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Cori glanced over her shoulder. “Who knows,” she said. “It wasn’t about vengeance anymore. The ones responsible for his pain were already long dead. The grief… drove him mad. He was on the verge of breaking into the Primary Timeline when Azura plucked him up and put him here.”

Cori stopped beside a copse of gnarled trees that wove together to form a bower. Calcifer pushed his head out from beneath her collar, hugging her neck.

“Ta-da.”

“I don’t see anything,” Skye said.

“Just wait. It’s happening now. We’re passing the inflection point. The Stitch is forming.”

A glimmer flickered in the shadows beneath the bower. Then—a door. It didn’t appear so much asunfold, pulled from somewhere else. Its edges sharpened, contours settling into reality. Faint glyphs shimmered across the wood, pulsing with an iridescent glow.

Cori turned to him. “Going into a Stitch—and I cannot overstate this—is like boarding a sinking ship. It’s unstable, the ground feels shaky, and the laws of physics get weird. Don’t wander off. If I lose you, I couldreallylose you. Do I make myself clear?”

“You’re really selling this experience.”

“I wasn’t aiming for comfort.” Cori approached the door and pressed her palm to the surface. The runes flashed from white to red. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Azura reset the passcode since I was last here.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because she’s a suspicious bitch who doesn’t like anyone but her meddling.” A pause. “And because this is her vault. Technically.”

“I thought it was a prison.”

“It’s also that.”

She hadn’t changed a bit, no matter how many years separated them. Taly—in this case, Cori—was still just as reckless andinfuriatingas the day she was born.

And Shards damn it, now he was curious.

What could drive the Time Queen to such lengths? What did she need to bend time and seal away entire realities just to keep it hidden?

And what did Cori want with it? Why all the secrecy?

“I thought the two of you were supposed to be friends in the future,” Skye said.

“We’re friends,” Cori answered distractedly. From her fingertips sprouted golden threads that anchored to the surface of the door, shimmering in the air like a crisscrossing lattice. Her eyes had a faraway look. “But friends don’t tell each other everything all the time. She has her secrets, I have mine, and sometimes our goals contradict.”

Cori dropped her hand. The threads dissolved. “Guess we’re just going to have to brute force it.” She straightened. “Speak the key that binds the realm.”

The runes glowed brighter. Waiting.

Cori said, “Azura is the most powerful High Lady.”

The runes flashed red.

“Azura is the most cunning High Lady.”

Again, red.

“Azura is the most beautiful High Lady.”

Red.

Skye asked, “Is there a point to this?”