I awoke on the bed at the inn, only blocks away from the palace. Fatigue made my eyes feel heavy. My skin felt cold, and unbearable soreness plagued me, yet after taking a few deep breaths, it began to pass. Yet I still felt drained. Used. As though my magic had been tapped out.
But even as I lay there, exhausted from what I’d done, a kernel of magic began to swirl inside me, cool and fluttering. With each breath I took, it grew.
Amazingly, already my magic was returning, and I recalled what the gargoyle scholar had told me, that I carried a goddess’s blood.
The inn’s wooden ceiling stared back at me, and I closed my eyes again, struggling to recall all that had happened. I’d gone to the Veiled Between. I’d twisted fate. I knew that much. Yet after appearing in the supernatural courts with the semelees around me, it all became fuzzy. Especially after they unleashed.
I knew that the semelees had done as I’d commanded and that I’d returned them to the Veiled Between when they’d finished, but when time had been altered, it’d created an explosion of power, so much that fragments of time and space had shifted. The cosmos had been rewritten, and even to me, it’d all turned hazy.
Disoriented, I forced myself to sitting and gazed out the window. An evening sky loomed with the sun disappearing beneath the horizon. Wind blew through the streets, but here at the inn, it was quiet.
Frowning, I glanced down and realized the simple breeches and top I’d worn when I’d ventured to the Veiled Between were gone. The navy gown that I’d worn when Jax and I had planned to meet his parents all those weeks ago swirled around me instead.
I started. I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not.
Even though every part of my body ached, I swung my legs over the bed, then grabbed for my bag...but my bag wasn’t there.
I crouched to search under the bed, stumbling in the process, but my belongings weren’t there either. I checked under the nightstand and in the closet, too, but nothing. It wasn’t in the room and neither was the room key.
Frowning, I figured that, like my clothes, my bag and the key were no longer here in this new reality. A memory stirred, of what Master Fistideeous had taught me. Previous lorafins always returned to where they’d been physically when they’d commanded fate. Otherwise, two bodies of oneself would exist at once.
My confusion disappeared, and I finally made my way down the stairs and out into the city.
My legs throbbed in time with my footsteps, but I forced myself to walk one foot in front of the other until I reached the palace. Black gates greeted me. Two guards stood at them, one on each side. More guards patrolled the perimeter.
When I approached, the guard on the right frowned. “Are you all right?”
I stopped dead in my tracks.Is he speaking to me?
The guard took a step toward me. “Lady Elowen, are you all right?”
I glanced at the guard on the left. Like the other, concern knitted his brow. They watched me with befuddled expressions, as though they were actually...worried.
Hope surged through me. If I’d truly rewritten time, then their behavior would be explained. The crown prince had let the servants know that I was his guest, and the guards had likely been told that as well. And if I’d been successful in commanding the semelees to undo Jax being caught, and to right the atrocities that King Paevin had committed with the half-breeds, the guards wouldn’t be surprised at my appearance. My arrest and visit to the supernatural courts would have no longer occurred in this reality.
My heart began to pound even more, and I blinked away the grittiness in my eyes and tried to ignore what would happen if anyone found out what I’d done. My godlike power was why lorafins were allowed to be enslaved. Our power was too great and could be used for selfish or malicious purposes. A lorafin queen could literally mold anything in the realm to her bidding. It was total and complete control of our lands. It was the power of a goddess, of Verasellee herself.
But I’d only done it to save Jax, to save our friends, to save the half-breeds, and to prevent King Paevin from creating his army. I hadn’t done anything for myself. My intentions had beengood, even if others might not see it that way.
“Lady Elowen?” the guard said again when I just stood there.
Forcing myself to move despite the tiredness spiraling through me, I reached the guards, then licked my dry lips. My throat felt so parched. I could have drunk an ocean of water, and it wouldn’t have been enough.
“What day is it?” I asked them in a scratchy voice.
His troubled look grew, but he rattled off the date, and my eyes widened. The current time was the day when Jax and I were supposed to meet his parents—the day Jax’s arrest had initially taken place. The semelees had transported me back in time after doing as I’d asked. It was literallyweeksago.
“And where’s the prince?”
“I...I don’t know.” The one on the right assessed me carefully. “But I believe he’s been looking for you.”
A sharp sense of relief pierced me. It was so sharp that I staggered back. “And he’s...free? He’s not detained by the supernatural courts?”
The guards shared a side-eye, and then the one on the right said in a slow, patient tone, “No, Lady Elowen. The prince has not been detained by the courts.” He frowned even more. “My lady, are you all right? Shall I call someone for you?”
“Yes!” I cried. “Please get the prince.”
The guards again shared a wary look, but with a swift nod, the one on the right jerked his chin toward the palace and called to an interior guard, “Please let the prince know his guest is here.”
