2. Back to the Start #2
“Can it be prevented?” Soren asked.
Dorian didn’t know.
Soren believed him first, Ariella last. She treated Dorian’s time-travelling like it was a shameful family secret, known by all and never spoken.
Rookwood wanted to know if he should invest, and who would win the strawberry festival, and whether or not anything happened between him and Ariella in the year Dorian lived.
Dorian had no idea why he thought that the last year would be any different than the last fifteen, but he kept that to himself.
“Maybe you should just ask her?” he offered instead.
Rookwood paled, looking as nervous as a schoolboy asking for his first dance. “But what if she says no?”
“What if she’s thinking the exact same thing?”
“Is she?”
“How would I know?”
“Well, maybe, if the year has to restart again, you could ask her towards the end and let me know? ”
Dorian hadn’t thought about the year restarting.
He and Soren were trying more than ever to find proof of the Duke’s guilt—especially now that Dorian knew exactly what he was planning—but finding the evidence of that is easier said than done.
Could he start again if everything happened exactly as before? What if all he had was this one chance?
He couldn’t waste it.
He paid for Marta to be tended on by a physician, just in case that could alter her outcome. He tried to stop Alfred from beating his wife. He suggested she take out an insurance policy on him. He silently rejoiced when he died again of the same accident that had killed him in the past.
He attended as many society events as he could, trying to narrow down his list of suspects. He managed a few, but not enough.
He even wrote anonymously to the King, but he didn’t appear to act on Dorian’s limited intel.
At every ball, he found his gaze wandering towards Selene.
He had often looked at her in the past, but now he noticed her.
He noticed how painted her smile looked, how her eyes didn’t glitter like they used to.
She held herself like Alfred’s wife, Lu, like she was trying to shrink herself, make herself small, less of a target.
He searched her face for signs of bruises, examined her arms when she removed her gloves, but it didn’t look like the Duke was beating her.
He was doing something else. She had the appearance of discarded washing, like he’d wrung out her colour.
Could Dorian have prevented that? He didn’t have any way of knowing.
The seasons turned. Despite his best efforts, Marta still died in childbirth on the exact same day as before.
Ariella wept bitterly at her funeral. Afterwards, she told him she was sorry she didn’t believe him, that maybe, if she had, she could have tried to prevent it.
Dorian didn’t know how. But he knew what it felt like, to buckle under the responsibility of knowledge.
A few weeks later, she came to him and gave him a date.
“What’s that?” he asked .
“The date they lay together and conceived the child,” she told him. “Memorise it. If you have to restart the year… find some way of keeping them apart.”
Dorian was still hopeful that he wouldn’t have to, but he and Soren were no closer to proving the Duke’s treachery. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to save Marta—he did—but he had no way of knowing if he could go back again. He could just die, and he didn’t want that.
“How did you get this?” he asked her.
“I have my ways.”
He didn’t doubt that, and wondered if it might be possible to take someone with him next time if he did have to restart the year. He didn’t know what the rules were.
Time marched relentlessly onwards. He stalked the Duke obsessively. He raided his study at Blackthorn Hall. He attended every event he did. He witnessed him smiling and laughing in front of the King. He tried his best to expose him.
He failed, again and again.
And Selene got smaller and frailer until she almost looked like a ghost.
“You can’t save her,” Soren said. “Not in this lifetime.”
Dorian and Soren went to Nocturne Hall, camping out in the woods nearby, looking for a way to sabotage the mining efforts.
They couldn’t find a way to do it successfully—not without killing the miners, which Dorian refused to do.
Soren was more open to the idea, although they both agreed that this would only delay the Duke’s plans, not stop them forever.
In the end, their efforts only delayed the inevitable by a few days.
When the soldiers came through, they slaughtered anyone who resisted—mostly servants of Nocturne Hall and the residents of the local village. Dorian descended to try to save everyone, despite Soren’s protests.
“We need to get to the temple,” he insisted.
Eventually, Dorian agreed.
They found Selene’s body on the way .
Dorian’s anger flared. It was bad enough that the Duke had married her just to use her birthright, that he’d sucked the life out of her over the course of the year. But that he couldn’t even protect her when Ashvold invaded, that he hadn’t kept her safe…
I’m sorry, Dorian wanted to whisper. I failed you, too.
Soren touched his shoulder. “You can’t save her,” Soren told him. “Not like this.”
In the next life, he promised her. In the next life, I’ll save you.
If he was granted another chance.
Dorian left Selene’s body on the ground, and moved through the battlefield in search of the temple. Even though he hadn’t been discovered this time, events had unfolded exactly as they had before. The servants had fought back. Selene had tried to intervene.
Selene, Selene, I will save you.
It took a while for him to locate the entrance to the path. It was so thin, so carefully concealed within the rock and half-hidden by ivy, that Dorian was surprised Selene had ever noticed it to begin with.
Soren pressed a hand to the rock, glancing at Dorian. “I still can’t believe she found this.” His voice was quiet, almost reverent, as he traced the smooth stone. “It’s like it was waiting for her.”
Dorian didn’t respond. His throat was tight, his mind too full of Selene—her hands gripping his as she had dragged him through the tunnels, the determination in her voice even as she’d trembled. She had been afraid, but she hadn’t let it stop her. She had saved him. And now she was dead.
Not for much longer.
His fingers curled into fists. “Let’s go.”
They slipped through the narrow passage. The further they went, the quieter the sounds of battle became, until all that remained was the hush of their breath and the occasional scrape of their boots against stone.
Then, the tunnel widened.
Soren let out a low breath. “Gods. ”
The temple stretched before them, its walls lined with crumbling statues, its ceiling arched and high, half-collapsed but still standing against time.
Faded murals lined the walls, depicting figures in dark robes, hands outstretched toward the sky.
At the far end of the chamber, a stone altar stood beneath a fractured window, its stained glass shattered, leaving only shards of deep blue and gold clinging to the edges.
Dorian stepped forward. He could feel the weight of something here—not just history, but expectation. A presence. It defied all rational thought.
Soren knelt near the altar and rifled through his pack. “Well,” he said, retrieving the two vials of poison, “I’d say this is as good a place as any.” He tossed one to Dorian, who caught it reflexively.
“It’ll be much quicker than a blade to the gut,” Soren assured him. He swirled the liquid in his own vial before raising it slightly in mock toast. “Bottom’s up.”