THE CARRIAGE HOUSE

The man in the hare mask goes back inside the carriage house.

“We need to be quiet, we need to be quiet,” I tell Addam. It sounds like I say that all at once, but I don’t. I repeat some words over and over, and there are whole spaces of white noise between syllables where I think I’m pausing, but I’m also shaking and scratching at Addam’s hands and muffling screams in my palm.

I press into the ground not just for protection, but because I have the crazy idea I can dig a hole in the earth and hide in it. But the soil is hard; there is rock only a few inches below the surface.

Addam is saying something about bleeding, but I’m running, because I can’t hide in the earth.

I run away from the carriage house. Away from whatever is inside. Away from this memory.

There is soft crying in the distance, even now failing to a dying gasp.

There is the smell of burnt flesh on the wind.

I run up the slope and away.

“RUNE!”

Someone was gently shaking me as I came back to my senses. “Addam?” I mumbled.

“Yes,” Addam said, and there were tears running down his face.

We were near the base of the mansion, off the path and near the forested fenceline. There was a body lying about twelve yards away just outside the reach of the guttering torches. Arrows stuck from its back.

Further along, around the bend in the mansion, I saw a low, inconstant orange light. They’d burned many of the bodies that night, including my father’s.

“I don’t,” I said, but my voice was a croak. I cleared my throat. “I don’t know what this is. This can’t be real. We can’t really be here.”

“She is Lady Time,” Addam whispered. “Are we so sure of that?”

“I can’t . . . I can’t feel Brand. I can’t feel Brand. What happened? Do you remember what happened?”

For the first time, I really saw Addam. He had a long, reddening cut down one side of his face, the blood barely tacky. I made a sound of panicked concern and reached for a Healing sigil.

He touched my wrist gently. “It’s fine. I healed our wounds while you were . . . indisposed.”

I saw my hand. My fingertips and nailbeds were covered in dirt and throbbing with a bad sunburn. One nail had gone black, with purplish blood pooling underneath it.

“This isn’t real,” I said. “This can’t be real.”

“It feels real. We can hear things. We can feel things—we are not ghosts. Is this . . . Rune, this is the night your throne fell. Isn’t it?”

“I can’t be here Addam,” I said, and hated the sharp, rising whine in my voice. “We can’t be here.”

Nearby were the glass doors, just off the largest patio. On the other side was the solarium from my childhood. There was a body splayed out on the table, and the tablecloth was soaked to scarlet.

The world shuddered around us. I couldn’t begin to explain what the sensation felt like, other than the world shuddered around us.

“It is gone,” Addam gasped. “Rune, look, the body just over there—it is…”

He trailed off.

I saw two things then. One, the body I’d seen dead on the ground was gone. And second, a young man I knew, a stable boy named Gregor, limped down the path and collapsed in the same exact spot. He had arrows sticking out of his back.

“Is this real or a . . . a simulation? Did it just rewind? Or . . . or loop back?” He put his hands on my shoulders and forced me to face him. “I must scout the area and look for a way out.”

“No,” I said, but louder. Because Addam must not see anything else. He must not be allowed to see anything else.

This new surge of panic mimicked rational thought, but there was nothing rational about it. “No, Addam! We need to get back. They need us in the fight. She killed Judgment. The Tower needs our help.”

“I know, Rune. I will find a way out.”

“Addam, no, please no. Stay here. Stay right here!”

“Rune—”

Any measure of control was slipping through my fingers. He must not see anything else!

“Don’t,” I said, and tears ran down my face. I could taste them on my lips, feel them dripping off my jawline. “I can’t. I can’t stand. This. Don’t look. Don’t look Addam, not if you love me, not if you want me in this world. I won’t survive this if you walk away.”

Addam stared at me with an expression I’d never seen on his face—whatever lay beyond shock. I think I’d just told him I’d kill myself, and I think he believed it.

“I won’t,” he whispered shakily. “I will not. I will stay here with you. I’m not going anywhere. It will be fine. We will be fine.” He came over and hugged me.

He said things that may have been soothing. I didn’t hug him back, because this couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening.

Then Addam lifted his head away from me, staring at something over my shoulder. His next words were soft and fragile. He said, “I do not understand.”

I pushed away from Addam and looked.

Brand had walked out a patio door, much further along the side of the mansion. He began making his way down the pathway. He barely glanced at the body of Gregor as he stepped over it. While his features were lost to the darkness, I knew he was young. Fifteen years old—he would have been barely fifteen years old.

Brand walked around a bend toward the carriage house, vanishing from sight.

“I do not understand,” Addam finally said. “He was hurt. That is what you told me, yes? That night, Brand was wounded and unconscious, and with you. Then he woke up and saved you. What is—”

I tried to inhale but nothing reached my lungs.

Addam took a step toward the path. I don’t even think he realized he was doing it.

Everything I loved was there, in my brain, like a photo slowly being leached of color, turning brittle, flaking away, scattering into irrevocable loss. There was no coming back from this. Addam was seeing this and it would trigger what I had always feared. People would find out. It would be the end of everything. It was the death of my world.

I was the boy crawling in the safe. I was the boy crawling in the safe.

“Breathe,” Addam begged. He was at my side. I was on my knees? I think I’d fallen to my knees. Addam said, frantically, “Please breathe, Rune. What safe? What are you talking about?”

I cannot . . .

“Rune, you are with me, we are together. This is not real. Listen to me, Rune, I am here, we are together, we will be fine.”

I cannot survive this twice. This is the death of my world.

Inside me was a power. The Majeure. I couldn’t feel it, I’d never used it of my own conscious will, but I’d seen others use it and knew it was real.

I said to it: Save us.

The entire world lit up in X-ray shades. I could see the line where these captured minutes of horror ended, and something fierce and unlivable began. The timestream was there, its current not liquid and lazy, but roaring through the universe like a blowtorch flame.

There were paths to and from this place, and they had been walked before. The power inside me told me so.

I reached out a hand and—

* * *

On a roof.

We were on a roof.

There were small tables covered in heavy white cloth, and the settings were sterling silver. Some of the tables were occupied with people talking over drinks.

“Oh, excuse me, sir,” a waiter said. His face had that startled look that humans adopted when they refused to admit that something magical had happened—such as two men suddenly appearing right next to them.

I moved in an unsteady circle and saw the Empire State Building. But it was all off—it didn’t match my expectations. The city looked too much like New Atlantis, all stone and brick and marble.

And the people? They wore old-fashioned dresses that fell to their ankles, and bespoke suits with fussy vests and ties.

In the middle of the roof was a small building that might have housed the stairwell and elevator apparatus. Shade fell off one side, and the tables there were empty. I staggered in that direction so that I could get a corner to my back. Addam, just as shocked as I was, followed.

On the way I bumped into a weird sculpture of blown glass. It toppled off its stand and shattered on the ground. The horrified waiter came over, pretended he wasn’t pissed at me, and shooed us away from the shards.

I reached my corner and pressed into the wall, glad for the solid protection against my back.

Trying to make sense of this, I watched the waiter go to an antique rotary phone, maybe to call for help. He flicked the receiver in frustration, then bustled through a door into the rooftop’s stairwell.

Minor annoyances were beginning to break through my shock. My fingernails still pulsed with discomfort from Addam’s healing. One of the nails was torn, and I wanted to tear a piece off with my teeth, but I couldn’t, because they were coated in fucking apple bitter.

That made me think about Brand. I started crying.

Addam whispered more comforting words and hugged me.

I took advantage of those minutes to focus on my breathing. To lock memories back where they belonged in the basement of my brain. To remember that we were not safe. People I loved were not safe. Breaking down was a luxury that had too high a price tag. Plus, I’d more or less tossed an emotional shitstorm at Addam, and he deserved better.

“I’m okay,” I breathed. I pushed away just enough to stare into his burgundy eyes, which also swam with tears.

“I’m okay,” I lied again. “I just need to . . . focus. On this. Where are we?”

“New York,” Addam said. “But not the present. And not . . . truly the past.”

I wiped a hand across my eyes, but kept the other around his waist. “He . . . the waiter. He saw us. He reacted to us. Why did you say not truly the past?”

“The sun is strange.”

I looked up. The overhang of the rooftop structure sliced the sun in half, but I understood what Addam was saying immediately. In the middle of an evenly blue sky—as perfect as a fresh brushstroke of paint—was a rectangular smudge of yellow. It didn’t hurt to stare at it.

There was the bang of a door opening. The waiter stumbled back into view, clearly upset. He stared down at the broken sculpture, and then at everyone around him. Our eyes met and he came over, saying, “Sir, did you just walk up the stairs? Was there a . . . a . . . barricade there? When you came up?”

“What do you mean, a barricade?” Addam asked.

“It just . . . there’s . . . it’s like it just ends. The stairway. It just ends in a wall.”

The world shuddered. The waiter disappeared from where he stood, and reappeared by a table of customers on the other side of the roof. He wrote down their order on a leather-bound pad.

“The sculpture is whole again,” Addam whispered.

“It’s a loop of time. It’s like it’s been cut out of reality. I saw that, when we . . . when we . . .”

The things on the other side of the basement door in my head began to pound and kick and grasp for freedom.

“When we left . . . Sun Estate, that loop of Sun Estate,” I finished. “I saw where we were. It was a bubble of time, with clear barriers, separate from whatever the fuck the timestream even is.”

“And you took us here,” Addam said. He didn’t meet my eyes as he said this.

“I did,” I said.

“You had a sigil spell conveniently stored to navigate the timestream,” he added.

It was not a question that expected an answer. And it was not an answer I was allowed to give. Speaking of the Arcana Majeure was verboten. No one from Sun Estate, outside Brand and Anna, knew what it was or what it meant.

“You’ve seen me do impossible things before when I was upset,” I said carefully. “It’s like that, Addam. It’s something Arcana can do. Is it okay if we don’t talk about that?”

“What may we talk about? You mentioned a safe?”

I pushed away from the corner and detangled myself from Addam. Nearby was a railing heavily stylized with beautiful art deco stonework. I went to it, feeling the grain of the rock under my hands. So real. But the more I looked, the more I saw the absence of things you’d expect.

The city was there—this older version of New York. But where were the cars in the streets? Where were the people in the windows? Where was the sound of rush hour? What I saw was immaculate and detailed, and wholly devoid of habitation. Like a stage backdrop.

“The boy in the safe,” I said when Addam stepped up to my side. “I suppose the boy in the safe is just something that haunts me. I saw it as a ghost on the Declaration—you remember, the first time we searched the battleship? It was horrible, and I think my brain turned it into a metaphor for terror.”

“Not terror,” Addam said. “Resignation. Defeat. Rune, were you so upset because of what you saw? Or because I saw it, too?”

I let a long minute stretch out.

“People,” I said, and my voice broke.

I let another long minute stretch out. “People think I’m nuts to let Brand badger me the way he does. They don’t understand. They can’t. Too many of them don’t have Companions or know what it means to have one. I can’t read his mind, but I always know how he feels. I always know I’m the most important person in his world. I always know that his smartass comments are grounded in one single concern: me. That I’m okay. That I’m safe. Do you know what that means? When I can listen to what Brand says and know there’s no real bite to the words?”

“I imagine you find him quite funny,” Addam said quietly.

“He’s a fucking riot. Sometimes it hurts trying not to laugh out loud. I never get tired hearing what he’ll come up with. Through all the darkness. All the horrible times? I’ve had the most extraordinary life because he’s in it.”

Another minute began to stretch, but I broke it, and said, in a faltering voice, “I cannot lose him.”

“Would it surprise you to know that I cannot bear the thought of losing Brandon either?” Addam asked, and his voice faltered too.

I clumsily moved my hand along the railing until I was touching Addam’s own hand. We stood like that for a few long moments.

Finally I cleared my throat and said, “I promise, Addam, you didn’t see what you think you saw. I know that I need to explain it. I know. But not now.”

Addam curled his fingers around mine. “It shall be so, then.”

“Maybe we can just focus on whatever the hell is happening to us? I’m good at that sort of stuff.”

He squeezed the fingers, just enough to make my healed damage throb. “You are more than just good. You will unravel this puzzle and get us home.”

I breathed in through my nose and slowly exhaled the tension, letting it whistle over my teeth.

“Let’s call it a time loop,” I said in a stronger voice. “Like a memory cut out of sequence and preserved in the timestream. I know Lady Time built that loop for me. She threatened as much in the Manse—she said something about building a hell just for me. And I could see the path she traveled to and from it. Just like I can tell she’s been here. So this loop is important to her. It’s not for me. We need to figure out what it meant to her.”

“Are these . . . people?” Addam said, lowering his voice. “Are they real?”

“I don’t think so. I think they’re just echoes of who really existed in the loop when it was severed. Imprints. And even at that, they’re limited. The waiter tried to go downstairs, but there was a barricade. A barrier. Let’s say that’s the edge of the time loop. The thing about loops in general is that everything in it follows the same path over and over. Right? I don’t think they can see it—these ghosts. And they don’t understand what’s happening when you push them off their tracks.”

“So we will look around,” Addam said.

“We look around,” I agreed. “Because I’m starting to wonder . . .” I looked up at the smudge of yellow that poorly aped our own sun. “I saw the timestream. It’s vicious. It’s not like a river, it’s like a lava flow. I don’t know how I’d survive in it for long. But we’re surviving here, right? What if this is how Lady Time survived the timestream? Not just this, right here, but something like this?”

Addam studied me for a few seconds, and some of the grimness lifted from his half smile. “Hero,” he murmured.

My cheeks heated, so I hid them by doing a quick turn to study the layout of the roof. “It would be a weird way to survive. Imagine if you even spent a day here. The entire world would just be a . . . what? Ten minute loop? Twenty?”

“No one is sitting there,” Addam said. He pointed to a corner table near where we’d arrived. “It’s warm and not in the shade, and no one has sat there—which means, quite possibly, no one ever sits there when the loop works as normal. If it were I, I would try to find spots like that.”

“Smart, Saint Nicholas,” I said.

We walked over to the other corner of the roof, past the waiter, who now seemed more surprised by our clothing than our sudden appearance. It had to be the 1940s or 1950s.

As we got closer to the empty table, I realized that Addam’s instincts had been sound. Because this table was not like the others. There was only one place setting—the second lay shattered on the ground. The tablecloth was askew. I put a hand on the corner that was rumpled and felt indentations in the table. Grasping the edge of the cloth, I pulled it aside, and saw deep, senseless gouges in the wooden surface.

“It seems unnatural,” Addam whispered. “Was this here when the loop started? Is it always here when the loop starts?”

“Imprints . . .” I murmured. “Imprints upon imprints. Use a record long enough, and you can wear new grooves in it. What if—”

I saw Vadik Amberson sitting on the other side of the roof half a second behind my own instincts, which already had me brushing a finger along my backup Fire spell. The magic hissed to life around my hands as I aimed my arm at him.

People around me saw this—saw a man with flames forming around his outstretched palm—and began to scream and push away from their tables.

And half a second after that, I realized that this was not my Vadik. This Vadik was young, and his face didn’t have the unwrinkled agelessness that came after rejuvenation treatments.

I flicked my hand and banished the Fire.

“Good heavens, that’s the new magic act from the Edison Hotel Arena!” Vadik said loudly to his dining companions—all young, all male, and none with the telltale glimmer of magical potential. Humans.

Vadik made his way over to me, telling people along the way that the “show was opening next summer.”

“Is he an imprint too?” Addam said in a side whisper.

I didn’t have time to answer. Vadik had reached us. He gave our clothes a quick, incredulous look, grabbed my shoulder, and roughly turned me so that we faced the street.

“What game is this?” he hissed. “Are you insane? I speak for a Greater House, and there will be consequences for this.”

“I speak for the Arcanum,” I said. “I am the consequence, little spirit.”

He furrowed his eyebrows at this. It seemed to mean something to him, for just a moment, but then the trouble washed away into an unsettled confusion. “I do not understand.”

The loop would be resetting soon, and I had an idea. “You are Vadik Amberson.”

“Do we . . . Apologies, have we met?”

“Your father is the head of your household. You serve the Sun Throne.” My father. For a second, my heart just ached. My father is alive in this era.

“You are in America for schooling?” I said, raising the lilt to a question.

“I do not understand,” he said again, but with less attitude.

“What is special about this place?” I asked.

“New York? My family has always schooled in America. We—”

“Here. Right now. Here. What is special about this place?”

“Look here, who—”

Fuck it, I thought. I called on my Atlantean Aspect.

Flames rose off my sleeves. They licked harmlessly at my bangs, and singed the stone beneath my feet.

Perhaps it was the Aspect of the burning man—my father’s Aspect. Perhaps I looked enough like my father in this day and age. But Vadik made the connection I wanted him to make, and sank to his knees.

Now people on the rooftop really started to scream. Addam stepped to the side to grab the waiter’s hand before he could toss a pitcher of water in my direction.

“Vadik Amberson, answer me!” I roared.

“I don’t understand what you want, my lord! My father lets the penthouse below, we can go there now and discuss—”

The world shuddered, and I snuffed my Aspect before the loop began again. I’d never tried to drop my Aspect so quickly, and I didn’t like how it felt—like swallowing burning hot coffee in your brain.

“Follow my lead,” I told Addam, wincing. “We need to move quickly.”

I walked over to where young Vadik was seated, oblivious to me once again. He saw my approach in his periphery. A look of modest surprise became a lazy smile. Not the full-grown leer of his future self, but dickish enough.

He was about to say something inane, so I whispered in his ear, “I am an envoy of the Sun Throne. We will speak in your penthouse apartment now.”

“What—” he began.

“I will not repeat myself,” I added. I straightened up and began to walk to the stairwell door.

Vadik scrambled away from the tables, making abrupt apologies to his friends. He circled around me to take the lead and held the door open.

The stairs were spotlessly clean and smelled like beeswax. As Vadik moved down the steps—with anxious looks over his shoulder—I asked, “How long have you been sitting at that table?”

“An . . . hour? An hour, my lord. Can I ask—”

“No. Is anyone in your apartment right now?”

“No, my lord.”

“Does Lady Time have a key?”

“Does—” the question so surprised him that he lost his footing and bumped into a wall. Addam had to grab his sleeve to keep him from slipping off the step.

“Did you say time?” he asked incredulously.

“Thyme. Like the herb. Hurry up, move,” I said.

We rounded a midflight landing. Down another short flight of steps, a corridor branched from the stairwell. There was only one door, painted yellow and gilded in goldish metal.

The key lock on the door was broken, and it was partly ajar.

“That wasn’t like that earlier,” Vadik said. There was a sort of disorientation in his eyes not unlike drugs. “But it’s been . . . It’s been a long time? That’s not right.”

Addam made a point of brushing past me to enter the apartment first—which was just like Brand, and my heart ached again. I followed without concern for ambush, though, because I already had an idea what I’d see.

The penthouse had a small foyer that opened into a respectably sized living room. A small kitchen was set behind an island, and the door to a bedroom was open.

Every mirror in the apartment was smashed. Odder yet, the glass beneath each lay in a pile far too deep for a single mirror.

The bed was made.

The cupboards in the kitchen were open and empty.

There were deep gouges along one wall—burn marks, fingernail scratches, missing chunks of plaster.

“By the River,” Vadik whispered.

“Was there food in those cabinets?” I asked him.

“Was there . . .? Yes. Yes, there was. Am I under some sort of attack?”

“Have you ever let a woman stay here?” I demanded.

“I have invited certain . . . female acquaintances over,” he said. The confusion in his eyes deepened, and a flush was creeping from his neck.

“Tell me about the old, powerful woman,” I said.

My raised voice startled him, and his eyes began to dart back and forth in genuine fear. “There . . . She was . . . I don’t understand. I do not understand what is going on.”

“Are you a principality, Vadik?”

He laughed crazily. “A principality? Me?”

“How long have you conspired against the Sun Throne?”

He lifted up his hands and backed away. “My lord, I swear, I have been loyal to my house and court. I do not understand what is happening!”

I made a sound of dismissal and exchanged a look with a curious Addam. “He won’t have any useful information. He doesn’t know yet.”

“Know what?” Vadik cried.

“What you’ll grow into. That you will betray your Arcana. That you will become a murderer and a rapist. That you will conspire against the Arcanum.”

“Who are you?” he demanded. “What is this?”

“This? I’d be less concerned about this false present, and more concerned about your real self’s future. Or lack thereof, as soon as I get back home.”

He stared at me, and I stared back, and I watched something not unlike understanding pass between us. “Am . . .” he said, and licked his lips. “Am I real?”

“No,” I said.

He turned and ran. I heard his footsteps hit the stairway, and from the sound he went downward. He’d hit the barrier soon enough—and hopefully busy himself with panic until the loop reset.

“What do you see, Rune?” Addam asked in a hushed voice.

“More of what you saw outside,” I said, because he was the one who’d started my theory. “If you were stuck in a loop, you’d want to hunt down areas where you didn’t need to constantly explain your presence. Let’s say the loop is ten minutes—or even twice that. The boundaries of the loop extend down to this apartment, which Vadik wouldn’t visit in the normal course of the loop without prompting.” I pointed to the bed, the cabinets, the mirrors. “Shelter. Food and water. And that? The damage? That’s repetition. Maybe that’s what happens when you repeatedly carve a new imprint into an existing imprint.”

“You think Lady Time took refuge here?”

“Until she broke it or ran out of resources,” I said. “Until the loop was . . . exhausted? Of food at least.”

“The questions you asked. Vadik does not know Lady Time at this point in his life.”

“Yeah. But I don’t understand the rest.” I looked at Addam. “There were other paths in the timestream, leading to and from these loops. I could see them when I . . . did what I did. Took us here.”

“Can you see any path that leads out of the timestream?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“So we follow another path.”

The world shuddered, and the open door flickered to its original slightly ajar position.

“We follow another path,” I agreed.

“Shit,” I whispered, as my leg buckled under me and I dropped to the pavement.

My physical senses assaulted me. The grit of cobblestone. The smell of horse shit and straw. The air was heavy with a bitterly acrid smoke—like a car had belched exhaust right in my face.

Addam helped me off the street just as a horse and carriage barreled by, the horse giving an alarmed bray.

“I’m okay,” I said—or at least I pushed the syllables out in a gasp. “Just need to get my breath.”

Addam was turning in a cautious circle, absorbing whatever dangers might be around us. “This is the past, but something is amiss.”

“Where?” I asked. “Where are we?”

“London, if I’m not mistaken. Like a page out of a Charles Dickens novel. It was harder to take us here, wasn’t it?”

I waited until my breathing had evened out. “No. It’s just tiring. I’m already feeling better though.”

I stood straight and felt the bones in my back crack in relief. It took all of one glance, though, to understand why Addam was so tense. The busy street around us was touched with troubling details.

The sky was a patchwork of pixelated clouds against a single, deep blue, like a cheap computer graphic. The Victorian-era street looked almost real, but the people about it were milling in chaotic patterns—not flowing along sidewalks.

“This crowd is mafficking, innit?” a woman said, grabbing my arm. “Please, sir, if you’re going inside, deliver this for me? My lady sent me t’do it, but I’d rather stay out here.”

She shoved a calling card in my hand. The edges of it were threaded with colorful green floss. The young woman ran off, and I looked around to see that Addam had moved us to the steps of a graceful brownstone.

Across the road was a row of less pristine houses and a small boy in heavily patched clothing was standing on a wooden box, clutching a stack of papers in his arm. People were milling around the base, unusually attentive.

“His majesty’s health is a’proving!” the child yelled. “He’s taking walks in the garden! Court to be held at Saint . . . Saint James . . .” He edged away from a man who tried to grab at a paper. His voice jumped to a squeak. “On June 4^th!” He started to sob. “I dunno what you want! What do you want?!”

“What is happening? What is wrong?” a man shouted, while a woman shrieked, “This is the work of the devil!”

Another man grabbed the boy by the collar of his jacket and swung him to the cobblestone with a thud. People began grabbing for the papers in a desperate mob.

A wave of magic washed past me, and Addam strode forward with his hand outstretched. The newsboy was jerked into the air Telekinetically and soared toward Addam, who snatched the boy in a two-handed grip and shoved him behind us.

The world shook. The boy and the mob vanished, as did the flossed calling card in my hand. We remained standing where we were—but everything else reappeared in different places. Across the street, the boy emerged from an alley, struggling under the weight of a bundle of newsprint sheets.

“This loop is deteriorating,” I said quietly.

Addam’s jaw was like stone. I can’t remember ever seeing such a hostile look on his face. “This is inhuman. This magic is obscene. Cruel and obscene. Whatever they are, these people, they know things are wrong.”

“I know,” I whispered. “We—”

“The world is ending!” a man shrieked across the street. He was ripping at the fussy tie around his neck. Dropping it on the ground, he grabbed a loose cobblestone from the ground and threw it into the window of a shop that said Apothecary in gold lettering. People began to climb into the shop and loot. One woman in particular—portly, with an underbite and a messy pile of black hair on her head—cackled at the despair around her.

“The timestream is filled with loops like this,” I said. “I think we’ve guessed right. That these loops are expendable. That they become corrupted and break apart.” Another piece of the puzzle drew my interest. “When we left the carriage house? And then the rooftop? I saw all these paths leading to and from other loops. Some were fainter than others. Maybe instead of following one of the brighter paths between loops, we follow one of the faintest ones?”

“Do you have the strength to do that? To do . . . whatever you’re doing, to move us between loops?”

I heard the frustration in the words and realized, almost in surprise, that I was sick of keeping secrets from Addam.

The man had followed me into possible death. He was lost in the godsdamn timestream because of me. And here I was, acting coy about the very instrument that may save us.

“You deserve so much better than me,” I sighed.

Addam saw the expression on my face and grew a bit alarmed. “Brand has spoken to me about this on many, many occasions. I am not allowed to speak about feelings while we’re in danger.”

I gave him a watery laugh and wiped my eyes. “Can you keep a secret, Addam?”

He dipped his chin.

“Do you remember when I broke apart Ashton’s weather magic in the Westlands? Without using a sigil spell?”

Again, that nervous nod.

“It’s an . . . ability. One unique to Arcana and principalities. One that defines a true Arcana and principality. It’s called the Arcana Majeure. It means that I can use my own life’s energy to power magic.”

“Truly?” he said, almost a whisper. “This is real?”

“It is. And I never get back the energy that I use. It will cost both me and Brand. That’s why the rejuvenation magic failed with Lady Time, Addam. She must have used the Arcana Majeure so often to survive the timestream that there is no youth to return to. It’s that limitation—the drawback of the power—that makes it a secret, because it could be used against us. Brand knows, of course. And Anna, because she’s used it too. But that’s it, in our court. No one else.”

“Thank you for trusting me with that knowledge,” he said. “Though I must admit, it does not ease my mind. What is it costing you to bring us from one loop to another?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I think we need to be smart about where we go next. I’m going to follow the paths to the oldest point.”

Addam shouted in pain. The world was spinning around me, and my mouth stung with acid—but I heard Addam’s distress.

“—cave!” he was yelling. “Can you walk?”

I tried to speak, but bile just dripped from my lips. I let Addam drag me to my feet, and tried to move in concert with him.

The dirt path was the only thing remotely recognizable as even vaguely lifelike. I saw rain as sharp as razor blades, cutting slices on our exposed skin. A sky that churned with indigo thunderclouds. Chunks of earth—whole bites of rock and soil—spinning through the air like helium balloons. The air wasn’t air, either—or at least the balance of oxygen and other compounds was off, so that every breath was laced with corrosion.

With a final grunt of effort, Addam threw us over a line of white stones, onto a dusty cavern floor. I felt my body pass through a powerful defensive shield. It was like a pane of glass holding the sheer insanity outside at bay.

“What by the River was that?” Addam cried.

“I have no fucking idea,” I said with utter sincerity. “But what if this is what loops become? When they disintegrate enough? What if broken loops actually dissolve or return back to the timestream?” My brain throbbed with racing thoughts.

“Rune, you are speaking very quickly, and you are feverish. This is hurting you.”

“I know,” I said hoarsely. “Okay. We need to see where we are. I’m still hoping we learn something here.”

“I will look around after I Heal us,” Addam said. “You will sit down and rest. This Majeure you speak of? It’s draining you. Let me do what I can.”

There was a rocky ledge along the side of the cavern, which was lit up by a light cantrip that Addam had summoned.

After Addam Healed the cuts from the violent rain, I went over to a pile of leather and sacks that were messily laid on the ledge, and sat down. “Check the wardstones,” I suggested. “Maybe you’ll be able to tell who left them there? We can—oh, this is a motherfucking body!” I shouted and leapt up.

Addam grabbed me before I tripped. We both stared at the corpse on the ledge. Its skin was ancient and leathery, like an embalmed mummy. The fabric may have once been colorful velvet but had long since rotted to a threadbare gray.

“What is this?” Addam whispered.

Swallowing, I reached out to nudge the fabric around the corpse’s neck. I had a sinking suspicion this might be the Lord Time who was known to have vanished in the timestream. If it was, he’d almost certainly have sigils or court symbols around his neck. But the neck was bare.

The skin on the corpse’s lips split as they opened. “Dominus Tempus sum.”

Addam and I both jerked back, and Addam even dropped an F-bomb.

A single desiccated eyelid opened as well. A bead of gelatinous fluid bubbled along a stretch of cracked skin.

“Dominus . . . Tempus . . . sum . . .”

“Is . . . he undead?” Addam whispered. “Is this a recarnate?”

“No,” I said. I edged forward and touched the rawhide skin. I repeated, “No. There’s a pulse. I think . . . he? I think he’s been surviving in stasis. I’ve seen magic like this before.”

“That is Latin,” Addam said. “I studied it at Magnus—it was once a common language in Atlantis, much as English is now. I believe he said he is Lord Time.”

“Appropinquo ad meam mortem. Prendas manum.”

The words were growing fainter, the sound barely a breath through the ruined mouth.

“I am . . . approaching death? Take . . .? Take my hand?” Addam shook his head in frustration. “It has been quite a while.”

“I’m going to touch his hand,” I said. “There are ways of communicating by touch. Can you pull me away and break the connection if anything bad happens?”

The look on Addam’s face was priceless, and even better, I could almost hear Brand speaking in my head. By all fucking means, say IF.

I blinked away the burn in my eyes and breathed until I felt steady again. There was a slight chance I’d begun to have a nervous breakdown, I thought. Wasn’t it best that I acknowledged that? Would it have been worse if I didn’t see that?

“Very well,” Addam said. “But I do not like it.”

I looked back at the corpse, with its sightless eyes and flaking, necrotic skin.

I touched his hand.

It was not a dialogue—just a string of ideas or facts that patiently unraveled into coherence. No single sentence that formed was made of just words. Whatever magic this was, it used my own mind to fill in the blanks. Meaning was conveyed by thoughts, feelings, shared human concepts.

He was barely sentient. He had a mind, and he had thoughts, but his state was closer to that of dreamlike than coherent. He was far past the point of recovery.

But even in his dreamlike state, he was responsive.

So I thought about me. My seal. My throne. I put the picture of a burning man in his head and remembered my vow. I am Arcana. I am Arcanum. I am the Sun of Atlantis.

And I asked him for his story.

At first, he was filled with braggadocio. He told me he was [a golden crown] – followed by an image of his crown sitting atop a mound of other crowns bent under his own crown’s weight.

I pushed through that and forced thoughts of family at him.

He didn’t know a word for daughter that I understood, but I saw a quick mental image of him kissing the top of a baby’s head. I saw her grow to young adulthood in a [a man puts his finger to his lips and whispers shhhh] palace.

A secret palace?

The woman I called Lady Time was his daughter.

The cavern I was in? It was all that remained of a glorious citadel carved into and hidden in the side of a mountain in old Atlantis. Or rather, I saw the citadel as it appeared in a handful of minutes stolen and sealed into its own, separate world.

I think he meant a loop—he was describing the creation of a loop.

Entering loops properly took great preparation. I felt like a century passed as he conveyed the sense of that—many rituals required, many safeguards put in place.

When his court was destroyed, he’d fled into a [a möbius strip, an endless shining strip—a loop?] with his daughter. The lack of an [a ship sinks an anchor into deep waters] both weakened and trapped them. He expended all of his power simply to keep this decaying [möbius strip] alive. Without a [a cast iron chain] his abilities were [an outgoing tide].

I barely grasped that.

He told me his daughter grew and left him. She had become great in power along the way: she was as a [regal woman with a tall golden crown on her head]. She found a way to breach the timestream, if not flee it. She formed [two people laughing over a table, breaking bread] across time, which she sought to turn into a [that same image of a cast iron chain]. Through these connections, she formed new loops, at the very least. She found a way to . . .

I had no parallel for the phrase or imagery he was trying to impart now. The best I could understand is that she found a way to survive among the dangers of the timestream.

Lord Time had been alone for decades of [a minutes-long image of a small hourglass trickling to its last grain]. Which I think I understood. From my perspective, Lord Time vanished into the timestream over a thousand years ago. His own objective experience would have been different, limited to the seconds and minutes of a mortal life.

It was growing harder and harder for him to exist, even while spending long stretches of time in a form of stasis.

He was ready to die.

He didn’t believe he’d be able to wake up again, and his youth was lost.

His death would . . .

I didn’t understand the image he imparted. In my head I saw a picture of the citadel, in full health, under a normal waking sky. Then I saw a picture of his withered body breathe one last time, and crumble into dust. And then I saw the citadel again, the real-world citadel, but there were tiny fault lines in it.

I stepped away from Lord Time, dropping his hand a little too quickly, because it hit the rock ledge with a tiny crack.

Lord Time’s body shuddered with a dry cough. “Cuique nostrum, ultimum granum harenae.”

“Did he speak to you?” Addam asked. “You were very quiet but did not appear to be in distress.”

“Can I ramble for a second?” I asked. “Can you listen to me while I ramble?”

Addam simply stayed quiet and nodded.

“This loop—what we call a loop—came from old Atlantis. It was a slice of one of the palaces he lived in, or at least where he raised Lady Time in secret. Remember how Lord Tower only had information of male heirs? Wasn’t it common in Old Atlantis to hide your real heirs, or foster them? For their safety?”

“It was,” Addam said.

“So he did that. That’s why we didn’t know his real heir was a woman. And when he fled the fall of his court, he was desperate. He wasn’t prepared. He wasn’t anchored. So he couldn’t get back out—it took all his strength just to keep alive.

“But this is where things get confusing. Or maybe it was confusing from the beginning. There’s something I’m not understanding about entering the loop. He was very clear about needing rituals. And anchors. But there was also this recurring image of a metal chain.”

“An anchor is attached to a metal chain,” Addam suggested.

“I know, but the images were separate. That’s important. I almost got the sense that the chain was a metaphor for a type of power. Or . . . a source of power?”

I knew a source of power like that, didn’t I?

I’d lived my entire life at the end of a chain—willingly and happily.

“Brand,” I breathed. “What if . . . what if I can find my way out by reaching for Brand?”

“It is a very good thought, Rune.”

“We need to go back to where we started, though,” I said.

Addam closed his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

I was too. But it was inevitable. My entire life, one way or the other, had been a narrowing gyre to that bloody carriage house.

* * *

We appeared in the loop just as the masked man walked back into the carriage house.

When I first arrived, I’d tried to dig a hole in the ground to escape. Even remembering that was painful—remembering that I fell apart so quickly, and that Addam witnessed it.

“I . . . need a second,” I said.

Addam pulled me close, and we huddled together under the overhang of the nearby tree line. I pressed into the line of cologne he’d drawn across his jugular in another life. I inhaled sandalwood. And breathed.

“Rune . . .” Addam said after a while, his voice hushed. “Brand is coming. The . . . the Brand of this loop.”

Was this what heart attacks felt like? This sharp ripping in the middle of my chest?

I turned in Addam’s arms so that I could see what he saw.

Last time, we’d watched Brand leaving the mansion, stepping over the body of a stable hand. And now there he was, walking down the path that led to the carriage house. He was so crushingly young. He was so bloody young.

Brand stopped under the door’s lintel. He stood there, straight backed, straight shouldered. Moments later, a man in a hound mask met him at the door.

The man put his hand on Brand’s shoulder and gave him a friendly shake. He said something we couldn’t hear and drew Brand into the building. The heavy door shut behind them.

Desperately, I watched Addam’s face. As closely as I’d ever studied anyone’s reaction before.

Addam stared hard at the door. “Oh, no,” he finally whispered. “Oh, no. Oh, Rune. He’s under a spell, isn’t he? He’s been compromised.”

I covered my face and exhaled a pent-up cry into them.

“Does Brand know?” I heard Addam ask.

“Nothing. He remembers nothing. It’s a . . . it’s a geas—a mind control spell. And it’s my fault.”

I pulled my hands away, wiping my face as I did. “Will you come with me?” I asked. “There’s a break in the forest over there. We can talk there without . . . this. Seeing this.”

We walked. The tree line curved around a bend, opening into a small hidden copse.

I didn’t hear sounds of dying or death. Couldn’t see the carriage house. Couldn’t even smell smoke riding the air. The grass was thick and springy, and for a few minutes—just a few minutes—I remembered the times that Brand and I had found a patch of shade and sprawled out. It was an odd and wholly unexpected memory of my childhood.

“Stop it,” Brand said crossly, nine years old and full of temper.

I couldn’t stop laughing. “But it was funny. Did you really think magic runes were named after me?”

For a second, his temper split into something vulnerable, because of course he’d thought that something big and real in the world could be named after me.

“I bet there will be fighting moves named after you some day,” I said.

“I’m ready to make one up right now,” he said, pissed again.

I swallowed. My hands felt wrong—I didn’t know what to do with them. So I put them in my pockets and sat down, as Addam sat across from me.

“I don’t think I can do this alone anymore,” I said hoarsely. “It’s not safe for anyone if I’m this vulnerable, and I have so much more to lose. So many people could get hurt because of me. And if I need someone else to know these secrets, then I pick you. Because I know you’ll be there for me. And I want you there. I want you in my life from now on.”

He reached up and brushed a lock of hair from my forehead.

“I’m not just saying this,” I swore. “And this may not be the right time to say that. But I swear it’s true—I pick you, Addam. I . . . I even bought a ring. I bought a ring for you.”

“I know,” he said.

I blinked at that for a while to make sure I heard right. “You know?”

“Yes, Hero. You hid it in my sock drawer.”

“I did?”

Addam nodded, his fingers still in my hair.

“Does this mean I’ve been wearing your socks?” I asked.

“I do enjoy the way your mind works. But let’s not talk of a ring now. You do not need my love, you need my strength. It is yours.”

And he leaned in and kissed me. It was not a passionate kiss; both our lips were dehydrated and chapped.

“This isn’t fair to you,” I whispered.

“If you are picking me,” Addam whispered back, “then I am picking you. We can trust each other.”

And, oh, it stung. It stung that a moment like this would be ruined by what came next.

So I did what I always did when I couldn’t avoid the truth—I tore the Band-Aid off and hoped I didn’t take much skin with it.

“There are nine people in that carriage house with masks,” I said. “And I can tell you who three of them are.”

“Three,” Addam repeated. “Vadik. Cornelius. You . . . already knew of another?”

“Ashton.”

Addam jerked back from me.

“Ashton is in there,” I said. “Or an echo of him, at least. He’s wearing a cat mask.”

“Ashton Saint Gabriel was one of your attackers,” Addam said in a voice that began to shake.

“Do you know what happens next, Addam? After the shock wears off? You’ll start dissecting everything you know and putting it in a new context. You’ll feel guilt. You’ll feel stupid. You’ll probably try to hate yourself for bringing Ashton back into my life—which is wrong. You’ll want to tear the memory of Ashton apart to see where it leads, to figure out what else you may not know. He’ll stop being just the man who tried to kidnap and hurt you. He’ll stop being just the person who was your business partner. He’ll become so much more. Something between an obsession and a fear, maybe? I don’t know if there’s a word for it.”

I took a ragged, hot breath. “Do you understand why I’m telling you this? This is the least of my secrets.”

“I understand,” he said after an emotional pause.

“No,” I said. “You don’t. You can’t. Are you sure you want to know more?”

“I think you need me to be sure, which is the same as being sure. I will not, I cannot, walk away from this.”

I lowered my head as I spoke, letting my hair hang in front of my eyes. The knife in my heart began to turn and turn and turn.

“I was . . . an asshole,” I began.

Then I stopped and had to breathe for a bit, only the breaths were hot and damp and felt like tears.

“I was such an asshole when I was fifteen,” I told him. “I was rich. Pampered. Spoiled. So many people loved or looked after me, and I took it all for granted.”

“Brand gets mad when you speak like that,” Addam said, leaning toward me and into my hair. “He says you are too hard on yourself.”

I took a few more deep breaths.

I said, “I love you. I really, really love you, Addam. But I can’t tell you this story if you insist on defending me. I am not the hero. Not then. I was not the good guy. I can’t tell you this if you try to make me one.”

He tightened his arms around me but said nothing.

“I,” I said, and it was right in front of me.

How would I even put the truth into words?

“I . . . would sneak out. It was like a game. Could I get off the estate without Brand knowing? Or my father, or the household guards? I would sneak away to spend time with Geoffrey. Or to drink in the Bowers. Scions would go there at night to drink and get high. I usually was caught sneaking back home—but I was good at sneaking out. And . . .”

Oh, Brand.

“Brand,” I said, my voice cracking. “I didn’t know this. Not then. But he snuck out too and would try to find me. When . . . If he . . . If he knew I was gone? He would sneak off the estate to find me.”

Brand. My Brand. My fifteen-year-old Companion on the city streets at night. Alone. Alone. Because of me.

“That’s how they got him. They . . . I don’t know who was behind it. I don’t know who led that group. I don’t know why they did what they did. I just know how. I know how they broke the Sun Throne. I know how it was done. Brand let them in.”

Addam wanted to say something. Anything, I think. But he stayed quiet, his arms heavy around me.

“They took him one night,” I said, and my voice broke, “when he was out looking for me. They put him under a geas. They found a way to peel back whatever emotion they wanted—loyalty, love, even our bond. They subverted a Companion bond. And in the place of these emotions there was only what they wanted. What they needed.

“Everyone wonders how the assailants could get past my father’s wards. They wonder how my father was so easily attacked. He was dragged from his study—his sanctum, one of the seats of his power—and burned alive.

“But that? That was the easiest part to figure out, once I knew Brand was under a geas. They used him. They caught him, and fucked with his mind, and used him—because I didn’t have his back. He was the most precious thing in my life and I left him to wander the city at night alone. And all he wanted to do was find me, because he was worried about me, because . . . he missed me. He wanted to be included.”

I covered my face for a minute until I could breathe again.

“Brand knew how to let visitors past the wards. Everyone loved him. There’s not a single person who wouldn’t have gone with him, if he asked. Getting my father out of his tower would have been simple. All they needed to do was have Brand knock on his door. Maybe cut himself, and cry out for help? Or just say I was injured? My father wouldn’t have expected an attack—he would have opened the door in a heartbeat.

“I’d snuck out that night. They caught me when I was reentering the house. I don’t even remember much of that—just waking up in the carriage house. I can’t . . . I can’t open that door. What’s to gain by opening that door? I don’t gain anything by telling you my shoulder still hurts from when they took a pitchfork and pinned me to the wood frame of the sofa. Because. I was. Struggling. In the beginning. I can’t . . .”

“No,” Addam said, and I could tell by his voice that he’d started crying too.

“But I’ll tell you this much. He saved me. Brand saved me. He always saves me.”

“He fought the geas?” Addam whispered.

“He did. But only after . . . hours. Hours passed. And I was . . . close. To giving up. But they said if I did, they would cut Brand’s throat. So I stayed alive, and they would hurt me, and heal me, and hurt me. And eventually that was worse than death. I just wanted it to end. I . . . In the end. It was too much. And I couldn’t . . . I almost lost the world, and the world almost lost me. But I guess the universe wasn’t satisfied with that, because . . . something . . . happened.

“I could feel it happening. I could feel it when it happened. The talla bond.”

Addam sucked in a startled breath.

“You asked me once if Brand is my talla,” I said in a shaky voice. “I didn’t lie. I didn’t. I don’t know why, but when I woke up in the hospital, the talla bond was gone. I haven’t felt it since. I think the geas corrupted it somehow. Broke it? I don’t know. But for a few minutes, Brand was my talla, and that connection severed their hold on him. As soon as the men in the masks were occupied with something else—they would come and go, and gather in another room to talk—but—as soon as they weren’t looking—Brand grabbed me and ran. He knew ways to get us off the property quickly, and he ran for help at a neighbor’s door.”

In the distance, someone screamed. Had I heard that before? When I first arrived? The idea sickened me. Constant torture, time and time again, an undiminished echo.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Addam,” I begged.

And I heard the grief in his reply. “You had a talla bond. And you . . . lost it. You lost your talla. I think my heart is breaking. I cannot begin to imagine what it must feel like to know that. To bear that knowledge.”

“I live with it because Brand is still here. And you’re here now, too. I lost the talla bond too quickly to even understand what it meant. And maybe . . .”

No.

No maybe. No what if. No.

“What I have now is enough,” I said firmly.

“And Brand remembers none of this. Which scares you. You worry he’ll blame himself if you tell him,” Addam said.

“Oh, Addam,” I said, and it felt like I was swallowing glass. Like the words were literally scoring my throat. “There is no if. He can never know.”

“But—”

“He’ll kill himself,” I said.

And there it was.

There it was.

If I had to sum up twenty years of near-constant fear that my secrets would be revealed, it was this simple, simple statement.

Brand would kill himself.

“He,” I said, and fuck, more tears. “If he remembers? Letting the killers in? That alone will destroy him. I know him, Addam—I know him. The guilt will unmake him, and that’s just the beginning of it, because he’ll figure out soon enough that the geas could be repeated. Or maybe it’s still there? That he could be compromised again. Brand has spent his life eliminating anything that threatens me. What do you think will happen once he considers himself the threat?”

“But . . .” Addam tried to argue. Helplessly. He didn’t see the larger picture—how could you, unless you’d had decades to consider it from every vicious angle?

I tried to keep the panic out of my voice, but the rest pushed loose in a flood. “And that’s even assuming he’d survive learning about the geas. A geas is built from magic and logic. It could have built-in commands to protect itself. If Brand becomes aware of it—if it’s still there—it could just break his mind.

“And what if other people learned about this? If people know Brand was a link to what happened? Hell, if the Arcanum knew Brand was a link? They would fucking dissect him. They would break his mind apart.

“I’ll lose him, Addam. If this gets out . . . if people figure it out? I will lose him. And I don’t think I’d survive that. So all of this? Me keeping this secret for decades? I am fighting for our godsdamn lives.”

Addam slid around me until we were facing each other. When I didn’t meet his gaze, he put his hands on my shoulders and squeezed gently. He said, “Tell me how to save him, because I will not lose him either. Do you understand? I have chosen my family. He is my family too. So tell me what we do next.”

I searched myself for anger. Or conviction. Or anything, anything at all, that would drive me from this place.

Addam’s grip tightened, the grip of his metal hand almost painful. “Rune. Do you remember what you told me in the Westlands? When I was too nervous to store magic during the siege at my family’s compound? You said all emotion is fuel. Fear, joy, grief—it is emotion, and all emotion is the raw power behind our sigil magic. So fight, Rune. Fight now. Use this, use this strange Majeure of yours, and take us home so we may protect Brand, and the children, and those we love.”

“I . . .”

“No. No thinking—just react. How? How do we leave here? I know you have a plan.”

“I’m going to destroy the loop,” I said. “Then use the Majeure to reach for Brand. I’m going to pull us to the exact moment we left, if I can.”

“And you believe that will work?”

“I . . .” I closed my eyes, swallowed, opened them. “I keep picking apart one of the last things Lord Time said to me. I think he was showing me what happens when a loop breaks. I think . . . when they break down, they’re connected again to the real world. Or a real when.”

“Are you sure we’ll appear when we need to? What if we return to this moment in our timeline?”

“Brand is my chain back to our own when.”

“Then break this world and take us home,” he said fiercely. “If Lady Time can do it, so can you. Whatever chain she used to bring herself to our time, it cannot possibly be as strong as the one that links you and Brandon! For gods’ sake, Rune, he was your talla. Brand was your talla! They took that from you! They took it! Are they to pay?”

My Aspect rose.

Addam’s face began to glow orange, and I saw flames through my eyes.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then take us home! You know it can be done, so do it.”

I brought my arms around his neck, and fire spread along our clothes. It felt like armor, not pain, not damage.

Slowly, together, we rose to our feet. I saw the world around me—this perverse, stolen slice of my worst reality—and imagined it as a snow globe resting in my palm.

I flexed my fingers shut and reduced the globe to atoms.

Everything that was, is, and will be roared around us in an almighty storm, and I reached for my Companion.

I am standing in a hallway, looking at everything and nothing, until I remember how to breathe again. A lithe, brown-skinned fae with corn silk for hair is waiting outside a closed bathroom door.

I am in a rundown bar with a deer’s head on the wall.

And I am in the Westlands, and Ashton has told me he wore the cat mask, and my vision is filled with black fireflies.

A woman’s voice.

She says, “You must fight the current.”

My chest is burning. Only it is cold, not heat. Lady Death is in front of me, and her palm, brimming with Frost magic, is pressed over my shirt. The fabric glitters with rapidly melting, crusty ice.

I am on my knees on a dirty cement floor in a sunken mall, and a metal pole is in my stomach.

“Even your instincts are stubborn. I said to fight this current, child!”

I say, dizzily, in a Westlands forest, “What just happened?” I look around, but don’t see any danger. We aren’t under attack. Were we? My stomach churns with nausea as Addam tells me it’s snowing.

“You are hurtling through moments of déjà vu, through moments of shock, through times when you lost seconds and minutes. Fight that, child—reach for him. Reach for him and where he stands.”

I absurdly wonder where my coffee is. When did I lose my coffee? I press my eyes shut, because the circles on the Tower’s war room table are still blinking and there are so many of them. I—

“DO AS I SAY!”

Brand watches me with worry across the war room table, and wishes he’d brought more than one cookie.

And oh, the waves are approaching New Atlantis, and they are the size of mountains. But Brand is there, and he gives them a look as if his annoyance could burn water.

I am on the floor of the Sun Estate courtroom—my courtroom. A shining liquid is eating through my Shield—Brand is there and he’s yelling for a healing sigil.

There, I think. There!

“Yes,” she says.

That happened just days ago. I’m close and I scream Brand’s name. I scream his name, and I scream his name, and—