On the table, beneath the generous spread the god had manifested, was a canvas Baz recognized as the sketch the god had been previously engrossed in. It depicted a complex web of threads with an ornate hourglass caught in the middle. Sand swirled through both bulbs in a figure eight, a continuous loop. It had been drawn in such vivid detail that it seemed to leap off the page, and because it was easier to turn his attention to this instead of the ache inside him, Baz asked the god what the drawing was meant to represent.
“Ah, that’s what I like to call fate’s central core.” The god sat opposite Baz, tracing the pattern of threads on the canvas. “It is what sends out the threads of fate to the loom for it to weave intothe tapestry. The very heart of fate, the pillar of balance.”
Baz had never hated the wordsfateandbalanceas he did now. The hourglass, the loom—these were the instruments responsible for what awaited Kai, and the unfairness of it all sat like a weight on Baz’s chest.
“You know,” the god said mildly, drawing Baz’s attention from the sketch, “I had an apprentice before you who also believed fate could be changed. He tried to meddle with the past just as you are now, and failed every time.”
Baz nearly choked on his tea. The god had never mentioned an apprentice, but he supposed it made sense that he would have had help with all these instruments he cared for.
“Where is he now?” Baz asked, wondering if this apprentice had been another Timespinner like him, or someone from another world perhaps.
The god had a distant look in his eye, as if he were remembering his apprentice, seeing him in this very workshop. “No longer with me.” He finally gave Baz a sad smile, pulled back to the present. “It’s the curse of being an immortal god, to see so many mortal lives come and go. I will again tell you the same thing I did him: you cannot change fate.”
“Why not? What’s the point of any of it if our lives are set in stone?”
The god gestured for Baz’s cup. “May I?” Holding it delicately, he said, “Think of this cup as fate, holding together life and death, creation and destruction, which all swirl together to make something balanced and”—the god took a curious sip—“quite delicious. What you are trying to do is chipping away at the cup, ineffective in the grand scheme of things.” Tiny chips appeared on the rim of the cup, the handle, marring its surface though never breaking the integrity of the cup or disturbing the tea inside it. “But do it often enough…”
The god let the cup drop—and it shattered at his feet, tea and porcelain spilling between them.
“If fate were to be broken, chaos would ensue,” the god said. “You see? This is what I am working to prevent. This is why ensuring the threads of fate run smoothly is so important. And this is why you must let this go, Basil. Because what you are trying to change, if youwereto change it, would likely lead to a more disastrous outcome than you can imagine.”
Baz stared at the mess at his feet. He understood what the god was saying, but he couldn’t give up—couldn’t accept that this was the end and that Kai’s fate was set in stone.
Maybe he didn’t have to change all of fate just to change Kai’s. He could keep chipping at the cup, so to speak, until the fragment he wanted gone from the pattern fell away, leaving the contents of the cup undisturbed, the larger tapestry of fate intact.
Baz lifted his chin. “You said I could attempt to change things however many times I wanted,” he reminded the god. “Send me back.”
The god sighed. “If you insist.”
9KAI
IT WAS NOT QUITE DAWNwhen they slipped out of the estate, Asphodel guiding Kai, Clover, and Luce through the dark, quiet gardens. The remnants of the night’s festivities were still there, tables laden with barely eaten food, ribbons that danced half-heartedly in the breeze, overturned goblets and crushed flower crowns and extinguished candlewicks slumbering in fat drippings of wax.
There was something foul in the air, Kai thought. As if these carcasses of a feast half-forgotten had been festering for days on end instead of a mere few hours.
They reached the garden gate that led off the estate grounds only to find it already open to the woods beyond. Clover’s hand shot out to stop Asphodel in her tracks, holding the witch back as a cry escaped her lips. Luce’s own hand shot to her mouth in horror. It took a moment for Kai to register what they were seeing, and when he did, he wondered for a second if this was a nightmare he had yet to wake from.
Lying in front of the gate were two witches—lovers, perhaps, who’d stayed behind after everyone else left the party—their bodies writhing as they were strangled by coils of rotten leaves and thorn-covered vines that slithered and tightened around them as if the earth sought to swallow them whole.
And hovering over them, eyes entirely black, were a group of hellwraiths.
There were a dozen of them, young and old, faces Kai recognized as recently ascended hellwraiths, and some he’d never seen before. They formed a circle around the witches’ bodies, levitating a few inches from the ground, their faces blank and expressions trancelike, their hands moving in odd motions as if they were controlling the deadly, earthly coils around the witches.
“Asphodel, I swear if you leave with—”
The voice behind them gasped, cutting itself short. Oleander stood with a lantern in hand, shivering in her nightgown, having clearly followed them from the house. Her eyes were wide with horror as she beheld the scene.
Her voice must have broken the hellwraiths out of their trance. In a swift, inhuman motion, a dozen faces turned in their direction, a dozen pairs of fathomless eyes staring blankly at them. Kai stood frozen in place. There was something not right about this, something oddly familiar about the way he could not move.
He watched as Clover stepped forward, emanating a brilliant light, the same way he looked when “purging” newly ascended hellwraiths of their would-be demonic influence. The hellwraiths fell as one to the ground, and Clover managed to wrest control of the coiling vines, tearing through them with magic until the two suffocating witches were freed and, likely healed by Clover, gulping air into their lungs.
In the ensuing quiet, as the light extinguished, the hellwraiths looked around them with eyes that were clear and a confusionthat skewed toward horror as they realized where they were and what had happened.
“You will answer for this,” Oleander told the hellwraiths in a shaky yet authoritative voice. “Every single one of you will pay for what has happened here.”
“This isn’t what it looks like,” said one of the hellwraiths, an older witch with graying hair. Incredulous tears gathered in her eyes as she gaped at the two would-be victims—crying now in each other’s arms, with Asphodel trying to soothe them. “I swear we meant no harm.”
“We have no idea how we even got here,” spoke another, looking equally confused.
