A Husterri lieutenant stood paralyzed on the top step of the podium, mouth open in a shout, one arm lifted and the other reaching for his sword.A weapon. I crept toward him, unsure whether I’d be able to take his blade if it was frozen in time along with its owner. I lifted my hand and glanced at his face.
His mouth moved—slowly, so slowly. His finger twitched. I jerked my hand back and made sure I wasn’t imagining things. No—he wasmoving. The freeze was no longer perfect. Stutters of movement ripped through the crowd—whispers of low, elongated sounds; prisms of sharp light; bright eyes shining like beacons.
I whipped my head toward Gavin and Arsenault, both intent on their fight. Sweat streamed down Arsenault’s face, and though Gavin struck another sound blow to his jaw, the older man seemed loath to use the blade on his godson. I allowed myself a small smile, and glanced back at the slowly awakening crowd. Arsenault didn’t want to kill Gavin. But the effort was making him exhausted and distracted. His legacy was slipping—his power over time was beginning to escape him.
Every legacy had limits. I just had to find Arsenault’s.
When Arsenault’s back turned to me, I quickly turned myself invisible, then sent a decoy of myself sprinting toward him. It was an old trick, but it had never led me wrong so far.
“Looking for this?” She dangled the ambric Relic in Arsenault’s face.
He jerked his head to the side, and grabbed for it. Gavin nailed him with a right hook. Arsenault’s head snapped. He reeled backward.
Time stuttered forward.
“Too slow,” my decoy taunted from his other side, dancing within reach.
Arsenault grabbed for her, but she leapt away. He screamed in frustration, throwing himself after her. But she was already too far away—halfway to the edge of the platform. Something ugly spasmed across Arsenault’s face. Oozing time slid again to a halt. Slick determination hardened his features. He ratcheted his grip up the sword’s hilt. He drew it back over his shoulder, and quickly took aim. His arm flexed. He threw the sword.
The blade arced toward my double. Too slowly, I saw Gavin launch himself after her.
Horror tore through me. I burst back into sight. Already the illusion of me was disintegrating like impossible moonlight, but Gavin didn’t notice. He had his eyes trained on Arsenault—on the sword flying toward him like winged death.
“Gavin,no!” I screamed.
I tried to run. But a nightmare clogged my steps—as though it was I who was frozen in time, instead of the multitudes. I pumped my arms, dug my heels into the platform, but everything around me seemed to be speeding up, racing toward the inevitable.
Arsenault saw Gavin a moment after the sword left his palm.
Gavin turned his head toward my decoy, evanescing into the dusk. He turned back, eyes narrowing in determination.
Arsenault cried out.
The sword caught the edge of Gavin’s throat. Blood sprayed in a brief, bright fountain. Gore splattered the front of his sun-bright armor. He fell to his knees. He groped at his neck. He choked.
He toppled to the ground like a felled tree.
Time blurred by us, rushing forward like a dammed river set free. Motion and noise shredded my senses—shouts and boos and cries, Husterri rushing up the steps toward us in confusion, scraps of moonlight and darkness and filtering sunlight making a chaos of the sky. What must they have seen, in those slivers of time when Arsenault’s power failed?
I couldn’t imagine.
Again, Arsenault gestured, as though gathering spare moments toward him. And again, time froze around us. But this time, it seemed more labored—sweat drenched his hair and beard as he ran toward Gavin’s butchered body. He reached him moments before I did, bending over the dark-haired boy. Arsenault heaved Gavin over onto his back, putting a hand to his ruined throat.
I ground to a halt and stared at my cousin. It was too late. The blood spreading in a vast pool beneath his body no longer pumped with the beat of a heart. His eyes had gone hard and glassy. Even from where I stood, I knew—Gavin was dead.
He’d died trying to protect me. Except it hadn’t really been me—it had been anillusion. I took one—two—gasping steps backward. Why had he tried tosavethe girl who would have cost him everything? And why hadn’t he guessed it wasn’t me?
Arsenault looked up at me, his eyes almost wondering. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
“Me?” Shock shredded my throat. “Youdid this.”
Arsenault stood, his motions mechanical. He paced to where the dristic Relic had fallen, red now with Gavin’s lifeblood. He picked it up and he knelt once more beside his godson. Shock spangled through me when I saw what he was doing. He reached for the kembric crown Relic, gleaming through its jacket of blood. He unthreaded it from Gavin’s belt.
“How dare you—” I snarled, stalking toward him.
In one swift moment, Arsenault put the hilt of the sword Relic beneath his heel and snapped it off. He lifted the hilt-less blade, fitted the angular crown Relic against the crest of the blade, and shoved.
The two Relics came together with a sound like mayhem. Light roared from the sword, bright as sunlight and vital as heartblood. I closed my eyes against the brilliance, but that didn’t lessen its impact. It burned against my eyelids with the light of everything I’d once dared to dream of—power and prestige, untethered from the dirt of reality, the grime of politics. It called to me, perfect and pure.
