Page 113 of Shadow & Stars
“You’ll always have me.”
“First you need to open this.” Darcy’s voice broke us apart, a much-needed antidote to this darkness.
“Fix now, shag later,” he added, holding up the jar.
“Seriously?” I went over to him, taking the essence of time from his hand.
The storm within the glass hummed against my palm, my hands tingling all the way to my fingertips.
I looked at the dead body of Butterfly, waiting for him to get up in one final act of desperation. But he stayed dead in a pool of his blood.
Good.
Thunder cracked overhead. A reminder that we were wasting time.
“Okay,” I said, giving the lid a twist. It moved, so I kept going until it came free.
My device whirred to painful life, every cog shaking my body.
“Fuck!” I bellowed, sounding like I was sat on a washing machine on a spin cycle.
The tiny storm cloud rolled out of the jar, forming into a serpent-like shape. It lingered in the air for a few beats, then shot straight into my chest and filled my device with new power, a massive surge sending me onto my arse.
I barley felt it, high on the pure essence of time. Power that didn’t actually have much time before Butterfly’s dust destroyed it. So, it granted my wish without me making one. It knew I wanted to go back and fix things, and could handle things from here.
I broke apart into a billion pieces just like the first time I’d gone back in time. Spinning, spinning, spinning. Hurtling back, back, back at the mercy of the device’s action.
Make this right, pretty please. No tricks, no silliness. Just a course correction.
It already knew that.
I still begged some more, though. To be safe.
I came back together in the dungeon corridor under Buckingham Palace. Right at the moment before Queen Margarite shot me in the chest.
38
ROMAN
Iremembered every haunting word she’d spewed at me before firing that gun:My Shadow is meek. My Shadow is pathetic. My Shadow has fallen from my grace. He has sullied his body. He has doomed his soul. You lay with killers of love, destroyers of worlds. I can never forgive you.
They didn’t come.
“Roman?” She lowered the gun, a red light flashing above her head. “I… I recall… I recall… Everything.” Tremors rocked her hands, her complexion taking on deathly gray hues. “My daughter taking my throne. My death. Helping you. Giving my life to… I can’t… I can’t.” She clutched her chest, tears running down her face.
Everything that’d happened remained in my brain. I might have gone back in time, but that didn’t change anything. And it hurt. My God, it hurt thinking of Grandma, the deaths, the carnage, the shit ton of trauma.
A hand landed on my shoulder. Xavier, his heat flowing into my body.
I sighed, leaning into him.
“I remember everything, too,” he whispered.
The queen looked me dead in the eyes. “Everything. Everything. Everything. Did… Did my daughter die when the sky fell?”
This was a second chance. Our only chance not to letthatfuture come to pass. Magic still lived inside me.
“Yes,” I answered her, the device releasing a gentle whir.
