Discord's Apple

Evie found the flashlight and went to the Storeroom. The box, he’d said. Which box? She didn’t have a clue. The room was a jumble of antiques and knickknacks, forgotten museum pieces. Lore and treasures. Her mother’s writing was still on the shelf, as if it held some magic other than memories.

Alex had stopped at the threshold. He was almost laughing, hysterical, when he said, “I still can’t go in there.”

She shook her head, clearing it of a sudden certainty that Alex belonged here if she wanted him to be here. The power of this place was hers.

“Alex.” She went to him and reached out her hand. “Sinon. I think you belong here. You fell out of time, didn’t you? Like everything else here. An artifact of legend, forgotten by the myths.?

?

He wore a strange, distant smile. “Forgotten, eh? Dante wrote a place for me in hell. Shakespeare used my name. I became a metaphor for treachery. But—if I could change the past, I wouldn’t. Not a minute of it,” he said with a frantic edge. “The past brought me here.”

When he wouldn’t take her hand, she took his, so they were connected across the threshold. “They all thought you died, and you didn’t. You belong here.”

“Moros maruma moo emetrei. . . .”

She narrowed her eyes, inquiring.

“It’s something Cassandra said. Fate has measured out my thread . . . to a frayed end. I’d forgotten.” He squeezed her hand.

She pulled him into the Storeroom.

He looked at her; then he looked around. “Gods, this place is unreal.”

Merlin waited outside the Storeroom. Arthur was at the top of the stairs. He scurried down a few more steps when the sound of wood and metal groaned above them, crashing with the noise of destruction.

“The house is collapsing!” Arthur called.

“We should hurry,” Alex said.

“But I don’t know what to do.” She looked around. There was something she was supposed to save. Something more important than the end of the world itself.

On top of a crate, she found a neatly folded leather bag. The bag was part of this. It had been here from the beginning.

She was on the verge of knowing.

Alex stared at the lyre on the shelves. His hand paused an inch or two from touching it. He clenched a fist and drew away. “It reminds me of someone,” he said when he caught her watching him.

Next he turned to the rack of weapons. He pointed, his hand shaking a little. “I might need a sword,” he said softly. “Could I have this one?”

It wasn’t the best sword on the rack, dull and bronze-looking, ancient and stubby compared with some of the more impressive broadswords around it. She expected the odd voice to resist. But it didn’t argue.

“Sure,” she said. “Take it.”

His face lit with wonder. “Apollo gave me this sword.”

The room had never mentioned that. When he came to the door wanting something, she could have given him this.

But it wouldn’t have killed him, and that was what he wanted.

Then the voice flared, screaming. She screamed to match it and fell, her knees striking the concrete, her hands at her temples.

And she knew that her father was dead. In that moment, she knew everything else as well. Everything she needed.

Alex was at her side, holding her. Heart pounding, she said, “Help me find it. We’ve got to find it. A box. A small box.” She showed dimensions with her hands.

She shoved aside a stack of folded banners and a pile of reptilian scales the size of her hands. She listened to the voice whispering you’re getting close.

“My lady, you’d best hurry,” Merlin called from the next room.