Chapter 45 #2
“In simple terms, it makes it possible to fix you to a specific point on the Timeline. The spell doesn’t simply send you back to the past, it will lock you there.
” She paused as if mulling the details over in her mind.
“It would need to be tied to a talisman. Something physical, strong enough to hold the anchor against anything the Timeline throws at it. It has to be unbreakable.”
A tangle of nerves and relief twisted in my stomach. I knew it would work. I still wasn’t sure how or why I knew but I had felt it the moment my dream resurfaced in my mind.
“What do you need from me?” I asked.
Anita quirked one brow. “From you? Nothing.” Her eyes stayed on mine, sober and unblinking. “But sourcing what I need will take time. Components like these don’t come easily. Especially when I’ll need three of them.”
“Three?” I shook my head. “It’s just me going back, so you only need—”
“We need all three.” Trace’s voice cut across mine, flat and final. He hadn’t moved from where he was standing, arms crossed, shoulder against the doorframe. “We’re going with her.”
I frowned at him, my brows pulling together in confusion. “That wasn’t the plan.”
Dominic clicked his tongue at me. “You ought to know better by now, angel.”
“I would never ask this of you,” I said, the words coming out frayed at the edges.
“You’re not asking us,” said Trace, his blue eyes fluttering over me. “We’re telling you.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that but it made my chest feel tight and warm at the same time. I pressed my lips together and looked away before my face had a chance to do something I’d regret in front of the Roderick sisters.
“If you’re finished with the floor show,” said Annabelle, her voice cutting through the moment like a letter opener through an envelope, “they don’t actually have a choice in the matter.
They’re your anchors, remember? They’re not just carrying your magic around for you, they’re also tethering you to this world. ”
My gaze snapped to hers, her words catching me off guard.
Tethering me to this world? I opened my mouth and then closed it again, unable to formulate an actual sentence.
“Really, Jemma.” She planted her hand on her hip and tilted her head at me “How else do you think you’re still alive when Ares is not?”
I flinched. “What are you talking about?”
“Hello? You were Anointed as the Fourth Horseman,” she said, her words coming out slowly as though she were explaining it to a child. “That meant you were one of them, for better or worse. The second Ares ceased to exist, you would have been dragged back to whatever realm they came from.”
A shiver ran through me. I vaguely remembered my Alt telling me something about that—that the Horsemen were bound to this world only for as long as Ares was alive, and once that purpose was served, they would return to whatever hell dimensions they came from. Taking me right along with them.
“You’re really only here because the anchoring spell is keeping you tethered to your bonds,” added Anita, as if my head wasn’t already spinning into orbit.
“Yeah. Thanks to us,” added Annabelle, examining her nails.
I stood there for a moment, the full weight of what they’d just said moving through me in layers.
I glanced at Trace and then at Dominic. Neither of them looked surprised.
In fact, there was something that looked almost amused in Dominic’s expression, which meant they’d either already known or had at least suspected as much.
No shocker there.
I turned back to Anita, my heart tight with gratitude.
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it in a way I didn’t have even have the words for.
This wasn’t the side I ever thought I’d be standing with, but I couldn’t deny I was only alive and in one piece right now because of them.
“For the anchoring spell. For this. For Ares.”
For the fact that I was even standing in this room instead of wherever the hell I was supposed to have been dragged off to.
Anita inclined her head once. It seemed to be enough.
“How long?” asked Dominic, his hand pressing into the small of my back. “To get what you need for the talisman.”
“At least a day.”
My shoulders dropped. Twenty-four hours felt like an eternity sitting around waiting while Tessa and Gabriel and Ares stayed dead on the other side of a Timeline I couldn’t reach yet.
I didn’t like it. Every part of me that had been running on adrenaline and certainty for the last several hours wanted to push back, to find some way to compress it, to move faster.
But I knew I had no choice in the matter.
Anita glanced at Arianna, something passing between them that required no words. When she looked back at me, her expression darkened in a way that made the back of my neck prickle.
“There is one more thing you should know before you do this.”
Dammit. So close.
“The Temporal Binding is permanent. Once it locks you into that fixed point and you complete the transfer, the Timeline seal is irreversible. You will never again be able to travel through time.” Her gaze moved to Trace and stayed there. “That means all of you.”
Oh, my god.
My heart dropped all the way down into my stomach as I turned to Trace. He was a Reaper. Time travel wasn’t just something he could do, it was what he was, who he was, threaded into him at the DNA level. It was as natural as breathing to him, and here I was asking him to give it up forever.
Horrified, I started to shake my head, to tell him I couldn’t ask that of him—that I’d never ask that of him.
“Done,” he said without hesitation.
“Trace—”
“Done, Jemma.” The steadiness in his voice left no crack for argument. “It’s not even a question.”
I looked at him for a long moment, and then at Dominic, who was watching me with those dark eyes that missed nothing and gave even less away, and I felt the enormity of what they’d just handed me sink into my chest, deeper and more permanent than I knew what to do with.
“Tomorrow then,” said Anita, her voice pulling my gaze from them.
“Tomorrow.” I nodded stiffly and then turned to leave.
We moved back through the house the same way we’d come, my eyes forward, and my steps even, letting myself lean into the bond between us instead of shutting it out. I could feel the steady thrum running from Trace and Dominic to me, and for once I didn’t try to push it away.
Everything else was still there. The grief and guilt.
The knowledge of what tomorrow was going to cost us.
None of that had changed. But for the first time since this started, I wasn’t drowning in it.
I felt like I could finally breathe. Like maybe, against every odd that had ever been stacked against me, we were actually going to fix this.
I was almost at the door when Annabelle’s voice followed us out.
“Try to get some sleep you three,” she called out, her tone somewhere between sincere and sardonic, which with her was basically the same thing. “You’re going to war with the Order of the Rose using nothing but stolen time and a borrowed spell.” A beat. “You’ll want to be rested.”
I didn’t answer her.
The bitch wasn’t wrong.