It occurred to Liana this might not be an already completed fragment of time into which Perun had inserted her, otherwise it would have looked like an illusion, and she wouldn’t be able to alter the smallest thing. She would be nothing but a ghost, a powerless spectator of past events. The fact that she had any power here told her this was the present, real and volatile and malleable.
There could never be two presents. The gods couldn’t create parallel timelines. They could stretch time or condense it, they could move through it in both directions, but they couldn’t multiply it. There was only one timeline.
Which meant all bets were off.
Liana doubled over on her knees, biting into the soft fabric of her sleeve, into the hard flesh of her forearm, to muffle her terrified moan.
There was no other Liana, hunting in the forests of Till, safe and unaware of the events in Abia. There was no victory waiting for her, no hard-won war for Amron in the end, no throne for the heirs of Amris. There was no future life together for Amron and Liana becausethere was no set future.
She howled into her arm like a wounded hound.
Perun had sent her back, and there were no guarantees, no fixed points in the future that were still true. It was all happening here and now, it was all decided at this crucial point, this unfortunate wedding that would change the history of the kingdom. All possibilities were still crammed together, like seeds in a bag.
Her moan shattered into desperate laughter.
It was a trap, Perun had set her up. She had been a naïve fool to believe this was about Amron and her. No, the gods liked to play for high stakes. Thousands of innocent lives, destinies of kingdoms and empires. Nothing was more exciting than a goodwar: bloody, long, and unpredictable.
There was no such thing as simply getting Amron to kiss her. Removing him from Abia now would mean there’d be no one left to win the war. And the future they’d go to, live through, would be a future of defeat and loss.
Perun could not have done this alone, they must have all agreed on it, the gods, including her mother. Including Morana.
Liana could see the vortex of death before her, starting here at this wedding and ending with half the kingdom burnt to ashes, the imperial army marching across it. People dying or fleeing north, back to the mountains and forests Amris had led them out of, but ill-prepared now, used to soft lives, still hoping that the shattered kingdom could protect them.
She remembered the battlefields. The Siege of Myrit, the city starved to the bones, its lord captured and executed beneath its walls, his wife watching from the battlements. The desperate attack that followed, Amron’s forces outnumbered, the knights that Prince Nykodios sent after him, who would’ve killed him were it not for Liana’s arrows. And then the Battle of Syr, the battlefield so horrific that even Liana, hardened from years of fighting, sobbed. Where Amron died and came back, carrying Morana’s curse that would destroy him. The victory that cost everything.
Her body was a tight ball of dread on the cold stone, chest bent over her knees, forehead touching the flags, arms crossed over her head.
A light-footed person strolled down the alley, walked by the doorway, paused, and walked back to her.
“Are you all right?” a female voice said.
“No.”
“Can you get up? Come, I’ll help you.”
Liana moved her head a little and saw a pair of leather sandals and a blue linen skirt with a frayed hem. She lowered her handsto the doorstep, pushed herself up. The girl set aside the jug she was carrying and knelt beside Liana.
“Are you hurt? Or sick?” the girl asked.
“I’m terrified,” Liana admitted.
“Of what?”
The girl was no older than fifteen, with a plain, well-scrubbed face and dark hair hidden beneath a white cap. She was the smallest of the small fish in this game. If the war broke out and Abia fell, she and thousands like her would die in the streets.
“If you knew for sure something terrible was going to happen, what would you do?” Liana asked.
The girl shot her a long look, taking in Liana’s messy hair, her creased dress, her red-rimmed eyes. “I’d try to stop it, I guess,” she said at last.
Liana took a deep breath, forcing her lungs to fill with air and her brain to think again. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me.”
Throwing Liana one last worried glance over her shoulder, the girl picked up the jug and disappeared. Liana got up, leaning on the wall.
If there was no set future, then everything was still possible. If this was a game played by the gods, if there were stakes, then there had to be different outcomes on the table as well. The one where the kingdom slid into a horrible war. And the one where it didn’t.
Chapter 14
Melia
