Waiting For Sunrise - The Books Of Beginning AU

48. Rupturing The Floodgates

"Have you been crying? I must say, you look dreadful. There's a mirror if you would like to go freshen up. Oh, and I do believe this is yours..."

The familiar glint of her locket flashed and then it was being passed to her. The metal was cool to the touch as Kate loped it around her neck. She felt numb. Her cheeks were still wet with tears and her whole body still trembled, as if the ghost of Clare's hug lingered in her skin. Kate wiped at her eyes and tried to push that thought, and all thoughts of her mother to the side. She was back on the boat, she reminded herself, and the children needed her.

"Let them go," she said quietly, even as she stood on shaking legs. 

"Hmm?" The Countess murmured, gliding across the cabin, holding the Atlas in a vice-like grip.

"Let them go," Kate repeated.

"Let who go?" The witch had carried the book to a desk on the opposite wall, and was flipping through its blank pages. She wore a hungry, almost ugly expression, so out of place on her unnaturally beautiful face.

"The children!" Kate snapped, new fear flooding her body. She had considered the possibility that the Countess might rescind on their deal - after all, it wasn't like the witch was a trustworthy person by any means - but she had hoped that the fiend's greed for the book, and the fact that killing or imprisoning the children would no longer be necessary or even practical once she had it, would make up for it. But now it seemed her worst fears were coming to pass anyways. "You said that you'd release them and leave once you had the book! Well now you have it, and it'd be so much easier to leave anyways, no one would come after you searching for revenge, and-"

The witch waved her hand and Kate's whole body went rigid. She was no longer able to speak, no longer to make her desperate arguments, appealing to the Countess's sense of self-preservation in the hopes that she could get the children free. She was simply frozen and helpless, watching as a slow, cruel smile spread across her enemy's face.

"To think, I now possess the Atlas of Time," the Countess gloated. "And it came to me when I had almost given up hope, when I was prepared to ride to oblivion with the town's miserable brats! My master is not one to take failure lightly -  there would be no mercy if I returned to tell him the book was lost and the townspeople had revolted. But now I have the Atlas, and that's all changed."

Her voice became serious as she trailed her fingers down one blank page, the gleam in her eye greedy and frightening. "I will not relinquish this power. Not even to him. I see that now. The Atlas is intended for me alone. It found me." She glanced up at Kate with a smirk and said, "of course, the dam will be destroyed and the children will still die. But it really is no more than they deserve. Tiresome place, Cambridge Falls..."

As she trailed off, humming a jaunty little tune and admiring the book now in her clutches, Kate felt sick. The witch was always going to kill the children, no matter if she succeeded or failed in acquiring the book. Even though doing so would anger people, would put a target on her back. Even though doing so made no sense, from a strategic standpoint. She was going to do it, simply because she was a horrible, vindicative person who lived to enrich herself while making others miserable. Kate should have known better, should have never thought such a person could be reasoned with.

Her eyes stung with tears she could not shed, for the magic holding her still prevented it. She thought of her brother and sister and she hoped with everything in her that they were safe, that if she died here - it certainly seemed as though she was going to - and if they never made it home, either to the Savages or their parents, that they would be cared for. They had to be, right? Gabriel wouldn't leave them alone in the world, he would protect them. And so would Dr. Pym, with all the power he possessed. He had to. For all the skepticism she had felt towards him in these past days, she now found herself pinning her hope on his magic, on King Robbie's integrity, on Gabriel's resilience. And she found herself begging destiny, or whatever force it was that might hold power over this world, that her desperate gamble didn't ruin their lives.