“The local one. Trolls shredded her throat. I tweaked it so she saw them coming.”
Killed?
I stared at the glowing figure across the clearing. By “local one” she had to mean me. Killed. She got me killed. What did that mean? What did she “fix”?
The Hazel stepped forward. Her feet on the ground made no sound at all. One branch went through her foot, as though she wasn’t even there.
Killed. The word whispered around my brain. Killed, killed, killed. I knew it. I’d known it all along: I was missing something. I was messing up.
I replayed the scene from Tara’s street. Then replayed Neven’s anger afterward.
The Hazel went on: “We’re talking about the same human who spent sixteen years with an interdimensional rift on her doorstep, yet never once attempted to investigate, even when I left the opportunity wide open. Even her kid sister took the hint. We’re talking about the same human who could’ve freed you and gotten years of practice with her sword, if she’d only nosed around. I’m running low on patience. I miscalculated, yes, but I wound back that error. It doesn’t mean you can start telling them about us.” She narrowed her eyes.
Except I didn’t think this was a she.
I didn’t think this was another version of me at all.
“I gave you a job,” she told Neven, “and I expect you to do it.”
This was one of the Powers That Be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Don’t let them screw around further,” the Power said. “The faster she wraps this up, the better our shot of closing the rift.”
“Will you be patient enough to let them? No more nudges?”
“Oh, I think she picked up on the hint this time. Any more and my colleagues would think me a cheater. No more nudges. No more rewinds.” It flashed a grin.
Not the kind of grin I saw on the other Hazels’ faces. Not the kind of grin I felt on my own.
A grin cold and bright and terrifying.
“You have company, by the way.” It looked right at me. Its glow flickered. It didn’t blink as its edges blurred, fading into the glow until the figure was just the faintest shape of light. It went out a second later.
The world was dark again. Neven stood in the clearing by herself.
Neven’s lumbering shape turned. “Hazel?”
“Was that . . .? Why did she look like me?”
“The Powers That Be have malleable appearances. Everyone sees something different. What did you hear?”
“Killed?”
Neven released a slow, rasping sigh. Leaves on the ground rustled.
“But I don’t remember . . .” I shook my head. “How . . .?”
“They pulled back time.”
I grappled with my words. “That’s possible?”
“For brief periods. Your worlds weren’t meant to be manipulated that way. Any longer than a minute is disastrous; an interference that significant would crumble the walls entirely.” Neven’s wide black eyes gleamed in the dark. “Hazel?”
This didn’t change anything. Not about what had happened, and not about what had to happen. The Power had even said I’d picked up on its hints.
I still felt like I’d gotten punched in the gut.
I pressed my nails into the fleshy tips of my fingers. Just hard enough to hurt. Just hard enough to focus. “They want us to kill Alpha,” I said.
“I see.”
The words came as a flood. “Was it the goal all this time? There must be an alternative. This is a test, right, to see if we’ll refuse? We can defeat the trolls another way. There’s the steel weapons, and you can help—”
“I can help,” she agreed. “I can’t be the main weapon.”
“Right. Against the rules?” My lips pressed together tightly. Based on everything I’d heard, it sounded as though Neven had told the truth about the trolls being the key to closing the rift. She was on our side. The Power wouldn’t have been so angry with her otherwise. But I had to know: “What happens if you break them, anyway? Do you—poof—get taken away? Do we insta-fail our mission?”
“If they decide I’m a risk factor, they can take me off the mission. If they think it would help motivate you, they could kill me.”
“Really?” I whispered. Neven shouldn’t have to pay the price for my failures.
I’d been too eager. Too clueless. I’d died. Time had to be rewound to cover my mistake. And that time Carolyn sneaked out to the barns—what the Powers had wanted was for me to sneak out. I’d never even considered it.
No wonder the Powers had sent the other Hazels.
I’d spent the past hours terrified that being lowercase-C-chosen meant I would simply die and that was it, no grand destiny, no hero’s journey—and now I learned it’d already happened.
I hadn’t stood up and defeated the trolls. I hadn’t sacrificed myself for some grand plan.
I’d run into the trolls by accident and died within minutes.
I’d bled out on the street.
When I spoke again, my voice sounded creaky. “Can you fly me to the library?”
The trolls were everywhere.
Neven flew low, giving me a good view of the town. While the outskirts of Damford seemed quiet, the closer we came to Tara’s house and the library, the more movement we saw.
A group of trolls rushed down a shopping square on all fours, while one troll nearly Carolyn’s size was scaling a church wall. On the corner of a residential street, a door slammed open. A woman bolted from the house, dragging a teenage boy behind her. They reached their car right in time. Two midsize trolls sprinted after it, but were left breathing exhaust and gave up quick. As we flew overhead, they craned their necks and watched us pass.
A few streets down, we spotted the pickup truck that’d come to my rescue earlier. A body lay limply on the truck bed. Bright blood streaked his hair. The other fighters surrounded him,
