Chapter 24

"Killian." The shock flashed through Emma like an electrical current, feeding on itself and growing stronger, liquefying her bones, clenching around her heart. All the obvious questions – about how he could possibly have survived, how he could even be here, whether this was some sort of simulacrum or delusion tricked up by Jafar to ensure her commitment to the cause – bubbled to her lips, then died aborning. She could only stare at him, not looking a day older than when they had marched him in chains to the gallows by the Thames, and he, ever defiant, had blown sarcastic kisses to the women and offered succinct and obscene gestures to the men. As she had been struggling furiously, desperate to get to his side, to have one last farewell – their final kiss ripped apart by the guards as she screamed and fought them, a cuff over the cheek knocking her half-senseless as they warned they could still kill her too – seeing his silhouette against the sun as they slipped the noose around his neck, and then the sound – the crack and thump of the trapdoor, the snap of the rope, and the way the breath went out of the crowd all at once, and then all that was left was silence. She couldn't, would not believe it, and yet she said it again. "Killian?"

"Swan." He scratched behind his ear and glanced away, oddly diffident. "It's confusing – I'm still not sure what happened, exactly. It was something that bloody Jafar did, once he got hold of the bottles – he changed things, altered our realities. I'll try to explain later, but right now – "

"What are you talking about? What bottles?" Emma's fingers twitched, missing the old, familiar weight of her derringer. It occurred to her that instead of being sent by Jafar, he could be some deceitful manifestation of the enemy, something triggered by the protective spells around Buckingham Palace. "Killian – you're dead, I watched you die. You can't be – "

He flinched. "No, love, look. Jafar created false memories for you, and God knows what else. I don't know what he told you to do, but come on – I've got the compass, we might be able to – "

"Stop. Stop talking." Emma held out her hands, backing away from him, stealing a look over her shoulder to see whether the guards had taken an interest – an eventuality which would be either very good or very bad – but no one had. "After fifty years, you suddenly reappear right when I – "

Killian blinked, frowned, then stared at her, as if only now realizing the fact that she was a stately matron of over seventy, hair silvered and face lined, still slim and elegant and sharp as a knife, but hardened and worn and turned to solid steel. For a moment, even though he had to be some sort of illusion, she quailed at his regard, waiting for him to see only a shadow and a wraith of the woman he had loved, but instead he just kept gazing at her, drinking her up with his eyes, undone and divine. Finally he said softly, "You look just as beautiful, love."

Emma bit her lip, unsure how to respond – were defensive-nexus conjurations usually this convincing? She ached to touch him, to put both hands on his chest, to fold herself into him – but then he really might fade away like morning dew, and selfishly, she wanted to keep him here a bit longer, just a bit. No matter what he was. "You haven't changed at all."

"Should I have?" A hint of that crooked, flirtatious smile, and it made her stomach turn over. "Now, I don't know precisely what you know, or think, or even what you're doing here – but as I said, we need to get away. Somewhere it's safe. I doubt we have much time."

Emma glanced back up the steps of the palace, not entirely willing to trust just yet. She still had the poison. It would be safer that way, more straightforward. But even as much as she wanted it, and knew that if she turned away now there would be far greater consequences to face with Jafar later, she couldn't quite bring herself to lose Killian – whatever phantom of him this was – one more time. It couldn't hurt to find out why. Put a silver throwing star through his heart if it was one of the darker breeds of creature from the underworld (almost stamped out these days, but one could never count out the reemergence of some very deep-buried sleeper cell). It was worth the risk.

"All right," she said after a moment. "We need to find somewhere we won't be interrupted, though. The – " She hesitated, wondering if this version of Killian knew or could be trusted with this information. "The Club?"

He gave her a strange look, then coughed, cheeks turning pink. "The Hellfire Club? Aye."

"Well then." Emma made an impatient gesture with one gloved hand. "Let's get on with it."

Killian still seemed to have something caught in his throat, judging by his intermittent coughing as they unobtrusively circled out of sight of the party and the imperious tall black-furred hats of the guards, bobbing here and there among the crowd like ambulatory beavers. Not willing to catch a trolley or a cabriolet in case Jafar had them watched, Emma instead sketched quickly with her hands, pulling open a hole in the air, rimmed in silver fire. She shooed Killian into it, then ducked in after him, pulling the threads of magic closed behind them.

A brief sensation of immense pressure later, as the world rippled and dissolved and then reshaped into a narrow dark lane several miles away from Buckingham Palace, they stepped out beneath the swinging shingle of the Hellfire Club. It gave Emma a turn to see it; she had rarely ventured here in the years since she had lost Killian, too assailed by the memories. Had left the underworld behind as well, blaming them for the betrayal. But somehow she was stepping up to the door, whispering the password that came as quickly to her lips as if it had just been weeks, or days, since she left. Then it creaked open, shading a dim path into the heart of hell – yet now, here, like this, it must be a dark and sweet and terrible heaven.

The taproom was crowded with those who had a very different sort of New Year's celebration in mind than the rest of London, and they glanced up suspiciously at Emma and Killian's entrance – but she had thought to work a quick glamour to make their features unrecognizable, not wanting the tale of the Prime Minister's assassin and a dead pirate spotted together to spread. Hence, they crossed the floor unmolested to one of the private booths at the back; moth-eaten velvet upholstery and intricate mahogany wainscoting, absinthe-green lamp swinging from a chain and casting eerie drowned light over them both as they slid in. It caught on the cruel curve of his hook as he laid it on the table with a solid-sounding thunk, and she had to clench her fists to stop herself from reaching over, taking his face in her hands, and kissing the breath out of him then and there. "So," she said tersely. "Talk."

Killian regarded her face for a long moment, as if searching for the right words. Then he said, "Why do you work for Jafar?"

"What? I – I have to. After you died, and he became Prime Minister – "

"When did he become Prime Minister?"

"I – " The answer flashed automatically to Emma's lips, then faltered as she realized she had no idea what it was. "I don't. . . I don't remember."

Killian's expression might have held a glimmer of satisfaction, but he didn't stop to rest on his laurels. "And then, the rest of it. . . when did you – did you decide you were. . ." He paused, as if picking his way around an excruciatingly delicate subject. "Fond of me?"

Emma frowned at him, unsure what he was getting at. "How does that help?"

"I just. . . in whatever other timeline I was in, when I remembered that I couldn't remember when we'd become intimate, or indeed why you would have the time of day for me. It was knowing that wasn't really you, that if it was wrong about you it was wrong about everything. . . you were the center of it. And that just. . . unraveled all the lies at once."

"What – are you saying that you knew that – wherever you were was a lie because you knew I didn't – " She faltered on the word, cursed her cowardice, forced it through her lips. "Because you knew I didn't love you?"

If he flinched, it was imperceptible. His voice remained calm, but his eyes dropped to the scarred surface of the table. "Aye."

Emma remained still, not sure how to react. She couldn't tell him it was false, as she had no idea what of anything was. And even more terrifyingly, she could not tell him if it was true. But there was the fact that if she had known she didn't love him, that should undo her false memories as his had been. If he was devoted to her but convinced it was not reciprocated. . . if she had been artificially made to love him, that should be the pivot on which this all turned. Yet it did not. She must, it must be true, without a single drop of interference from Jafar, and so she could not break through. She had lost this time, all of it, all of him, and there was no chance of getting it back.

"Love?" Killian's voice had gone soft, uncertain, as he reached toward her, as if about to caress her chin with his thumb. She jerked back from the gesture, badly unsettled, and saw the briefest flash of pain and disappointment on his face, just as swiftly gone. "Em – Emma?"

"I don't know." She kept her voice tightly controlled. "What am I supposed to remember?"

"Your boy? Henry?"

She laughed, dry as dust. "Henry's dead. He was killed in the Boer War. Years ago. Unless you're going to tell me that he's not either?"

"Well, I can't swear as to what sort of time he may be currently having, but he was alive the last I knew. We all were. We'd found you and Jafar in the shadow world, but Henry had brought the third of the bottles he needed to change time, control the laws of magic. Hence how we ended up trapped in our separate realities, after he did so. I found you with this." He held up a heavy golden compass, beveled crystal face glinting in the low light. "It's the fake compass you stole from me once. Jafar has the real one, and they're connected. It's how he plans to navigate himself back to the correct time once he's finished whatever charming little plot he has in train here. That's why we need to find him first, and take it. With this – " he tapped the fake – "I could travel to where the real one is, but I can't go back from whence I came. So – "

"So if we couldn't get the real one back from Jafar, we'd be stuck here, in this time." A stab of fear went through Emma. She couldn't decide if it would be worse if he was lying, or if he was telling the truth. If she did belong to another reality where Henry was alive, where she was young, where everything was not yet lost, but –

"Are you there?" she asked levelly. "In this time you want to take me back to?"

He paused. "Aye," he said after a moment. "I'm there. What you want to make of it – well, that's your decision, of course."

Emma was quiet. She couldn't think of another reason why he would have risked chasing her across time and space, knowing that failure meant there was no way home – unless, God help her, he was serious. She looked at her hand, lying close to his on the table, yet not quite touching. She remembered the times they would meet here in secret, how difficult she had always made it for him to get close to her, but how that was only an act, a carefully choreographed masque to how the night would always end: in one of the beds upstairs, gasping and thrusting and kissing, sweat-dewed skin in the candlelight, bodies entwined in silhouette against the wall. But had that happened either, or was it like the philosopher Plato's allegory of the cave, the shadows that were only a fleeting, distorted glimpse of a deeper reality, never to be found by the cave-dwellers while they lived? Only imagined, only faded?

There was only one way to find out. Had to put her life in his hands, or at least the one of them available. And if she died, well. . . she'd lived long enough with half a soul that the prospect no longer seemed very frightening. She had only to guard herself against hope. There were too many ways this could go wrong. Yet the price, it seemed, was worth it.

"All right," she said abruptly, and stood up. "Let's find Jafar."

Easier said than done. London was still awhirl with gaiety and celebrations, drunken revelers tottering on the sidewalks or sliding down walls to snore (best hope they weren't run over by the milkman's wagon in the morning). Fireworks kept going off overhead in coruscations of colorful light and noise, so that they had to hold hands to avoid being separated in the crush. Emma consciously reminded herself of the sensation, in case she never got to feel it again. For his part, he seemed to be considerate of her aged knuckles, not grasping too tightly, although his thumb absently caressed the back of her hand. She ordered herself not to be distracted by it, keeping all her senses on alert for any passing trace of magic. She knew that Jafar had planned for the dinner he was attending with the rest of the Government to be blown up, thus conveniently positioning himself as the sole survivor – but since she had shirked on her portion of the mission, might he have sensed something awry and sped to Buckingham to try to accomplish it in her place? Or turned to something else altogether?

It would have to be Buckingham, Emma decided. She could at least warn the Queen of a plot against her life, or tell her not to be fooled when Jafar made his move for martyrdom. She sped up, dragging Killian behind her like a caboose, and found a side alley where she could open the magical doorway without being noticed. A few moments later, they stumbled out before the lit-up gates of the Palace, the festivities clearly proceeding unabated inside, and she shot a small spell at the guards to make them pivot in opposite directions like a pair of nutcrackers. Nutcrackers – that pricked at something in her memory, some wisp of something, a winter night in Prague – but she didn't have time to recollect the rest of it. They ran through, up the steps, under the chandeliered foyer, and into the ballroom beyond.

At once, a tide of sensory overload hit them from all sides: heat and light, the valiant sawing of the orchestra, the hum of cognoscenti conversation in half a dozen European languages, white-gloved butlers weaving expertly through the rush to offer a glass of champagne or a delicately adorned truffle. Ambassadors strutted like peacocks with chests full of medals, while great ladies flirted and fluttered behind decoupage fans. At the front, the short, stout, matronly figure of the Queen held pride of place – Victoria having put aside her customary black mourning for the occasion, gowned instead in brilliant crimson taffeta. The aether lamps sparkled on the fat diamonds of her state crown, and a serving boy was just sidling up, bowing all the while, to offer her a drink. Victoria reached for it, and Emma put on a burst of speed, flinging herself across the final space between them. "Your Majesty, no!"

Victoria looked up, startled, just as Emma tackled the serving boy and sent the drink spinning to the floor in a shriek of shattered crystal. The landing hurt considerably, as it would smashing elderly bones into solid marble, and she wondered if she'd broken her hip. Still, she gathered herself enough to roll over and gasp, "No. Your Majesty, don't. There is – there is a plot against your life."

The Queen stared at her, blinking like a small and stunned owl – though in and of itself this news could not have been remarkable; she had survived enough assassination attempts in her earlier days for the press to make something of a running joke of it. "Lady Emma? What on earth is the meaning of this? We are confused."

"I know," Emma panted, pushing herself to hands and knees with a grimace, even as Killian darted in to lift her up, holding onto her waist. "Tonight – they – the Prime Minister. He means to have you dead."

An aghast gasp followed these words, followed by an uneasy hush. The elite of Britain had never trusted Jafar, but they had also had no choice – when had he become Prime Minister? Apparently never, if the tale Killian was telling was true. This was some twisted magical deviation of his, a plot to seize supreme power, and it had come very close to succeeding, if it hadn't already. "Jafar?" spluttered one assorted luminary, some earl or duke or something of the sort, almost popping his monocle and spitting out his cigar. "How dare he think to – "

Victoria's lips went thinner than usual, but her voice remained calm. "What evidence do you have of this, Lady Emma?"

"I know because I – " Wincing, fighting the stabbing pains that kept traveling up her left leg, Emma steadied herself with Killian's help. "I was supposed to be part of it. Your Majesty, I don't know, I can't explain it myself, but – this isn't how things are supposed to be. Jafar has altered time somehow, manipulated all of us like pieces on a chessboard. Tell me, when did he become Prime Minister?"

Victoria, looking indignant, opened her mouth – then closed it, frowning. "Be that as it may, we do not understand why you have ambushed us in such a – "

At that moment, a second horrified murmur circled the ballroom, as the doors flew open and a ragged, limping, bloodied figure stumbled in from the night, the masses drawing back as if at the parting of the Red Sea. "Your Majesty!" Jafar's impeccably sleek black curls had come loose, frizzed and soot-stained, as he lurched forward and fell to his knees before the queen, pressing her beringed hand humbly to his lips. "Oh, tell me that I am not too late!"

Victoria shot a baffled glance at Emma, then back at Jafar. Belatedly, she recovered herself enough to speak. "Prime Minister, what is the meaning of this?"

"Only that I beg you, do not trust her." Jafar raised a hand and pointed directly at Emma, damning as the sword of Damocles. "We all know what she is. A liar, a thief, an assassin, who has seen more men into an early grave than one would care to count. It is only by Providence that I myself have escaped an attempt on my life tonight – as you can see." He indicated the shambles of his frock coat, the blood running down from a deep gash on his temple. "We were at supper, myself and the ministers of your Cabinet, the Fellows of the Royal Society, when. . . please, please do hurry. Send the fire brigade. Some of them may still be alive under there."

Victoria went pale. She seemed to be searching for the right words when Emma pulled herself free of Killian's protective embrace. Took a step, winced again, but her leg held up. Slowly and methodically as one of the automaton soldiers that had been in production, a weapon that Jafar promised could win all of the world's wars without another loss of a human life, she advanced across the floor toward him. "You."

"Stop!" With commendable theatricality, Jafar threw up both hands, cowering as if in actual fear of her. "Come no nearer, witch!"

Emma almost laughed. She shucked back her tight sleeves, stripped off her lacy evening gloves. Could almost glimpse whatever it was she was supposed to remember, could almost see. Not quite – but enough, and she would trust Killian for the rest of it. "This ends. Now."

"There is no end to your brazenry. Threatening me before the Queen, before the entire court, on the occasion of her New Year's party, when your foul designs almost succeeded in murdering me?" Jafar rolled back his cuffs as well, flexing his fingers in their black leather gloves. "And oh my – what is this? A pirate? Guards! Seize him!"

At once, several red-jacketed stalwarts broke off and started forward – then stopped in their tracks as Killian drew his sword with a ringing scrape, turning in a slow, deliberate circle. "I don't want to hurt any of you," he informed them. "So don't come any closer."

"Stop this at once!" Victoria looked bug-eyed at the effrontery, the way her cultured soiree was quickly devolving into mayhem. "We are most displeased with all of you – see if we don't – "

"Terribly sorry, Your Majesty." Jafar almost did look truly penitent. "But the Black Swan is right. This does, in fact, end."

And with that, fast as a striking cobra, he flung out both hands, pushing a titanic, broiling current of magic in front of him – but Emma had been watching him, intent for the slightest change, and she shifted stances, threw out her own hands, and blocked it, countering fast enough that Jafar actually had to duck. She could feel the pulsating golden current sizzling through her bones, imbued with an elegance and a strength it had never had before. You made a mistake, she thought at him. You made me too powerful, and you tried to make me serve you. But you're wrong. You won't. You can't. You need me, and now, I rise.

They traded blows almost too fast for the naked eye to follow, the heat and crackle of competing magical currents growing stronger and stronger, shattering and reverberating, until Emma could almost grasp the memory of another sorcerer's duel – at another party, this one in Monaco, between Jafar and someone else – Gold? But that was a distraction, and not one she could afford. She needed all her attention on the clash, drawing on every drop of magic she knew, every sort of arcane spellwork, blocking and parrying, the two of them all but completely evenly matched. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Killian trying to get the party guests out of range, lessening the chances that one of them would catch an errant fatal blow upside the head. Yet no matter how much he pulled at her, Victoria remained rooted to the spot, watching the duel with almost mesmeric attention. It must indeed be something, to understand at last the true nature of the vipers you had taken to your bosom.

Emma could feel her arms starting to tremble, her shields no longer as quick and well-crafted as before. If she was even ten years younger, she could have kept this up all night, but she was, after all, over seventy, and the pain radiating from her smashed hip was making her nauseous. She had to duck one of Jafar's assaults and then another, smashing in lethal fractures across the marble; it caught a page boy and felled him immediately. No – she had to keep this contained, couldn't risk accidentally assassinating half of London. Had to.

With one final glance back at Killian to assure herself he was still alive, Emma threw all her effort into a detonation sphere – expanding outwards in a rush, eating up light and noise and motion and time itself, until she and Jafar were face to face, no more than a few feet apart, as the world froze solid around them, and an eerie hush descended. The golden-fire edges of her sphere oscillated and quivered as she fought to keep it whole, as she advanced on Jafar and spread her arms. "I bring my hands together," she panted, "this crushes you. Unless – you give me – the compass."

"Oh?" Jafar was out of breath as well, struggling to maintain his usual suave demeanor, but at this, he managed a gasping chuckle. "That's what this is about, my dear? This?"

With that, he reached into the breast pocket of his torn jacket and pulled it out, dangling on its chain, somewhat scuffed and cracked but otherwise operable. "You want this, do you?" he went on. "Your only hope of finding your way back to your own reality, and not being trapped forever in this one? An old woman with nothing and no one to live for?"

"Yes." Emma forced her hands together, constricting the sphere, and Jafar grimaced as he began to feel the pressure of it, bending and warping dimensions inward, down to a core of absolute nothing. He couldn't conjure a competing one, already trapped inside this one, and Emma's heart lurched with mad, wild hope. "Now," she repeated. "Give it. And I'll – spare – your – life."

Jafar laughed. "Spare my life?" He was perspiring freely with the effort of holding off the sphere, flickering hungrily around his legs. "That's what you'll do?"

"Yes."

"Very well." He held out the compass, flat in his palm. "Take it."

Emma hesitated, certain that it couldn't, wouldn't be this simple – but at the same time, desperate to believe that it was, would be. She reached for it – let her attention slip from the sphere for the barest moment –

Quick and deadly as a panther, Jafar sprang, battling through the unfocused, deadly magic of the detonation, and slammed her arms together, so the center lost hold and crumpled into nothing, tearing through the fabric of the world down past absolute zero, into blackness and unbeing. Then he threw the compass into the void, and Emma's heart shriveled into a freezing fist as she could do nothing but watch it plunge. In another instant the nothing caught hold of it, and it did not merely explode – it was wiped from existence altogether, as if it had never been.

"NO!" Emma did not know if that was her, if she'd thought it, if she'd spoken it aloud – if it was merely the universe itself screaming out its defiance, as her last chance of returning to her old life disappeared before her eyes. The weight of her years crashed down on her, the knowledge of losing Henry forever, of losing Killian – of never even having a chance to find her family, as all at once the memories avalanched loose. Lady Regina and the enchanted, sleeping people in her vault, Killian's insistence that they were hers – Elsa, Prague, Will Scarlet, the contract she had signed binding her to Gold, the zeppelin, Neal, Jafar murdering him, the shadow world and Blackbeard –

Gone. Gone. Gone. It screamed through her, twisting like a frozen blade. She fell, the abyss still roaring and sucking eagerly just a few feet from her, and the detonation sphere went out with a sound like a thunderclap. She landed on her back, skidding in a streak of blood across the marble, silver hair haloed around her. She lay inert, beaten, broken, an old woman waiting for the end, without even the strength for one last defiance.

Gasping and coughing himself, pressing his pocket handkerchief to a spreading crimson wound in his side, Jafar limped toward her. His eyes were utterly inhuman, as if they reflected the gate into the netherworld that still stood open, sucking in party favors and ladies' shawls and spare bits of detritus, black tendrils curling out eagerly in search of more prey. If it was not stopped, if it was not closed, it would devour everything, collapse the entire foundations of the world in on itself – but she couldn't. It was over. Done. She'd fought and fought, and lost.

"Good people of Great Britain," Jafar announced, spreading his arms wide to encompass the huddled, silent masses – no longer frozen by the detonation sphere's time-stopping effects, but as motionless as if they were. "Please do behold, once and for all, the fate of traitors."

With no further ado, he raised his hands, preparing for the death blow. Emma could only watch and wait for it, merely waiting for it to crash down on her and for it all to end. But then, the swirling black maw of the abyss did something strange. It twisted, quivered, and contorted on itself, as if trying desperately to spit out something roiling in its innards. And it occurred to Emma in a mad flash that if the compass, when Jafar tossed it into the nothing, had guided itself back exactly where it was supposed to go –

She had no further time to consider the ramifications, because at that moment, with an echoing, rendering explosion, the blackness tore apart and something huge, something monstrous, lumbered out. Emma's dazzled eyes could not register, could only take in the sense of enormity – until she saw the misshapen clay head brushing against the high ceiling of the ballroom, breaking off chandeliers that tumbled like falling stars, spraying crystalline Faberge droplets everywhere. Had a sense of ice and snow whirling past it. The golem. The creature of clay and blood that Jafar had woken in Prague, that they had tried to stop but not in time. If it was here now, if the compass had torn straight back through to their original reality –

Emma propped herself on an elbow, coughing blood, staring in disbelief as a tiny, slender figure appeared behind the golem, driving it on, the whirls of winter howling and swirling around her. Elsa. Elsa must have seized control of the beast, and when the portal opened, driven it through. The two competing realities were grinding against each other like ships too closely anchored, buckling plate and popping rivets, until one of them would be snuffed out for good. And so –

Finding some last reserve of strength, Emma staggered to her feet. "ELSA!" She battled her way through the tempest, closer and closer, feeling the pull of the altering realities on her – she could look down and see her hands aged and wrinkled one moment, then smooth and young the next, as her frail mortal body struggled not to be torn apart by the power of the elemental forces, trying to take into account who she was supposed to be in each of the timelines. "ELSA!"

The Queen of Norway looked up, saw her, and stared as if visited by a ghost. But she wasted no more time, flinging out her hand, and Emma snatched it, feeling a flare of power jolt through her. She joined it to her own, and the two of them held tightly as the magic scoured in waves through the darkened ballroom, the outlines of Buckingham Palace itself beginning to warp and distort and bend in, like the false reality – Killian's memory – that she had freed herself and him from in the depths of St. Vitus Cathedral. Killian – where was he, where was he? But she couldn't look, couldn't do anything except focusing on driving the golem on, advancing step by thunderous step toward the lone figure of Jafar. Take him. Take. Him.

Jafar raised his arms over his face, trying frantically to work a defensive spell against the beast that he himself had brought to life, but the tendrils of abyss clinging to the golem kept snuffing it out. The clay giant reached him, swept one three-fingered hand out, and lifted him kicking into the air, hauling him back toward the open gate, as Emma and Elsa ran after them. The closer they got, the more Emma could feel herself pulled and reshaped like warm clay, melting back to who she was supposed to be – but she didn't know if she was strong enough to pass through and emerge alive on the other side. Killian. Killian! Killian! Where are you? Where are you?

Everything beyond their immediate vicinity was a blur, but she thought she could see an indistinct black shape, running toward the gate with them. I'm not going home without you. She took as much of her power away from the control of the golem as she dared, reaching out to ensnare the figure – pulled it close, wrapped them all up together as the palace began to collapse in earnest, and jumped.

The ground rocked and shivered and shook. The stone fell in thudding chunks of dust and mortar. The palace groaned and shifted and kept on collapsing, the rubble blocking out the stars, as Anna, Robin, Regina, and Henry stared at the scene of absolute destruction, the whirling void of nothing that had opened up when the compass came tumbling through. It was as if time had started again, as if they had been frozen in place, awake but not awake – until then. Perihelion. The moment of creation, of salvation – or utter and complete destruction.

When at last the thundering stopped, silence reigned absolute, louder and louder and louder until it was almost crushing as the tumult had been. They stared at the debris, desperate to know who if anyone was underneath it, if Elsa had made it to the alternate timeline and back – if she had found Emma and Killian, if it was a mad gamble, if Jafar had escaped, and now was stronger than ever. But there was no sign of life. Nothing anywhere.

Nobody said a word. They could not. Remained motionless, entranced. Until they heard a crunch behind them, and then another, as in footsteps. Turned all at once, and beheld a strange apparition, clothed in trailing linen bandages like an Egyptian mummy escaped from the tomb, pulling them off his face and swearing with every step, until he noticed them and seemed as stunned to see them as they were him. Chips of clay cracked off his boots, but he himself was flesh and bone. Came to a halt and stared, rubbing his eyes as if to be sure they did not mislead him after days of disuse – but in fact, they did not.

"Jesus organ-grinding Christ," Will Scarlet said, surveying the wreckage. "What the bloody hell did I miss?"