Page 47 of Revert (The Royal Chronicles #4)

Castiel stepped closer, gaze fixed on the mural.

“I never told you at the time, but I couldn’t understand how you discovered this mural…

or how it even existed outside the Chamber of Timelines.

It was as if this room wanted you to find it, even though it only appears to those who carry the bloodline possessing the ability to wield its power. ”

I turned towards him, heart pounding. “The bloodline… to wield its power ?”

His eyes searched mine as he nodded. “Since that night, I started researching your genealogy. I never looked too deeply into the king’s reasons for arranging our match. But the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.”

His eyes searched mine. “Like I mentioned earlier, my father chose my bride from a very specific family. Though you are the perfect leverage against me, for all your rebellion he never killed you, even though he had every opportunity to create an alternate timeline that would erase your existence forever.”

I frowned. “But he did kill me,” I reminded him. “Even if it wasn’t permanent. He was boasting about it just before he reversed time.”

Castiel stiffened, his eyes flashing. “Those are my worst memories,” he said in a low voice. “I’m thankful you cannot recall them.”

I hesitated, wondering how to ask my question without causing him pain. “Why is there no mark from that death? I have a scar from the time I—you?—”

His eyes widened for a moment before his gaze dropped.

He took a slow breath. “I didn’t realize that, but I suppose it makes sense.

Time magic always leaves evidence behind of every timeline it’s undone.

Just as your memories were preserved because you…

died at the entrance to the Time Chamber, the physical mark remained as well.

But your encounters with the king were always elsewhere’ I think he was afraid to have you close to the chamber, just in case its magic allowed you to remember the timeline before. ”

“If he is so distrustful of me, why do you think he never attempted to remove me entirely?” I wondered.

“Despite the risk, he must have had a motive for preserving you—he never does anything without reason, which means…”

“…he has a strong motive to keep me alive.” My heart seized at the thought, and then another idea occurred to me. “He truly wasn’t involved in the assassination attempt. Why would Lord Ravenhurst have wanted me dead, if it wasn’t under the direction of the king?”

“I don’t know entirely.” Castiel’s hand brushed against his dagger as though recalling the moment he had defended me. “But my father has long suspected that he has ties to a revolutionary group in multiple other kingdoms.”

“Like…Myrielle?” My voice was faint.

“All I know for sure is that I saw him near your fox-masked contact on multiple occasions at the masquerade, and it looked like a slip of paper was exchanged, though I couldn’t be positive.”

I felt as though I couldn’t breathe. I had just learned that the cause I’d spent years advancing was nothing more than an attempt to seize power, and now it seemed that they’d tried to kill me.

“Why would my own countrymen want me dead?” I asked. “I took countless risks for them.”

“Didn’t your contact warn you about becoming too close to me?”

I looked up sharply. “You heard that?”

He shrugged. “I suspected he didn’t have your best interests at heart.”

“Unfortunately, it appears you were right.” The betrayal was sharp, and would take time to work through the complicated emotions it’d stirred. “But I still don’t understand. Why would they kill me before I found the artifact they wanted?”

“I can only guess that they were no longer certain of your allegiance and feared that you might be sharing information with me.” He considered further.

“Or perhaps their mission was compromised in some way, and they suspected killing you would guarantee I would reset the timeline in order to save you, providing them another opportunity to fulfill their purpose.”

Despite the seriousness of our conversation, a small smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “I suppose they were right, to a degree. While I have no intention of sabotaging the mission, I can’t deny I’ve certainly been creating a…new alliance .”

His fingers curled around mine. “I promise that I will never turn against you. Any illusion to the contrary was done solely for your protection.”

My smile grew. But much as I wanted to continue this more pleasant line of conversation, I knew our time was limited before the king made his next move.

“So the assassin wasn’t working with the king. For all his threats, for some reason he doesn’t seem to want me dead at this point.”

Castiel’s voice dropped. “A reason I am beginning to believe is tied to your blood.”

His words stirred something in me, a detail buried beneath the tangle of recent memories, something small and quiet that suddenly pressing against my awareness—a memory I hadn’t yet seen that I sensed mattered more than the rest.

Instinct more than awareness directed my attention to the ancient, time-worn script carved beneath the mural, written in a language I must have learnt in one of the timelines that had passed: “He who bends time too long shall eventually be bound by it.”

The moment I whispered the phrase aloud, a glyph near the edge of the mural flared with light, so faint it might have been mistaken for a crack in the stone. I stepped forward, reaching towards it instinctively.

The glyph responded to my touch. Magic sparked beneath my fingertips, causing a ripple of light to spread through the chamber wall like ink dropped into water. As the light expanded, it revealed a hidden panel—etched with runes long buried, forgotten for centuries.

Unspoken understanding drew both of our attention to the hourglass at the heart of the chamber.

Its sands still hung suspended, but something had changed—a new thread pulsed outward from its base that hadn’t been visible before, glowing faintly, fraying at the end like a rope unraveling.

Castiel inhaled sharply, his posture stiffening.

“What is it?” I asked.

He stepped forward, eyes narrowed with focus.

“That thread…it's the king’s original anchor, the first timeline he always reverts to, no matter how much he reshapes the world.” Castiel reached towards it, as if drawn by some pull only he could feel.

“But it’s unstable, decaying . Whatever’s holding it together appears to be starting to collapse. ”

The glyph behind us pulsed again, light shimmering over the wall as the runes beneath it shifted and aligned. A translation formed in my mind, the same way one might know a memory before remembering it, pieced together from everything I had uncovered:

“A loop cannot trap what sees its end. But blind the master with his own reflection, and the loop becomes a prison. ”

Those words provided the final piece, causing all those I’d painstakingly gathered to snap into place all at once.

The clues folded inward, gathered in quiet symmetry and lined up like a deck of cards—all shuffled, dealt, and laid bare before me.

I stepped into the center, each circling me like threads of a tapestry, no longer like the chaos I had once tried to stitch together with trembling hands, but finally whole—a design created by the lives I had lived and lost.

All the years I’d lived and relived had come together to create knowledge, a power I could have never possessed with only a single timeline.

I finally realized that all of the agony, the fear, the pain we’d endured was not a grievous waste, but that each of my winding paths could now be woven into a powerful cord that led straight to the destination we’d been seeking.

I turned to Castiel. “You often spoke of your fear that the king would create an irreversible timeline after my death, but is it possible for us to do the same—to somehow trap the king inside a time loop where he can no longer wield its power? If we sever his connection to the magic and there’s no fixed point to return him to… ”

Castiel’s eyes bulged. “Then perhaps…we could trap him, lock him in a final timeline, one he can’t reset or escape.”

The chamber stilled, the weight of all our past lives pressing against us, as if even time itself were listening. We stared at one another in hopeful wonder.

“This is what we’ve never done before,” he murmured, voice fierce and reverent. “We’ve fought the outcomes, tried to undo the damage after it’s already been done. But this time…we break the rules.”

Despite the hope rendered by our discovery, a shadow passed over him.

“If I hadn’t kept my distance… if I’d fought harder to involve you instead of trying to protect you from the sidelines, determined to carry the burden alone—we might have uncovered all of this sooner.” Castiel’s voice was low, rough with regret.

The ache in his words pulled at another tender remembrance—a quiet promise once shared between us in another timeline, forged in the space between trust and uncertainty. The shape of his hand over mine, the vow that next time we would face whatever came together.

I cradled that memory a fragile moment…then let it go.

“What’s done is done,” I said gently. “We don’t know the ripples of that choice, whether it would have led to progress or only more sorrow.

But those decisions led us to this moment that is ours to act, and for the first time we hold the key to truly succeed. ”

He laced our hands together, holding fast in a new promise that would allow us to finally move forward.

The king had been resetting the world for longer than I could comprehend, but the power he wielded had never truly been his. The longer he pulled the weave of time, the closer it came to unraveling. But threads didn’t only unravel…they could also loop .

He had trapped me in timelines again and again. It was finally time I did the same to him.