Parallel World

XVIII. Angel

AS THEY STEPPED ONTO the platform that led to the station doors, Angel let her eyes linger on the ice that decorated the stony steps and the sharp golden knobs on the pine-colored doors. Blocks of ice were wedged between each stone like checkered tile, trailing from the station's entrance all the way to the stairwell.

As Arkin pushed open the heavy door, a cool breeze blew directly in Angel's face, forcefully pushing her medium-length black hair awry. There had been a time when her hair had run all the way down her spine—just like Nylie's—but she had spitefully chopped it in half when she had been mistaken with her sister twice in the same day. She shoved it roughly from her eyes, eager to see the train she had not laid eyes on in nearly two years.

A train made of both glass and ice, the Alamain stood proudly at the end of the station. It was slim and sleek, its body so long that Angel could hardly see where it ended. The seats were decorated of sapphire and gold, the two colors dancing throughout the interior, the ceiling painted in various patterns of mint green.

There were no separate cars, only a large one with the capacity to seat at least two hundred people. There was nothing but a raised platform beside it for people to enter and leave through the gates. There were no tracks beneath it; the Alamain rode purely on its own magic, a floating train.

What intrigued Angel the most was how the sky stood behind it, forever frozen at 6:38 Q.M.—the Quarter Moon—right when the Sun would have set. But the Sun and Moon had mysteriously vanished that day, leaving not a trace as to where they might have gone. It was a mirrored reflection of what had happened in Paravald, only three years prior.

The sky had stayed frozen for the past 14 years. With no Sun to set the sky, with no Moon to turn the tides, the world had stopped, the clock along with it.

But it was strange how only Windham had been affected. Paravald and Wayward had carried on, as if unaware that they had left a part of themselves behind. Perhaps it was because it was the only territory that both worlds shared—the Mid Ring, they called it, for Windham being located right in the center of the two worlds.

Without the Sun and Moon, Windham would remain frozen. Five more days of this deconstructed time, and the world would crack under pressure, bits and pieces of itself floating around in an abyss with no purpose, no direction.

Not for the first time, Angel wondered for the well-being of Nylie and her friends, and if they had made any progress in finding the Aydar and the Asad. She sometimes found it hard to believe that the world would end in five days, because of two stubborn people she had the displeasure of knowing intimately—her mother and father.

If they don't work out their damn issues, Angel thought angrily, I'll kill them.

Her entire family was selfish, cruel, ruined from the inside out. Every single person. It was amazing, really, how each of them were all rotten in their own way. Even Tristen. Especially Tristen.

"I love it when you look like that," Arkin said, drawing Angel back from her thoughts.

"Look like what?" she said irritably.

"Like you're thinking about something too deep for the rest of us to understand."

Angel rolled her eyes. "Are we getting on this damn train, or what?"

"After you," he said mockingly.

"Don't give me that gentleman-ly bullshit," she said, not looking back as she stomped across the station and onto the train.

Paravald required a different Angel, someone she was no longer used to being. Cold and selfish. On a normal day, she was all of those things. But the place they were going now, Osinharo--Paravald's biggest city--it required her to be just like her sister.