Etta read the note again, ignoring the soft patter of freezing rain on her hair and face. They’d gone upstate, to a cabin that sat like an afterthought in the woods, and waited a day, watching its doors for any Ironwoods. Hungry and frustrated, she’d broken away from Julian and gone to where he said the key would be: buried beneath the root of a nearby tree.

By the time she’d gotten the door open, he’d been brave enough to join her in sorting through the endless piles of letters and notices that had been slipped inside of its mail slot. Some were torn, clearly battered by their delivery; others showed the era in which they were written by the quality of the paper and the ink. Most were sealed with the same wax seal, bearing the sigil of the Ironwoods, except for one: blank wax, marked with a B that rested inside the curve of a crescent moon. Julian had picked it up between two fingers and shaken it, as if afraid it might suddenly reveal a set of teeth.

He had gone through his travel journal to try to locate the nearest passage, but she’d found a small reference book of passages, left on the empty cabin’s table for anyone who dropped in and needed help in navigating away. A passage in Brazil would take them directly to Mount Kurama, but one rather weighty problem remained.

A hundred pounds of gold or jewels—not just difficult to locate, but difficult to carry to the auction site.

“I don’t want to alarm you,” Julian began. He pulled back from the hulking outcropping they’d hidden behind, observing the black beach below. “But there seems to be a gaggle of Vikings rowing up to shore.”

That startled her out of her thoughts. Etta pulled him back by his simple tunic and took his place, scanning the fog spreading its pale hands across the sea. A carved wooden face appeared ahead of the rest of the ship, slicing silently through the heavy cover of gloom.

The figurehead was a serpent, a dark specter, all teeth and long, curving neck. Etta sat back, flinching as it broke through the gloom, gliding forward like a knife through a veil. The rush of the tide and the birds circling overhead covered the sound of the oars splashing through the water.

“I thought you said he picked this place for his gold reserve because it was deserted—your exact words were ‘untouched by time and man,’” she said, glancing back over her shoulder.

“All right, I’ve been known to embellish my tales with a touch of drama, but do you honestly believe I wouldn’t pay special attention to where I could find my shiny inheritance?” Julian said, leaning over her shoulder. “This was the safest place to keep the loot because of how little play it got with the timeline. No one is supposed to actually like this place enough to come visit.”

Several other caches they’d checked had already been emptied and moved to an unknown location, or the timeline had shifted so severely that they had faded out of existence entirely. “Except Vikings,” Etta said.

“All right, except Vikings.”

“And the Celts,” Etta said. “And other Scandinavian peoples. Why didn’t he go way back—beyond ancient times? Prehistoric. Actually, how far back do the passages go? Could you see, like, the dinosaurs? Cavemen?”

Julian leaned back against the rock, pressing a hand against his chest, his expression one of pure astonishment. “My God, Linden-Hemlock-Spencer. I believe you’ve just given me a new purpose in life.”

Etta’s brows drew together. “Finding new passages?”

“No, hunting for dinosaurs,” he said. “Why did I never think of that—oh, right, the eating thing. Big teeth and all. Well, never mind.”

“How quickly the dream dies,” Etta said wryly, turning back toward the beach.

For an hour now, they’d kept watch on the cave, hidden just out of their line of sight by a curve in the mountain. All they could see of it through the mist and fog was the edge of the entrance: towering stacks of stone, some round like pipes, others as straight and narrow as bone, had seemingly splintered from a rough rock face. From a distance, Etta had thought they’d merely been piled closely together, like ancient offerings for whatever king had ruled the mountain and beach below.

The longship navigated between the narrow, towering black rocks jutting up from the water, before driving up onto the shore itself. The landing was quick work; the oars were tucked inside, the sails drawn up so as not to catch the whistling wind.

A half dozen men poured out of the belly of the ship, their feet striking the black sand, moving swiftly to catch the five empty leather sacks thrown by the others on the deck. The depressions their feet left in the black sand filled with rain, shining like scales from a distance.

Finally, a tall figure jumped down from the deck of the second ship, struggling for balance with one arm cradled against his chest. He was darker than the others, both in skin and dress, wearing none of the fur they did. The men around him gathered slowly, as if with reluctance, their heads bobbing up and down with whatever instructions he was giving them. Then he began his long strides toward the very cave Etta and Julian had come to clean out, his shoulders set back, chin raised, the way—

She was on her feet before she could think to rise. Etta choked out something between a gasp and a laugh. “Nicholas.”

Julian reached for the back of her shirt, trying to pull her down, but Etta twisted away, frantic. He was too far away, too far—her whole body trembled in protest at being forced to remain where it was.

She edged as close to the line of the cliff as she dared, starving for a better look at him; her heart was thundering so hard, she was half worried it might suddenly give out on her.

How long his hair had grown, how thin and battered he was in the face. The distance between them was more than just air and sand and mountains; it manifested in all of those missing days between them, creating a deep valley of uncertainty. The sling for his arm—what had happened? Who were these men, and why—

One last man was lowered down from the first ship, with the assistance of two other men. He was hunched at the shoulders, adorned with leather armor and gray fur, and she knew him—not because her mind put the impossible pieces together, but because Julian did. He recoiled, going bone-white in the face.

Cyrus Ironwood looked like a different beast without the finery he’d wrapped himself in to give the impression of civility.

Oh God, she thought, pressing a fist against her mouth to keep from making another sound. He’s got Nicholas.

She’d been so focused on finding the astrolabe, so sure in her belief that Nicholas was in Damascus still, that she had somehow never considered the possibility that Ironwood would have snared him again. But then—the men were going where Nicholas was pointing, hauling the sacks toward the hoard inside the cave at the end of the beach.

When Ironwood came up to him, when Ironwood put a hand on his shoulder, Nicholas did not run. He did not flinch. He nodded, pointing to the cave.

He…smiled.

“What in the name of God?” Julian began. He shook off the surprise first, pulling her back down to a crouch beside him. “He’s—that’s Nick, isn’t it? But then, that’s Grandfather, and they’re…they’re together.”

Walking side by side to collect the reserve of Ironwood treasure.

For one terrible moment, Etta could not feel anything below her neck. The cold air seemed to ice over the inside of her lungs, making it painful to breathe.

“He must be—the old man must be forcing him,” she managed to say. The Nicholas she knew could barely stand to be in the same breathing space as the man, let alone tolerate his touch.

The Nicholas you knew for a month?

No. No. No. Etta shoved the thought away. He’d handed her his heart in complete trust, and she knew the shape of it, how heavily it was weighted with hatred and shattering sadness toward this family. This wasn’t a betrayal—the only betrayal would be hers, if she believed he was doing anything other than finding a way to survive.

She blew out a harsh breath, gathering up her small bag of supplies. The landscape of Iceland had a cool, reserved kind of beauty, but its terrain was unpredictable, roughly hewn, as if shaped by the travels of giants. They’d come down a worn path that would eventually lead to the beach below, and, if she continued down it just a bit more, she might be able to get close enough to somehow catch Nicholas’s attention without any of the Ironwoods noticing.

“He’s treating him like…” Julian began, still sitting on the ground where she had left him.

“Let’s go,” she said. “Come on.”

He turned, and for once she couldn’t read his expression. “He’s treating him like the way he used to handle my father.”

“Nicholas is?”

He shook his head. “Grandfather. That’s not a prisoner on that beach. That’s an heir.”

The words flew at her like an arrow. Etta took off, continuing up the path, to avoid it landing. She wrapped the heavy, drab wool coat around her tightly, and looked up to find that the rain had turned to snow, and was catching on her shoulders and hair.

Etta took the bend in the trail at a run, scrambling on hands and feet to avoid slipping on the ice and moss. The waves broke below her, snapping against the earth, sounding more and more like the blood rushing through her ears. She kept her eyes on Nicholas below, trying to keep up with him and the others before they disappeared into the cave.

Two hands caught her by the shoulders and swung her back around, hard enough that her feet slipped out from beneath her. Etta slammed onto the uneven ground, the air exploding out of her in a cloud of white. She wheezed painfully, trying to fill her lungs, to rise back up, but she was pinned in place by the kiss of a blade against her exposed throat.

It pulled back suddenly, and the weight that had crashed down on her chest lifted with a gasp. By the time the burst of light cleared from Etta’s eyes and she could lift a hand to clear the snow from her lashes, a familiar face was gazing down at her in horror, partially disguised by an impressive-looking leather eye patch.

Her mind understood what she was seeing—who she was seeing—but couldn’t make sense of it: the short hair, the shirt and trousers, the boots. Etta scrambled back as best she could, trying to put distance between her and Sophia, until her hand closed around a shard of stone. She thrust it between them to ward the girl off.

“Soph…ia?” came the weak voice above them.

Julian stood on the path, a short distance from them. When Sophia turned toward him, rising to her feet, his face seemed to crumble. He didn’t just look remorseful—he looked as if he wanted nothing more than for a bolt of lightning to blow him off the face of the hill.

“I guess the obvious question is, how the hell are you alive?” Sophia’s voice sounded as if it had been rubbed raw.

Julian dared to take another step toward her, holding out a hand, as if he expected her to take it. Sophia stared at it the way a wolf would assess whether or not it was worth chasing a hare.

“Oh, that—well, old girl—Soph, light of my life—” Julian seemed unable to tear his eyes away from the eye patch. There was an unhealthy sheen to his face, almost feverish, when the attention of the group finally shifted to him.

“You,” she interjected, “I know about. I’m speaking to you, Linden.”

“Me?” Etta repeated. “I’ll admit I had a couple close calls, but—wait, what?”

“You were dead. D-E-A-D. As in, finished, gone to meet your maker, et cetera,” Sophia said. “Your father issued a challenge to Ironwood. He demanded satisfaction for your murder at his men’s hands.”

“My murder?” Etta repeated, hauling herself back up to her feet, only to have Sophia tug her and Julian back down to their knees.

“Oh,” Julian said, turning to her. “Didn’t you tell me that your father said he had a way of keeping Ironwood off your tail? How better to do that than to confuse Ironwood into thinking you were already dead?”

“That’s a leap,” Etta said, even as something squirmed in her stomach.

“He kept it secret from you?” Sophia asked, looking unimpressed. “It’s true, though. The only reason Ironwood would ever leave you alone is if he thought you were already dead, and he’d missed out on the fun of killing you himself.”

Etta’s eyes narrowed. “Ironwood, huh? Not Grandfather?”

The other girl drew back, her visible eye narrowing. In Etta’s experience, Sophia had defended herself by deflection, by attacking. This time, Etta was prepared for it.

“Aaaand I’m just going to stand over here,” Julian said, inching away. Etta cast him an irritated look. He cocked a brow in reply. “You court the dragon, you get burned, kiddo.”

“What are you doing here?” Etta asked. “Why are you in disguise?”

Sophia laughed then. An ugly, exhausted sound. She flicked her leather eye patch up, revealing a scarred, empty socket. Julian either coughed into his fist or tried to muffle his retch. In either case, it wasn’t well received.

“Cute,” Sophia said in a cold voice. “I would guess you’d want me even less now, except you already went so far as to fake your death to get away from me.”

Julian startled. “What? No—Soph, believe me, it had nothing to do with you—”

“I don’t want your excuses,” she said. “I want to know why you’re here now, and what you’re doing with her.”

“I went to the Thorns,” he said quickly, “which was a rotten idea all around. They despised me and I slept every night with one eye open—oh God—I heard the words leave my mouth and I couldn’t stop them, Soph—”

Something dark bobbed at the edge of her sight, just past Sophia’s shoulder. Everything was in harsh relief here, from the icy sky and feathery clouds to the browning moss that covered the black mountains and cliffs like flaking skin.

But there was another person there with them. In her dark cloak, with her dark hair, the land seemed to claim her as its own. Etta might not have noticed her at all if she hadn’t moved.

Recognition linked with memory.

“You.”

She was dressed differently from the last time Etta had seen her, in San Francisco. Her soft silk suit had been replaced by a linen tunic and baggy trousers, both held in place by a tightly knotted leather belt weighed down with scabbards and pouches.

There were a number of things about her great-aunt Winifred that Etta had willed herself to forget. Her penchant for vile turns of phrase wasn’t one of them.

That creature you insist on working with is here to make her report.

Sophia turned, looking between her and Li Min. “What are you doing? Get over here before they spot you from the beach.”

The girl did not move.

“You were wrong after all,” Sophia said. “This is Etta Linden; not so dead, it seems.”

Li Min was watching Etta, her head already bowed in resignation. Guilt was its own beast, Etta had learned. It took up residence beneath your skin and moved you to things you never thought possible, all to try to appease the discomfort it caused. Etta saw how they had all converged on this place. Fury leaped through her like a bow skidding off the strings of a violin.

Etta understood now.

“Funny that you told her I was dead, considering I saw you less than a week ago in San Francisco,” Etta said coldly. “Did you finish your job for my father, or have you been working for Sophia this whole time to undermine him?” Another thought, almost more terrible, arose. “Did he tell you to keep us all apart?”

“Working for me? You’re not making sense, as usual, Linden,” Sophia said. But Li Min remained impossibly still. She couldn’t tell if the other girl was breathing.

“Oh, cripes!” Julian figured it out a moment later, his brows shooting up to his hairline. “Li Min, you are one naughty little dame. I was wondering how the two of you ever would have met.”

“What is going on?” Sophia demanded, an edge to her voice.

“What job is this, exactly?” Etta continued. “Have you been reporting back to her on the Thorns? Or did my father send you to watch her, on the off chance she found the astrolabe first?”

To her credit, the girl didn’t retreat into silence to protect herself, as a coward would.

“I was hired by Hemlock,” Li Min said, “to take the astrolabe, if either she or Nicholas Carter reached it first. Report back any useful information.” She turned, meeting Etta’s gaze. “He did not give me explicit orders to keep you apart, only to use my judgment in what would keep you safest. In the end, that was keeping your paths separate.”

“What?” The word was so faint as it escaped Sophia, Etta wasn’t sure it could be considered a whisper.

“You have to understand,” Li Min said to her, a small, pleading note in her voice. “The Hemlocks found me again, after I escaped the Shadows, after I finished my training with Ching Shih. Her father is the head of my own family’s line, yes, but, more than that, he believed in me. He arranged for jobs that helped to build my reputation. He provided whatever resources I needed to live my life on my terms, and he has never once asked for anything in return. I could never be one of them, not the way he hoped for—I could not tell him the things I told you. I was…afraid. Set in my ways. But I owed him a debt that demanded to be repaid. I offered to do this job for him and would not have committed to it for anything less than that; you must believe me.”

“You—” Sophia stood, her feet carrying her toward the girl. She reached for the long knife at her side, yanking it from the hilt strapped to her leg. “Believe you? After everything else you’ve said and done was a lie?”

Etta understood that Li Min had perpetuated her father’s lie and inserted herself into Sophia’s life under false pretenses, but…Sophia wasn’t just furious. Etta had seen fury in her before. She was shaking.

“Not everything,” Li Min swore. “Not everything was a lie.”

“The Thorns—the ones who beat me and left me for dead in the middle of the desert?” Sophia continued, stopping just short of the other girl. “You must have had a laugh, telling me all of that mystical nonsense about revenge. All the while, you were going to stop me.”

“Not stop you, join you,” Li Min said, her serene expression finally breaking. “I only—it—it all got rather complicated, you see—”

“It’s not complicated at all,” Sophia said, drawing the freezing air to her, turning her words to ice. “You showed me exactly who you were from the moment we met: a thief and a con artist. You were right. You are not my friend. You are nothing. Get out of my sight. Leave! Otherwise this time I really will kill you.”

There was a long moment where no one spoke at all, not even Julian, who looked like he had a few thoughts on the matter. Li Min turned, shifting the bag on her shoulder as she passed the three of them. Whatever she whispered to Sophia seemed to enrage her further. The breath was steaming in and out of her, her pale face blooming a vicious red. Her one visible eye was screwed shut.

“Well, this has been a day of, ah, fascinating revelations,” Julian said, daring to approach his former fiancée. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder, which she immediately knocked away.

“She was watching both you and Nicholas separately?” Etta asked. The question seemed so ridiculous that she almost couldn’t get it out. “Or were you…are you working together?”

Sophia crossed her arms over her chest, turning her gaze out over the water. Her face mirrored the rough, jagged lines of the mountain, rendering her unrecognizable to Etta.

“Should we be preparing to catch her?” Julian murmured out of the side of his mouth. “Grab for the shirt, I’ll try for an arm—”

Etta thumped him across the chest. Hard.

In Etta’s mind, Sophia was always burning, always straining toward something. Now she stood with her face toward the bitter wind and welcomed it. She tilted her chin up, the way only Ironwoods seemed able to, and a smirk slid into place.

“You’re hilarious, Linden,” she said. “Work with him? I wouldn’t let Carter polish my shoes.”

“Soph!” Julian said, his voice sharp.

“Do you really want to take issue with that, considering all those things you called him in the past?” Sophia said. “Whoreson, gold-digger, ratfink—”

“Enough.” Julian took a step forward, his face pale, his hair ringed by snow. “Enough! I know what I said in the past, and I was wrong for it. It doesn’t excuse you to say any of it now.”

“Aw,” she said, cooing at him in a repulsive way. “Have I upset you? Or are you struggling with the reality that your bastard brother is now enjoying all of your old spoils of being heir?”

This was a trick Etta was familiar with—Sophia’s uncanny ability to zero in on a chink in a person’s armor and slip a blade through it. If Etta had had anything remotely sharp on her, it would have been wedged in the girl’s windpipe in return.

“Liar,” Etta said simply.

“Am I? I’ve been following him for weeks, that’s all. I’ve watched him drift back into the old man’s arms happily. Willingly. He’s overseeing all of Ironwood’s business ventures, repairing the changes caused by the timeline shifts, advising him. It’s absolutely precious how well they work together. The old man actually looks happy. He’s leaving Carter in charge of things, while he goes off to the auction.”

Julian swallowed hard, glancing over at Etta, as if to gauge how possible this might be. She shook her head.

“He certainly didn’t come looking for you, did he?” Sophia said.

A thin, hot thread began to weave itself in and out of Etta’s chest.

“He thought her dead,” Julian cut in. “As you did.”

“And yet he’s working for the man who was supposedly responsible for her death. It shows you exactly who he is, doesn’t it? You had it in your head he was so good, such a hero, but he’s no better than the rest of us. Your whole ‘relationship,’ your love—your infatuation—was based on deals and transactions. Payment to bring you to Ironwood. Payment to stop you from taking the astrolabe. Shall I go on?”

Etta’s stomach turned so sharply that she tasted bile. Not true. Not true. Sophia didn’t understand. She wasn’t there to see his regret. She didn’t know Nicholas at all.

“Do you want to know why I’m here? The same reason you are: I want that gold they’re carrying out, in order to attend a little auction for something stolen from me.”

Of course she was. It was all about her, always. And just like that, Etta reached the end of the frayed patience that she had been clinging to. She lunged forward, ripping the knife out of Sophia’s hand, and slammed the girl back against the rock behind her. Etta braced one arm over Sophia’s chest, and brought the blade up just beneath her chin.

“Good lord!” Julian said, half in appreciation, half in horror. “The two of you bring out the worst in each other.”

They ignored him.

“Too high,” Sophia said, the words curling around Etta like smoke. “Lower. Did you already forget what I taught you?”

Etta’s grip didn’t ease. “You still don’t see it, do you? The astrolabe has to be destroyed.”

Sophia laughed—actually laughed. “Would you still be saying that if you knew what would happen, I wonder?”

“I’ve accepted that my future can’t exist,” Etta said. “You’re the only one who still thinks she can get everything she wants in life.”

“If you destroy that astrolabe, you’ll have nothing you want in life,” Sophia said. “Of course you don’t know. You’re nothing but a sweet little sheep being led by the nose, bleating on about right and wrong—wake up, Linden! There is no right and wrong, only choices. And you’ve made a decision without even having all the facts.”

“What are you on about?” Julian asked, ineffectually trying to separate the two. “Sophia, come on. We’ll go together—between the two of us, we know enough about the Ironwood holdings to scrape together the entry fee. There is a wrong choice in this, and that’s letting Grandfather get his hands on it. You haven’t seen what we’ve seen of the future, what’s at stake. I don’t know what Nick is on about, but it can’t be helping him. He’s too obnoxiously good.”

Nicholas can’t be helping Ironwood, Etta thought, her hands curling at her side. But then—he had made that agreement with Ironwood behind her back, hadn’t he? Nicholas was supposed to follow her, ensure that she returned with the astrolabe. In exchange, he’d receive Ironwood’s holdings in the eighteenth century.

She straightened. No. He’d turned his back on that. He’d confessed, he’d told her that he loved her. Loved her.

The small, dark wisp of a voice in her mind returned. Infatuation.

“I don’t need to hear another word from you, you bloody selfish coward,” Sophia snapped. “You’ve lost the right to care about me. In fact, why don’t you just walk off that cliff now, finish what you started? At least Grandfather will have a body to bury this time.”

“You don’t mean that,” Julian said, and Etta was almost surprised by how calm he sounded, how he didn’t retreat from any of the ugly looks Sophia sent his way, the hissing words. “Tell me what’s the matter, what’s hurt you so badly. We’ve been friends our whole lives—do you honestly believe I can’t tell when you’re just lashing out?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, finally pulling free of Etta’s arm. Sophia stalked over to pick up the bags she’d dropped. “None of it matters. Jump now, or destroy the astrolabe—your life is over either way. Since you can’t seem to do anything yourselves, allow me to paint the full portrait for you: the Ironwood timeline won’t just disappear. We will all be returned to our own godforsaken times, and the passages will slam closed behind us forever.”

“God,” Etta said, “you’re such a liar.”

Sophia had begun up the path, ignoring how Julian’s hand reached for her. At Etta’s words, she turned. “Am I? I guess you’ll see, won’t you.”

“Wait,” Julian called, following Sophia along the trail. “Soph, please—”

The two of them disappeared around a bend in the rocky path, and took that last small need for control with them. Etta’s breath left her like she’d taken a punch to the lungs, and she brought both fists to her eyes, pressing the freezing skin there to cool the thoughts racing behind them.

Infatuation.

Returned.

Closed.

Forever.

If what Sophia said was true, and Etta had every reason to doubt her, then Henry clearly had never got the full story. He never would have risked separating the Thorn families from one another. God, what if a child was born in a completely different century than his or her parents—what if one of those children running wild in the house in San Francisco found themselves locked inside a violent time, in a place where they had no friends, and couldn’t speak the language, much less ask for help?

Etta remembered what it felt like to have Nicholas’s hands on her face, the way his fingers had run along her skin as if he could paint his feelings onto it. She remembered the way Nicholas had trembled, just that small bit, when she’d lain down beside him in the darkness. The warmth of his lips on her cheeks, her eyelids, every part of her, and how he’d given her his secrets. She remembered the way her fear had broken and dissolved against him, how carefully he had held her together each time she came close to shattering.

How quickly his mind worked, how earnestly his heart believed, how desperately he’d fought for everything in his life, including the belief that they could be together. In her heart, Nicholas was a song in a major key, bold and beautiful.

But Etta remembered, too, the way it had felt when the Thorns had reached for her, embraced her, claimed her with a thousand smiles and questions, trying to defeat the lost time between them. She remembered hearing her father’s music join her own. She remembered her city, how its occupants and streets and trees had been blown into the same shifting, swirling cloud of ash.

She needed to talk to Nicholas; she needed to touch him, and kiss him, and know how he had hurt himself, know how she could help him. But there were a hundred men between them on the beach, and now, even more dauntingly, a hundred questions between them that Etta couldn’t begin to answer.

There’s so much darkness to this story, there are times I feel suffocated by it, Henry had said. How these things came back around. How everything circled back to the astrolabe, again and again and again.

A pattern.

No—Etta shook the thought away as hard and as far as she could.

Julian jogged back to her, running his hands back over his hair, breathing hard. “She wouldn’t listen. There’s something else going on that she’s not telling us, I’m sure of it.”

Etta nodded, keeping her back to the rock as she circled back to watch what was happening on the beach below. She found Nicholas immediately—it would have been impossible to miss him standing beside the old man, a short distance from the cave’s entrance. He stooped slightly, to better hear what Ironwood was saying. Nodding, he stepped forward, cupping his good hand around his mouth to relay the message to the others.

What are you doing? she wondered. What can you possibly be planning?

There had been so many moments on their search together when Etta had felt like she understood his mind better than her own. But for the life of her, she couldn’t understand why he’d taken this role in a game he’d never wanted to play in the first place, unless something had forced his hand.

“What should we do?” Julian said. “If she’s right, then we’ll get the original timeline, but then…that’s the end for us, isn’t it? Without the astrolabe to create the passages again, we’re stuck.”

Nicholas looked up toward them suddenly, as if searching through the mist and snow. Etta ducked before she realized she was doing it, her heart slamming in her chest as she leaned into the hard, jagged ground. She squeezed her eyes shut.

The one thing she had never doubted, never once questioned, was the constancy of her feelings for Nicholas; it was the part of her heart that kept a steady beat, that drummed a song only she could hear. By leaving Nicholas behind so she could chase the astrolabe with the Thorns, had she damned him to this choice, to survive the only way he could—through twisted loyalty?

The snow built around them, flake by flake, blanketing the black rocks and their twisted formations, smoothing them over until their wrinkles and crevices disappeared. When the idea came, it wasn’t new; it was repurposed.

“How long would it take us to get back to San Francisco from here?”

Julian felt around the pocket of his coat for his journal. “If we hurry, maybe three, four days? Why? You want to try to link back up with the Thorns?”

“From there, how long to get to the auction site?” Etta pressed.

“If we use the direct passage that’s in Rio de Janeiro…maybe three more days?” He thumbed through the pages again, checking his math.

“Then there won’t be enough time,” she said, sitting back on her heels, rubbing her muddied hands against the rough wool of her coat. “Especially if we’re going to find a hundred pounds of gold. You didn’t happen to notice any Thorn stockpiles, did you?”

“They spent everything that came in on food and water,” Julian said. “Your father might have a reserve or two somewhere, but I’m not sure how we’d locate them and still make the auction date.”

Etta nodded, recalculating. “And there are no other Ironwood reserves?”

“He’s already cleared out the others—”

There was a sharp whistle from below, from the longship, as the men climbed aboard with the overstuffed leather bags. Nicholas followed suit, cupping his hand around his mouth to call out some order that was lost to the wind. Ironwood, it seemed, had already climbed aboard.

“Look at that,” Etta breathed out, her heart giving an excited kick. “Did that look like more than a hundred pounds of treasure to you?”

“No,” Julian said. “A hundred and a bit extra, maybe. But there’s definitely more than that in the cave. They’re not moving this cache, then, or clearing it out, are they? They only took what they needed.”

“Which means we can take whatever he’s left for our entry fee,” Etta finished.

If Sophia doesn’t beat us to it.

“And then what?” Julian asked. “Etta…I know you don’t want to believe her, but Soph is never more truthful than when she’s aiming for the heart.”

“I know,” she said, unable to take her gaze off Nicholas as he walked beside Ironwood back toward the vessels. One hand was tucked behind his back, and it reminded her of the way he had walked the length of the Ardent’s deck, so completely in his element.

Henry and the others had only known that destroying the astrolabe would revert the timeline, and prevent any new passages from being created to replace those lost by age and collapse. They had no idea that it would close all the passages, and strand everyone back in their natural times. She had to think he wouldn’t want that—that Henry would come up with another, middle way.

Until she was able to figure out what that could be, she would have to try to keep the astrolabe in one piece. Once they confirmed that what Sophia had said was true, then she and the Thorns could turn their attention back to using the astrolabe to reach history’s many linchpin moments, and nudge the timeline back to its original state by influencing them. It would send the Ironwoods lurching into panic, destabilize the old man’s rule, destroy him with the knowledge that the astrolabe would remain just out of his reach forever.

It would be slow, dangerous work that might take years, but they could do it. She could do it, if Henry could not. It was a stark, disorienting reversal of their original plan, but Etta took comfort in the stabilizing thought that this, this would help her make amends for everything her family had done to contribute to the world’s suffering across history.

They could start again. They could be better.

“I know,” Etta repeated. “We’ll get the astrolabe and try to regroup with the Thorns again to decide what to do with it. We can’t destroy it, though, not until we know for sure what the consequences will be.”

They did not have to sacrifice their families for the good of history and the future. Those two things didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. There was a way to have both, and she would find it.

“And what of Nick?” he asked. “I hate leaving him with Grandfather—not because of what Sophia said. Being the heir is a curse, not a blessing. It just feels like, as much as he can handle himself, he’s standing in the open mouth of a crocodile.”

Etta drew back from where she’d been watching over the edge of the cliff. She felt light all of a sudden, as if she’d left something crucial there. “He’s safe for now. We’ll find the astrolabe, and then we’ll come back for him.”

If there was a path back to him in all of this, she would find it, or she’d carve a path where none existed—meet him halfway, as she always seemed to. There was a place for them, for all of them, to live with their families, and love and care for one another, but it couldn’t exist in the world they lived in now.

They waited only until the longships had disappeared into the swirl of fog and snow before continuing down to the beach. Etta tried to shake the feeling that Nicholas was still there, that she was somehow walking beside an imprint of him. There were too many footprints on the beach to tell which were his, and she didn’t want to cover his tracks with her own; not if it cost her proof that he had been here. That he’d been alive, and so close.

The cave was darkness incarnate, the mouth of a thousand-toothed creature. Ice-coated stalagmites shot up from the ground, the freezing wind whistling between them. It was as if the steps had been intentionally carved into the cave, and she followed them down, stepping with intent, ignoring the splatter of freezing water dripping from above.

“All right, then,” Julian said, stopping a short distance ahead of her. They were at the very edge of the natural light emanating from the entrance, but there was a crack of sorts in the mountain above them. Etta looked up at it in wonder, watching the snow drift lazily down to her. She imagined each flake was a note falling against her skin, and the music in her began to stir once again, coaxing out a tentative, sweet song of hope. Nicholas hadn’t gotten to see this. She would bring him back here one day.

“It looks like we’ll have enough, though it might be close,” Julian said, tossing Etta one of the sacks he’d brought with him. “Come on, Linden-Hemlock-Spencer. Gawking is my job. Appreciate the beauty of the world later, will you?”

Etta shook herself out of that reverie, crossing the distance between them. It was obvious where the Ironwoods had hidden their barrels beneath false rock covers. They’d been in such a hurry, they had left the empty ones to slowly rot. Julian popped the lid off a barrel stowed beneath a pile of rocks, cooing at the bright gold inside.

“The lost treasure of Lima,” he told her, as if this explained everything. “He’s greedy as sin, but lord, does the man have taste.”

“Let’s just hurry,” she said, her fingers digging into the cold metal. There were days ahead of them before the auction, and too many chances for her plan to fail. But here, in the darkness, in the midst of their silent work, it felt safe to think of Nicholas on the beach, to wish that she had been there to warm his hands while the cold air nipped at his skin. She could almost remember what his voice sounded like as it whispered secrets into her hair.

Etta could be grateful even as she felt longing rise in her like an unfinished crescendo. One look had been enough; one reassurance that he was alive would sustain her. And whatever would come in the temple on the mountain, in the darkness of midnight, she hoped that he, at least, would be spared.