Chapter 79 - The Fracture of the Line
"No," Lily said firmly.
She reached up, took the silver locket from around her neck, and held it out over the open railing of the trestle, directly above the four-thousand-foot drop.
"Lily! Don't!" Evelyn shrieked in sheer panic, lunging two steps across the icy ties, forgetting the gear mechanism, forgetting her threats, forgetting everything except the small piece of metal that held the key to the empire she had murdered for. "Don't you dare drop it! DON'T!"
"You wanted it so badly you tried to kill Julian," Lily said, her voice steady against the howling gale. "You tried to kill Mom. It’s not worth anything if it makes you like this."
Lily opened her hand.
The silver locket slipped from her palm.
"NO!" Evelyn lunged forward with a desperate, animal howl, throwing her entire body over the timber rail, her arms outstretched into the empty air, clawing at the falling speck of silver.
Her fingers brushed the metal chain—and in that fraction of a second, her momentum carried her center of gravity past the icy timber.
Her boots slipped on the glazed wood.
With a sickening crack, the rotten wood of the safety railing gave way under her weight.
Evelyn didn't scream. She slipped over the edge into the howling void, her red coat billowing out around her like the wings of a broken bird.
"EVELYN!" I screamed, dropping to my knees on the ties, sliding across the ice, my hands shooting out over the precipice.
My fingers caught the thick wool collar of her coat.
The sudden, violent jolt nearly ripped my arms from their sockets, dragging my upper body halfway over the edge of the trestle. The wind tore at us, threatening to peel us both off the mountain and cast us down into the frozen granite sea thousands of feet below.
Evelyn hung suspended above the abyss, spinning slowly in the gale. The silver locket was gone, swallowed forever by the infinite white fog below.
She looked up at me.
Her face was completely devoid of rage now. There was only the primal, naked terror of a human being staring into the face of death. Her bloody, frostbitten hands reached up, grasping my wrists with desperate, frantic strength.
"Claire..." she choked out, her voice barely a whisper against the roaring storm. "Don't let go... please... Claire... I’m your sister..."
"Hold on!" I screamed, tears freezing instantly on my cheeks as I pulled with everything I had left. My muscles tore; my ribs screamed in agony where she had bruised them. "Hold onto me!"
Lily fell to her knees beside me, grabbing the sleeve of my parka with both hands, anchoring her small body against the steel track, trying to pull us both back.
"I've got you, Evelyn!" I yelled. "Grab the rail!"
Evelyn reached for the broken timber support—but her fingers were too numb, too frozen to find purchase.
And then, through the shrieking blizzard, a heavy, rhythmic mechanical thrumming began to vibrate through the steel rails beneath our bodies.
*00:00.*
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The terminal countdown reached zero.
High above us, at the summit observatory, the secondary geothermal pressure release valves blew open with a deafening roar. A towering plume of superheated steam geysered into the freezing sky, illuminating the clouds with a brilliant, hellish crimson glow.
