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I don’t remember turning around. I’m just suddenly facing the opposite way. Facing Ysabelle. She’s close to me, three feet away. The same sharp gaze, pasty white skin. But her hair is a little different. It’s still flaming red, but now I’m up close I can see the silver hairs in it, how it makes parts look a little more strawberry blond, like Sian’s hair. And it’s dry too, so dry. Frizzy. Nothing like the glossy, voluminous waves it used to be. It looks frazzled, burnt.
She looks older, too, Ysabelle. Grooves in her skin. Grooves that dig deep around her eyes and that join the corners of her mouth to the edges of the bulbous end of her nose. Her eyes are still burning azure.
The child is with her. A child who’s about four or five years old. A child I don’t know. A child I who must have been born after the massacre.
“Hello, Kacey.” Ysabelle’s voice booms, loud and rich and dark and velvety, and it wraps around me and clings to me, just as it did back then.
The hairs on the back of my neck rise. I want to run. Every part of me is screaming this, but I don’t move. I just stare at her. Don’t even utter a hello.
“That’s her, isn’t it?” Maggot’s voice is low. I think there are others standing with her now. “Pass me the gun.”
“No,” Ysabelle says. “We need to end the time loop. And killing me doesn’t do that. Just makes it harder for you to do it. And I want to live,” she adds, as if it’s an afterthought.
I swallow hard. “How are you here? I killed you—before. Years ago.”
Her nostrils flare and her upper lip twitches. I see she’s missing a tooth, and seeing that—this imperfection—makes me feel stronger, better, like I’ve somehow got more power. “You left me dying, Kacey. There’s a difference. Make sure those you kill are actually dead before you flee.”
It... it wasn’t a massacre... I don’t kill.
No. I did.
The whole clan aren’t here. Just her and the child, who must’ve been born since. I still killed everyone else.
My breaths shudder across my whole body. “How did you survive?”
“Made a deal with a spirit,” she says. “Good job there was one around. Could only save two of us though—those who hadn’t already expired.”
Two of us.
“The Overlord Seer?” I turn my head, looking around. Of course, I saw him before. “Is he here too?”
“About half the time, when time is resetting.”
“So he’s not here now?” I breathe out hard.
“He got killed. Half the time, in this repetition of life, we see a lion. And it always goes for him. Leaving us, me and our baby.”
Baby.
My stomach recoils. This child is the offspring of Ysabelle and the Overlord Seer. A sibling for Iralda. Iralda who’s dead. Who I killed. Who the Beast killed. Who the spirit that Ysabelle consulted couldn’t save.
“Wait, what did you exchange with the spirit?” I ask. “For saving you and the Overlord Seer?”
For a moment, I don’t think Ysabelle is going to answer. She frowns and glares at me, giving me such a pointed look that practically says know your place. She never did like me asking questions. But then sighs.
“The birth of a future child.” She glances down at the child who’s with her. “Not this one. They said they’d claim the right one when he or she was born. And it was a week ago—well, no, it might be longer. I’ve been stuck in this time loop for months. It was a day before time went wrong, when he was born. The moment he was born, the spirits claimed him. Tore him apart.” She breathes out heavily. “I still hear his screams.”
Shweta’s frowning. “You made a deal with the spirits and when you fulfilled the deal, giving them your newborn, the time loop started?” She looks at me. “So who are we supposed to kill to end it?”
But before I can answer, Ysabelle cuts in. “No, it was the next day,” she corrects. “The time loop wasn’t part of it—someone else has done that. And who are you?”
“Shweta,” Shweta says. “And I’ve been in the time loop for months.”
“We need to break it,” Ysabelle says.
“But if you didn’t set it, we don’t know who to kill to do that,” I say. “We know if we kill the person, the time loop won’t hold.”
Ysabelle’s gaze falls on me. “The Overlord says it can be done another way. There was no chance of us finding the setter, so we consulted Marta’s Lore.”
“Marta’s Lore?”
“It’s Seer knowledge, deep knowledge,” Ysabelle says. “A Seer called Marta put together an archive that contains information, knowledge, secrets, and power. There, we found that a huge amount of dark, dangerous energy can overthrow a time loop and get rid of it. And that’s why we’ve been looking for you.”
I frown. “You’re talking about my Beast.” I wince, wishing I hadn’t said that. Being under Ysabelle’s steely gaze makes me want to distance myself from the creature inside me. To show that it’s not me. That I’m not it.
Ysabelle nods slowly, but her gaze isn’t on me. It’s slightly behind me. “It makes sense now, how you were able to get away from us. The world knew you’d be needed for this. You and the others.”
“The others?” I ask.
Ysabelle pushes the child—her child—in front of her. The four-year-old. “I’ve taught Lani how to conceal her Beast. She’s pretty good at it, given the Gods and Goddesses also chose her as a Seer. Not that there was any question of that, given her parentage.” Her tone is haughty.
My eyebrows shoot up. “You have a child who has the Beast?”
And I stare at the girl with the fire-red hair and try to send a Beast in her too. I cannot.
Ysabelle’s eyes darken. “All my children have Beasts. We taught them well, ensured they knew how to hide them.”
I inhale quickly. Iralda had a Beast, too? Iralda who painted my face with bison blood, to sacrifice me? To kill my Beast? And she had one herself. Anger ripples under my skin.
“I didn’t understand it then,” Ysabelle said. “I was scared. But I know now that it was for this moment. To get us out of this time loop.” She looks around. “Where’s your child?”
I stare at her. “I haven’t got a child.”
“But... but then we have a problem,” Ysabelle says. “The Overlord Seer says—or rather said, as it were this time—we need three Beasts to break the time loop. That’s why we had to find you. We had to bring you Lani, because he said there were two of you here. We assumed it was your child. You’re old enough to have one now.”
Yes. I’m twenty-one. Quite a few Untamed have children by this age—in the clansmen, it was encouraged as soon as the girl was able to sustain a pregnancy. They really focused on making their population viable, making it continue.
“We assumed the other Beast would be your child. That it runs in blood.”
“But it doesn’t with you,” I say. “You’ve given birth to more than one, if what you say is true. Yet you’ve not got a Beast.”
Ysabelle’s shoulders drop. “I assumed it would be your child.”
Shweta takes a deep breath. “Okay, so we need three Beasts. And now we’ve got two. So we just need to search for a third one, then we’re all set?”
Ysabelle nods.
“We don’t need to search for a third one,” I say. “I know where he is. We can just get him to work with us. Well, force him to work with us.”
“He won’t do it willingly?” Shweta asks. “I’m sure he would if we explain it all.”
Ysabelle nods. “Chances are he’s stuck in this time loop too. He’s going to want out of it.”
“We can’t assume anything about him,” I say. “He’s Enhanced. His name is Red.”