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“Do I possess the power of future-gazing?” I asked Arina.

“Don’t you know?”

“Well, I’ve seen flashes of the future. Of my daughter. But that’s the Vault projecting into me, right?”

“Perhaps you’re seeing the visions of the future through the artifacts,” Arina said. “Or perhaps the artifacts are using your magic to allow you to see.”

“Can’t you read my magic and tell me what it is?” I asked her.

Arina looked at me for a long while. Finally, she said, “I don’t know. Your magic is very powerful right now. It’s like staring straight into a bright light; it’s blinding. I can’t separate your magic from your unborn child’s magic.”

I patted my belly. “She has the power. She got it from absorbing Faith’s magic. Grace made sure of that.”

“Your mother sounds like a real treat,” Arina told me.

“Just wait until you meet her.”

Arina cringed. “I hope that I never do.”

“Leda, look at Grace,” Nero said.

So I looked—and blinked in surprise when I saw what Grace was doing. She now had the weapons of heaven and hell set out on the floor before her. The gun Shooting Star. The silver-and-red Shield of Protection. The long Vortex Blade, whose bright blue flames could kill a deity. And Fortitude, the set of silver armor.

“What is Grace doing?” I wondered.

“I believe she is performing a spell to bind them to you,” Nero told me.

“Yes.” Arina nodded. “That’s exactly what she’s doing.”

“But why?” I wondered. “And how does she even have the artifacts? At this point in time, they were stashed away in the Lost City, locked away behind many magical protections.”

“Grace must have found a way to recover them. And now she’s binding them to you.” Nero frowned. “So that when you find them in the Lost City approximately twenty-three years later, they will remember you, and you’ll be able to wield them immediately and effectively. She’s performing this ritual to make sure you have a higher compatibility with the artifacts.”

“But she can’t possibly know that I will be there and find them.”

“Grace can see the future, or at least fragments of it,” said Nero. “She could see enough to know what she must do to set you on the path she intends for you to follow.”

I scowled at the Grace from the past. “Wow, planning out my whole life before I’m even born. Nice.”

“Actually, as we just saw, she planned out your whole life before you were even conceived,” Arina pointed out.

Even better. I knew there was a reason that Grace gave me the creeps.

“Let’s fast-forward a bit.” Then Arina brought us to the next stop along the Road of Time.

* * *

Arina was definitely getting betterat directing this memory bus. She switched scenes so smoothly that I didn’t even fall into Nero this time.

Grace was talking to a woman whose face was covered in a dark purple veil. “I need you to return these to the Lost City on Earth.” She waved her hand toward the weapons of heaven and hell, which lay spread across the desk beside her.

“So soon?” said the woman in the purple veil.

“I need nothing more from them,” Grace said. “At least not for the time being.”

The purple-veiled woman took the sword, turning the blade around slowly. “These weapons can kill a deity.”

“I am aware,” said Grace. “But that doesn’t help me just yet.”