“Just showing some friends around,” Archer said casually, though I felt him shift his weight, ready to move. “Been a while, Wee Willy.”
Willard’s eyes slid over me without recognition before landing on Aldus and Quill by the scarf merchant’s stall. Something calculated flickered across his face. “Indeed it has. Not since…” He paused, his brow furrowing slightly. “Actually, I can’t quite recall our last meeting.”
“The funeral,” Archer said, his voice tight. “You were at Harlow’s funeral.”
“Ah yes, of course.” Willard took a step backward. “Such a tragedy. Though I must admit, the details seem a bit hazy.”
I watched him drift closer to the king, my heart pounding. Even with Thorne’s magic wiping his memories of me, of the Fray, of everything we’d done, the cold calculation in his eyes remained unchanged. He was still the same man who’d broken Harlow’s heart, who’d stood at her funeral like he had any right to mourn her.
Quill darted away from the scarf stall, distracted by a display of sparkling trinkets. In that split second, Willard moved. The blade appeared in his hand like a serpent’s strike, and before anyone could react, he’d buried it into Aldus’s chest.
The king’s small gasp shattered the market’s peaceful buzz. Such a quiet sound that had no business being the sound of Archer’s future shattering. It shouldn’t have meant the end of everything. I’d heard that sound before though. On the lips of that old king’s daughter the second before she died.
“No!” I was already moving forward. We could fix this. We had to fix this. Archer could stop time, we could get help. Thorne would know what to do. There were healers in the castle. Magic. Anything to stop the blood that was spreading too quickly across the king’s fine jacket.
On the break of Quill’s scream, everything stopped. The crowd froze mid-stride, Willard’s satisfied smirk suspended in time, even the ripples in the puddles at our feet stood still.
“No, no, no,” Archer chanted, catching his father as he crumpled. There was no part of me that could watch him lose someone else. “Someone, there has to be someone who can…” His voice shook as he lowered Aldus to the ground, pressing his hands against the wound. “Why isn’t time stopped for you?”
His father’s face had already begun to lose color.
“We’ll get help,” I said desperately, dropping to my knees beside them. “We just need to stop the bleeding. We can—” But the words died in my throat as I saw Aldus’s eyes. Saw the knowledge there. The acceptance.
“My boy,” Aldus whispered, his trembling hand finding Archer’s cheek. “My beautiful, strong boy. I’m so proud of you.” His breath hitched. “I’m sorry I missed so much. So many moments I should have…”
Archer shook his head. “No. You don’t get to die.”
“I’m sorry,” his father answered, the pain so obvious on the old man’s face I could almost feel it as if it were my own.
Archer looked at me. Fucking looked right into my soul. “Help me.”
But I couldn’t. “I think because you’re touching him, time is still moving. Maybe if you…”
“Don’t,” Aldus said, staring only at his son. “Don’t let go. Please.”
Archer nodded. Tears pooled in his ocean blue eyes as he stared down at the father he never truly had. Not even time magic could halt the life draining from the king’s eyes as he looked at his son with so much love it hurt to witness. A lifetime of it, shoved into seconds.
“You’re going to be amazing,” Aldus breathed, each word seeming to cost him more than the last. “Just like your mother.Just like Harlow. If only you could see that you have so much of them in you.”
Archer’s shoulders shook as he stared down at his father, and truly, I wanted to be anywhere but here, witnessing him lose his last living family member. But also, I’d never leave him for a heartbeat, not when his soul was so crushed the sorrow was pouring down the Treeis bond in waves of agony. Whatever words he couldn’t say, I could feel, and my heart burned for him.
With trembling fingers, Archer reached into his pocket and pulled out one of his coins. He pressed it into his father’s palm, curling the cooling fingers around it. “When you see her, tell Harlow I kept my promise. I learned to be brave.” He squeezed his father’s hand around the coin. “And tell her… tell her to hug you extra tight for me. For all the hugs I should have given you.”
“I promise,” Aldus whispered.
The words faded with his last breath, his hand going slack in Archer’s grip. For a moment, everything was perfectly, devastatingly still. Then Archer’s face crumpled, a sound of pure anguish tearing from his throat as he bent over his father, his forehead pressing against Aldus’s temple, unable to pull him close with the blade between them.
“Please,” he begged, his tears falling onto his father’s face. “I still have so much to tell you.” His words dissolved into broken sobs. “I never got to show you the view from the bell tower. Or teach you how to play cards properly. Or tell you that I forgave you. That I understood. Please, please come back.”
I reached for him, my own tears falling freely, but he was already lifting his head. His grief-stricken expression hardened as his eyes locked on to Willard’s frozen form, that self-satisfied smirk still etched on his face.
The temperature seemed to drop as Archer gently laid his father down. When he stood, there was nothing left of the man who’d laughed over lunch just hours ago. In his place stoodsomeone I’d never seen before, someone forged in the same fire that had taken both his sister and his father.
“Time to wake up, Wee Willy,” he said softly, and the ice in his voice made my blood run cold.
Archer moved with terrifying grace, his fingers wrapping around the hilt of the blade in his father’s chest. He pulled it free with a sound that would haunt my nightmares, the metal scraping against bone as his father’s body settled against the cobblestones. The blade dripped red as he crossed to Willard, each step measured, deliberate. His face hardened until there was no light left in the eyes of my best friend.
“Archer,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure what I wanted. Certainly not to stop him.
