9. An Empty Return
I n the next life, Dorian woke howling. He screamed so loudly that we woke the rest of the household, sobbing into his pillow, tearing at his chest. Ariella crashed into the room first.
“Dorian, Dorian, what’s wrong—”
Her hands immediately closed around him, checking him for injury, but they were the wrong hands from the wrong person—
“She’s dead,” he wailed. “She’s dead, they’re both dead—”
Soren tumbled in, followed by Rookwood.
“Is he hurt—”
“Should I fetch a physician—”
Ariella was still trying to steady him. “I think… I think he’s dreaming,” she said, though even she didn’t sound sure. Dorian’s screams had not been the cries of a man waking from a bad dream. They were the raw, broken howls of someone wh o had lost everything.
Soren reached the bed, gripping Dorian’s arms, trying to ground him. “Dorian, listen to me—you’re all right. You’re safe.”
Safe. The word meant nothing.
Selene wasn’t safe.
Their child wasn’t safe.
They were dead.
Dorian gasped, the sound strangled, and fought against Soren’s grip. He clawed at his own throat, at the spot where her blood had bloomed across her neck, as if he could rip the memory from his skin.
“Dorian, stop,” Soren ordered, voice low and firm.
But Dorian couldn’t stop. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. His body shook violently, raw sobs tearing from his throat.
“She’s dead,” he choked again, fingers tangling in his sheets. “I lost her. I lost them.”
Soren’s face went still. He looked at Rookwood, who ran a hand over his mouth, looking grim.
Ariella shifted on the bed beside him. “Who?” she asked gently, brushing damp hair from his forehead. “Dorian, who did you lose?”
He couldn’t say it. If he said it, it would be real.
But it was already real.
He clenched his teeth, fresh tears spilling down his cheeks. “Selene.”
Ariella stilled.
“Selene,” he sobbed, curling into himself. “She—she told me to leave. She gave me a way out. She—” His throat closed. He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head. “The baby.” The words barely made it out. “My baby.”
“He’s not making any sense,” Rookwood said. “I’ll send for a physician.”
“Give him a moment,” said Ariella, and pulled him against her. He collapsed into her hold, shaking.
He didn’t know how long he stayed like that. Hours, maybe. Until his throat was raw and his body weak. Until grief hollowed him out and left nothing but a shell .
Eventually, exhaustion dragged him under again.
Dorian did not rise from his bed for days.
At first, it was because he couldn’t. His body was wracked with tremors, his limbs heavy as stone. Sleep did not bring rest—only feverish nightmares that left him drenched in sweat and gasping for air. When he was awake, the grief crushed him, pressing him deeper into the mattress, suffocating.
Selene’s blood was under his fingernails. He swore he could feel it.
He hadn’t even gone to her. He hadn’t held her as she slipped away. She’d bled out on the lawn while he ran…
Ariella tried to coax him into eating. He ignored her. He couldn’t chew. Everything tasted like paste.
Soren sat by his bedside, quiet and unmoving. He asked no questions, only placed cool cloths on Dorian’s burning skin, forcing him to sip water when he was too weak to push him away.
Rookwood came in once, cursing under his breath when he saw the state of him. “You’re going to kill yourself like this.”
Maybe.
He didn’t care.
She was dead. The baby was gone.
What was the point of breathing in a world without them?
But the world did not let him slip away so easily. His fever broke after three days. His body ached, weak from neglect, but the worst of the sickness passed.
His mind did not recover so quickly.
Even as he sat up, even as he took the spoon Ariella pressed into his hand and forced down a mouthful of broth, the weight of his failure did not lift .
He had failed Selene.
He had failed their child.
And still, the world had the audacity to keep turning.
By the sixth day, he could not bear it.
He shoved off the blankets and forced himself to his feet. His body protested, his vision blurred at the edges, but he didn’t stop. He staggered down the halls, ignoring the voices calling after him, the concerned hands that tried to steady him.
He reached his study, shoved open the door, and collapsed into his chair.
His hands trembled as he reached for parchment and pen, and began the long, arduous process of writing everything down.
He would not fail again.
He would not lose her again.
One way or another, he would set this right.
He began to work.
A few hours later, Soren joined him.
“I don’t know if this helps or not,” Soren began, “but you need to know anyway. I remember. Everything from the last few cycles, anyway.”
Dorian paused in his writing to look at him. “You do?”
Soren nodded. “I came back this morning.”
“What—what happened?”
“When I went to our meeting point and you weren’t there, I panicked,” he said.
“I snuck into Nocturne Hall to see if I could find out what had happened. The Duke was trying to spin a story that Selene had miscarried and died, but I got the truth out of some of the staff.” He paused.
“I’m really sorry about the baby, Dorian. ”
It wasn’t just the baby who was lost forever. It was Selene, that version of her, and the future they had planned. There was no way he could follow those steps again, remake those memories. Those were forever lost to time. Even if he rekindled things…
I don’t want to forget, Selene had told him.
He would remember for her. However much it hurt, however much it killed him, he would remember.
He just wasn’t sure he could bring himself to ever be with her again, to open himself up to that kind of pain.
“What happened afterwards?” Dorian asked.
“I went to the temple,” Soren continued. “I guessed, of course, what you must have done. But then I stopped and wondered: if I was still here, and you weren’t, did that mean time hadn’t reset? I decided I’d stick around, just for a little, to see if I could gain any more intel.”
“And did you?”
“I waited for the invasion,” Soren told him.
“I wanted to see what would actually happen. A part of me was hoping it would be a peaceful takeover. Perhaps, I reasoned, we haven’t had any luck averting the course of history because we were fighting the inevitable.
Perhaps Ashvold’s invasion wouldn’t be a terrible thing.
This country is far from perfect, after all—”
“And?” Dorian prompted, not wanting to get into a discussion of how much else needed to change if they did save the country. “Was it?”
Soren went quiet. “Let’s just say, I think there’s a reason we keep being sent back,” he told them. “And that I don’t ever want to have to witness that again.”
Dorian swallowed.
“I think the temple wanted me to return,” Soren explained. “In the days after the invasion, I could feel this tug in my chest, like a thread. A whisper. Could have just been my own will, of course, but…” He took a deep breath, dropping into one of the chairs. “Have you noticed the patterns?”
Dorian gestures to the piles of paper around him .
“I mean, Selene always marries—even when we dispose of the Duke. Marta and Jon always conceive a child if they’re together on that specific date. Only that specific date. Someone always dies. Sometimes it feels like we’re completely powerless.”
Dorian shrugged. “Then why do we keep being sent back?”
“I feel like we’re missing something,” Soren declared. “Something that will break the pattern.”
Dorian felt it too, and certainly in the last timeline, when the evidence of the Duke’s treachery just didn’t seem to exist.
He just didn’t know what that something might be.
“I know we’ve often worried about the other timelines,” Soren continued, “and whether or not they continue after we die. Certainly, having stuck around for weeks without you, that’s more of a concern of mine, but still…”
Dorian raised an eyebrow. “Still?”
“If the other timelines exist after our deaths, then why do we keep getting sent back to the same one? No matter when we arrive, it’s always the timeline we haven’t altered. Nothing changes but us.”
Dorian had never thought of that before, but he was right. If they arrived after the 3rd of Springrise, there was nothing to suggest that they’d returned to their most recent timeline. Selene was always engaged. Dorian had never approached her at the party.
There was something in that, too. He wasn’t quite sure what.
But he was going to find out.
Dorian lost count of the cycles .
He stopped keeping track after the first handful, after the grief of each failure bled together, becoming indistinguishable from the last.
Every time he woke, he forced himself up. He ignored the trembling in his hands, the way his stomach clenched at the thought of going through it all again. He had work to do.
If he couldn’t save her yet, then he would prepare.
Each life, he ruled out one suspect, learned more about one place, one house, one person.
He mapped the movements of the Duke’s allies, uncovered their secrets, their weaknesses.
He dug into Ashvold’s dealings, the mercenaries who came and went from the estate, the Duke’s guards—how many there were, how well-trained.
All the while, he saved who he could.
He couldn’t let their deaths be meaningless. He tried to keep Jon and Marta apart. He tried to protect Luisa from her husband. He warned villages of impending raids. He exposed traitors before they could act. He helped those he could reach, moved pieces before they could fall.
It was never enough.
One day, he’d find a way to save everyone.
But for now, he saved who he could.
And he kept trying.
He lost Soren again, more than once.
The first time, it shattered him. The second time, he felt like ice, like glass—fragile and brittle and already broken. But it was worse when he lost Ariella and Rookwood, trying to take them back with him.
He thought he was prepared for the pain of it.
He wasn’t.
Still, he didn’t stop.
He tried what Selene had suggested—starting rumours about the Duke. When he had the time, when he had the chance.
He rarely had enough time.
So he tried again.
And again .
And again.
Ten times or a hundred, he would not rest.
Until he died for good, he would try.
He failed every time.
Until one day, he tried something different.
He went back earlier.
He planted the rumours earlier. He whispered in the right ears, nudged the right hands, let the right suspicions take root. The idea that Selene herself had given him, lifetimes ago.
And then—
Then he met her in the garden on the day of her engagement. For the first time in over a dozen lifetimes, she sought him out. She looked at him, eyes sharp and searching.
And then she said, quietly, “I want you to marry me.”