The Ivory Rite

Chapter 44

The tick, tick, tick of my clock begins to cut through my state of unconsciousness, only to be drowned out by another sound. The passage of time is suddenly marked by something new, but familiar.

The death knell is tolling.

Once, twice, all the way up to twelve.

At first I think I must be dreaming. The death knell only tolls for the Ivory Rite, on the mornings of the first of November and the first of May. 

We're still months away from May, I tell myself. This has to be a dream.

In a moment Adair will appear. Any minute now I'll be drowning in a mixture of blood and melted ice. I keep thinking these thoughts, but silence settles after the twelfth toll. Nothing else happens.

I start to get nervous.

Dragging myself from my bed over to the window, it takes me too long to process what I see. I'm not at all prepared for what I find behind the pane.

White isn't actually a color. White is the absence of color, so I live in a land where the absence of pigment is natural. Snow covers everything in Glace for every minute of every day, every day of every month, twelve months out of the year.

Today's absence is not the absence of color.

There's color everywhere. I can see dirt, mud, pools of water. Today, for the first time, there is an absence of snow.

This is it, I think. It's happening.

The Great Thaw has officially begun.

Looking over at the relentless clock, I realize how early it is. How can it be that the sun has only just risen? Landon came to give me the sacrament in the afternoon. Somehow I have slept through an entire night, with no recollection of falling asleep at all.

And as early as it is, it's late for the start of my schedule. No one came to get me for my run. No one came to find me for breakfast. My confusion marries with anxiety, the two of them making a happy home right in the center of my chest.

I open my door to ask one of the Watchmen what's going on, but the hallway is empty. My minds starts to form theories, each one muddled by a worse scenario than the last.

The castle has been abandoned, and they've forgotten me.

The castle has been attacked, and they're coming for me.

The world has already ended, and I'm the only one left.

I start to run.

Down the hall, down the stairs, down another hall. Hall after hall after hall. The minutes in which I fail to find another living human multiply. I'm moving at full speed when I get to the second floor, the ice angel coming into view through the outer wall facing the garden.

I stop dead in my tracks.

"Adair," I whisper.

He should be the last thing on my mind, but the panic is like a vine growing in my brain, lengthening, twisting, squeezing. It blocks out the sunlight, making it impossible for me to prioritize. It forces his name straight out of my mouth for a second and third time. I can't take my eyes off of the ice sculpture looming outside the wall in front of me.

What's left of it, that is.

The angel's head is deformed, mostly melted away. Her wings are all but gone, half of one remaining, the other nothing more than a rounded, wet stump. I will my feet to move, approaching the wall and pressing my hands and face against the glass. I search the outside grounds for White Watch, servants, someone. 

Anyone.

There's no one.

"Ah, there you are."

I should be relieved by the sound of another voice, but instead I'm startled out of my skin. His tone is foreign, but familiar. Soft, but authoritative. Unfriendly, but not unkind.

"I've been looking for you," he says.

I don't know why I don't turn around right away. I keep my back to the non-stranger until I can place him, until it comes to me.

Don't let yourself forget that by societal standards she is something to be ashamed of.

I hear the same voice say those words, and only then do I understand I'm standing alone in the hallway with the secret man I overheard Landon arguing with. A man who has full knowledge of the prophesy.

The Arch is standing behind me. 

I'm sure of it.