Chapter Forty-Three
Of the Essence
Celestia
I stand before my snow globe collection, the rounded glass surfaces catching the light in tiny pinpricks, like flickering stars. I am usually calmed by the sight, but right now, I’m not sure anything can settle my nerves.
Countless globes of glass fill towering shelves all around me, the circular room fitting for these endless moments. All of these fractions of infinity, frozen in crystal.
Right now, however, my mind can only focus on the one missing moment.
The empty sphere, where Millbrook used to sit, gleams mockingly in the soft light. Fate’s carelessness. Her complete and utter disregard for anything I valued.
I reach out and touch the empty globe, running my fingers across the smooth glass.
Inside, there is nothing. The four hundred souls screaming as fire consumed them, the way their panic made seconds stretch into eternities, the perfect temporal distortion I’d watched a thousand times—all of it erased because my sister couldn’t control her temper.
My hand clenches into a fist.
“Stupid, reckless, selfish brat,” I mutter to myself, moving along the shelves.
I run my fingertips across the globes as I walk, feeling the subtle vibration of each captured moment. Every one represents a piece of my energy spent in preservation. A part of me, literally, exists in all of these keepsakes.
And Fate destroyed one without thinking twice about the consequences.
I stop at a globe showing a shipwreck. Fifteen hundred souls experiencing the horror of sinking into black water. The cold. The realization that they were going to die. I’ve watched this one countless times, but it’s not the same as Millbrook. Nothing is.
“She’s always been impulsive,” I say aloud, though there’s no one around to hear me.
The solitude is new to me. For so long, it was the three of us, sometimes even four. But even with Chance’s mercurial comings and goings and Mercy’s betrayal, there was always Time and Fate. Inseparable—until now.
I continue to pace my memory palace, my anger building with each step.
Fate broke the rules, fraternizing with a mortal. I can get past that lack of judgment on her part, but to keep it a secret from me, her supposed partner in all of this? Nothing heals that wound, not even time.
I move to a globe that displays a plague. Bodies stacked. Entire families dying en masse. The way time seems to fracture for the dying, how their final moments stretch and compress in ways that defy logic. I watch it play out behind the glass, and for a moment, it calms me.
But only for a moment.
“She’s gone too far,” I whisper. “It’s every sister for herself now.”
I walk to my desk and pour myself a small drink—a dram of liquid distilled from moments of pure joy. It’s called Euphoria, and the irony isn’t lost on me. I’m drinking the happiness from others while my heart fills only with rage.
I set down my tumbler and return to the globes. This time, I select one at random—a moment from 1666, a massive fire. Multiple perspectives of death and terror and the way time fractured for each victim. I hold it up to the light, watching the flames dance behind the crystal.
“What did you think would happen?” I ask Fate, though I know she’s not here. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Did you think I wouldn’t care?”
Of course she didn’t think. Fate never thinks. She feels, acts, and destroys.
And I’m done with it.
I’ve spent eons managing moments. Preserving them. Studying them. Understanding the intricate way that time works for all souls. I’ve learned that control is an illusion, but built my power on maintaining that misconception anyway.
But now my sister’s carelessness and selfishness threaten to shatter that illusion. And I, quite simply, will not stand for that.
I stare into the empty glass in front of me and marvel at its potential. I can feel my energy gifted to this orb, can feel its charge waiting to capture a moment and preserve it for all eternity.
Then my eyes track over to the emptied Millbrook globe. Nothing can fill it again. A piece of my own energy and essence trapped in the nothing that remains of that lost moment.
“You choose you, Sister?” I say to the empty air. “Very well. But guess what. I get a choice too. And I choose me.”
I close my eyes and feel the weight of my power settling over me.
All those moments I’ve protected. The accumulated strength and the intimate knowledge of how time fractures and reforms. My connection to every single moment of the past, my presence inside the present, and my inevitable mark on the future.
I grasp the newly formed globe in my hand and squeeze it tightly, feeling the kinetic energy bouncing off its surface.
I walk from my private space into the room beyond, where my sister keeps her threads.
Globe glowing and vibrating with potential, I walk it directly to the base of Fate’s most recently woven loom.
I think of my sister’s betrayal, her selfishness, her carelessness.
I note the frayed edges of the piece of thread hanging off the edge of the loom.
I smirk disdainfully and place the vessel at the feet of her most recent work, then step back, taking in the two physical manifestations of our power—her tattered weaving machine and my freshly made globe.
I wonder what as-yet-unmade memory, what moment from the near future, I will capture inside that orb. I wonder what event will resonate enough to be worthy of being saved forever. An act of betrayal, or forgiveness, or war?
Only Time will tell.