Chapter 44

What Is Written Comes to Pass

Sefia landed, staggering, on a dock. The air smelled of salt and tar, and the wind was full of the creaking of boats, the cries of gulls. Dinghies and tall ships surrounded her, and a rickety old cutter lay at anchor nearby. At the far end of the pier, a wooden column topped with a metal statue of a songbird—a canary—rose above the throng of sailors, servants, and war orphans scrambling for scraps.

She was back in Epidram, the city where she and Archer had fought Hatchet on Black Boar Pier and stowed away on—

Then she saw it. A green hull and a figurehead shaped like a tree: the Current of Faith. Laughing, she hoisted the telescope higher on her back and charged forward. Captain Reed was supposed to be somewhere in the Ephygian Bay, searching for treasure. What was he doing here?

She had almost reached the gangplank when two figures appeared at the rail. The chief mate looked just as she remembered, his strong rectangular face weathered with age, but the boy beside him . . .

It couldn’t be. Black curls soft as satin, big ears, an easy smile. A red bird perched on his shoulder.

Harison?

Sefia drew back. Harison was dead. She’d been there when it happened. She’d watched him die. She’d felt him die. She’d mourned as his body was sent burning onto the ocean. He couldn’t be alive.

Which meant only one thing.

She was in the past. Over four months before she’d left Erastis in the Library.

For a moment, she allowed herself to feel the full weight of her disappointment. Her mother hadn’t carved those words onto the crate after all. She hadn’t returned from the dead to save her daughter.

Sefia ran her thumb over the sharp black stones of Mareah’s ring.

She couldn’t buckle now. She had work to do.

With a stealthiness she hoped her mother would have been proud of, she sneaked toward the stacks of supplies yet to be loaded onto the Current. Among the chests and kegs, she hunkered down to listen.

There it was—a murmuring from inside one of the crates. She crept closer.

It was only one voice—her voice, higher and more childish than she’d expected. She couldn’t make out all the words, but she remembered what she was saying.

“I’m sorry. I should have been more careful. I should have noticed . . . I just couldn’t control my vision . . .” Then, “Hatchet said you were supposed to lead an army.”

How little they’d known back then.

Sefia blinked and drew her knife. Glancing around once to make sure she wasn’t being watched, she began to carve.

In the Illuminated world, the words blazed beneath the tip of her blade. She hoped she was doing this right. The most she’d ever achieved with Transformation was removing mold from a book. Making something disappear was entirely out of her depth.

The voice inside the crate went silent, the air hushed and tense. She wished she could reassure her younger self. They were going to the Current of Faith, where she’d meet Captain Reed and the chief mate, Meeks and Horse and Jules . . .

In her mind’s eye, she pictured the way the crate had seemed to flicker in and out of her vision, the way the mate kept touching it to reassure himself it was still there. The way the door in the house on the hill had done the same thing.

She didn’t have much time. The crew of the Current were coming. She knew they would. She remembered their voices.

“You there!”

She looked up, blinking. Theo and Killian were heading toward her, readying the ropes that would swing the crate onto the green ship.

But her gaze was drawn by movement farther down the dock.

From the deck of the old cutter, a woman in black leapt onto the gangplank. Sefia’s breath rushed out of her. She knew that pale pockmarked face, that curved sword.

Another corpse risen from the dead.

And just a few feet ahead of her, Tanin.

Cursing inwardly, Sefia sheathed her knife and dashed into the crowd. Her attempt at Transformation had to work—it had been written, and it had already come to pass.

Escaping with her life was another matter.

She dodged through the throng, knocking aside merchants and burly stevedores. She leapt coils of line and gleaming chests waiting to be loaded.

Behind her, she heard startled cries and Tanin’s annoyed hiss.

She had to get out of there, had to find a way back to her own time. What was it Erastis had said?

There are some people we can always get back to, no matter how far they are from us.

Some people’s stories were so entwined with your own that you’d find your way back to them again and again.

Archer.

Archer was her referent. Her anchor. Her home.

She blinked. The Illuminated world swept over her, turning her vision to gold, and she could see her way through the groups of passengers and stacks of kegs, past the cannons ready for the warships and the discarded fishing nets stinking on the docks.

But she needed to see more than this.

Racing down the pier, she ducked around a cart, wincing as her elbow struck the hard corner.

Archer. His face. His scars. The color of his hair in the lamplight and the feral glow in his eyes. The strength and gentleness of his hands.

Where was he? As she ran, she searched the Illuminated world for him. For the boy she’d saved, the boy she loved, the boy she’d gladly join her life to—in this story or any other.

Oceans of time slipped past her as she ran. Days in the blink of an eye. Months in a breath.

And she still couldn’t find him.

She was nearing the end of the pier, looming before her with a stack of crates like steps into the sky.

Archer.

Where are you?

She was out of space to run. Teleport or be caught. And she already knew she wouldn’t be caught.

Though it made her a target for Tanin and the Assassin, she bounded up the crates and flung herself into the air. She spread her arms wide, like wings, hoping, desperately hoping, to see him at the other end of the parted sea of gold.

He wasn’t there.

The water rose up to meet her.

Pain seared through her arm as a knife flew past.

She wouldn’t make it. She’d end up stuck in the past or in some far-flung future. Worse, she’d end up nowhere. Dissolved into nothing but dust, all the pieces of her carried off by the currents of history. She’d never be able to tell Archer she’d been wrong. She never should have kept him in the dark. She never should have left him. She should have stayed, and they should have faced this, together, whatever came for them.

Then, seconds before she hit the water, she saw him. Flawed. Perfect. Surrounded by a tapestry of light so dazzling it nearly blinded her.

She waved her hands, sweeping herself through the sea of gold. And then she was gone.