Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 88960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
I know these signs.
I’ve seen them before.
This New England is under the territory of kings.
I’m not in my old world at all.
I’m back in Devyn’s world.
But when? How far back did Hewhay send me?
And then I see her.
Mrs. Lyme.
She’s walking toward me on the sidewalk, market basket over her arm, silver hair pinned in that familiar elegant twist. Same face. Same posture. Same everything. The amber light gilds her, makes her look like a figure from an old painting.
“Mrs. Lyme!”
She stops. Looks at me with polite confusion.
“I’m sorry, do I know you? How do you know my name?”
Of course. In this timeline, we haven’t met yet. I’m a stranger to her.
“I...” I trail off, my eyes catching on something in her basket. A newspaper. The date visible on the front page.
I read it.
Read it again.
The date is one day before I first appeared in Devyn’s chapel. One day before the wedding that started everything.
Which means Devyn isn’t married yet.
And Abigail is still alive.
Chapter Sixteen
THE OTHER KINGS WERE already waiting when Devyn arrived.
The forest convergence point looked the same as it always did—ancient trees, mist curling between them, amber light filtering through the canopy in slanted columns. The kind of wild beauty that made humans feel small and insignificant. His soldiers had secured the perimeter. No hikers would stumble upon them today.
Quinn stood like a statue carved from ice, silver-blond hair catching the weak sunlight. Skye leaned against an oak with deceptive casualness, golden and warm, though his eyes were anything but. Wolfe paced at the edge of the clearing, a predator who couldn’t stand still.
They’d all felt it. The summons that wasn’t a summons—just a shared knowledge, bone-deep, that they needed to be here. Now.
“We saw it.” Skye’s voice was uncharacteristically grim. “She went back to her old world.”
Devyn’s blood turned to ice.
He had asked for this. He had planned for this. Hurt her to keep her safe. Shattered her in front of his entire household so thoroughly that she would have no reason to stay, no hope to cling to, nothing left but the door Hewhay offered.
So why did it feel like his chest had been hollowed out with a rusted spoon?
“The Bailey here.” Quinn said quietly. “No one remembers her anymore.”
Of course they didn’t.
This was the cost of being marked by Hewhay. You didn’t even have the right to grieve, because the people around you had never seen what you lost. His staff would go about their duties with no memory of the queen who’d learned their names, who’d made Marguerite wink, who’d defended him at Court with escalating tales of puppies and blizzards until even his enemies were laughing.
Bailey Sutton had never existed here.
Only to him. Only in his memory, where she would live forever—violet eyes and secret dimples and the way she said you’re blushing right before he kissed her to shut her up.
“Why did you send her away?” Wolfe’s voice was a low growl. “Did she turn out to be one of the others?”
The others.
Nameless beings that wanted to destroy worlds for the sake of destroying. Passages carved out of sacrificed blood. They weren’t like Devyn and his brothers, who’d been brought through Hewhay to fill a need, to protect, to serve. The others came through different doors—darker ones—and they left nothing but ruin in their wake.
Abigail had been killed by such a one. They’d known the moment they saw her corpse. The markings on her body weren’t just violence. They were ritual.
And whoever that man was—whatever he was—could have set his sights on Bailey next.
“No.” Devyn’s voice came out rough. Scraped raw. “She wasn’t one of them. She was—”
The pain hit all four of them at once.
Sharp. Piercing. The same pain they’d felt days ago, when Bailey first arrived in this world. The pain that meant Hewhay was moving, shifting, rewriting.
They checked their watches simultaneously.
Time had moved backward.
Again.
“Six days.” Wolfe’s voice was grim.
“Abigail is still alive.” Skye’s tone was musing, calculating.
Quinn said nothing. He only looked at Devyn, pale eyes steady, no need to voice what they all knew.
Still-alive Abigail meant still-engaged Devyn.
For better or for worse.
The other kings left. Not physically—years of bearing Hewhay’s mark had unlocked certain abilities, and one of them was this: their souls could see and speak to each other without being in the same place. The forest dissolved around Devyn as they withdrew, leaving him alone with the trees and the mist and the weight of what he’d done.
He should be glad.
His old life was back. Uncomplicated. No wife who made him laugh, who made him blush, who defended him like a warrior and hid under blankets like a child. No soft violet eyes looking at him like he might be worth trusting.
No weakness.
But all he could think about was her.
I had no choice, he reminded himself. A broken heart heals. A broken neck doesn’t. Being spurned by your husband is always a better fate than having your life taken by something that wears a man’s face but isn’t one anymore.