The jagged sphere I’d taken from Meriwa’s tomb and the four shards of the Heart lay on Clem’s bed.
“Nah,” I said. “Let’s finish this. They’ll be more surprised if they see the whole thing.”
Clem carefully lifted the sphere off the bed and examined the jinsei lines that divided it into quadrants. “I see a little green here, and a little red...”
She snatched up the emerald shard and laid it over the Meriwa’s orb. It fit perfectly, and emerald light splashed across Clem’s face. Her breath caught in her throat, and a pink flush crept up her throat into her cheeks.
Excited, she grabbed the ruby shard and fitted it into place next to the emerald. Then the blue piece, and, finally, the silver. Each of the shards clicked to the sphere as if drawn by magnets. Light from the reassembled Heart of Eternity painted Clem’s face like a rainbow.
Neither of us could tear our eyes away from the treasure for long minutes. We simply stared into its depths, mesmerized by the power and history cradled in Clem’s fingers.
“Take it,” she whispered, her voice low and urgent. “Or I won’t be able to let it go.”
She tipped her fingers forward and the ball rolled into my outstretched hand. The instant it touched my skin, I understood what Clem had felt. The ball was glorious and beautiful; its power called to me with a siren’s song. With this, there was nothing I couldn’t do. All I needed—
I blinked and snatched the key off the bed. With an effort of will, I placed the orb in the end of the key.
The compasses snapped closed around it like a Venus flytrap capturing its lunch. The light in the Heart died, and the urge to possess it drained away. It was as if the Heart had found a new home and no longer needed me to do its bidding. That was a relief.
Though I couldn’t help but be disappointed that the Heart no longer yearned for me.
“That was certainly something,” Clem said. Her eyes fixed on mine, and she reached up to brush a stray lock of hair back behind my ear. “It’s almost over, isn’t it?”
“What do you think you’ll do?” I asked. “After, I mean.”
Clem considered my question for a moment, then looked away. Her eyes found a stray belt from her robes, and she darted across the room to collect it from the floor.
“It’s not supposed to be this way,” she said, sitting back down. “I’m not, either. My mother always said that to keep an orderly mind, you must keep order in your surroundings. And I can’t do either one!”
Clem’s voice rose as she spoke until she practically shouted her last sentence. She kept her hands clenched in her lap and bit off each word with precision. When her outburst ended, her shoulders slumped, and she leaned against me.
Her emotional response to the messy room surprised me. Clem had always seemed like the most levelheaded and logical of my friends. She reminded me of her mother, the Adjudicator. This was the first time I’d seen Clem’s control slip, and it was over something that seemed so minor.
But her reaction told me it was important to her, and that was all that mattered. There were people who didn’t know me and would be surprised by my own violent reaction to hearing news of my mother. Unless you lived another person’s life, it was impossible to ever truly understand them.
“It’s okay,” I said and wrapped an arm around Clem’s shoulders. “You’re doing your best, and no one can ask more than that. Not of others, not of themselves.”
Clem nodded and leaned her head on my shoulder. We sat in silence like that until she was ready to talk again.
“My parents are good to me,” Clem said. “Maybe too good. They’re both important people, with important jobs. Everything comes easy for them. They’re so clever and wise. I want to be like them, but I’m just not.”
“Don’t you think you’re beating yourself up a little?” I said. “What did you see in that vision of the future? You might be destined to become one of the most powerful people in Empyrean society. You’re young. Wisdom comes with age.”
Clem nodded and reached over to squeeze my hand. “You think we really saw our future?”
“The future the Grand Design has planned for you,” I said.
Clem leaned away from me so she could see my face. “Destiny. That’s what it called the vision. My destiny. Do you think that’s true?”
I’d given a lot of thought to this during my meditations. If the Grand Design’s destiny was immutable, then Clem and Eric had nothing to worry about. He would become a Battle Federation champion, and she would be one of the three most powerful people in the world.
Unless the threads of their fates were snipped. By the warped, for example. Or a heretic’s bullet.
And there was one other way the future could change.
“Clem,” I said. “It’s true, right now. But you know our quest is to save the Grand Design. To do that, we have to redraw it.”
My friend lowered her eyes as she considered my words. My heart ached for her. She’d learned her dream would come true and then been told she’d have to throw her future away to save the world.
“It’s hard,” she admitted. “But seeing the future doesn’t change what’s right. And if we don’t fix the Design, the warped will take our destinies anyway. We still have to do this.”
It was a deep relief to hear that Clem wasn’t angry about her future. It would have crushed me to have to go on without my best friend, and I didn’t know how I’d have lived with myself if she’d wanted to save her future.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Now I just have to break the news to Eric.”
Clem chuckled at that. “No,” she said, “I’ll do it. It’s not as dire as you think. Eric has
