CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I was a time mage.
With only a month until my presentation to the Mage Council Conference, I wove through crowded streets on my way home from Master Carter’s tower, dazed. The Capitol was humming with murmurs of royal balls, dresses, and carriages, but I couldn’t have cared less.
My mind wandered over my past and present, over possible futures, of all the timelines set before me and how they’d intertwined to this very moment, this very realization of who I’d been all along.
Had Thomas suspected it, with his odd questions and challenges? Had he come across the concept in his foreign studies?
I rushed down slushy streets, dodging giggling ladies and gentlemen with stern expressions. I threw off my boots at the door, not bothering to greet Mama in the kitchen or Kelara, who sat folding laundry in the living room.
I entered the study, my back against the cool door, my skin tingling and alive. My chest heaved, aching to be free of the shackles of my ribcage.
Papa’s journal caught my eye. I grabbed it, dropping into a chair and flicking through the pages until I found the mended parchment from so long ago.
I set it before me.
I knew I could unmend it just as easily as mend it. Thomas had been restrained in the task himself—his why was to make order from chaos, to figure out how the world worked, to put material back together.
But I’d always been interested in something deeper, more integral to who I was.
The rush of time: how it sped my days of work at the castle, how it slowed at my beloved pond, how it froze at my father’s bedside.
How it settled like a blanket over me for so much of my life, slowing my movements, encouraging me to settle for what I already had rather than struggle against it.
How mending magic had always come easy through the reversal of time, but crafting from scratch came much harder.
How the premonitions I received weren’t things to change; they were things to come.
I understood that about time—it wasn’t meant to be tricked, or torn, or tampered with. It couldn’t be caged to fit human expectations. It just was.
Just like I was, or at least, was becoming.
My index finger trailed against the parchment, tickling the nerves just beneath my skin. I breathed in deep. Why should I unmake it?
Why would anyone unmake something?
To build it again. To make it better.
Because destruction could be good much of the time, whether that destruction was of materials, expectations, or of time itself.
I thought of Thomas’s shirt ripping, my hands trembling as I reached out to touch his upper arm, a moment that would’ve never happened without destruction. Breaking up with David. Admitting my failure to Mama. Quitting the palace.
Leaving Thom.
My heart skipped a beat. He’d left me.
But had that been why? So I could rebuild the pieces he’d left behind, become stronger and better like I’d claimed I wanted?
A clatter from the other room shook me from my thoughts. I startled, my gaze coming back into focus to see the parchment torn in two, directly along the line that Thomas had left behind.
An unmaking, a before. As if the moment had never happened.
My finger trailed along the new rip, the parchment’s torn edge tickling my skin.
I closed my eyes once more, willing the parchment to mend beneath my fingertips. When I opened my eyes, the rip was gone, as if the last few moments had never happened.
To test my theory one more time, I focused, fingers dancing in the air above a page that smelled of heartbreak.
And for the first time, I saw the fullness of my magic in its truest form: the golden thread. I searched until my very soul released a shimmering yarn through the spool of my mind. My fingers tugged, ever so gently, willing my pull to change time itself.
The yarn yanked itself from my hands. When I flicked my eyes open, the parchment was ripped down the middle, just as before.
I’d always been a talented mender. I’d always thought it was due to textile magic, but perhaps Thomas had been right to question me.
I couldn’t just mend. I could destroy.
And it wasn’t simply destruction… it was a rebirth. My gaze lingered on the piece of paper.
I could undo, but I could also make new. Within the span of seconds, maybe even hours, I could alter a small aspect of fate.
My stomach dropped. The premonitions. Another thread, another note passed from the universe to me. Another permission granted to alter time, to rebirth destiny, to make a new ending and change what had been planned.
I was most certainly a time mage.
And I’d finally found my why.
Thom would be overjoyed. If he were here, I’d probably boast. Maybe even kiss him.
But the notion was pure foolishness. The prince would be here in a few weeks for the convention. Although I would be presenting, I had already determined to avoid him at all costs; the wounds were still too fresh to be reopened.
I’d bleed from the inside out again.
But I could tell him what I’d discovered. I could prove to him that I ripped the parchment, that I had confirmed what he’d suspected all along. That I’d changed…
I opened a drawer, pulling out a fresh piece of parchment. My gaze caught on a cut, faded violet ribbon that sucked the air from my lungs. I lifted it, letting the fabric tickle my palm as it had so long ago.
I put pen to paper, writing about what I’d discovered about my magic and why I felt he ought to know. I slipped the ripped parchment inside the folded letter as proof. Before sealing it with wax, against my better judgement, I slid the torn ribbon inside as well.
I stood and made my way outside, avoiding Kelara’s curious glances.
On my way to the palace, my mind reeled with memories from over a year ago, memories I had hoped were long locked away.
Of late nights and goosebumps and damp linen and a thousand nerve endings on fire, my lips pressed to his.
And perhaps because it had been so long…
Perhaps because it was my first thought of him, truly, in ages…
Dread filled my stomach. Nausea rose, and bile climbed up my throat.
And I knew that within weeks, Thom would soon be bound and gagged, a knife to his throat, facing death.
And for some reason, I knew it would be my fault.