.

In the stable yard I'd only heard what leaked.

Now I reached for him through the mark, and the door was there under my hand.

It was heavy.

It was like pushing a boulder.

"Don't," Emmett breathed. "Greer, you don't want to."

"Yes, I do."

I leaned into it.

It gave all at once.

The room fell away, and I was in his head.

It was not a place with walls.

It was a long night, and a cold hospital hallway, and the smell of antiseptic and old coffee.

It was the beta archive on a screen at four in the morning, and a man alone in a supply room reading the text of a tablet he'd never been meant to see.

I knew the words by heart, because he did.

When the Sunblade falls at the Gate, the Nightwarden takes her place in the dark.

He becomes the Hollow King, and the game begins again.

The King remembers every cycle.

The King waits for the next hero.

I saw the thing laid out the way he saw it.

At the Gate on the last day, one of us dies on the oath blade, and the other puts on the crown of black glass.

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