Their fates were tied. Kai and Luce in the abyss, Clover in the godsworld. A triad of power, connected by threads that Kai himself had noticed when dreaming, this bond they shared that could never quite be explained.
Curiosity had Baz exploring Clover’s thread further. When he’d done so before, in the god’s workshop, Clover’s thread had been too far out of his reach for him to see. But perhaps being at fate’s central core made it easier to follow.
And Baz could seeeverythingin it. Clover’s past—how he’d watched Kai and Luce fall off the bridge of stars between the Wychwood and the Wastes; how he’d journeyed through the other worlds alone, killing the warrior and then the guardian, taking their power, before going after the gods, too. His present—how he sat in the godsworld, recovering from his last encounter with Emory, raging against his failed attempt to gorge himself on Atheia’s and Sidraeus’s power and make himself into a proper god.
And his future—the threads of Clover’s life fraying into a hundred different possibilities. Baz followed the brightest and thickest one, assuming it was the thread with the likeliest outcome. What he saw made his stomach drop:
Clover, now a god in full, stood triumphant over Emory’s slain body in a world reduced to ash. Then—nothing. The thread of Clover’s life ended, but not because he was dead. It was the same way Kai’s and Luce’s threads ended. But this oblivion wasn’t reserved for a single person.Everythingcame to an abrupt end. As if the universe itself ceased to exist, and from the ashes emerged a new one.
As if someone had wiped the board clean and started everything anew.
Heart pounding, Baz backtracked and followed the other fraying threads of Clover’s future. In one possibility, Clover died at the hands of Emory, though it wasn’t the Emory that Baz knew; it was an Emory who had made herself into a dark god like Clover, her power corrupted beyond recognition.
In another, Clover killed Emory, Sidraeus, and Atheia in one fell swoop, spilling their blood into a great fountain, before turning on the boy who’d given Baz the Reaper tree ritual—Equilibris’s old apprentice—whose face shifted between his own and four others who Baz understood to be the gods of the living realms.
In yet another, Clover stood over those same four gods, though they were in their own bodies here, hollowed-out husks that Clover had bled of every morsel of power. Wiping ichor from his mouth, he smiled tauntingly at Equilibris.So you’ve come to stop me at last, Clover said, before this thread ended in oblivion, just like everyone else’s.
Every possibility spelled death, and every one of these threads ended the same way: with the worlds resetting, and everyone Baz had ever known ceasing to exist forever.
Baz pulled back from the hourglass. An overpowering dread rose inside him. No matter how he looked at it, the outcome remained the same: obliteration. A complete erasure of life as they knew it.
A sudden gust of wind knocked him back as it rushed past him. Before Baz could make sense of what he was seeing—the ghostly outline of a boy in the midst of a strangely shifting whirl of ethereal power—it slipped through the portal, disappearing beyond.
Baz stood transfixed. It had happened so fast, but the face he’d seen, those rugged features and deep blue eyes that had stared right at him before disappearing through the portal… He knew this boy. It was Equilibris’s old apprentice.
A horrible inkling seized him moments before the screaming began. It came from far down the path in the direction of the abyss. Like a howling wind passing through a tunnel. Cries of agony. A name—Baz’s name—called in a voice that should have been midnight smooth but was sharpened now by desperation.
Baz tore down the path. He didn’t question if this was another hallucination. Nothing else mattered now but reaching Kai, because he knew in his gut that this was him, really him, and something was terribly wrong.
And he was right. He’d made it only a few steps from the hourglass when they came into view: Kai and Luce running toward him, looking exactly as he remembered.
For a second, the breath was knocked right out of Baz at the sight of Kai. He wore clothes that hailed from a different era, a loose-fitting ecru shirt tucked into dark breeches, the shirt laces at the top undone at his chest so that the tattoos around his collarbone were visible. Baz imagined closing the distance between them and embracing in some sweeping, romantic reunion. Imagined stepping out of the portal together and putting this all too real nightmare behind them.
But it was as if hell itself were pulling on Kai and Luce. Spindly black roots were wrapped around their limbs, making every step an impossible torment. Panicking, Baz wound the threads of time back on these roots, trying to send them back to where they came from. Some of them let go for a second before they shot forward again with renewed force, completely out of Baz’s control.
“Brysden.” Kai’s voice was hoarse. The roots were encircling his chest, tendrils of them wrapping around his neck as if to entomb him. “There’s no point. The abyss won’t let us go.”
Those dark, midnight eyes that Baz loved so much, usually so full of starlight, were dull now. Haunted. These were the eyes of someone resigned to the idea that salvation was completely out of reach.
“No.” Baz refused for this to be the end. He closed the distance between them and tried to pull at the roots with his bare hands. “This was my purpose. To bring you out of hell. The god’s apprentice said—”
“Baz.” Kai weakly grabbed his wrist. “The only reason you were sent here was to open a doorway for the gods to escape through. That piece of shit lied to you—to all of us. It’s too late now.”
Baz gazed down at Kai’s fingers around his wrist, realizing why they felt so off. The tip of them was black obsidian. A whimper from Luce had him glancing at her. She wore the same look of defeat on her tearstained face as roots and obsidian slowly overtook her.
Kai and Luce were turning to stone before his eyes, as if becoming part of the very path beneath their feet.
Baz realized then what they had already pieced together: it had all been for nothing. Opening the Reaper tree portal, setting foot on this path, pulling Kai and Luce from the abyss… None of it mattered because Kai and Luce couldn’t return to the world of the living. The abyss had claimed them, and now they belonged to the realm of death.
Baz shouldn’t have been surprised. The god of balance did warn him that there was no changing fate. Pulling at loose threads, trying to create snags in the tapestry, attempting to dupe fate however he could… All pointless, in the end.
And yet…
In his fourth attempt at changing the past, he’d sought to replace Kai with Thames as the one who would follow Clover through the door. A reversal of fates, so to speak, that he never did see the outcome of because he’d been interrupted by the god’s apprentice.
What if it was the answer now?
“Baz.” Kai’s voice was faint. “I know you made me promise notto say anything back until all this was over, but I need you to know before it’s too late. I love you too.”
