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In a flash of light, they were gone.

Epilogue

Azura Raine, former Queen of Ages, watched the display screen with a frown on her face.

Around her, consoles flickered with complex algorithms, and the room hummed with the low, steady drone of machines.

Numbers scrolled in front of her. To anyone else, it would’ve been gibberish, but to her—she could read between them. See the picture they painted. These numbers, for so many thousands of years now, had been her only window into the outside world.

Cori knocked on the doorframe. Not that Azura didn’t know she was coming. They were all queens here, after all.

“I don’t understand,” Azura said as Cori came to stand beside her. “We had him placed all the way across the island. How did he get there in time?”

“I don’t know,” Cori said, her face betraying none of the inner turmoil Azura knew she must be feeling.

This was an important moment in the Primary Timeline. A defining moment. A moment she’d been planning for centuries.

Skylen was supposed to stay on Tempris. Taly was supposed to go. If they went together, then—

“Damn.”

“I know,” Cori said.

“Damn, damn,damn.” But all was not lost. “It’ll be harder now, but I think we can still pull it off. There’s never only one way to accomplish an entire rewrite of history.”

Cori’s glamour was gone. She fixed her one-time mentor with an unwavering gaze, her eyes glowing with a steady golden light.

Azura placed a hand on her shoulder. “I will fix this.” It was a vow. “You go back to your life now—you have a fiancé and a wedding to plan, and that’s what I want you to focus on. Behappy. You deserve it.”

Of all the people Azura had hurt trying to save her people, this was the one she needed to see whole again.

Cori managed a wan smile. “Okay.”

Azura felt the whisper of the Weave as it swallowed her. With a sharp breath, she turned back to her screens and resumed the endless task of damage control.

It was dark when Cori stepped out of the space between threads, the Weave shifting back into place around her. The familiar smells of fine perfume and ocean breeze met her.

“Ma’am.” One of the maids curtsied, waiting with her usual cup of wine. Weave-walking always made her thirsty.

The palace corridors stretched out before her, dimly lit by flickering sconces that cast long shadows on the marble floors. She passed between towering arches, up long, winding staircases. Outside the windows, she caught glimpses of the Bay of Ghislain. The water glistened like a sea of liquid starlight.

When she came to the turnoff for her bedroom, she hesitated. Her fiancé was upstairs, probably asleep. After all this time, he’d learned not to wait up when she went walking through time.

Cori turned and made her way to her study. Not her official office—this was a little room tucked behind a hidden shelf in the library that Skye had shown her once.

A narrow staircase descended into the dark. The door at the end was already open, voices filtering out.

“Well, that was a piece of cake. Who knew all we needed was a little synchronized chaos?”

“Did anyone else think that last spell was going to go sideways? No? Just me? Okay, then.”

“Let’s not forget the best part—we totally did it with style. Those robes were on point! We looked so evil.”

“You know, every Skye is so different, but they all seem to have that‘save the day’vibe. It’s kind of hot.”

Cori cleared her throat. The room fell silent as she looked out over the sea of faces. All of them her face, though there were some variations here and there. The color of her hair, her eyes, the occasional piercing, tattoo, or scar.

Ivain had warned her not to meddle, but as usual, that warning came too late. She’d been building her army for a while now. Jumping to parallel worlds to recruit soldiers for an impossible mission.