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“What the hell are you doing?” Caia-Lu demands. She’s in a hut, a hut like she had at D’Elinous. No, we are in it. I’m here too. I lift my hand and stare at my skin—and it’s not glowing red. It’s normal and—
“Kacey, are you even listening to me?” Caia-Lu snaps, her face an angry red. She grabs me by the shoulders. Her touch is hot. “I had to save you and...”
But I can’t focus on her words. They’re too fast, and there’s more pressing things. Like how I’m in this hut now. And how it doesn’t feel right.
“Is... is this the New World?” My eyes widen and my breaths come too quickly. The reset. It didn’t work.
“I had to pull you here, and I wasn’t ready—it’s got the be the right time for that, Kacey! Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You’re in the New World. And you shouldn’t be. Your Rijikarii needs to stay in the mortal world. I told you this.” Caia-Lu shakes me. “The Rijiikarii must stay there in the perfect balance and the world must be stable before you leave it, else how can the Seventh One win the war for us?”
“She’s alive still, the Seventh One?”
“Yes, and she needs you alive. Not you killing yourself.”
“I wasn’t trying to die,” I whisper, and I think I’m telling the truth. The truth as I know it. “I was trying to reset the time loop.”
“You foolish, foolish child.”
The New World. I blink. It’s got to be bigger than one hut. Is it exactly like our world—or exactly like it would’ve been if the Enhanced hadn’t developed, if no augmenters had ever been created over four hundred years ago. Because this is a land just for Untamed. And maybe this is D’Elinous. An alternate version of it. An alternate reality. Is that what happens when we die and the Untamed send us off to the New World? We cross to an alternate reality?
My heart pounds. “Shweta. Is Shweta here? Oh Gods, we didn’t send her off. I told Maggot that we—”
“Shweta is not here,” Caia-Lu says.
She didn’t make it? I stare, aghast, at Caia-Lu.
“Shweta isn’t dead,” she says. “The Enhanced have her and you need to get her back.”
My mouth dries.
“Not dead?” My words hang heavy.
And we left her.
No. Maggot made me leave her. Maggot left her.
“So I can go back?” I whisper. My heart pounds. A rescue mission, that’s what we need to do.
“Yes,” Caia-Lu says. “Go back before the God of Death has realized what you’ve done. And for the Gods’ sake, stop the time loop before it stretches and traps any more people in it. Because you’ve only got a small timeframe now, Kacey. Once it’s too big, there’s no going back. The Seventh One can only use your power if you’re in the same timeline as her. And she’ll only have one shot. Make sure you’re there.”