Page 49 of Revert (The Royal Chronicles #4)

My breath caught. These weren’t just recollections, but inflection points, pivots where he had changed the course of time for his own ends—where he had chosen power over mercy, control over consequence—sacrificing anything that stood in his way to preserve his illusion of rule.

But here they were, laid bare and vulnerable for me to alter.

My hand trembled as I reached higher, gripping a thread near the top of the chamber. It flared with recognition in answer to my touch, pulsing with a light that felt…known. I pulled, not sharply, but just enough to shift it.

Below, the hourglass at the chamber’s center shimmered, its suspended sands vibrating with the change. Above, a portion of the celestial canopy shifted—the stars rearranging around the movement I had made, a new pattern beginning to form.

I turned toward Castiel. “I can fix this. Not just trap him or stop the next loop, but go back and repair what he broke. He thought his greatest weapon was controlling time, but time doesn’t belong to him. It’s not a blade but a tapestry, one that can be unraveled and woven again.”

Castiel reverently stepped closer, as if approaching something sacred. “You would rewrite fate itself, restore all the damage the king has rendered during his dark reign?”

I wasn’t sure how much influence I could wield, only that I wanted to try. I reached for another thread.

A girl’s execution—undone.

A rebellion—rekindled.

Lives extinguished—revived.

With each adjustment, I felt the world itself beginning to shift. The threads no longer resisted me, the hourglass artifact seeming to welcome the interference, as if it had been waiting for me all along. Invigorated, my hand closed around another, but before I could tug?—

The magic shifted, abrupt and violent, as if recoiling in fear. The chamber doors shuddered then burst open with a crash that echoed like a war drum.

The king strolled in, cloaked in fury and command, as if he had all the time in the world.

Cold rushed in behind him, snuffing the warmth from the chamber like a smothered flame.

The golden threads scattered in his presence, retreating to the corners of the ceiling like frightened birds fleeing a storm.

His calculating gaze slowly swept the room, noting the glowing glyph, the shifting threads, my hand still suspended midair, caught in the echo of the power I had just awakened. His expression didn’t change, but his eyes burned.

That fire sharpened, aimed with precision in my direction. Castiel stepped instinctively beside me, his hand already poised at the hilt of his sword. The king smirked.

“Ah,” he murmured, sounding almost amused. “So this is how it ends.” He stepped forward, moving with a grace that belied the threat tainting his every movement. “As I suspected—interference. So this is the cost of my generous mercy.”

Castiel shifted, placing himself more directly between us, but the king barely acknowledged him. His bearing remained regal, the posture of a man accustomed to control and obedience, to always getting his way.

“You see, this is why such an archaic notion has no place in building kingdoms. Goodness, compassion, mercy, second chances…these are all weaknesses that breed softness, foolish ideas—dangerous things in hearts that don’t understand their place.

” His gaze flicked to Castiel, full of disdain.

“To think even my own son would choose sentiment over sovereignty. How...disappointing. I should have eradicated your greatest weakness the moment she stepped into this court.”

All pretense of detachment fell away when his eyes found mine, binding my gaze to his like chains.

“Fascinating. I always wondered about you. From what my spies reported, you seemed harmless enough. Complacent. Clueless about what you carried within you…or why I arranged a union with my son in the first place. And you died so many times, so easily and pathetically. I mistook you for an inconvenience rather than a threat.”

He stepped closer, stopping just short of the pedestal. For a long moment he stared directly at me, as if searching for the fear that had once held me bound that he only now realized was absent. His eyes narrowed.

“Now I see: you are far more dangerous than I ever anticipated, and I have made a grave error in keeping you alive…a mistake I shall remedy in due course.”

I didn’t move as the king advanced another step, not out of defiance, but because something deeper held me still. The threads steadily pulsed in my periphery, waiting.

“Tell me,” he said, voice sharpening to a blade. “When did the little pawn wake up and believe she was the hand moving the board?”

Castiel shifted again, subtle and deliberate, angling himself between us. I laid a hand on his arm, not to stop him, but to steady myself as I met the king’s gaze, unflinching. “The true question you should be asking yourself is: who is the stronger player?”

For the first time, a flicker of something crossed his expression—not fear, but uncertainty.

“Interesting. You’ve grown bolder. In every version of you I encountered, you were smaller, quieter, content to cower in the shadows, knowing your place.

But here you stand, spitting riddles like a woman who believes the ending has already been written in her favor. ”

I met his words with silence, which seemed to anger him.

“You think this changes anything?” His voice grew sharper now, layered with venom and disdain.

“You’ve touched power, yes. Stirred the dust of a dead legacy.

But you’ve only just begun to grasp what I’ve mastered.

” He lifted a hand, as if presenting an invisible kingdom to the air.

“I’ve shaped nations, burned rebellions to ash, bled centuries from the calendar like ink from parchment.

You are nothing but a ripple, whereas I am the tide. ”

A flicker of tension pulled at his jaw as his gaze pinned me in place.

“You will not win, girl. You may see the threads, but you cannot hold them. They will cut you, collapse you. You do not understand what it means to bear time and command it.” His smile was cold and fractured, like a man who already believed he’d won.

“But I do, and I will unravel everything you’ve done—again and again—until you beg to forget. ”

His smile was cold and fractured, eyes narrowing to slits of fire, like a man who already believed he’d won. He lifted the sigil from around his neck as he turned towards the hourglass, his lips beginning to form the spell that would revert time again.

Before he could finish, steel met steel with a resounding clash. The chamber exploded into motion as Castiel lunged, his blade singing through the charged air. The king spun to meet him without hesitation, sword flashing in a practiced arc—every strike precise, brutal, and unrelenting.

Sparks danced as their weapons collided again and again, the sound ringing off the stone walls. Castiel moved with the desperation of an untamed storm, but the king was colder, every movement sharpened by centuries of repetition.

This wasn’t father against son—it was a protector defending love, a sovereign extinguishing rebellion.

I stood frozen at the heart of the chamber, surrounded by glowing threads and suspended hourglass light.

Castiel fought for me, buying precious seconds—but for all his skill I knew he couldn’t last. The king was older, but fought with the precision of someone who had rewound time until perfection was second nature.

He anticipated Castiel’s counters, dodging his feints like he’d seen them a thousand times before.

I couldn’t waste Castiel’s sacrifice. Frantically, I turned back to the threads—trying to unravel them, to pull the broken ones taut, to rewind what I could. But every knot I loosened revealed two more beneath it. For every injustice I tried to undo, another rippled out in consequence.

A sob of despair broke from my throat; there was too much.

Too many lives and tragedies, too many timelines that had splintered, diverged, overlapped.

The king had done this for decades—maybe centuries—cutting, splicing, starting again.

What had once been a straight thread of time had compounded to become a web of tangled light.

I couldn’t fix it all in time. And even if I did, what would stop the king from reweaving the threads as he chose, once he reverted time?

Behind me, Castiel grunted in pain as the king’s blade caught his shoulder. He stumbled, barely blocking the next blow.

My breath hitched. No . Without thinking, I reached for the threads again. My hand closed around one glowing strand and yanked, this time not to fix, but to slow.

The chamber shivered as magic surged, the walls rippling like water. Time didn’t stop, but staggered. The sounds of the sword fight dulled to a warped murmur. Movements slowed into something dreamlike—Castiel mid-lunge, the king mid-parry, their blades frozen just before the next clash.

Around me, the threads spiraled in slow motion, drifting like galaxies across a darkened sky. I stood in the eye of the storm—alone in the silence, time stretched so thin I could almost hear it breathe.

I released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

I had given myself more time. And with it slowed, I could finally see what had been difficult to discern before: the timelines were changing, shifting as if alive.

My hands trembled as I brushed strand after strand, visions blooming around me like constellations unfolding.

But unlike before when I had only seen the end result, this time I had a view of the full picture.

A rebellion that failed in one thread but inspired peaceful reform in the next.

A betrayal that led to exile—only for the exile to become a healer in a land that would have burned without her.

My own death, once a tragedy, had become the spark that awakened Castiel’s resistance and had drawn me back here.