“I begin to see more,” Corien whispered, unblinking. “Your journey forward in time scarred you horribly and almost killed you. You weren’t always this ugly.” He smiled, and yet the rest of his face, beautiful and pale, did not move. “But you aren’t ugly, are you, Simon? Beneath that map of scars, you are quite a fine creature.”

Simon struggled to sit up, and when Corien helped him, his gloved hand at Simon’s back, Simon flushed. He straightened his posture and lifted his chin, trying to remember how to be a boy. His mind tilted and spun. So, he was far in the future now. He had suspected as much from some terrible instinct gone dormant in his blood. He had whispered it to himself many a night. But now he knew it was true.

Frantic questions crowded him. When, exactly, was this future? How much time had passed between then and now? What was this world? Corien’s eyes were black, and Simon could not travel, and he wondered: Could these strange things be connected?

What had happened to the empirium?

And why was Corien looking at him so oddly, as if seeing something in Simon’s face of which Simon himself was ignorant?

Corien’s gaze was cold and impenetrable. “She died beside me. I bled for decades, and even when I was whole again, my mind was not. Is that why, when I look inside you, I can see only elusive shadows and hear little else but your own endless, thudding fear? Is it that my mind has been battered by the years, Simon? Simon Randell. I know your face, but I don’t know why. Who are you? Who do you fight for?”

“Fight for?” Simon shook his head. “I fight for no one.”

Corien considered him for a moment longer, then said, “Ah, well,” and stood, brushing the snow from his coat. “I came here looking for something that could help me. I suppose I have found merely a lost boy.”

“Wait!” Simon cried, for Corien had turned to leave, and he simply could not bear being left alone again. He crawled after Corien and grabbed the hem of his coat. He curled up against his boots, miserable as a beaten dog, and there was a small burst of fear in his chest as he considered what he was about to do, but he had long ago stopped feeling shame.

For it was Rielle’s death that had ripped him from his home and brought him here. It was her selfishness, her inability to control her power, that had ruined the world and left him abandoned, alone, without his magic.

He pushed past his fear and clutched Corien’s arm. He pressed his forehead hard against Corien’s sleeve, gathered up his hatred of the dead queen, and sent it hurtling at the angel standing before him so he would see, so he would understand.

“I am from Celdaria,” Simon said, trembling. “I have seen the daughter of Rielle. And, my lord, I will fight for you.”

He waited. There was silence above him, terrible and heavy. Though Corien was not touching him, Simon felt the weight of a hard hand on his neck.

“I held her on the night she was born,” Simon said, the words spilling out fast. “I was the son of Queen Rielle’s healer. He hid me from you. And that night, I was frightened. I watched my father jump…” His throat closed. He growled to clear it. He had not cried in months and would not do so now.

“I saw him fall,” he said. “And Queen Rielle was dying, and the baby, she was alone. I heard you screaming for the queen, my lord—I saw you beating against her light. And I didn’t know what to do, my lord, so I took the baby, and I tried to travel with her somewhere safe. I thought I would take her north, to Borsvall, where King Ilmaire could protect her. I thought that if Queen Rielle died, she would kill me too, and her child.”

Simon looked up, shivering. He could not see Corien’s face through the blur of tears and snow.

“But something went wrong. Time caught me, my lord, and took me here. I have lived alone for months. I can find no one. I have walked and walked.”

He was wailing now, wild and unthinking in his despair. He hated the sound of it, how small it made him seem, but now that he had talked to someone he knew, someone from the Old World that was his home, he knew he could not bear solitude again. If Corien left him, Simon would die. He would throw himself upon the rocks. He would follow the snowcat trails and let the creatures feed on him.

Corien was very still, then knelt slowly to take Simon’s face in his hands. He had removed his gloves. His skin was white and smooth.

“You are in Vindica, little Simon,” he said, kindly, “in the wilds of what was once angelic country. You are on the high plains of the Maktari Mountains. Of course you are alone; of course you are cold.”

Simon let himself be drawn against Corien’s chest and sobbed into his coat. He held himself still and fought hard against the worst of his tears. He could prove that he was indeed a creature worth keeping.

“Don’t leave me, please, don’t leave me,” he whispered. “Take me with you, please, my lord.”

Corien stroked Simon’s long, matted hair. “You loved your father very much. You should hate me for killing him. I did kill him—I see that now too. You should want to kill me for that, but you’re so afraid of being alone again that you’ll gladly go with me if I tell you to. You’ll do whatever I say for the chance to be with someone who knows what you’ve lost.” He laughed, a frayed sound.

“Yes,” Simon whispered, shivering in Corien’s arms. He felt the angel in his mind, gently probing. “I’ll do whatever you say, my lord.”

“Such a weak mind, so unguarded and scraped thin,” Corien marveled, his fingers soft on Simon’s cheeks. “You’re remembering things you’ve tried to forget, and I can see each memory as clearly as if it were my own.”

Simon was remembering, yes, in the midst of these tears and this horrible rising fear, this desperation to keep Corien close to him. He could not stop remembering.

He remembered Queen Rielle thrusting her infant daughter into his arms on the night of her death. He remembered her shadowed eyes sparking gold, and the sour charge to the air as the room burned bright behind him. He remembered Corien crying out in the queen’s rooms, the sound savage with grief. He remembered looking out into the night and summoning the threads that would carry him and the child safely to Borsvall.

And there was his father, gripping his head and stumbling onto the terrace outside the queen’s rooms. Toppling over the railing, falling fast to the ground below.

And there were the dark threads of time, gripping Simon, tearing at him. The pain of that, and of how for the first few weeks after arriving here, he had hardly known himself, had been more beast than boy. He had forgotten how to speak. He had run on all fours, bleeding and burned, screaming at nothing.

“And the child?” Corien crooned, caressing him still. “What happened to her?”

“When I awoke here, she was gone.” Simon dug in his pocket for the scrap of blanket he carried there. Every time he slept, he buried his face in it. Sometimes he screamed into it. He bit down hard on it and tugged, rocking in the dark.