Page 37 of Guarded By the Nightmare

She whipped her head to glare at me over her shoulder. “Why?”

“I mean it,” I said, my voice like gravel, and she gave a contrite gasp, taking me seriously at last. I came up to her side, flowing around the magic. “Something is wrong here.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mina said sadly. “It’s not a great place—it’s just what her parents could afford.”

“No. I mean metaphysically—give me your hand, and take hers with your other.”

She gave me a dark look, but did as I requested, taking Ella’s hand first.

“No matter what happens, don’t let go of either of us. Promise me?”

I felt her hand squeeze mine. “Yes.”

“Brace yourself,” I warned, and then let her see the world as I could when I wanted, letting the confines of perceived reality peel away. Objects that looked solid became blurs of atoms and time became a rope that leashed us all, creating bright streaks of fortune or fate from one creature to the next, as all the opportunities that opened or contracted with every choice a human made, innumerable amounts of them per day, briefly branched and then disappeared, as an infinite number of potential universes were repeatedly lost.

It was beautiful in its own strange way, once you were accustomed to looking at it. It was like watching an image made entirely of fluttering butterfly wings—and in the center of everything for me, right now, was Mina.

The threads of fate binding she and I were the most obvious, but now that we were here, I could see the things that made herherfrom moment to moment—right now her grief, pain, and despair. They made her skin light up, like she was coming apart at the seams.

She looked around, her jaw dropped. “Is this how you see...everything?” she asked.

“Only when I want to.”

I watched her inspect herself, and then the shimmering line pulling between us ever since she’d hired me, that could not be denied. “Oh,” she breathed.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Where are we?” she asked, looking around, before inspecting her friend. The spokes of magic I could feel in reality were more obvious here, and they were pulsing like slowly strummed strings. “What’s happening to her?”

“Time gives fate reason. Fate gives time a point,” I said, just like the inscription on my side of the hourglass’s band. “And this, is what the concept of both look like, when you can manage to perceive them.” I gestured to the threads between us with my free hand. “And as for your friend,” I began, then took longer to contemplate what might be happening. “I believe something magical is diverting her future away from her...stealing it, in much the same way I will be stealing yours, only you agreed.”

Mina gasped in horror. “Can you stop it?”

“Yes and no. I could break the strands, yes, easily. But as for what would happen to her afterward, I cannot say.” While the magic that surrounded the blonde girl was familiar, it had a human’s touch—and I had never seen magic done by humans echo onto my plane.

It made me displeased—and then I noticed Mina’s horrified expression.

At seeing me, here?

Because here I was the thing that ate the light.

But it wasn’t that. Her hand squeezed mine more tightly. “They did this to other girls, Sylas. Before her. But they killed them.”

“Are you certain?”

“One hundred percent. It was why I was in the library, researching. I knew it couldn’t have just been Ella.”

I considered her friend again. “And that boy, last night—he was capable of bending fate?” If so, he should’ve been a more formidable opponent.

“He...must be? Or maybe it’s all of them together—they were all there the night of the ceremony. I saw it,” she said, drifting off, her eyes glazing as her memories got the better of her.

I held her hand tighter so she couldn’t let me go, and now I had the perfect lever to use against her: the truth. “I cannot read any future but yours, my queen, but if you want me to be able to undo this—you need to tell me everything. I need to know what I am up against.”

“Do you think you can?”

“I think I can try—and my trying counts more than most.”

Tears shimmered in her eyes again—so close to being mine!—but thenshe turned to the other girl. “Do you hear that, Ella?” she whispered. “I’m going to get you back!”

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