I look at Nephele, watching understanding dawn as tears trail down her cheeks. She turns back to the shelf, looking for more urns, but all she finds is an old, yellowed note, folded across the middle.
Every thought in my mind narrows to one thing when she brings the note closer to the light. The wordNephelescrawled across the front.
With wide, confused eyes, she opens it, her fingers trembling so hard the paper shakes in her grasp.
Dearest Pelly,
If you’re reading this, your mother and I are gone, and the future I saw for my girls is finally coming true. I have written you letters a thousand times, letters where I explain everything. But the problem with knowing the future is that I’m still unsure if anything I say to reveal the truth to you might change or destroy the path you’re meant to walk. And so that truth lives in me, and it will die with me.
I’ve tried testing it. I’ve sought counsel. But the future I see for you and Raina in the North isn’t one I would dare alter. There is pain ahead for us all. But there is also great joy. And in truth, I believe my journey is part of a grander design than I can understand. So forgive me for my silence but know that I have only done what I felt I had to do for the sake of my family.
Knowledge is power, Nephele. But if a man knows his fate and tries to change it, what other lives might he impact in his efforts? Are one person’s decisions enough to truly alter history or the future? Or are there simply too many forces at work for it to matter? Too many catalysts created by too many decisions to be made by too many people? History is a sea that millions of rivers feed. If one dries up, the sea is still the sea.
This has been my dilemma here in Malgros. A dilemma I don’t think I’ll ever have an answer for.
Your mother isn’t happy. She worries that you and Raina will hate the North. But we’re leaving for the valley today, to take you girls where my visions say you both need to be. And so I write this. I write this, and I will seal it away until you find it. I have already seen that you will.
Everything in this room is for you and your sister. For the journeys we could not make together. You will later understand how I came to gather these treasures and why, but know that time, for your sister and I, is a much different entity than for everyone else. Don’t fear it when Raina finds that part of herself. Remember what I said. Knowledge is power, and knowledge is found in our journey. Some of us just have more interesting methods of travel.
These urns are for you, as well. I already know you will do with them what is needed. There is a journey for the memories held within, too, and I’m assured they will see their way back to where they belong.
Because of you.
As for all else, there is one vision I never shared with your mother. She would never have survived it. Just remember what she used to say when she read you the story of Cila and Thaddius. Beautiful things can grow teeth. It only makes them that much more powerful.
I have always held your hand, Pel. Yours and Raina’s too. Know that I am holding both of you even now. There will not be a moment where I am too far. Just look to the sky, my darling girl.
Look for the dove.
With all my eternal love and blessing,
Father
When Nephele meets my gaze, her sky-blue eyes filled with heartbreak and pain and so many tears, I swear a crack splits my hardened heart.
“Come here.” I draw her into my arms and against my chest and just hold her while she weeps, soothing her as best I know how.
Eventually, her trembling and sobbing cease, and she pulls back to look up at me. “My father was a time walker like Raina, wasn’t he?”
I glance around the room, at the hundreds of items from around this world, from many different eras. The maps, too.
“It bends my mind to imagine such a thing,” I tell her. “But I think you could be right.”
She nods, as though accepting some silent command. “We have to get back to the tor and leave.”
I frown at that, shocked she doesn’t want to stay after finding all these things. “Are you sure?”
“More than ever. My family was leaving Malgros for the North the day my father wrote this. Tonight, you and I are to leave. Something awaits us there. I don’t believe for a second that finding this letter isn’t a sign that I need to follow in my father’s brave footsteps. I will return here. Father will guide me.”
“All right. If that’s what you want.” I take Thibault’s urn from her and hesitate. Much of the letter seemed important, but one part did stand out to the wolf in me. A part I have to mention before we leave this room. “Cila and Thaddius, eh? I knew of Cila and her beast. Many, many moons ago.”
Even in the low, violet light of Nephele’s orb, I see her blush.
She folds the note, slips it into her jacket pocket, and then wraps her hands around my neck. I barely know what to do with myself when she rises on her tiptoes and presses a sweet, tender kiss to my mouth, and says, “I never could resist a rose. No matter how many thorns it bore.”
I do my best not to grin at that. But I do.
Nephele bestows me with the warmest look I’ve ever received from her and buries her hands into my hair. “Hold on, wolf,” she says with a gentle, teary-eyed smile. “You know what to do.”
