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Petersburg, 1657. Felt like an April 25th to me. The middle of the night, in a cold dark street. An alley between two brick buildings.
Moving through time was different from moving in space, like being reeled sideways rather than forward, except with seven other directions. Since I was following a trail of a specific time and a location, rather than a monumental instance like the memory that had brought me to Miro’s world, it was a little more delicate.
“Arms, fingers, toes, shoulders, head, feet, all here,” said Zander. Blayde echoed him.
“Arms, fingers, toes, shoulders, head, feet, James, all here,” I finished, taking a deep breath. Leaving the Dread’s influence was like curling up in a warm bed after a cold winter’s day. I felt ten kilos lighter.
“So, I’m an appendage now?” James grumbled under her breath.
“Well, do you have all of yours?” asked Blayde.
James made a show of counting her fingers. “There, happy?”
“Brilliant, Sally!” Zander lifted me into the air, swinging me around. “You really can find me anywhere.”
He was loving being this whole beacon-boyfriend thing. I kept smiling, if only to keep the rising bile inside. Here he was, all encouraging and gentle and trying to distract from the fact that everything was on my shoulders, all while I was keeping this massive secret from him, lying to him about where this ability came from. But I couldn’t face telling him the truth. Knowing something had scrambled my brain, had made me like Nimien...
“So, we’re here?” James asked, same energy as a kid asking if we did get a puppy.
“It’s definitely Earth,” said Blayde, turning up her nose. “Orange sky or no orange sky.”
Hold on—orange sky? I looked up, and sure enough, instead of velvety blackness, there was an orange tinge in the air. Maybe I had been off after all.
“How are you so sure?”
“The smell,” she replied. “Earth always smells the same.”
James inhaled deeply then let out a sharp, hacking cough. “Of piss and smoke?”
“Well, when I say smell, I would rather say reeks, but you know, I’m being polite. Anyway, no offense.”
Before I could say anything in our defense, the air was filled with screams.
The three of them immediately smoothed themselves against the wall, leaving me awkwardly delayed in joining them. Blayde peeked around the corner, zipping her head back as people marched past, dressed in their Puritan best. The hats, the tall black hats! What a relief to see the hats. It was all the confirmation I needed that I did good here.
“Well, at least we know we have the right time and place,” James said hesitantly, peeling herself from the shadows as the mob passed us by. “Do you think...?”
“1657.” I swallowed. “I can think of a few reasons for an angry mob.”
I stuck my head out of the alley, tentatively. The crowd was too busy marching to pay us any attention.
“Witches are here among us!” proclaimed a voice, uncomfortably familiar. Despite them speaking English, my translator seemed to have taken it upon itself to make them all sound as modern as anyone I knew. The device must have decided that a good rural accent was appropriate for these folks, and they all sounded like they should have their own TLC show.
But—witches. I sure had picked the wrong night to jump to. My hands clutched into fists. I knew about the horrors of our past, but there was a disturbing distance between knowing and actually witnessing them. What innocent girl had overstepped?
Something had had to have set them off.
Blayde was already gone, having slipped out of the alley directly into the crowd. Zander didn’t hesitate, following her without a second glance. James and I exchanged a few glances before following them.
The mob had come to a stop, congregated in an open square. Ahead of them, a man with an impossibly tall hat stood on a raised platform—a pyre. My heart clenched. No, this couldn’t be happening. They couldn’t seriously be...
The mob’s whispers were quickly silenced by the man clearing his throat.
“We have seen the work of the devil tonight,” he proclaimed. Did the tallness of his hat correlate with the importance of his stature? “Heresy! Joan Mason was consumed by flames in front of her own home—an act only possible by a witch.”
I took a breath. So they didn’t have an accused. At least there was that. But... a woman, consumed by flames? This was too close for comfort. My mind conjured up the images I’d been so desperately trying to bury—those of that poor cashier who had burned in front of my very eyes.
I didn’t even know her name.
“One among us is responsible for this heinous act,” continued to the man on the pyre. “We must join together to weed out the evil in our town and burn the witch responsible!”
Cries of “burn the witches!” echoed throughout the angry mob. My hands were shaking. All at once I felt it, the unmistakable energy radiating off the crowd. The anger and hate. The air was saturated with it. This was a different kind of Dread—not one from without, but from within.
“You gotta hang them instead!” said someone from the crowd. “Far less mess to clean up afterward.”
My blood ran hot in my veins. There was no mercy in these voices. The torches flamed high.
“I accuse Verity Smith!” someone shouted. “She was seen arguing with Joan Mason mere hours before her death.”
And like a call-out tweet, all attention turned to the accused. The crowd parted around a young woman, her hands having risen to her mouth in shock.
“Wha...what?” she stammered, standing alone. “You all know me! I couldn’t possibly have... I’m not a witch!”
“Her pies have been exceptional of late,” said someone beside her. “Too good.”
Voices rose all at once, agreeing that her pies were indeed exceptional. I turned to Zander again, but he’d already pushed himself forward.
“What value do these baseless accusations hold?” Zander asked, his voice loud and booming. They shoved him away, and he dove in front of Verity. That’s my man. There’s my heart on display. “Have we taken it upon ourselves to deem a person’s guilt simply by lack of evidence to the contrary? Or very good pie?”
“Indeed,” said the man on the pyre. The crowd went silent. He jumped to the ground, marching toward the girl. She was quaking in her boots. “She has the right to a fair trial.”
I groaned. Fair trial was an oxymoron here from what I’d read. I wanted to go home, but the only reason we were in this wretched time was to find the weapon that would ensure there was home for me to return to.
Their leader continued, “She will have the right to the trial of the white bar. This will determine if she’s guilty of heresy.”
“Burn her!” someone shouted.
“We’re supposed to hang her!” said another. “That’s the right way to do it. I didn’t come all this way for us to leave the law back home.”
“No! This is not how we do things!” Zander’s voice echoed across the square.
“Can someone shut up the peddler? He’s ruining it!”
“I’m innocent!” Verity stomped her foot, staring up at the sky. “This isn’t fun anymore. I demand you end this now. At once! You backwater freaks need to get with the times and get your asses civilized!”
“There will be no fires tonight.” Someone else pushed forward from the crowd, flinging themselves beside Zander. For a second, I felt pride swell in my chest. We had started a movement. Then the protester opened his mouth again. “Hanging is more appropriate in the circumstances!”
“Will you shut up? Burn them!” yelled a woman from the crowd.
“Before you burn her, ask yourselves this,” said Zander. “Would you—”
But he didn’t have a chance to hit us with a thought problem. His mouth froze in a small ‘o’ as a column of white flame consumed Verity Smith, taking her screams to the skies. The air was thick with a syrupy silence as we watched her disappear into a puff of smoke.
No, this couldn’t be happening. The same fire that had consumed the cashier had taken this girl, and it was no less gruesome this time around. And I knew, I knew this was the work of the Agency.
Blayde had said they had used SHC method to hide amongst our people in the past. Witnessing this... it’s one thing to know history happened; it’s another to watch it unfold in front of your eyes, unable to change it.
I reached forward, toward where Verity had been standing—only for a hand to clamp down hard on my shoulder.
“Do you want to join in their fate?” the voice hissed. I turned to look up at the stranger, but his face was hidden by a heavy hood. Just lovely. I tried to rip free, but the hand clamped down harder.
“Jeremy!” the leader said, drawing my attention back to the mob. “You’re too torch-happy! We hadn’t even had the trial yet.”
“It wasn’t me!” shouted a man with his torch held high. “I swear, I was waiting for you!”
“Well, teenage girls don’t just go up in flames,” the leader replied.
“They do if they’re witches!”
“But if that one lit herself on fire,” said one of the men in the crowd, “does that mean witches are unharmed by flame?”
“Maybe she was a fire demon,” said Jeremy, the torch guy. “That would explain a lot.”
The protester wrenched his way from Zander’s grasp. “You see? We should have been hanging her all along!”
“Will somebody get this peddler out of town?” shouted parchment guy. “He just ruined a perfectly good event.”
“I’ll move myself, thank you very much,” said Zander. “So help me stars above, if you ever attempt to burn another child in this town again...”
“You’ll what? Wave your rags at us?” asked Jeremy. I expected Zander to say something, anything to instill fear in this man. Instead, he folded his hands under his armpits.
“If she didn’t do this to herself, then there must still be a witch among us!” someone cried.
The crowd roared. My stomach tried to jump up through my throat—a panic. A frenzy. The mob was turning into a stampede. Screaming came from all directions, names spat out like sparks from a fire. Accusations left right and center.
“Come with me,” said the man behind me. “You and your friends are drawing too much attention to yourselves.”
The hand finally came off my shoulder, and I wrenched myself away. I glanced back at the others—Blayde stood a whole foot shorter, fiddling with her laser pointer like she was going to crush it to a paste. She caught my gaze, and at the sight of the hooded stranger, her hackles raised.
“And what do you want?” she said. “Going to press charges on us for basic human decency?”
“If you were human, I might,” he replied. “Come with me.”
He turned and mechanically marched into the town, not waiting for a response. I stared through the crowd at Zander, who was as stiff as the Puritans’ hats. He saw me, grabbed James, and followed us. Guess we were going to trust the creepy stranger after all.
The streets were mostly empty outside of the mob, not that there were many streets in this colony to begin with. Here I was, dropped in the middle of my own nation’s history and as disappointed as if I’d attended a small budget historical recreation. Where were all the turkey legs I’d been promised? I still hadn’t eaten since the grilled Sven at the bonfire.
Bonfire. My mouth went dry. I couldn’t even properly distract myself. I would never be able to look into flames again without seeing the faces of the women. Heresy or witchcraft, off-worlder or local, it didn’t matter. No one deserved that kind of fate.
A fate delivered by my past, my people, one that created the world that created me. One I couldn’t alter in any way, lest I cease to exist. But what kind of horrors could I avoid from ever happening by making small changes here?
What kind of small horrors could come as a consequence of my actions?
All this power and yet I was powerless. I gritted my teeth. All this great responsibility I was promised wasn’t right for me to take. It was too much for one person to handle.
Blayde sighed heavily, clenching her laser pointer. “SHC. Though I don’t know if she had a Call Back button. I doubt it.”
“So the Agency just... burned her to a crisp where she stood.” I shuddered. With that small action, they’d condemned every woman of this town to the same fate if they just stepped a single toe out of line. The only reason they’d even turned on Verity was because that other girl, Joan Mason, had suffered their SHC.
Blayde’s lack of answer sent a pang through my heart. James put a comforting hand on my shoulder, covering the ghost of the stranger’s clutch.
“Come on,” she said, as she rubbed my shoulder. “Remember, you’re the reason the Agency’s going to have to tighten their game now.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “But that’s not going to make up for all the people the Agency treated as collateral.”
The stranger led us to a house on the very edge of town, which looked like it was designed from word of mouth by a toddler who couldn’t quite remember what a house looked like. It was square like a house and built of wood and stone, with a triangular roof too equilateral to be made by human hands. The crisscrossing beams on the front seemed painted on as an afterthought. Thankfully, the monstrosity was half hidden at the corner of the wooden city wall. Only a dim, orange glow outlined the heavy drapes and curtains behind the tiny windows.
The stranger pulled out a key and unlocked the heavy steel door, waving us through. I traded a glance with Zander—was it really safe? He shrugged again. Defeated as we were, we really had nothing better to do.
Inside, the house was catalogue perfect. The sitting room looked exactly like movies on this time period: comfortable chairs sat around a warm fireplace, with a harpsichord in the room’s corner and leather-bound books stuffed on shelves covering every inch of wall space. But something about it made the room seem false. Were Puritan homes ever really that opulent?
“It’s the middle of the frashing night, Urruin!” A man appeared on the top of the stairs so quickly we all took a step back. The light from behind him made it impossible to see his face, instead making his whole body glow an eerie orange.
Our stranger, Urruin, removed his dark cloak, revealing the body of a balding middle-aged man, the real-life equivalent of Homer Simpson, dressed entirely in a green silk suit.
With coattails. Effing coattails.
“Desmond, we are duty-bound to the lost guests of our employers,” he said to the man on the landing. “Be kind. They just witnessed an inflaming.”
“That’s sir to you, Wrench.”
Desmond? My eyes flashed to the man on the landing, still unable to make out his features. We’d been brought right to the doorstep of the person we’d crossed time to see. This couldn’t be a coincidence. Was it Fate or future selves pulling the strings once again?
“Another one?” He inhaled sharply. “I thought I finally fixed that. Well, show them to the spare rooms, I suppose. Looks like I’ll be burning the midnight candle again.”
Zander cleared his throat. “Are you Desmond Elegrious?”
Landing man’s tone dropped to a grumble. “Who’s asking?”
“I’m Zander, and this is my sister Blayde. You may have heard of us?”
And with that, Desmond flew down the stairs.
“Urruin! Do you know who you’ve brought into my house?”
“Not your house, sir.”
“Why do you always tell these people our real names?” Blayde groaned. “We could have told him we were lawyers bringing him his inheritance, but nooo, you had to tell him we were convicted interstellar felons. Genius, truly.”
Desmond’s dark hair drooped foppishly over his forehead as he bounded to Zander’s side, his smile dazzlingly white. He placed his hands on Zander’s shoulders, all the while staring deep into his eyes.
“I never thought I would see this day...” Were Desmond’s eyes watering? I shifted on my feet, trying to make sense of the stranger. “This cannot be. The Zander. The Blayde. The Iron and the Sand, here! In my home!”
He was young—late twenties or early thirties, maybe, but that was if he was even Terran—with jet-black hair reaching slightly below his ears. He was well built, strong looking, and tall to top it off. Fine, he was mildly handsome, if I had to say it. He had thrown on a thick dressing gown, a little too plush for our surroundings.
“Desmond Elegrious?” asked Blayde.
He turned to face her, his smile growing tenfold.
“Please, just call me Desmond,” he said, positively radiant. “I believed the tales of your beauty were simply myths. I see now that they must have been, as they do not do you justice.”
“Charmer, Desmond.” Blayde rolled her eyes. “Meet James Felling.”
“Enchanté,” he said with a smile, shaking her hand. He then turned to me. “And who’s this?”
“Um, Sally,” I replied, extending a hand to shake. “Sally Webber.”
“Pleasure,” he said, before picking it up and kissing it. Butterflies took wing in my stomach; I’d never been greeted by a historical gentleman before. “Now, what has brought the legendary siblings to my humble abode?”
“We’re here because of your book,” said James, ever the pragmatist.
“Book?” Desmond asked, brows furrowed. “I’ve never written a book. Will I write a book? Oh, that’s wonderful!”
Future tense? I stepped closer to Zander, my skin going cold. This man not only knew who they were but knew what they could do—all of what they could do. Who was he?
“Your writings about a labyrinth?” Blayde leaned forward, eyes wide. “The labyrinth?
“Ah. My research.” He let out a heavy breath. “The great work of my life. I would rather be out in the field rather than sitting on my ass fixing the Agency’s problems. But alas, something has to pay the bills since research doesn’t.”
A chill crept over my skin. Desmond worked for the Agency. Urruin had mentioned employers. Was this an Agency safehouse? Everything fell into place in that instant: the opulence, Urruin’s rush to hide us here...
“You’re trying to fix the SHC system,” I said.
He nodded earnestly. “The Agency’s gotten themselves tied in knots with this legacy code. It was crafted by a fleet of highly intelligent Trubblings on a million parallel typewriters, and thus can only be read if you apply Bayesian statistics to each—”
“So, let me get this straight,” I said. “You don’t know where the labyrinth actually is and you’re stuck here until you can stop Agency tourists from igniting—in a town already under the spell of witch-hunt madness?”
To say I was crestfallen would be an understatement. My hands tightened into fists as I thought about Marcy, sobbing in the interrogation room, facing the news the Alliance didn’t want their new empress to know: my world was ending. I couldn’t come back and tell her our only lead was a dud too.
And yet... we were in the past. A place yet untouched by the Dread. We could stay here as long as we needed, until we had a solution. I bit my lip until it bled. I didn’t want to spend a second longer than I had to in this wretched time.
“Well, hold on now.” He turned to me. “I may not have the exact coordinates, but I am the leading expert on the myth. Maybe with our combined skillsets...” His eyes roamed the room, landing heavily on Blayde. “I’m certain you can lead me there. If the tales of your intelligence are understated as much as your beauty, then you must be a genius indeed.”
“Suuure,” said Zander, exchanging a look with his sister. Even James’s face had turned a vibrant shade of red. My gut writhed like it was full of eels.
“But!” Desmond frowned, his lips drawing thin. “I want to see the labyrinth that I’ve spent my life pouring my blood, sweat, and money into looking for. You take me with you. Deal?”
I looked at Zander, at Blayde. Did I need them to make the decision for me? I would do whatever I had to to save my world, no matter how long it took to find the labyrinth, no matter how long I would have to hide in this terrible time period.
“Deal,” we said simultaneously.
“A fine deal indeed.” Desmond shook Zander’s hand. “I would be a poor host if I put you to work without a good meal and a night’s sleep. Is anybody hungry?”
Despite everything we’d just witnessed, I was starving. My stomach had only leftovers and Sven and a sea of coffee. I nodded.
“Finally!” Urruin clapped his hands. “How fortunate we are to have guests! I’ll make a cake!”
He threw open two large wooden doors, revealing a dining room fit for a palace, complete with heavy chairs and a roaring fireplace. The fire crackled and I flinched, grabbing Zander’s hand. He gave it a gentle squeeze.
“I’ll be right back,” said Urruin. “Get comfortable. We’ll have a feast!”
Zander pulled out a seat for me. I gave him a quick smile and sat, and he settled into the chair beside me. Desmond took the head of the table, while Blayde sat across from her brother. Urruin somehow filled our wine glasses before we’d finished getting situated.
“So, Desmond,” she said, leaning in close to our host, “why don’t you tell us about your research?”
I groaned internally, my stomach joining in with beautiful harmony. Maybe this would distract me from the hunger that now gnawed at my gut.
“We just sat down for dinner. Surely, you don’t want me to bore you with details?” Desmond eyed Blayde with a sideways glance. She only fluttered her eyelashes in response, politely waiting. He continued, “Well, the original myth is incredibly old. It usually starts by saying that there was this battle between two suns, so that sets the tone for what I’ve pieced together.”
“Sons of whom?” Zander asked. He leaned back in his chair, taking a sip of his wine. If it weren’t for the desert wraps that still clung to his body, I would have thought him quite the gentlemanly sight.
“No, suns. Stars. You know, like the actual balls of plasma? Some say they were fighting over who would rule the universe, others, that one was being punished for his crimes. It’s said that the swifter sun somehow tricked the other into taking human form, trapping them in a maze they grew around them. Others say that a genius was asked to chart everything in space, every galaxy, every planet, every moon, and every asteroid, but when he mapped them all they played him the music of the universe and he went mad, locking himself in the labyrinth to stop himself from telling the world. The only fact every myth agrees upon is that an undying genius deserved to be locked within a planet-sized prison, and he did not fight it.”
“Our guests are starving, sir,” said Urruin, a massive serving tray balanced on his hand. “Do not bore them with children’s stories.”
The smell waltzed into my nose and made itself at home: roasted, juicy turkey; fluffy mashed potatoes; the greenest of green beans. I drifted like a cartoon character through the wafting steam as Urruin set out plates before us. Heavenly.
“Well, they asked for it.” Desmond held up a hand as if to put the tale on pause, devouring most of the turkey on his plate. Urruin pursed his lips, slipping out of the room and closing the doors behind him. No one said a word.
Zander’s eyes were wide and riveted on Desmond, completely engrossed. He didn’t even seem to notice own plate steaming in front of him.
“Soon the labyrinth was forgotten entirely, and the universe went to war, as it eventually had to,” Desmond said between bites of mashed potatoes. “That’s just the way it all goes. Call it the rebellious phase, the teenage years of a civilization. Its control soon fell into the hands of one of the warring factions, though it had no idea what power it contained. After decades of trial and error, they sent in their smartest rather than their strongest to run it and find what was locked in the center of an impenetrable maze. What they discovered was a man.”
“The Eternal?” squeaked Zander, eyes sparkling.
Desmond nodded. “The explorers tried to bring him to their leaders, but the Eternal told them it was impossible for him to leave the labyrinth. For you see, it had a mind of its own and could move and grow, and any of the men trying to escort him out would find his exit blocked. So, they asked him what they should do to bring peace between worlds. He pondered this and decided that they should bring the opposing factions to him, so that he may hear both sides.
“There’s no record of what he said, but boom, instant harmony. But now that all the massive diplomatic problems had been solved, smaller and smaller issues were being brought to the Eternal, and labyrinth guides were dropping by the hundreds. The leaders of each of the formerly warring factions got together and decided that once every year, a champion from each civilization would be permitted to run the labyrinth, and the winner would be allowed to request anything of the Eternal.
“But peace meant people were living longer. New civilizations arose practically overnight, what with everyone working together to terraform inhospitable worlds. So, the rules to the race changed. Anyone could enter, if they could afford it, to compete for the opportunity to have their dreams come true. It was said that the wise man could make anything happen. Powers like a god.
“But the labyrinth kept evolving, adapting to the scale of the influx of contenders. Fewer and fewer people returned alive, and as a result, fewer people entered. Wars broke out amongst the stars, the cycle continuing, and the labyrinth slowly fading into the fabric of myth before the records just...stop.”
“That’s all you have?” asked Blayde.
“Hey, this is a lifetime of research here!” Desmond growled. His plate now empty, he reached for the bowl of peas, eating directly from the bowl. “Remember, this was millennia ago. The first accounts date back almost a million years.”
“A million?” Zander whistled.
“And they were written long after the Eternal was supposedly imprisoned. The first races happened while the first humans were still only single-cell organisms dreaming of the sun.”
Zander nodded. He still hadn’t touched his plate. “Yet you managed to narrow down its present-day location?”
“I have a fair idea of where it is.” Desmond grinned, his teeth glowing in the yellow lamplight. “Solar system, I’m certain of. Planet, maybe. But getting there? It would be impossible in my lifetime.”
“We might be able to work with that,” said Zander, nodding slowly. I knew instantly what he was thinking: how would I find it, if he’d never been there himself?
I looked down at my empty plate. I was thinking the same thing in reverse—how could I get us there without him questioning my methods? How much detail would I need from Desmond to bring us all there, right here, right now?
“How can we be certain this man is still alive?” I asked, looking up. All eyes turned to me. “What?”
“He’s immortal, Sally,” Blayde snapped.
My face went hot. “That could just be part of the legend.”
“He lived for thousands of years of recorded history,” said Desmond.
“Some species have an average lifespan of a few thousand, though, right?” I said.
“So why haven’t we heard of them?” asked Desmond.
“Or maybe—just maybe—he could be one of us.” Zander’s eyes sparkled like the anachronistic electric chandelier above us. “Imagine, he might hold the answers we’re looking for. This could be it.”
“Could,” said Blayde. “And that’s if this so-called wise man truly is immortal.”
“But he’s got to be millions of years old now, if he’s still alive.” James let out a low whistle. “That’s a long time to live.”
“Who’s to say we haven’t already lived that long ourselves?” said Zander. “Who’s to say he hasn’t lost his memory, like we have? Could he have forgotten his past as well? Could he have forgotten the Dread?”
“I sure hope not.” Blayde shuddered. “I sure hope not.”
And I realized, then, exactly what the siblings would ask this man if they could.
He was their only chance for a way home.
* * *
Desmond was kind enough to set us up with rooms. Being an Agency safe house, it was built to house a few visiting dignitaries and directors and the like. Urruin led Zander and me to a room beside Desmond’s study, complete with a four-poster bed and a roaring fire. We even had loaner nightgowns.
I was so ready to rip off my desert wraps, to get the sand off my gross body, that I started peeling out of them the second Zander closed the door behind us. Two worlds and three time periods of crud fell to the floor as I stumbled to the fireplace.
“Let me,” said Zander, reaching for the knot of fabric behind my neck. The relief I felt when the fiber fell away was enough to make me groan. The soft brush of his trembling fingers against my skin sent strokes of heat down my spine. I turned, reaching to help Zander with his, but he pulled away.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I...I need to help Desmond with his code, so we can get out of...” He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to waste any time in this...”
“It’s terrible,” I agreed. I wrapped my hands around his neck, pulling myself close. The skin there was clammy and hot. “Those poor girls didn’t deserve their fate. I want to storm out there and give every single person in this town a piece of my mind. But can we? Would that be changing the timeline? What if just by showing up, I’ve just—”
“You’re still here.” Zander kissed the top of my forehead, calming the roaring boil in my stomach. “That should be evidence enough that you haven’t screwed up the timeline yet.”
I leaned my head against his chest, breathing him in, every sweaty inch of him. I was tired, so tired. I just wanted to curl up in bed with him, let his arms anchor me in time and space.
A tremor shook me from his warmth. Not mine—his. Zander was... shaking?
“What’s wrong?” I asked. He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me closer, so tight against him I could feel the trembling that gripped his entire body.
“Nothing to worry you with,” he replied, kissing the top of my head again. His lips were cold. “Just go to sleep, Sally. You need it. You deserve it. You’ve done...”
The water running down my scalp was unmistakable. Tears.
I pulled away, taking his face in my hands, brushing the tears with my thumbs. He was sobbing quietly, the sobs of a man overflowing.
“Sit,” I said, leading him to the end of the bed, making him sit. At this height, at least, I was taller than him, could wrap my arms around his head, cradle it against me the way he usually held me, letting my bare skin soak up his tears. “Just tell me what’s happening.”
“I don’t even know where to start,” he whimpered.
A heavy soul. A moment of overflow. I held him closer. “Whatever’s in your head.”
“I’m scared.” He exhaled, making the hair on my belly rise under his hot breath. “I’m scared of me.”
“Of you?” I snapped my mouth shut. This was his time to talk. My questions would only be speed bumps along the way. His hands wrapped around my waist to anchor himself to me.
“Of who I was in that dusty memory of Blayde’s.” Zander’s voice was as low as a whisper. “I was cold, Sally. So cold. So angry. But I...I had known where Blayde was. I knew how to find her. The right time, the right place.”
I felt my body go rigid against his. I had been so focused on my own worries, my own fears, that I hadn’t see what was right in front of me, clear as day. Zander had talked about waves in phase, and now I could see that we were the opposite. Somewhere along the way, we’d gotten out of sync.
“I could jump, Sally,” he said, his voice wavering. “Really jump. Like Nimien. Like... like you.”
I was shaking now. I tried to take a step back, but his grip around me was firm. He didn’t look up, didn’t raise his voice. He only sank deeper into my embrace, hugging me impossibly closer. Goosebumps covered my exposed skin.
He’d changed the subject, sprang this realization on me so fast...
“I’m so sorry,” I breathed. “I didn’t know how to tell you, I don’t...I don’t fully understand it myself.”
He nodded. I took his head in my hands again, tilting it back so I could look him in the eyes. The beautiful silver-green was brimming with tears.
“My past self can’t have been everywhere and anywhere,” he said. “No matter what you’d have me think.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I replied. “Why I’m broken. I would have told you, I swear. I just...I wanted to come to you with answers.”
“Oh, Sally,” he said, his eyes so wide and wet I could have drowned in them. “You’re an angel. All this time you’ve been asking me to understand your risks, to see that you’re unbreakable, that you’ve forgotten I’m unbreakable too. You didn’t have to protect me.”
Protect him? I smiled weakly. As much as I wanted to take credit for a little act of selflessness, this wasn’t one of them.
“I’m the one who’s broken,” he said, exhaling again, his body deflating like a balloon. “I’m the one whose memory has been smashed, who can’t do the very thing that defines him. You didn’t want me to know.”
He urged me closer, and I dove into that kiss, all the while my mind reeling. My hands still clutched the side of his face while his hands ran up my back, pulling us closer together. Even as he lit my heart aflame with lips so full of love, I was stuck at the moment where he had entirely inverted our roles.
No. He wasn’t broken. I was broken. I was the one who sank too deeply into the universe. He was the one with perfectly healthy barriers against it.
Only he hadn’t always been like this—not in a time and place he could no longer remember.
He pulled away, reluctantly from the sigh that he took, kissing my forehead, my cheeks, the tip of my nose. No new tears in his eyes. He wiped away the old ones.
“You’re not broken,” I said, breathless. I couldn’t fit my thoughts into words, the fears I had been hiding from him, the fears he was dismissing without understanding.
“Sally, it’s all right,” he said, pushing himself off the bed to stand. He removed his hands from my skin, turning the whole room cold. I had forgotten I was bare.
Dammit. Where did that shirt go?
“I’ve got to go help Desmond,” said Zander, planting one last kiss on my forehead. “If all goes well, tomorrow we’ll be at the labyrinth. We’ll find our answers. And you’ll get us there.”
I swallowed. Loud. But he didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m so in awe of you, Sally Webber.” How was he already at the door? “I don’t deserve you.”
Well, shit.
I fell backward on the bed the instant the door closed. What the hell had just happened? Zander’s tears were still drying on my bare stomach as I lay staring at the ceiling, mind aflame. Because if he didn’t deserve me—
What the hell did I deserve?
