Page 72 of Revert
Castiel stared at me as if seeing someone unfamiliar, yet intimately known. “This is your inheritance. Is this the power the king covets that caused him to allow you to live, rather than rewrite the timeline and erase you completely? He couldn’t risk it, for you were never mere leverage—you were the last of the bloodline that possesses power our own line does not, the only one left who could do what he feared most…as well as what he longed for most.”
My fingers closed around the thread. It responded to my touch, pulsing with memories not my own. Some were tangled, others frayed or severed—burdened with sorrow and grief, scars of choices made with cruelty. I brushed my fingertips along one, and a vision rippled through me.
A town razed in the name of rebellion. A family executed in silence. The king standing above it all, high on his balcony, unmoved as the crowd wept beneath him.
My breath caught. These weren’t just recollections, but inflection points, pivots where he had changed the course of time for his own ends—where he had chosen power over mercy, control over consequence—sacrificing anything that stood in his way to preserve his illusion of rule.
But here they were, laid bare and vulnerable for me to alter.
My hand trembled as I reached higher, gripping a thread near the top of the chamber. It flared with recognition in answer to my touch, pulsing with a light that felt…known. I pulled, not sharply, but just enough to shift it.
Below, the hourglass at the chamber’s center shimmered, its suspended sands vibrating with the change. Above, a portion ofthe celestial canopy shifted—the stars rearranging around the movement I had made, a new pattern beginning to form.
I turned toward Castiel. “I can fix this. Not just trap him or stop the next loop, but go back and repair what he broke. He thought his greatest weapon was controlling time, but time doesn’t belong to him. It’s not a blade but a tapestry, one that can be unraveled and woven again.”
Castiel reverently stepped closer, as if approaching something sacred. “You would rewrite fate itself, restore all the damage the king has rendered during his dark reign?”
I wasn’t sure how much influence I could wield, only that I wanted to try. I reached for another thread.
A girl’s execution—undone.
A rebellion—rekindled.
Lives extinguished—revived.
With each adjustment, I felt the world itself beginning to shift. The threads no longer resisted me, the hourglass artifact seeming to welcome the interference, as if it had been waiting for me all along. Invigorated, my hand closed around another, but before I could tug?—
The magic shifted, abrupt and violent, as if recoiling in fear. The chamber doors shuddered then burst open with a crash that echoed like a war drum.
The king strolled in, cloaked in fury and command, as if he had all the time in the world. Cold rushed in behind him, snuffing the warmth from the chamber like a smothered flame. The golden threads scattered in his presence, retreating to the corners of the ceiling like frightened birds fleeing a storm.
His calculating gaze slowly swept the room, noting the glowing glyph, the shifting threads, my hand still suspended midair, caught in the echo of the power I had just awakened. His expression didn’t change, but his eyes burned.
That fire sharpened, aimed with precision in my direction. Castiel stepped instinctively beside me, his hand already poised at the hilt of his sword. The king smirked.
“Ah,” he murmured, sounding almost amused. “Sothisis how it ends.” He stepped forward, moving with a grace that belied the threat tainting his every movement. “As I suspected—interference. So this is the cost of my generous mercy.”
Castiel shifted, placing himself more directly between us, but the king barely acknowledged him. His bearing remained regal, the posture of a man accustomed to control and obedience, to always getting his way.
“You see,thisis why such an archaic notion has no place in building kingdoms. Goodness, compassion, mercy, second chances…these are all weaknesses that breed softness, foolish ideas—dangerous things in hearts that don’t understand their place.” His gaze flicked to Castiel, full of disdain. “To think even my own son would choose sentiment over sovereignty. How...disappointing. I should have eradicated your greatest weakness the moment she stepped into this court.”
All pretense of detachment fell away when his eyes found mine, binding my gaze to his like chains. “Fascinating. I always wondered about you. From what my spies reported, you seemed harmless enough. Complacent. Clueless about what you carried within you…or why I arranged a union with my son in the first place. And you died so many times, so easily and pathetically. I mistook you for an inconvenience rather than a threat.”
He stepped closer, stopping just short of the pedestal. For a long moment he stared directly at me, as if searching for the fear that had once held me bound that he only now realized was absent. His eyes narrowed.
“Now I see: you are far more dangerous than I ever anticipated, and I have made a grave error in keeping you alive…a mistake I shall remedy in due course.”
I didn’t move as the king advanced another step, not out of defiance, but because something deeper held me still. The threads steadily pulsed in my periphery, waiting.
“Tell me,” he said, voice sharpening to a blade. “When did the little pawn wake up and believe she was the hand moving the board?”
Castiel shifted again, subtle and deliberate, angling himself between us. I laid a hand on his arm, not to stop him, but to steady myself as I met the king’s gaze, unflinching. “The true question you should be asking yourself is: who is the stronger player?”
For the first time, a flicker of something crossed his expression—not fear, but uncertainty. “Interesting. You’ve grown bolder. In every version of you I encountered, you were smaller, quieter, content to cower in the shadows, knowing your place. But here you stand, spitting riddles like a woman who believes the ending has already been written in her favor.”
I met his words with silence, which seemed to anger him.
“You think this changes anything?” His voice grew sharper now, layered with venom and disdain. “You’ve touched power, yes. Stirred the dust of a dead legacy. But you’ve only just begun to grasp what I’ve mastered.” He lifted a hand, as if presenting an invisible kingdom to the air. “I’ve shaped nations, burned rebellions to ash, bled centuries from the calendar like ink from parchment. You are nothing but a ripple, whereas I am the tide.”
