The snake devours itself.

  I gasped, leaning forward in a cold sweat, gripping the table before me for support. The bite of the knife lingered in my mind, as did the panic and desperation. Almost too terrified to look, I examined my hands and arms. They were no longer the pathetic twiggy things barely capable of grasping a hilt, let alone drawing the blade it bore.

  Above, the tilted chandelier swung back and forth, clinking chain grating to the ear.

  Someone grabbed my arm, and I jumped.

  "Brother?"

  "Yes?" I answered automatically, still reeling.

  The back of a cool hand pressed to my temple, as Sera leaned forward, examining me carefully. "You seem unwell."

  It came to me then. Where I was. When I was. Slowly, somehow afraid if I moved too quickly the dream would vanish entirely, I panned the room.

  A small salvaged banquet sprawled out before us. After years of the blandest nutrition possible, it was absolutely decadent in comparison. Candles lit the table, warm light radiating with false calm. Annette was fiddling with her food, mouth tight in silent focus as she organized her portions to preference. My father and mother sat next to each other in stony silence, both pointedly not looking at each other and paying attention to little else.

  I felt the intensity of her gaze before I saw her. In the seat adjacent, Maya had turned fully towards me, a vision of emerald and violet. Her brow raised in silent question.

  It was—gods, it was so good to see her again.

  I reached out and cupped her cheek, gently, just to ensure she was there.

  Then the reality hit, and a fierce trembling went through me, traveling from my legs to my head and back again, terror pulsing up my spine. Because none of it mattered.

  In just three days, I'd lose it all again.

  Glass shattered at the end of the table. "Oh my," Queen Elaria lifted her arm, staring at the stem that was now devoid of flute, its end now decorated in shards. "Perhaps I should retire for the evening."

  "Us as well," Maya cut in smoothly, taking my arm and rising, tugging for me to follow. "As delightful as this has been, the hour is late and Cairn is clearly fatigued from the battle."

  The king's scowl was withering. But when he looked at me, his expression softened. "Aye. You shared harrowing experiences today. All three of you." He directed the last to include Sera. "Our trespasser already dampened the occasion. Enjoy a rest well-deserved. We will resume this later, when bodies are mended, and spirits are recovered."

  "How uncharacteristically reasonable." The queen said, mauling him with glassy eyes.

  "Damned if I do, damned if I don't."

  "What?" Annette looked around, confused. "We just got here—" Out of my peripheral, I saw Sera give a small shake of the head, and Annette fell silent, studying me.

  Before anyone else could interject, Maya rushed me away, throwing open the door and guiding me down the hallway.

  "Are you alright?" Came the hushed whisper.

  "Never less." I managed. My collar was tight, a hangman's noose, and I tore its buttons free.

  "How bad is it?"

  "Maybe the worst it's ever been."

  "Lord below, that's a high bar." Maya grimaced, a strand of her perfectly coiffed hair falling loose as she looked over her shoulder. "Your sisters are following. Alten behind them, looking to overtake. Who do we need?"

  "You. For now, just you."

  She seemed surprised, then cautious. "Did something happen in Kholis?"

  "A lot happened. Everywhere. There's a lot of moving parts. We need to keep the circle small."

  "Okay. I'll tell them. Convene to your rooms after?"

  "Yes. No." I shook my head. "This is too big for that. Our departure was too abrupt, and my father too understanding. It's possible he'll alert Thaddeus, and we cannot have this conversation with ears pressed to the door."

  "Then where?"

  /////

  The streets of Topside were filled with ghosts. Ashes that walked as men, expressions blank and dour, utterly unaware of the destruction that awaited them all. We wove through them, hooded cloaks covering our heads and shielding our faces. As much as it was a relief to see the population of my home alive once more, I couldn't shake the weight of what was coming.

  We found the sort of inn that didn't ask questions about names or look too closely at its patrons. Maya handled the particulars, which was helpful, as I was too shaken to be anything approaching subtle or nuanced.

  Beyond the dull stink of smoke, the room was neat and quiet. And despite being steadfastly paranoid on the journey over, no one followed us.

  I embraced her fiercely the moment we were alone and felt her arms ensnare me in return. Her fingers plied at my back, my hair, so kind and tender it hurt.

  "So." Her warm voice murmured in my ear. "How long have you been gone?"

  "… Too long."

  "Tell me."

  "I'm not sure. It's—gods, I don't even know where to start."

  "Start at the beginning."

  "That's…" I choked a little, thinking of Kholis. "Not any easier."

  "Then let me see." Her fingertips paused on my forehead. "May I?"

  There was no guarantee it would work. It'd happened by chance the first time, in a moment of desperation. But it was worth a try.

  "Yes." I said.

  A green glow illuminated the room. At once, tendrils of warmth embraced my mind, imparting calm. I watched, hours slipping by, as a thousand memories flooded her, and she saw them as I'd seen them, one after another. At first she was focused. Her neck flushed in embarrassment, and her breath caught in her throat. The embarrassment faded to happiness, and she laughed, shaking her head.

  Then stilled. A tear slid down her cheek. Others followed.

  "Gods. She's… so much braver than me."

  "You're one and the same."

  "I'm not so sure. Wait… it actually worked?"

  "A surprise to me as well."

  The words fell away as a cold fury took its place. "Even at the end of the world."

  "She never stops."

  "You were so alone. So terribly alone." She grew crestfallen again. Then her mouth dropped open. "But… you saw her face. Her real face. Thoth is human. Thoth is…" Horror overtook her expression, and the connection broke.

  Maya clung to the baseboard for balance, mirroring the same disorientation I'd experienced. "Lord below. Taking her at sea will never work."

  "No." I agreed grimly. The weight was lighter now, but still heavier than I knew what to do with. "Killing her means nothing if we don't find a way to sever that connection first. Worse than nothing." I leaned back, letting my skull thud against the headboard. "Her dying prematurely means losing everything. She's tethered to the iterations. Anchored."

  Maya's brows furrowed in thought, all intensity, though the tears still flowed freely down her cheeks. "Why aren't you?"

  "Hm?"

  "Think about it. Every iteration, Thoth methodically tracks down every one of her once-allies. Wipes their memories and kills them. There has to be more reason for that than she's letting on. No matter how powerful she is now, by her own words, she wasn't always a force to be reckoned with. You were all in constant danger. Having it tethered to a single person would be foolish. It makes far more sense—"

  "—that it was tethered to all of us." I realized. My mind raced. "Only cycling back once the last in our number dies."

  "By eliminating them all, and eventually you, she's monopolizing the mechanism. Controlling it. Making it dependent on her and only her. So why did it all reset before you died?"

  "Something severed my anchor." I leaned forward. "It might be reaching, but I'd wager it happened when I was given the ability to reset within the same timeline. They'd conflict otherwise."

  "Right." Maya realized. "A necessary tradeoff. Otherwise you'd never go all the way back. Just reset over and over, directly at the end. But what would be powerful enough to do that?"

  Whatever granted me my power, whether it was the Black Beast or something else, intended it as a counter. But when it'd tasked me with ejecting Thoth from the loop, that was exactly what it'd meant. Removing her from the cycle and eliminating her personally.

  That reminded me. I looked to Maya, taking a moment to admire her sheer commitment. She was feeling it, the loss of the time we'd shared. She had to be. But instead of getting caught up on that, she'd set her own wants and needs aside, focusing on the greater problem instead.

  "Do you want to talk about it?"

  "Kholis?" She intuited, turning to me. A tremble betrayed her casual air.

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  "Yes."

  "I—I don't think we should." She swiped at her eyes. "I felt it. The love you held for me. The love we shared. In the time before, and when the ground was crumbling beneath our feet. Even when I was gone, it carried you forward. It never flagged. Not once. It's all I could ask for. And so much more than I deserve. But if we speak of it for too long, my envy will be my undoing. Gods. I'd do anything to see it all through her eyes."

  "I'm sorry." I said. The sense of loss weighed heavy.

  "Don't be." Maya shook her head, hand clinging to her chin. "I had no idea I could even be that happy. It was like seeing an entirely different person."

  "We'll find it again. That happiness."

  She looked at me. "You promise?"

  "I promise."

  Something else occurred to me. "Before the fire hit, you said something to me. About the black beast weakening."

  "Yes," Maya hissed, running a hand through her hair. "Bear with me for a moment. How did you know to look for Persephone?"

  The question felt so out of place I wasn't sure I'd actually heard it. "What? In the enclave?"

  "Yes." Maya said.

  "What does that have to do with the black beast?"

  "Just answer me."

  "Alright." I thought back, brow furrowing as I realized I didn't actually know the answer. I'd needed to find an asmodial, one of the demons that threatened to overrun the enclave. Persephone, a half demon, half infernal hybrid, had given me my first lead. "It was your parents?"

  Maya shook her head. "You already knew the name when you came to them. Father would have never mentioned her in front of mother, and mother despised the woman with every fiber of her being. Where did you learn it?"

  "I… don't remember." The words left me puzzled, even as I spoke them. It didn't feel like there was a void there, something I'd misplaced or forgotten. There was just nothing. Not even the faintest hint of a memory.

  She stepped away from me, gnawing her lip in clear anxiety. "Nothing?"

  "No." I felt frustrated, like I was missing something.

  "There are other holes in your memory. Times where you survive something you shouldn't, or avoid a danger despite having no reasonable way of knowing that it was present. I think you have a guardian. And I think she tried to help you. In the enclave and before the fire hit. Probably more."

  "A guardian." I struggled to even comprehend the suggestion. "Not sure what to do with that."

  Maya drew a deep breath. "I probably didn't go into detail because we were both already struggling, and if I was right, it would have made everything worse. But I know that name. Not so much a name, but a title." She continued. "A long time ago, before I left for the Sanctum, Kastramoth referenced the same name. The iconoclast of the heavens. It didn't seem terribly important, so I didn't mention it, but I was curious. When I asked, he said it was the title of a demon from some apocryphal history that betrayed his kind and caused their downfall. That it wasn't even real. So I widened the net. Demons can be easily bribed with trinkets, and rumors are often cheap. Yet no matter who I asked they wouldn't tell me."

  I groaned. "So we may have an even bigger problem."

  "It's not something we can solve today. Or even soon, most likely. Regardless, we should take the warning seriously. Treat every shot at this like it's the last."

  "I can do that." I nodded slowly.

  "Cairn…" Her expression tightened. "About Thoth. The spare. What she said, when her mind was gone and there was no reason left to lie. It's not perfect, and there's still so much I don't understand, but the pieces connect in a manner that is telling. Have you..."

  Something inside me shut down. Refused to budge.

  "There's too much at stake here. For now, she's a continent away, tomorrow's problem. We have enough to deal with as it is."

  "There's logic to that." She watched me carefully. "But you will have to face it, eventually."

  I looked away.

  "Do you believe her?" Her gaze trailed to the amulet on my neck. "About… what happened at the end?"

  "Probably." I spoke carefully, mindful that Vogrin could be listening. He wouldn't retain anything about the desolate future, but any discussions of the pact or attempts to subvert it would go straight to Ozra's ears. "I'll need to confirm it for myself, but if there was a single person in the world who could manage it, it would be her."

  "Good. Good." Maya breathed a shaky breath, taking my hand. "There's a great solace to be had in that. Regardless of where it came from." She smiled. "Remember this. Because you won. Thoth can be beaten."

  "It was hard." My voice was raw.

  "I know." She looked to my satchel. "Now get your pipe. If we only have one chance at this, there won't be time for sleep. We need to plan."

  /////

  By the time I left the inn my mind was stuffed full. We split the next few hours pounding on doors and waking good people at ungodly hours of the night, notifying my banner lieutenants—Cephur, Tamara, and Kilvius—and looping in everyone else who needed to be on standby for an imminent threat, only disclosing as much information as necessary.

  There were four core objectives of varying difficulty.

  Finding anything we could to point us to the missing deity. Divining the dark purpose of the laboratory beneath the throne room. Unmasking the void mage.

  The ugly truth was, I couldn't trust my most powerful allies with any of this. It'd been cut short this time, but my mother had made her position clear. She loathed my efforts and wanted nothing to do with them. Meanwhile, while I had no doubt the king would be willing to help, his connection to the void mage made this difficult. They cooperated, at least strategically, though I doubted he knew even a fraction of what the bastard was involved in.

  There'd be a time to loop him in. Once I had more answers than questions, evidence of what was actually happening below the castle and that the mage had, as we'd suspected, been suppressing Annette's magic.

  The fourth problem was Thaddeus.

  We couldn't really move on anything with purpose while Thaddeus was in play. His avoidance of me had been drawn into sharp focus with the revelation of the lab, and nothing happened in the castle without his knowledge.

  I needed to take him off the board. Preferably before anything else moved forward. Searching for him would be fruitless. He was too good at operating in the shadows.

  Dragging him out with something he simultaneously wouldn't ignore and couldn't run to the king over was the only option.

  So I went the way of the spoiled noble and showered my problem in gold.

  /////

  "NE'ER-DO-WELL WANTED IN CONNECTION TO BLOOD WIZARDS!" The town crier shouted, banging a kettle in the center square beneath the rising sun. "METAMORPHOSIS SOCIETY MENACE AT LARGE. CONFIRMED SIGHTINGS COULD BE WORTH FIVE HUNDRED GOLDEN RODS. TAKE A FLYER FOLKS. LAY EYES ON THAT FAT BASTARD'S FACE AND IT COULD BE YOUR LUCKY DAY."

  "This will never work." Vogrin complained, following behind me closely. "The man is a ghost. I lost him, and that's saying something. Even if he is sighted, he'll be gone before we run him down. If anything, this will only drive our quarry further into the dark."

  "We don't have to find him. He'll find us." I said, slipping through the crowd, flyers hidden beneath my cloak, purse still heavy with gold.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "There are two things Thaddeus values. Pleasures of the flesh, and anonymity. No one knows who he is except his enemies, some of the court, and those in his direct employ. I guarantee he’s already aware this is happening." I pulled my hood closer to my face.

  "Ah." Vogrin grinned. "And someone who values discretion so highly will be very displeased to learn his face is being plastered all over town. How delightfully coercive."

  "Exactly. Question is, how much anonymity is he willing to lose."

  "What makes you so sure he won't simply cry foul to the king regent and render all this pointless?"

  "Call it a hunch."

  "Hm."

  There was no such thing as a blood wizard. Anyone with even a passing interest in magic would know that, passing it off as nothing more than superstition. What they would home in on was the reward. The real threat was nested in the center, the reference to the metamorphosis society—also nonsense to the average person and hopefully, a heart attack for Thaddeus. I hadn't told my father of his involvement originally, because that was before I knew what to expect of the king. If Thaddeus was as cunning as he appeared, he'd put it all together quickly. Who was snapping at his heels and why, and what would happen if he tried to go over my head.

  And I doubted he wanted the crown inquiring into the nature of his side activities.

  "This… calamity we grapple with." Vogrin murmured. "You said it cut you off from the demonic plane?"

  "As far as I can tell. I found you at the inn, returned your physical manifestation to the amulet, and never heard from you again. Despite repeated attempts."

  "That is consistent with a discontinuance. How certain are you? That it will happen?"

  "Completely." I glanced at him. "You've seen my foresight pay its weight in gems."

  "Yes."

  "Then why the hesitation?"

  "Severance from the mortal plane would be disastrous for all of us. Much the same as a bad crop, or blight. We would be forced to make do with what we have. With that in mind, I'm considering leveraging that to bargain for more power. Those that broker it would be quite invested in seeing our connection to this plane remains stable and the mortals remain solvent. If they could be convinced there was such a threat." Vogrin mused.

  "Anything to tip the scales." I raised an eyebrow. "What do you need?"

  "A memory orb demonstrating the scale of the devastation. Even better if you include my collapsed state—"

  I fished a blank orb from my satchel and focused on it, imprinting some of the experiences from Kholis. Later, the desolation of the approach. Then breaking sequence to show my summon's collapse and recovery. Perhaps unwisely, I included something he hadn't asked for.

  A collection of moments, after the collapse, that I'd tried to summon him, imbued with both the desperation I'd felt and the utter inertness of response from the medallion.

  The swell of emotion dissipated, and I held the orb out to him.

  He peered at it suspiciously. "There's no way you did that so quickly. It used to take you six times as long."

  I hadn't really noticed. Ever since my return, casting had been luxuriantly comfortable, the abundance of mana everywhere making usage and regeneration almost effortless. "See for yourself."

  Cautiously, my summon reached out and took the orb. His visage slackened as he reviewed it, and when he returned, he looked unnerved. Almost troubled. "That… will do it. Thank you for this."

  "Of course."

  He seemed to falter, and for a moment I thought that was the end of it. Then he spoke again. "How long are these visions, typically?"

  "It ranges." I looked down at the glimmering sphere in distaste. "This one was far longer than I'd prefer."

  "I wasn't there when you needed me. It will not happen again." He clutched the orb tightly in his palm.

  "It never happened in the first place."

  Before either of us could respond, the sound of racing footsteps drew both our attention. A child, no more than nine, clad in poorly fitted clothes with dirt on his cheeks raced towards us, tears streaming down his face. "Please sirs. My da, his heart—we was just walking to the market, and he collapsed."

  "Oh, no." Vogrin said.

  "How much gold you think he paid for that?" I asked my summon.

  "For his sake, I hope it was free."

  To his credit, the child—probably an orphan, exactly the sort Thaddeus was fond of employing—seemed to immediately realize the jig was up. He scowled. "He wants to talk to you. Just the ponce, not the blind bloke."

  I snorted. "Where?"

  "The alley back there." The child chucked his thumb behind him, towards a tight space between two falling apart buildings.

  "You and your 'da' were walking to the market through a dead-end." Vogrin stated flatly.

  "And what of it, ya giant raisin."

  I elbowed Vogrin before he could rise to the provocation. "Don't bully the orphan."

  "D'yer ears work? I'm no orphan." The orphan insisted. "I've got a da."

  "Can we kill him?" Vogrin asked.

  Ignoring that, I made a show of loosening the strings of my purse. "How much to leave right now and pretend none of this ever happened?"

  There was a calculating pause before the boy answered, eyes glued to my purse. "Three golden rods."

  "The gall—" Vogrin started.

  "—Fine," I interrupted, handing him the sum, along with more I tugged back when he went to swipe it. "Double it, if you tell me where the lookout is."

  There was no answer. But the boy's eyes flicked to the rooftop to his right. Out of my peripheral, I saw the silhouette of a thin outline of head and shoulders, watching from the widow's walk above.

  No more was the message conveyed before the gold was swiped from my palm and the boy scampered off, disappearing easily into the crowd.

  "I'll need a distraction," I murmured.

  "How long?"

  "A minute at most."

  "Count to ten. Then make it fast."

  Vogrin disappeared from my side, fading from existence, and I counted.

  There was a clatter above, then a muted shout. I took long strides towards the alley, never looking away from its mouth in case Thaddeus changed his mind and tried to slip away.

  No one left or entered. I slipped between the shadowed walls, feeling a rising satisfaction as a silhouetted shadow turned toward me. Thaddeus stood there, quaking with fury, ever-present smirk entirely absent.

  "Have you tired of this petulance?"

  "Not yet."

  Before he could react, I drove my fist into his gut.

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