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“Yes, cease.End.Die.And not a glorious death, a hero’s death.One that your people believe will allow you to be reincarnated eventually and live again.But finally, completely, with no one to remember or care.You’ll fade into nothingness because you were plucked out of time, which has rerouted around you and this whole era.Everybody else will go on, all of those back there, butnot you.You won’t exist anymore.All anyone will know of you is that you disappeared in the middle of a trial, one youfailed, and were never heard from again.Unless I tell them a story—and trust me, if I do, it won’t be flattering.It will be about how you sandbagged us—”

“Sand—”

“—and ratted us out to Jonas—”

“He didwhat?” Gray Curls snarled, peering in the already crowded doorway.

“—and kept us from having any hope of getting back and preventing all this.But you don’t have to worry,” I added, as he stared at me, almost as if he’d never seen me before, “you’ll be dead long before all that.Jonas will sacrifice everyone in this room, including you, because fey princes have a lot of magic, don’t they?Only not enough.

“He’ll probably even sacrifice himself to get power that won’t take me back one.Single.Day.And do you know what I’ll do then, should I survive?The same thing I’m doing now,” I said, moving toward him; ice cold, yet with my blood pressure through the roof.And weirdly, Æsubrand yielded, walking backward into the corridor while I stalked him.“I’ll fucking die trying, but Iwilltry because, unlike you, I don’t care about thrones or people remembering my name or chiseling out goddamned statues—”

“I don’t—”

“I’vehadthe statues, and do you know where they got me?”I gestured around again savagely.“Fuckthe statues, andfuckyou, andfuckanybody who isn’t on the let’s-get-Cassie-to-Rhea train because that’s the only chance any of us have or ever will have!I am the time traveler here, and believe me, I’ve earned that title.So we do thismyway,notyours, and we leavenowbefore another well-meaning idiot comes along who thinks he knows better than me and screws everything up!Do you get me?”

“I get you,” someone said quietly, but it wasn’t Æsubrand.

It was Zara, somehow still managing to channel Jasmine despite wearing one of those damned ugly Circle tunics and looking at me for the first time without a scowl on her face.“What do you need?”

Chapter Eighteen

Well, fuck,” someone whispered, and it could have been any of us.It could have been me.

“Why is nothing ever easy?”I whispered to Zara, who was lying on my left as we stared down through a railing into a big old lot of Nope.

“Hate for things to get dull,” she murmured.

“I like dull.I’m all about dull!”

“Oh, fuck that,” Alphonse said, but not in reply.He’d just come from guarding our rear and seen what was happening below.“You have got to be kidding me.”

I wished I was.

The only good thing was that a portal was thrumming away on the opposite wall of the cavernous room we were overlooking.It looked like there was space for three of them, as two burnt circles farther along the wall attested, but only one was lit.It was big, it was green, and it was probably not tuned into Vegas because I wasn’t that lucky.

But Bodil might be able to change that.

“No,” she said, crawling out of the tunnel behind us and onto the narrow ledge bordered by the railing.

She’d answered my question before I asked it, so I tried another.“Just how close do you need to be?”

“Closer than this.”

Great.

The problem was that the vast space below was being used.And what it was being used for had all the skin on my body standing at attention as if it was trying to see, too.Only it didn’t want to.

Ididn’t want to, but I didn’t have a choice.

This looked like it might have been a naturally occurring cavern, with a few sheared-off stalactites overhead, where they’d been removed so the Corps could turn this place into a cafeteria/meeting spot.Somebody with a little earth magic had caused slabs of limestone to erupt from the floor all over the area, giving the mages tables to sit at and eat their dinners.There were only a few scattered chairs anymore, probably because this place had become a reminder of all they’d lost as their numbers shrank and had been left to gather dust.

It wasn’t gathering any now.

The Circle had been busy while we were resting, showering, and eating—and now I knew why the feast had been so generous.Nobody was worried about running out of anything because this was the day.The last day, before victory or annihilation, so provisions didn’t matter anymore.

And neither did anything else, apparently, like the code they’d once believed in.Because they were busy dragging obviously beat-up people back through the portal and beating them up some more if they tried to run away.The latest arrival made it five whole feet before being taken down by a triple spell.

He hit the floor, still in wall-eyed panic, while the portal behind him churned out a handful of others.It was no longer landing them in the safe zone outside, where they could be checked out before entering the new HQ.It looked like Jonas didn’t think there was time for that and had rerouted them straight here.