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“Not all battles are won by fighting.” Azura gave her a pointed look. “You’re going to have toget more creative if you want to win. Part of being a time mage is knowing when to fight, when to run, and when neither one is necessary.”

“That makes no sense.” But then again, half the shit the Queen spouted ever did.

“You’re also still using too much aether,” Azura said, reclaiming her seat.

Something inside her caved at that. She thought she’d been doing better.

“How is your Sight?” Azura went on. “Have you had any luck increasing your range? I really would like you at five seconds before you return to your own timeline.”

Taly sank back down into her chair. Leto tried to pick a few flecks of mud from her braid, but she waved the well-meaning fairy away. “No change. I can still only see three seconds ahead, but I’m getting better at summoning and dismissing the visions at-will. It’s too much of a drain on my aether if I try to keep them active all the time.”

“The Sight is a powerful tool, but also costly. Use it when you must, but use it sparingly.”

“Why use it at all?” Taly asked. “Half the time, I get too much information to make sense of any of it before a fairy knocks me on my ass.”

The Queen picked up her cup, taking a thoughtful sip as she stared out across the training yard. The rain had started to pick up, but a line of air crystals embedded in the stone archway kept the moisture and humidity at bay. “I’ve said it before, but I think it bears repeating. Time is an unfolding of moments, each one a single variant plucked from a limitless number of possibilities. The Sight allows us to see those possibilities, but intuition is what helps us make sense of what we see.”

“Anything is possible, but not everything is probable,” Taly recited. She had most of the Queen’s favorite sayings memorized by now. “So how do I train my intuition then?”

“That’s something that can’t be trained, I’m afraid.” Waggling her fingers, Azura picked a delicate teacake from the silver serving tray that Leto placed in the middle of the table. “Time and experience will help, but like the Sight, intuition is something you either have or you don’t.”

“I don’t like that answer,” Taly grumbled under her breath. In fact, she hated it. But, to be fair, she hated a lot of things these days: time magic, the Queen, fairy tag, as well as any and all things that were seemingly spinning out of her control.

That last item was going to need its own list soon, complete with sub-headings.

Feeling petulant, and tired, and so incredibly irritable, Taly picked up a cookie and tossed it straight at the Queen’s head.

Unsurprisingly, the pastry stopped mid-air.

“I don’t know why you look so morose.” Azura picked the cookie from the air. “I’ve told you before—you have naturally high intuition. If you didn’t, instead of three or four variations, you’d see hundreds. It’s just going to take a few decades for you to learn how to read a situation. You’re still young, after all. Little more than a babe in the woods.”

“Hmm,” was about all Taly could muster for a response. Ababe in the woods—that was another one of Azura’s favorite sayings. And just one more thing she had come to hate.

“You’re frowning, dear.”

Yes. Yes, she was.

“You’re terribly unattractive when you frown.”

Taly didn’t even bother to glare. Just stared up at the stupid chandelier.

Azura set down her teacup. “How have you been sleeping?”

She really hated that chandelier.

“Answer me.”

Taly let her head loll to the side so she could better frown at the Queen. “Better,” she said truthfully. She was finally learning how to control her Sight while she slept, and most nights, her dreams were clear of those blood-filled visions of the future she could only pray never came true.

Sometimes she saw Skye; sometimes she didn’t; sometimes the visions were so sweet, she had a hard time dragging herself from sleep.

Like last night—she had dreamed of a dingy little room with cracked windows and a thin wooden door. It had been cold, the fire in the stove having already gone out, but the man sleeping beside her had still managed to kick the blankets away during the night.

Even though there had been dark circles beneath his eyes and new scars on his chest, he was still the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Dark hair that perpetually fell into his eyes, lips that were more art than flesh, and muscle that flexed and shifted with every breath.

She had spent most of the dream merely staring at him, watching as his chest rose and fell in sleep and wondering how, after all the lies she had told, there was still a future where she would get to spend her nights beside him.

“Oh dear,” Azura said, pulling a face. She turned to Leto. “She’s thinking about Skye again.”