Wayfarer

Don’t die, don’t die, please—

It took her a moment to sort her own shaking from the faint murmur beneath his skin, but it was there. He was alive, if just barely.

With as much care and strength as she could muster, she rolled his weight off her, just enough to slide out from beneath him, but not enough to flip him onto his scalded back. The stench of burned flesh and hair made the bile rise again in her throat. She had to press a fist against her mouth to keep from retching when she looked over and saw what remained of Winifred. Oh my God, oh my God—

Iron—Jenkins had shouted Iron, unable to finish the word, to fully name the assassin. Ironwood. The waiter, the assassin, had shouted a word she hadn’t been able to make out, but she’d recognized the moment when the timeline had shifted again.

Henry had been right—Cyrus Ironwood had sent agents out to push the timeline back to his version…but this wasn’t what had happened in the timeline she had grown up in. This couldn’t be Ironwood’s timeline. Which would make it…a new one?

Her hatred made it feel as though her whole soul had caught fire.

The floor beneath her feet was still crumbling; she felt a section of it collapse and realized she’d lost both shoes in the explosion. It wasn’t safe—Etta felt a wave of panic swelling, threatening to wash away whatever rational thoughts she had left as she surveyed the room. Its bright, glorious colors and shining gold had been replaced by shards of glass, splashes of blood and cinders.

She was alive. She had to stay alive. She had to—just breathe—just get out—

The ringing was so piercing that she could think of nothing else. She reached down on unsteady legs and got her arms under Henry’s, circling around his chest. The open wounds on his back oozed blood onto her dress, and the mere touch was enough to make him groan; Etta felt the vibration move through his body.

The jagged mouth of the floor revealed the smoldering room below. The fragments of metal and wood that had flown like shrapnel sliced through her stockings, lacerating her heels and ankles. She winced as Henry’s long legs butted and bobbed helplessly against the ground. The only way she could move him was through sharp, short surges of strength, and she could already feel herself fading when a door appeared through the smoke. It had been left open, a tray of food overturned nearby.

The smoke had already drifted into the hall, but Etta felt herself take her first real breath as she put Henry down, carefully laying him out on the plush carpet. She knelt, searching his face again for signs of life. He’d cracked his forehead against something—a knot had formed on his right temple, and blood continued to trickle down his cheek.

She should have surged up onto her feet and started to run back the way they had come through the palace, but Etta found herself rooted there, unable to move when parts of her felt like they were fading.

She’d only just found him, and now…

Etta choked on an unwelcome sob, unwilling to release that last bit of control she had over herself until she could think.

What would it have been like, she wondered, to stay with the Thorns? Her mind played scene after scene, waltzing through the possibilities. To be with a father who wouldn’t use her, who appreciated her talent, who explained their way of life, who showed some sliver of interest in her beyond some task he was saving her for in the future. To strike back against Ironwood until his grip on their kind dissolved into memory. To find Nicholas, and bring him to a group that might appreciate and respect him the way he deserved. To see the whole of time, the scale of everything her beautiful world could offer….

“Etta.”

With the piercing whine in her ears from the explosion, Etta would never be certain if she’d actually heard her mother, or imagined her voice the instant she felt the deadening weight of Rose’s presence. She turned slowly, and a moment later her mother took shape in the smoke.

When she’d been taken by Ironwood, drawn into his net of deception, Etta would have done anything to see her mother and have her explain what was truly happening. But now she knew, and it had come only through loss and the most devastating of betrayals. Staring at Rose now, truly seeing her, Etta wondered how she had ever missed the tremor just below the surface of cold calculation Rose projected. As if the wild delusions skimmed just beneath her skin.

She would be here now for a reason. Rose always had a reason.

“Did you do this?” she demanded, shouting to hear herself.

Her mother wore man’s pants tucked into tall boots and a loose white shirt. Her long blond hair was braided back away from her bruised left eye and right cheek. Etta’s heart gave an involuntary clench at the sight, before she let the anger back in to harden it. At Etta’s question she flinched.

That’s right, Etta thought, I know what you’re capable of. What you want.

Her gaze lowered from Etta’s face to Henry’s and she took a step back, as if only seeing him now. When she came closer, making as if to kneel, Etta felt the last of her self-control snap. “Do not touch him!”

“All right, all right, darling.” Rose’s face looked strained as she spoke loudly, holding out her hand. The other strayed to the gun at her side. “You need to come with me now.”

God, how Etta had prayed for this exact moment—how desperate she had been for any sign that her mother was alive and coming for her.

A sign that she wanted me.

“Henrietta,” Rose said, her voice scalding. “You don’t know what’s coming, what’s been chasing me for years! I’ve kept them off your trail for weeks, from the moment you were taken, but the Shadows—!”