Altered

“Fool!” Cormac yells as his guards rush toward us. “She already lost one father to inane valor.”

Dante. The wild card, who never quite wanted me, didn’t know what to do with me, is fighting for me now. I whip toward them and see guns raised, but they can’t take on all these men. Valery is helping Albert to safety, but Amie is nowhere to be seen. I twirl, trying to find her, but she’s hidden from my sight, lost in the chaos of drawn weapons and gunfire. I choose to believe she has fled with Albert and Valery, disappeared into the night, beyond my vision—because I have one last thing to do.

I think of the house crumbling behind them, the severed time strands. Albert wanted me to remember, to look at this world for what it was, and I had. I unwound Kincaid but I studied everything first and I’m able to call it forth now as rifles click into place and fingers press down on triggers, and with a great and sudden fury, I pull against the world around me. This conflict won’t be solved with guns, and I’d rather go with Cormac than watch the life seep from another friend, the only family I have left. I can stop the bloodshed with a single choice. My fingers find the right strand, long and wild, a lifetime of possibilities and it cracks against Earth, mutilating what lies in its wake, forming a long barrier of protection. I turn and instantly warp another spot and another, until I’ve surrounded us in protection. They can’t reach me, but Cormac’s men can’t shoot them.

Their cries are muffled, and I see the look on Dante’s face. Grim, but determined, and he waves for the rest of them to flee as I build my own cage. The only way to protect those I love is to cage myself with the Guild. I’m as dangerous to them as these men with guns.

Erik doesn’t run with the others, he walks forward and places his hand on the rift between us. He can’t reach through, and I can’t touch him, but I let my hand rest there for a moment. One final goodbye.

“Go!” I choke at the words, and even if he can’t hear them, I know he understands. He doesn’t move, not even to breathe.

“I can’t.” The words are lost in the wind or muffled by the rift, but I see them.

And so I whisper back, carefully articulating each word, so that he understands: “‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.’”

He bites his lip and I see the desperation in his eyes, but then Jost comes and pulls Erik away. Jost pushes Erik away from the cage of light and time I’ve created.

Jost turns toward me, and although his words are lost to the warp between us, I understand them. “Find her.”

I give him a determined nod. Somehow I will protect Sebrina for him.

He raises his hand and places his fist over his heart before he turns away from me—perhaps forever.

“I have missed your flair for the dramatic,” Cormac says. “A little unnecessary, but if you can’t control your men—”

“I’m not interested in controlling anyone,” I spit at him.

“You have a world to control, so I’d reevaluate that,” he says.

So this is how it will be—the niceties abandoned. A group of men cuff me and lead me toward the waiting aeroship.

“I could still kill them, you know,” Cormac calls, pulling a flask from his vest. “But I won’t, and then you will see that I can be merciful.”

I twist my mouth, weighing my words, searching for the right thing to say, and in the end it’s simply, “Thank you.”

“Better manners every day,” he murmurs. “Take her to my quarters, and put her hands in gages. We don’t want her wandering off.”

The inside of the aeroship is voluminous and austere. Great metal ribs arch overhead, and my footsteps echo across the metal flooring as the guards lead me. My hands are secured with gages, inflexible gloves that prevent the use of my hands. It occurs to me as my gaze sweeps over the thin metal walls and pressed-glass windows that I could try to escape, that I should try to escape. I’m not interested though. Cormac has no idea he’s taking me exactly where I need to go.

The final words Einstein whispered to me as the house crumbled echo through my mind: Destroy the looms. If you choose this path, others will follow you as Whorl. Embrace and trust them, but know their hearts. As you must know your own.

I’ve made my choice. My destiny is one of my own choosing.

Standing, I wander to the small round window and peer out. The aeroship glides along a thin series of strands from the Interface. The world beneath us is made of blocks, gray and black in the lack of light. I imagine the boat, fighting the waves, pushing forward against the tide, and peace settles over me.

“It’s lovely.”

Cormac’s voice startles me, and I turn to find him in the doorway.

“Lovely,” I repeat in a flat voice.

“You must enjoy it. The Interface,” he says. He crosses to a chair and pours himself a drink. The scene is familiar, but I’m not the girl Cormac used to order around anymore.

“I’m not very interested in it,” I say to him.

“The energy doesn’t call to you? The pure, brutal force of the universe?” Cormac takes a long swig, studying me over the rim of his glass. “I doubt that. Not up here, this close to it.”

I look back out the window at the tangle of threads the ship gathers as it moves across the sky as though it’s a fly caught in a spiderweb.

“So what now?” I ask. “A remap? An alteration? A wedding?”

“We will work together for a mutually beneficial solution,” Cormac says. “I’m a man of my word, Adelice.”

“Since when?”

“I’m not Kincaid. I have no interest in destruction,” he snarls. “We can work together. I’ll make you immortal.”

I nod, but I know we’re both lying to ourselves as much as to each other. I’m unwilling to turn a blind eye to how the Guild wants to control the world. “I will help you sever and bind Arras and Earth, but I have no interest in immortality.”

“That’s your foolish youth talking.” He sets down the glass, abandoning it in favor of lecturing me. “Talk to me in your thirties, when time’s winged chariot draws near.”

“My answer will be the same,” I say.

“I doubt that.”

“I only have one goal in life.”

Cormac’s head cocks to the side, inviting me to share it.

“To never be like you,” I say.

His smile doesn’t slip, but he pushes up from his chair. “You are powerful, Adelice. It’s time to accept that. Arras needs you more than ever. Things are happening there and I need you to help me achieve peace.”

“Peace,” I echo, wondering if he knows what that means. I’m not sure I even know.

“Think about it,” Cormac says. “For now, please excuse me.”

“Need a trip to the little boys’ room?” I ask.

“I have missed your wit.” He chuckles and opens the door.

She’s standing in the hall, waiting, her arms crossed protectively against her small chest. She bites her lip when she sees me, her eyes finding the floor rather than facing me. My fingers flex against the gages that imprison them.

“This is what you call being a man of your word?” I roar as he takes Amie’s arm.

“I said she could go,” Cormac says, “but she chose to stay.”

“You promised.” My words are as weak as the final thread holding together a seam.

“You can’t have it both ways,” he says. Amie won’t meet my eyes. “You can’t claim your own free will and strip someone else of it.”

“You do it all the time,” I point out. I walk as calmly as I can toward the door.

Amie steps behind Cormac and my heart sinks.

“Ames,” I say softly. “You have a choice. You always will. But this life is the wrong one.”

“I made my choice,” she says.

I swallow back the words that I want to unleash. It’s the wrong choice.