ETTA WAS NOT SURE HOW long she stood rooted to that same spot. Terror had such a firm grip on her that it could have pulled the skin off her bones. Julian ventured forward a few steps, waving the soot and ash out of the way as best he could. Revealing only more soot and ash.

“There’s…there’s nothing,” he said, turning back to her. “How is that possible? The buildings, the people…”

He wasn’t wrong; as far as the eye could see through the smoke—which turned out to be very far, without the hindrance of buildings crowding the park’s boundaries—there was nothing beyond the husks of what had once been. If the air cleared, Etta knew she’d at least be able to see the East River. She had thought the destruction of the San Francisco earthquake had been absolute, but this…this was…

“Oh my God,” she said, pressing a hand against her mouth.

She’d been right. This was a third, alternate timeline—it hadn’t reverted back to Ironwood’s timeline like he must have intended with the assassination. He’d grasped burning, dangerous threads of history and knotted them into something far more sinister. Something unrecognizable.

There’s nothing left.

She lowered herself to her knees, suddenly unable to support her own weight.

“What could cause this?” Julian asked. “Shelling? Aerial bombings?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know—we need to—we need to go—”

If it was something worse, like a nuclear weapon, then they’d already exposed themselves to harmful radiation. The thought pushed Etta back off the ground, dried the tears that were beginning to form in her eyes.

But when she turned to tell Julian, something else caught her eye—the sweep of headlights cutting through the thick smoke, brushing over them.

“Survivors, call out,” a voice crackled over a speaker, broken up by either emotion or the technology. “Help is on the way. Survivors… call out if you can….”

“Come on,” Etta said, turning back to the passage. “We need to go!”

Julian shook his head. “No—Nan—I’m going to find her—”

Etta’s words caught in her throat. If she’d been in the city, there was very likely nothing left to find. But before they could protest, the headlights found them again, and an engine revved as it raced toward them. Before the vehicle had fully stopped, a man in a full black jumpsuit and gas mask—something that closely resembled what Etta knew as a hazmat suit—leaped out of the back of a Jeep and rushed toward them.

“My God! My God, what are you doing here?” The man’s voice was muffled by his oxygen mask. “How did you survive?”

“That, chap,” Julian managed to get out, “is an excellent question.”

ETTA KNEW THAT SHE SHOULD have steered them back through the passage, but some part of her wanted to know—wanted to see for herself—what had become of her city.

She should have considered what that would do to her heart. After a while, she stopped looking out at the devastation as the military-issue Jeep bounced through the smoldering wreckage, and cupped her hands over her eyes.

This isn’t right, his isn’t right….None of this was right. This timeline…

A medic riding with them had given them both oxygen masks, which cleared her head somewhat. Etta winced as he swiped antiseptic over the cut on her arm again, and then turned to the slash across her forehead.

“Say…” Julian said, his voice trembling slightly as he leaned forward to speak to the driver. “They figure out who to pin this on yet? We’ve been a bit, uh, out of it. Trapped in that basement, you know?”

Julian Ironwood: worthless at paddling a boat, but quick with a lie.

“I’ll say,” the driver called back. “The Central Powers proudly took credit for their handiwork. Made sure to hit Los Angeles and Washington, too, just to drive the message home.”

Etta had to close her eyes and breathe deeply, just to keep from vomiting.

“Never seen anything like the flash when this hit. Millions, just—” The man trailed off.

Gone, Etta’s mind finished.

It was light enough outside that once they approached the Hudson, heading toward what the men had described as a medical camp and survivor meeting point in New Jersey, Etta could see the dark outline of a bicycle and a man against one of the last standing walls. Almost as if they had disappeared and left their shadows behind.

“Paris and London are still standing, but it’s only a matter of time,” the medic said bitterly. “This was to warn us off joining them in their fight, I bet. They knew Roosevelt was thinking about sending aid or troops over to the Brits—that they’ve been gearing up for a fight. So the Central Powers declared war on us.”

“This isn’t war,” the driver said. “This is hell. They knew we’d jump in first chance we got, and so they crippled us. They showed us who’s boss.”

Etta didn’t ask about the government, about the other cities. And she didn’t ask Julian about how they would get back to that passage, or what other ones they could reach in this year. Exhaustion swept over her. It stole whatever spark of fight she had left. She closed her eyes on her ruined city.

“Almost done, honey,” the medic said. Under any other circumstances she would have hated the endearment, but she was feeling battered, and the man had a grandfatherly quality that reminded her of Oskar, Alice’s husband. “You’ll need to find a doctor to stitch up your arm when we get there, you hear me?”

Etta couldn’t muster the strength to nod.

Where would she even start? How could anyone fix this?

Anywhere, she thought, and with everything I have.

THE MEDICAL CAMP WAS SET UP IN ELIZABETH, NEW JERSEY. Far enough from the blast site in the center of Manhattan to be out of immediate danger, but still close enough to be shrouded in toxic clouds of fumes and dust. To get there, they’d had to drive by cleared fields where the bodies of victims had been brought, some covered with tarps, others not. Etta’s breath was harsh in her ears, and she couldn’t seem to let go of the image of their twisted shapes, the way the charring had left them looking almost hollow. As much as she felt like she had to be a witness to these atrocities, that she owed it to them to form a memory of their wasted lives, Etta didn’t protest when the medic leaned over and covered her eyes.

“You don’t have to see this,” he said. “It’s all right.”

But she did.

I did this, she thought. By letting the astrolabe slip away, she was responsible; the thought left her trembling so hard that the same medic had her lie down across the seat to administer an IV.

By listening to the radio in the Jeep, Etta learned the following: the attacks had happened five days ago; the secretary of labor was now the president of the United States, as he’d had the good fortune to be on vacation outside of the District when the bombs struck; and there’d been no decision on whether or not to make peace or declare war.

“Is there a registry?” Julian asked. “A list of survivors from the city?”

“Not yet,” was all they were told. “You’ll see.”

And they did see. The old warehouse that had been converted into an emergency medical facility was wrapped around twice with a line of people waiting to get inside. Many of them—in fact, most—were African American. They, too, made up the bulk of those coming in and out of the tents that had been set up along the nearby streets. Their rudimentary bandages looked like basic first aid, not actual treatment.

“Why are there two lines?” Julian asked, sounding as dazed as Etta felt. She turned to see what he was staring at. Two separate booths, both with the Red Cross’s symbol, both handing out the same parcels of food. But there were two very distinct lines: one for white people, the other for blacks.

Etta fought the scream that tore up through her. The whole city was in ruins, millions of people were likely dead, and they still followed this hollow, cruel tradition, as if it accomplished anything other than humiliation.

“You know why,” she told him. Julian was an Ironwood; he traveled extensively; he had been educated about the history his father had created; and he was acting like none of that was true. Somehow, it only infuriated her more.

“But why?” he repeated, his voice hollow.

“Come on, you two,” one of the soldiers said.

“What about the rest of them?” Julian asked as they were walked right past the line waiting to get into the warehouse.

“Waiting for blood from one of the black blood banks in Philadelphia,” the soldier said, as if it weren’t a completely insane statement. Blood is blood is blood is blood. The only thing that mattered was type. This was an emergency, an utter disaster, and still—this.

Calm down, she told herself. Calm down…. She crossed her arms over her chest to keep from tearing the world apart around them in a rage of devastation. My city. These people…Etta choked on the bile that rose, and it was only by pressing the back of her hand against her mouth that she kept from throwing up until she was truly as hollow and empty as she felt.

“What are we doing here?” Etta whispered as the men led her and Julian toward the warehouse. “We can’t stay, you know that.”

He shook his head, turning back to look at the faces of the people at the door, waiting to get in. “There are open beds. Why are they outside if there are open beds?”

“They’ll be treated when the rest of the staff from Kenney Hospital arrive,” the medic said, speaking slowly, as if Julian were a child. “This way.”

The medic relinquished them to a bleary-eyed doctor, who ushered them over to sit on a cot. The man began to examine the cuts and burns on Etta’s arms and hands without so much as a word. A nurse with strawberry-blond hair eventually wandered over with a pail of water and a rag.

Julian stared at a man two cots over, quietly weeping into his hat.

“Let me help you there, sugar,” the nurse said, and cleaned away the grime and blood Etta had been carrying with her since St. Petersburg. “It’s all right to cry. It’s better if you do.”

I can’t. Something cold had locked around her core, so that she didn’t even register the doctor stitching a particularly bad cut without anesthesia. She didn’t register Julian scooting to the edge of the cot so that the nurse could lift Etta’s legs up, laying her out on the cot.

Etta watched, in some strange state between sleeping and wakefulness, as the doctors, nurses, servicemen, and families of the injured moved between the cots and curtains that divided the enormous space into makeshift rooms.

“Will you stop with this—” A nearby voice was rising, flustered. “I don’t need to be examined.”

“Madam, you do—if you’ll let me continue, I won’t be but a moment—”

“Can you not understand me?” the woman said, her voice dripping with a venomous mix of fear and tension. “I don’t want you to touch me.”

Etta opened her eyes, craning her neck to see what was happening. The doctor who had stitched her up went right to the other, badgered doctor’s side. A black doctor.

“I’ll finish here, Stevens,” the other man said. “The next shift will start soon. I’m sure they need your assistance more outside.”

“Why—” Julian had been so quiet, she’d assumed he’d gone and wandered off. “Why are there empty beds, when there are people outside?”

He wasn’t speaking to the doctors; he wasn’t speaking to the nurses, or the patients, or any one person in particular. There was a manic edge to his tone that drew eyes, nervous glances.

“I want you to tell me why—”

“The same reason,” Etta murmured, “you never truly trained your half brother. The same reason he had to sign a contract just to travel. The same reason,” she continued, “no one ever acknowledged him as being a member of your family.”

Julian turned on her. “That’s not true! That’s not! You have no idea—”

She wondered if his privilege had made him blind to others’ suffering in his travels, or if maybe it took something of this magnitude to shatter that shield of self-righteousness that being white and male and wealthy had always provided him with. Etta didn’t doubt for a second that, as the heir, he might have been protected from harsher years so as to keep him alive, but she also didn’t doubt that Julian had never been able to see further than a foot in front of him when it came to other people.

Or maybe he’d treated traveling as all of the other Ironwoods seemed to; they disconnected themselves from decency time and time again to play the parts each era demanded of them. They had seen so much, they must have become desensitized to it—the way she could watch a film, see characters suffer, but never fully invest in their lives because of the emotional distance. Because it never truly felt real; not in a visceral way.

This kind of destruction was what traveling did to people—not the travelers themselves, but their victims, the common people who could not feel the sands of history shifting around them before they were smothered.

Julian’s hands were limp at his side, turned slightly toward the room, as if he could weigh the odds of life or death for each person stretched out on a cot. He had closed his eyes; his breathing was shallow, his face screwed up. Powerless.

“Remember this,” she told him. “How you feel right now.”

What it felt like to move through the world without power, at the mercy of things bigger than you. Unable, even if just for an hour, to control one’s life. How Nicholas had felt for years, before he’d taken all of that strength she loved so much about him and pulled himself up, out, back to the sea.

Etta turned her face against the rough fabric of the cot and focused on nothing beyond her own breathing, fighting back the sweep of shame and anger.

I have to finish this. A single man, on Ironwood’s orders, had set this disaster in motion. The blast from the explosion hadn’t just killed the tsar; its effects had rippled out, exactly as Henry had said, cutting through millions upon millions of innocent lives. For the first time in her life, Etta felt lethal.

“We need to leave,” she told Julian. “We have to find your grandfather. He has the astrolabe. We can still fix this.”

Julian shook his head, rubbing his hands over his face. “I can’t go back—I can’t.”

“The survivor rosters have gone up,” she heard a soft voice say. “I’ll take you to them, if you’d like. They only account for this field hospital. We should have others by the evening.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a nurse leading Julian toward the entrance, where a man was hammering up handwritten lists on large sheets of butcher paper. Those who could rise from their cots did so, swarming that small space. The line outside began to push forward as well, surging toward the sheets in a tangle of arms and legs, until everyone was nearly climbing over each other to get a better look.

By the time she saw Julian again, almost twenty minutes later, the same nurse was by his side again, leading him toward an area in the far back of the warehouse that had been sectioned off by sterile white curtains.

Etta pushed herself up and followed, bracing herself for this next hit. Either his old nanny was alive, or he was being drawn back to identify a body. She caught the tail end of the nurse’s instructions as she came up behind Julian.

“…need to wear a mask and try not to touch her—the burns are exceedingly painful.”

“I understand,” Julian said, accepting both gloves and a face mask from the young woman. Her tidy uniform seemed at odds with the barely managed chaos of the place; she cast them both a sympathetic look before falling back.

Etta accepted her own set and pulled them on. She survived. What a small, precious miracle.

“They say she doesn’t have long,” Julian told her, with an odd, forced lightness. Etta knew this feeling, too, of overcompensating to rise above the pain in order to function. “The air way out in Brooklyn was so hot it damaged her lungs.”

Etta put a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I’d like to ask her a few things, if she can answer. But mostly…I think I…”

Julian never finished his thought. He took a deep breath, smoothed his hair back, and stepped through the curtain.

Inside, about a dozen or so beds were arranged in a U shape around a central station, where two nurses were cutting bandages and measuring out medicine. The lights from the lanterns were kept dim, but the shadows didn’t hide the heavily bandaged figures on each of the beds, the blistered patches of exposed, unnaturally gleaming skin.

Julian paced toward the far right end, counting under his breath. Finally, he found the one he was looking for, and Etta saw him straighten to his full height as he moved to the small wooden stool beside the cot. He moved the basin of water onto the floor and reached for the hand of the woman on the bed.

Etta hung back, unsure whether or not she was meant to be listening or watching. The woman seemed less bandaged than the others, but wore a bulky oxygen mask. Her face was as pink as the inside of a seashell, and her eyebrows were entirely gone, as were patches of her gray hair.

With utmost care, Julian stroked the back of her hand, careful to avoid the IV line. Within a moment, the woman turned her head toward him, her eyelids inching open. Etta knew the precise moment she saw him and made the connection, because her free hand floated up to pull down her oxygen mask, and those same blue eyes went wide.

“You’re…”

“Hullo, Nan,” Julian said, his voice painfully light. “Gave me a bit of hell trying to track you down in this mess.”

Her mouth moved, but it was a long while before words emerged.

“I thought I might be…I thought I might have passed. But…you’re not you, not from before—?”

Etta wasn’t sure what she was asking, exactly. Julian just responded with one of his infuriating shrugs.

“Before I supposedly plummeted to my untimely death? It’s all right. It was only a bit of play. I never did go splat. You know how I love my games.”

Even in her condition, the woman, a guardian, knew to be wary of revealing his fate to a traveler—however false a fate it might have been. She blinked almost owlishly at him.

“I thought…I thought so. You’ve the look of a man now. You’ve grown so well.” As if the whole scene wasn’t awful enough, the woman began to cry. Etta began the slow process of backing away without being noticed. “I’d always hoped to see you…one last time…that you’d come to visit me when I was older, so I could see you…smile again.”

Etta’s heart stretched to the point of ripping at the unbridled emotion in the old woman’s voice.

“A fair bet, that. You’ve always known, Nan, there’s no getting rid of me,” Julian told her. “What did you say? Luck of the devil, lives of a cat? I’m only sorry I didn’t come sooner.”

The eyebrows had been singed from her face, but Etta imagined them lifting at that, just by the way her eyes took on a sudden glint. “Thank the good Lord you didn’t. Or else you’d…be…”

Dead. Dying. Incinerated.

Gone.

Etta’s stomach turned, and she looked away, toward the heavy, dark curtain covering the shattered window. The movement must have finally caught the old woman’s attention, because Etta felt the pressure of her gaze like a chain jerking her head back up.

“My God—Rose—”

Etta jumped at the viciousness of the woman’s tone, less amused now to see yet another person all but cross themselves at a reminder of her mother.

“No, Nan,” Julian said, pressing her gently down onto the bed. “This is her daughter. Etta, this is the great Octavia Ironwood.”

This didn’t seem to improve the woman’s opinion in the slightest. Her breathing had become labored, to the point where even Julian shot a panicked look at a nearby oxygen tank. Etta took another step back, wondering if she should leave—Julian’s old nanny was so fragile right now, any sort of disturbance seemed capable of shattering what strength she had left.

“I never thought…I’d see you with the likes of a Linden, and her daughter, no less,” the woman coughed, hacking up something wet from her lungs. Julian’s face softened; he reached for a rag and a bowl of warm water from the nearby stand and dabbed the blood from the corner of her lips.

“Don’t…bother yourself….”

“It’s no bother at all,” he told her. “Just returning the favor for all the times you did it for me as a little prat.”

“You were never a prat,” Octavia told him, her voice severe despite the whistle of air in and out of her chest. “You were trying. You tested. But you were never”—she cut her eyes at Etta—“stupid.”

That one stung, Etta had to admit. Initially, hearing things like that had made Etta think of her mother like one of the paintings Rose restored at the Met—its true image obscured by layers of age and grime. Now, she wore the truth like a badge of shame. “You tried your best raising me,” Julian was saying, “but you know me—all style, no sense. I was bound to run with a rougher set sooner or later.”

The burned half of the woman’s face pulled into an agonizing smile. Etta couldn’t tell the difference between her choking and laughter.

“You’re a little love,” she informed him. “I might like you…even better…if you could find me a drink of the good stuff.”

“I’ll bring you a whole bottle of Scotch,” he vowed, “if I have to go to Scotland and bring it back, still cold from the distillery.”

“Tell me what’s…what’s happened,” she said. “This wasn’t what was meant to be.”

Julian began to explain what had happened, quietly, quickly.

“There’s a lot to be said about Cyrus Ironwood,” Octavia began. “There’s…much to be ashamed of. How he treats—how he treats his own family, for one. He was so hard on you…for not being what he meant you to be. For not fixing…your father.”

Etta’s hands curled around her biceps, squeezing the muscles. Nicholas and Julian’s father, Augustus, had been a vile piece of work; Etta had to wonder if he was what Cyrus had “meant for” Julian to be.

The shadow that passed over Julian’s face lifted again as the woman’s eyes flickered over to him, then to the room’s other sleeping occupants. She spoke so softly, Etta had to move closer to her bed to hear. “There is…madness in him. Oh, don’t look so surprised. Those of us…those of us closest to him have watched him step closer…closer…to the fire. But he did create a world better than what had…come before. None of this…none of this should have happened. But Rose Linden—she and her outcasts could never accept it.”

“This wasn’t part of the original timeline?” Julian clarified, just as softly. “I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t be sure. There were so many changes when Grandfather went to war with the families.”

“No,” Octavia said. “I wouldn’t have stayed. I wouldn’t have…let children…let anyone die…I wouldn’t have let this happen.”

Etta’s heart froze in her chest, seizing painfully. If Octavia thought—believed—that she could have prevented this, or at least saved herself, then that meant…

She’d had it wrong. Etta had assumed that guardians, unlike travelers, wouldn’t be able to recognize when the timeline shifted—that they would simply be carried forward, their lives and memories adjusted, blissfully unaware that their lives had ever been different. But that wasn’t the case at all. The Ironwood guardians, in service to the old man, would know how things were meant to play out. If they survived the changes, they would know the timeline had been altered, and live out its consequences. Etta was almost breathless with the unspeakable cruelty of it. These people were born into this hidden world, yet were as much at its mercy as a normal man or woman. Only, they would know when something was lost, and when there was a reason to be afraid.

“I know, Nan,” Julian said, cupping her hand between his. “You would have saved the whole damn city if you knew.”

“You didn’t know, either…so why…why come?” Octavia asked, turning her head to better look at him.

“Because I needed to find out a few things,” Julian said, lying just a little, “and you’re the only person I trust.”

Another painful smile as her burned skin pulled beneath her bandages. “Tell me. But—she goes.”

“Nan,” Julian cajoled. “Etta’s not like her mother. She wasn’t even told she was one of us until last month. If you hold her mother against her, you’ll have to hold my father against me.”

“Her mother was the reason for your father’s change…for his cruelty. She created it in him—”

“Let’s not—” Julian cut her off, then cringed. “She didn’t make him who he was, she only released what was already inside of him, waiting to be let out. Let’s just…I only meant that we’re trying to find out what’s been happening with the family. Grandfather has been trying to track down his old obsession again, and now we need to find him.”

The candlelight drew deep shadows across Julian’s face as he leaned forward, searching Octavia’s face. He shifted uncomfortably, and the creaking of the chair cut through the murmur of life and death in the makeshift ward.

She won’t talk until I leave, Etta realized. But she wasn’t about to step outside and rely solely on Julian relaying the complete picture to her.

“Easy, Nan,” Julian said. “This one’s all right. Vetted her myself, otherwise I wouldn’t have brought her to you.”

She clearly had some doubts about his judgment, but let this pass.

“Be careful…won’t you? He’s been…traveling again. Came here only days ago…called a family meeting. Don’t let him…find you,” Octavia said, fixing her gaze back on Julian.

“Him?” Julian repeated. “Grandpops? Why? The old man moves once every two decades at best.”

“If I tell you…” Octavia blew out a long, wheezing sigh. “What trouble…will you find yourself in?”

“The good kind,” Julian promised her. “The kind that makes you proud of me, even as you put me in the naughty corner.”

The sound that came out of her must have been a laugh, though it was painful to hear. “There’s…an auction. Came through…the family lines. He came to take…the gold from his vault here. Buy-in.”

“An auction?” Julian repeated, glancing at Etta. “Did he say what for?”

“Is there anything else…he could want…so desperately?”

The astrolabe.

“He doesn’t already have it?” Etta asked. Who had taken it from Kadir in the palace, then?

Julian must have had a similar thought, but arrived at an actual guess. “The Belladonna. I should have known the blasted thing would turn up with her. She must have sent one of her minions to steal it, or one of Grandpop’s men went rogue and brought it to her for a fee. Do you know the location of the auction? The year?”

Octavia shook her head, and Etta felt herself deflate. The old woman grabbed Julian’s hand, holding him in place. “Leave…go back. As far…back as you can.”

“I’ve got a few things to do first,” he told her, “but I will. In time.”

“No—Julian, the Shadows—even guardians hear whispers of such—of such things—murders—”

“Shadows?” Julian’s brow creased. “Are you trying to be funny with me, Nan?”

Despite her condition, she leveled him with a look perfected by years as a nanny.

“You also told me my hair was going to fall out if I didn’t stop eating sweets, so forgive me if I doubt the story about the creatures who snatch naughty traveler children in the night.”

“What are you talking about?” Etta asked, looking between them.

“You know, the one your mother gently traumatized you with from a young age—about people who live in shadows and steal little traveler children who don’t follow the rules?” He rubbed at the stubble on his chin, and Etta wondered why everything he ever did made it seem like he was posing. “Huh. You don’t know. Oh! Right. Your terror of a mother kept everything secret, et cetera. Have to say, this is the first time I’ve been jealous of you. From the shadows they come…”

It was only because he had mentioned her mother. It was only because the memory of the Winter Palace was still so close to the surface, blooming with renewed pain every few minutes. It was only because of those things that Rose’s words circled back to her then, and tentatively linked with what Julian said.

“You can say if I’m telling it wrong,” he told Octavia. “But there’s this old story, about a group that lives in the shadows and takes traveler children who stray from their families. I always thought it was made up to explain how kids got left behind in time periods or were orphaned. Is that not the case?”

“Killers—” Octavia let out a brutal cough, bringing blood to her lips. Julian leaned forward, gently dabbing them with the wet cloth.

“Easy now,” he told her.

“Murderers…the whole lot of them,” Octavia said. “We knew of them…Cyrus—he wants the same thing that—that they do. Destroyed all records of them. Never wanted…anyone to know about them…otherwise, they’d be too frightened…to help him search for it.”

It. The astrolabe.

You don’t know what’s coming, what’s been chasing me for years, her mother had said. I’ve kept them off your trail for weeks, from the moment you were taken, but the Shadows—

But the Shadows…

What had Henry told her about Rose’s delusions? That she’d become afraid of the darkness, that the delusion of the radiant man who’d haunted her had sent Shadows out after her?

“What do they look like?” she asked. Rose’s attention in the palace had been drawn away by attackers in black. She’d assumed they were Ironwoods, even palace guards, but—her mind was moving too quickly, strumming through possibilities. There was one more piece to this, something that would weave the truth together. It couldn’t be as simple as…no, it wasn’t.

Henry wasn’t wrong. Her mother needed help. She was a murderer who’d killed a member of her own family—her best and only friend.

“Don’t…know,” Octavia said. “I don’t—just stay away—”

“All right, it’s all right,” Julian said, glancing at Etta.

But the Shadows…

What’s been chasing me for years…

Octavia’s chest began to rise and fall, fluttering shallowly. When the old woman turned to him again, it was with a wide-eyed desperation, with wretched, gasping breaths. Julian stood from his stool, and Etta thought for one infuriating second that he was about to bolt for the exit—but he only slipped that same tattered notebook out of the fold of his clothing. He retrieved the stubby pencil secured to the back cover with string. The leather was so soft, the journal fell open on the bed, revealing an unfinished sketch of a street.

He’s an artist. Etta had forgotten that, somehow. Or maybe she’d just never been willing to see him as anything other than a coward and a flirt, because it would have been another complication when her entire world had become a series of them. If he had been one of her mother’s paintings, one of those at the Met she had worked so hard to restore, peeling back layers of age and patches, Etta wondered how bright his colors might be beneath.

“Do you remember the old house, Nan? The one we lived in just off the park, up on Sixtieth?” he asked her. His right hand held hers, but his left was already sketching on a blank page.

“With the…with the…”

“The columns and marble and carriage entry,” he continued softly. “Our little palace. Remember how I slid down the banister and cracked my head on the ground?”

She nodded. “Blood. Amelia…fainting. Butler moaning about…the damned vase…”

“That’s what you remember,” he told her. “What I remember is this.”

He held up the rough sketch for her to see, but the cover blocked it from Etta’s sight. It wasn’t meant for her, anyway.

“I remember you scooping me up, holding me, telling me that it would be all right, and that you were there and always would be, to take care of me,” Julian whispered.

Octavia touched the page with her finger. “Beautiful…”

“That’s right. I had a proper, beautiful life, thanks to you.” He kissed her bandaged hand. “And now I’ll do the same for you.”

“Don’t do…anything…foolish….”

“Nan,” he said, fighting for his smile. “You can bet on it.”

THE WOMAN SLIPPED INTO SLEEP AND ETTA MOVED AWAY, leaving Julian to keep vigil. Her head felt empty of real thought, even as her heart was clogged with everything threatening to burst out of it. What surprised her most, though, was the jealousy, burning just beneath the pity and fear.

He gets to be with her.

Julian would be there for Octavia when she died. Etta didn’t think she had much time left at all, but she knew with certainty that Julian would not leave her. It was more than she’d been able to give to Alice.

Henry had stayed with Alice.

And who had stayed with Henry?

Etta lost track of time, walking between the rows of cots, trying not to notice the new openings in the beds. It didn’t feel like nearly enough hours before Julian emerged and came straight toward her, shooting through the rows of the dead and dying like a fiery arrow. He took her arm and drew her forward, stopping only long enough to lift a pile of plain gray trousers and white shirts—the same thing the nurses had changed most of the wounded into.

“Here,” he said, motioning her toward a screen. “Change here.”

Etta slipped behind it, watching his silhouette move against the white fabric, pacing. “What happened…?”

She let her dress fall to the ground and tugged on the soft, oversize clothing.

“Nan’s finally at peace,” he told her quietly, coming closer. “I was waiting for it…for the timeline to shift. To be flung out of here. But it never came. And then I tried to remember—I tried to remember if any change had ever been caused by a guardian dying, or if time just sees them the way Grandfather does: disposable.”

“And?”

“And I couldn’t. I couldn’t. It feels like it should have shifted the whole world. A traveler can do one thing outside of his time and the whole of it can shift. I don’t like that—that it makes it seem like she wasn’t important.” He was talking quickly, almost too quickly for Etta’s tired mind to keep up with. “All done?”

Etta stepped out from behind the screen and let him pass her to start changing.

“Julian,” she said gently. “Are you all right? Take a minute if you have to….”

“I don’t think we have a minute, do you?” he said. “There’s an Ironwood message drop in this year just a ways upstate. The Belladonna will have flooded the drops with invitations to the auction, just to get as many bidders as possible. We can start looking there.”

“Who is the Belladonna?” Etta asked.

“She’s a collector and an agent of sale for rare artifacts,” he said, pulling his new shirt over his head. “There’s going to be a buy-in amount in gold we’ll need to provide, but the bidding is done by submitting offers of secrets and favors. We just need to get inside, and then we can do whatever it is you think we’re supposed to be doing.”

“Destroying the astrolabe,” Etta said.

Julian leaned out from behind the screen. “Destroying it—what good is that going to accomplish? Shouldn’t we use it to try to save these people?”

One of the first things she’d learned about life as a traveler was that you couldn’t save the dead, not without consequences. But whatever fate the original timeline had intended for these people, this wasn’t it.

“It’ll reset everything,” she explained. “Bring it back to the original timeline. The one we knew…it’ll be gone.”

Julian turned away from surveying the cots, the weeping men and women by the survivor boards, and glanced back at her over his shoulder. “Then let’s go.”