Letters and words, scribed in Lewis’s angled, swift script, faded. My room too slipped away as the paper recalled the last thing it had seen before the envelope closed for the long, solitary dark of the journey across the sea.
Lewis sat at a writing desk, pen scratching while a sea breeze buffeted the sun-bleached tent around him. The tent flap was open, letting dawn light pour over his shoulders and ignite his glistening bronze threads, visible just above his collar.
Lewis looked weary and sunbaked, but healthy. His officer’s tie was loosened for comfort but only just, and the corners of his eyes, thick with blond lashes, showed premature lines of concern.
He tugged absently at one ear as he wrote. On the paper before him, between his worn khaki pith helmet and a forgotten cup of tea—its flower-patterned, delicate porcelain out of place in this make-shift world—words flowed from his pen, glistening as bronze as his threads before they dried, black and dormant, into the page.
At the same time, back in my room, my magic waned. My surroundings returned to me, and with it, another wash of dawn light.
For a moment two magics were suspended in the play between beams of pink dawn and the last grey shadows of twilight—Lewis’s dawning sorcery of the written word and my twilit gleanings of memory.
Then the twilight yielded. My threads retreated beneath my skin and with them, the height of my power gave way to its usual, more passive existence. Lewis’s magic, however, continued. His words sculpted images before my eyes and emotions in my chest, lending vivid detail to the thoughts and events he had succinctly penned.
The letter was dated for three weeks ago.
O,
Forgive the briefness of this letter. I am being transferred. The Seaussen have been driven south, but I was injured in the push and have been loaned to the Settlement Office in Sarre Grand, to sit at a desk and recover.
If the opportunity to move up our timeline comes, take it. I can no longer stand this place. Wait for me at the place we agreed. I will meet you soon.
L
In my mind, I glimpsed the intention behind his words; the violence of the recapture of the Sarren capital of Sarre Grand, its ancient stone buildings blurred by smoke and mosaicked streets filled with running soldiers and flashing rifles. I saw Entwined officers, gathering in private conference. Then I saw the Sunrise Isles—our intended meeting place. A Harren foreign stronghold clung to the skirt of one of the smaller islands, ramparts armed with pivoting artillery and her waters studded with warships.
The real world returned to me in a rush of clean daylight, the crackling of a gramophone through the walls, and thechatter of children leaving the courtyard with their school bags. The cello clashed with the gramophone and a child laughed.
‘If the opportunity to move up our timeline comes, take it.’
The opportunity had come, in the form of a stack of money currently waiting for me in Mr. Stoke’s safe.
All I needed to do was retrieve it.
A Note to the Reader:
Regarding My Engagement
The first time I met Lewis was the day of our engagement. It was an impersonal encounter, a joint gathering hosted by the Guild Academies.
Over a dozen couples were presented that night, the heads of the Guild calling our names and joining our hands beneath glistening chandeliers, to hearty applause. They made it all as grand as possible, with a lavish dinner and ball, soft music and warm candlelight and all the windswept beauty of Old Harrow. They lavished us with wine and the finest costumes the Guild’s considerable vaults could buy.
It was calculated, the whole of it, to make us feel valued, lauded—to instill in us the weight of our upcoming task.
“Miss Ottilie Rushforth,” the headmistress called.
I stepped forward out of the line of other young women, my hair perfectly swept up, the heavy beading on my bodice glistening. I turned in place, the long drape of my gown tugging into an elegant swirl about my legs, and looked down to the line of waiting young men.
My expression was set, my posture one of dignified ease—skills that I had learned over eleven years in these glittering halls. But beneath my skin, my blood thrummed.
I was, at that point, uncertain at the notion of a Guild husband. I rebelled against the expectation of it, the insistenceupon duty and fidelity to an organization that had stolen me from my mother’s side and kept me contained within stone walls.
I heard Pretoria’s voice in my mind, roiling against the confinement of the Guilds, prior to her escape. I remembered the face of her lover, Emeline, frozen in confused horror at the moment of her execution, and my chest burned with rage.
But there was a power to this moment, a weight of respect and responsibility that left me unexpectedly stirred. Madge’s influence came with that feeling, bolstered by the pride in her eyes as she watched me from the assembly with a baby in her arms and two children clinging to her skirts of rose and powder blue. They were beautiful children, well-behaved and calm.
And already marked by the Guild, with their emblazoned little sashes of ebony silk. Adepts. Full mages.
The rush of my blood sounded loud in my ears.
