”So that’s the end of the story?” I asked, the lace on the stolen dress suddenly felt like a burial shroud. “I stay here until I fade? Like the others?”
I thought of the loop of handwriting in the journal from 1924. I fear I am merely the weight that keeps him drowning. She hadn’t been a queen. None of us were.
Kaspar’s face was a mask of aristocratic calm, but his eyes were dark with an internal conflict. “That was the design. The mountain is a living thing. It doesn’t give its protection to the valley for free. It requires a human soul to anchor the magic. It needs someone to feed the stone with their desire and guilt…their very essence. I am the cage, but the queen is the lock.”
“And when the lock breaks?” I asked, my voice trembling. “When the woman…disappears?”
“Then the mountain
