Page 163

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. Be happy . 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.

To change history. To re-write it, despite Azura’s attempts to sway it in the other direction.

“Ladies,” Cori said in greeting. “Well done. Skye went through the Aion Gate. This little coup just became considerably more probable.”

“By approximately 200%,” one of the variants called out. “Bringing us to a whopping 17% chance of actually pulling this off.”

“That’s better than I was expecting,” said another to a chorus of murmured agreements.

“Oh, and Skye taking the keeper’s deal also bumped us another 1.5 points.”

Cori pressed her lips together. She could admit when she was wrong. But 1.5 points wasn’t wrong. It was a… rounding error.

Still, she had to give credit where it was due. Even if it stung.

“Not bad,” she admitted. “57, I had my doubts when you suggested waking up the grimble—”

“You called it an overly complicated suicide,” another voice cut in.

“—but it worked out in our favor. So, good job.”

A raised hand. “I have a complaint.”

Cori sighed. “Yes, 34. What is it?”

“Are we all just going to ignore how Luck seemed hell-bent on sabotaging us?”

“Yeah, what exactly was that fever-dream of a tea party, pipsqueak?” someone else chimed in. “Kinda looked like you forgot which side you were spying on.”

The ten-year-old was sullen, sitting alone in the corner. Of everyone, she was struggling the most with the realization that her world was never real—just a distant offshoot, severed long ago from the Primary Timeline.

“Relax,” Luck grumbled. “I just wanted to get a sense of her. If she’s as impressive as you all seem to think, a bit of poking around shouldn’t throw her off.”

“You were supposed to let her out of the dream. Not keep her locked in until she had to claw her way free.”

“And let’s not forget the part where you sicced a bunch of shades on her because you decided to throw a fit,” another voice said.

Luck rolled her eyes. “Everything still worked out.”

“What’s next?” This question came from one of the Adjacents. They all had their proximity to the Primary Timeline, but the Adjacents had lived nearly parallel lives. It made them, in a word, more real.

The room quieted, waiting as Cori pulled a folder from her desk. “Next, we’ve got a recruitment mission. Currently taking volunteers.”

She threw the folder into the middle of them to a chorus oohs, let-me-sees, gimmes, and pass-it-heres.

On the front it read simply: Variant 62.

“Ow,” Taly groaned. She’d been falling forever it seemed—and when it ended, it ended abruptly, her body slamming into the ground.

Wherever they were, it had grass. And sunlight. It beat down on her as she panted, mind spinning so violently she barely managed to roll onto her back. The air smelled scorched and dry, and sand clung to her sweat-dampened skin.

“Taly!”

“Here!” she called, reaching up and tearing away that awful crown.

Skye came tearing through the underbrush. His face was scratched, but the lacerations were already healing. His eyes were wild, his hair wind-swept and messy. When he was close enough, he wrapped her in a fierce hug.

“Thank you,” he whispered. Over and over, thank you, thank you, thank you .

When he pulled back, he didn’t ask if she was okay. For that, she was grateful. He just pushed back her hair with a tenderness that a part of her, however small, had feared she’d never see again. Looking into those strange, new eyes, his expression didn’t waver, didn’t flinch.

“Does this mean I have to call you Your Majesty now?”

He felt so far away now. Without the bond, he was an island separated by a vast, unknowable ocean.

She tried to smile. “Only in the bedroom,” she quipped weakly and let him pull her up.

“Let’s figure out where you sent us.”

Palm trees swayed gently in the breeze, their leaves whispering under the bright sun. A clear pool surrounded by a ring of greenery—they were in some kind of… oasis?

Ferns and weeds snagged at her skirts as they made their way towards the edge, where the lush vegetation gave way to a vast expanse of desert. Sand stretched out before them, an endless ocean of dunes that seemed to ripple under the intense heat of the sun.

In the distance, hills rose like sentinels, and above them—

“Is that…?” Taly blinked, but it was still there.

Dark shapes soared over the distant mountains, their silhouettes cutting through the air with an effortless grace. Birds of prey, perhaps, or maybe—

“Draegon,” Skye said, his mouth set in a grim line.

And Taly remembered, in the midst of all that power surging through her, when time had been running out, the place she’d latched onto.

This was Eya. The Draegon homeworld.