We lunge.
Kaelis shouts in agony, unleashing purple flames and shadows that hold back his father. Arina darts to Judgment, but he has yet to move. Clearly, Judgment holds little love for his sire.
So I’m the one who makes it; my fingers close around the vessel, and I lift it up to the statue as it leans forward.
A power beyond comprehension pulls free from the statue as golden threads and crashes into the card I’m holding with such force that my fingers nearly snap back. I strain against the endless pressure that holds all the joy and loss of the world. All the hope and sorrow. They all converge on me. Within me.
“Do it, Clara!” Kaelis shouts, but he seems distant, as though he’s shouting through a tunnel in the folds of reality itself.
I close my eyes, suck in a breath, and make my wish. Hasty. Half formed. Desperate. But it’s the only thing I can think of with little time.
I’m sorry, Kaelis, that I wasn’t able to tell you my wish,I think.
Arina warned me of misfortune if we continued as we were. So I deviate from the wish I had so carefully planned. I don’t wish for my beautiful new world as I’ve been thinking of for months. I wish for the first thing that comes into my mind and hope it’ll be enough to avoid misfortune:
Make the world as it should have been—before Naethor made his wish.
Everything goes white.
Chapter 80
The world doesn’t change…It shatters.
I open my eyes to everything I once knew fracturing like stained glass—turning to prismatic dust of a thousand colors. And then the artist’s skilled hand renders it in a different way. Everything is twisted, shifted, and reassembled. It is a force beyond my comprehension. Seams invisible to mortal eyes are ripped open and rearranged.
There is a madness to it.
Yet it is also eye-wateringly glorious.
My mind cannot fathom this power, and yet I can feel it. I can feel my will bending the world. One heartbeat I’m at the font of the World, and the next I amelsewhere.
I draw in a shaky breath that tastes like stardust on a cold winter’s night. Colors bloom around me like paint dripped into water. I turn, watching the horizon curve slightly different. The mountains I remember aren’tquitein their same positions. The peak where the Stone Citadel was toppled is restored. Sunlight gleams upon the gildedembellishments of what I knew as Arcana Academy, which now stands as regal as a palace. Embellishments that I can only assume were always there but covered with years of grime. Forgotten. Pushed aside by Naethor’s will.
The academy itself looks like one of the golden Majors that rendered this world. An homage to the power it contains.
It’s being rebuilt around me, stone by stone. Rooms form, hallways connect. The city and sea are blocked from view as I am encapsulated in a new construct.
Incense chokes the air as nobility gather in the castle’s main hall. Nearly seventy chairs have been set out for High Lords and Ladies and other high-ranking nobles to bear witness to a ceremony. Their distant murmurs quiet to a hum before vanishing completely as the last of reality settles into its new form—walls closing around me.
The weight of the ceremonial robes I’m now in is nearly smothering. I pick at where the lace itches my skin. It’s as if a thousand tiny bugs crawl all over me. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get comfortable.
For the first time, the clothes Kaelis has offered me don’t quite fit.The thought is rogue, as if it’s natural for me to have it, and yet also inserted by an unseen force. Unease gnaws at my stomach and hollows it out, leaving room only for churning bile.
It feels like waking from a dream. You’re somewhere you should recognize, yet it seems distorted. Nothing is quite where you remember.
I turn. The room is small, for preparations only. I know it is not far from the main hall. My head aches as the combined weight of the knowledge of two worlds threatens to split it in two. But an unseen hand seems to silently relieve the pressure, as if forcing me to settle into this new shape and accept it as how it’s always been. To not try too hard to remember things as they were, even if I can.
Kaelis stands in front of a mirror, adjusting his robes.
The coronation will be beneath the eyes of the World,I vaguely remember him saying, even though I know he’s never spoken those words tome. A whole history is still being written across my mind—things that happened in this world that I would know.
“Kaelis?” I say softly.
He turns, and I freeze. It’s him. It’s undeniably him. And yet…There’s something about his eyes that makes me feel like I’ve never seen them before. His stare pierces right through me. Void of the warmth I’ve come to know from him. He offers a brief smile that feels completely forced.
“Do you…do you know me?” I whisper.
“What?” The smile falls to confusion. “You are my wife, of course I do. Are you ready?”
