Page 116 of Never a Hero

‘No,’ Ying said, and Nick sat slowly back in his chair, disappointment tightening his mouth. ‘I’m sorry,’ Ying said. ‘I cannot tell you what you wish to hear—that you can stop this. The truth is, we are already seeing signs that this timeline is coming to an end.’

A cold wind blew across the river, raising goose bumps on Joan’s arms. ‘Signs?’ she said.

‘Signs of disruption to the timeline; signs of a breakdown. Signs we saw at the end of the previous timeline.’

‘What signs?’ Joan asked.

Ying looked down at his tea, and shadows deepened the creases of his face. He sighed. ‘What do you know of fluctuations?’

Joan felt herself tensing, uneasy without knowing why. The term was familiar. Corvin Argent had spoken of fluctuations, and so had the gamblers at the Wyvern Inn.

Beside her, wool rustled as Aaron shifted his weight. She felt his eyes graze over her. Or thought she did—when she turned, he was sitting up, alert, looking at Ying.

‘I don’t know what fluctuations are,’ Joan said to Ying slowly.

‘In general, they are a normal part of the timeline,’ Ying said. ‘They are created by us. By monsters. We time travel, and that means that the timeline must compensate for us. For example …’ He thought for a moment. ‘If I were to hail a hackney cab right now, I would likely take the place of a human who would have hailed that cab. Imagine I caused that human to miss a meeting. And now imagine that it was a significant meeting. I would have altered the timeline just by going about my everyday life.’

It was how Aaron had described time travel at the boathouse—he’d thrown a stone into water and pointed out the cascading ripples. ‘But the timeline would smooth out your changes,’ Joan said. ‘It would arrange for the meeting to happen at another time, or for the cab to drive past you without stopping.’

‘Yes,’ Ying said. ‘A cab driving past … a rescheduled meeting … These are examples of fluctuations. The everyday corrections made by the timeline.’

Joan swallowed. She did know that mechanism—only too well. It was why the timeline kept bringing her and Nick together. Jamie had explained it once: If people belonged together in the true timeline, then our timeline tries to repair itself by bringing them together. Over and over and over. Until the rift is healed.

Only for Joan and Nick, that rift could never be healed. Too much had come between them …

‘Why are we talking about fluctuations?’ Aaron said. He was tense too, Joan realised then. He’d been wary at the beginning of this meeting, but the turn in the conversation had him leaning forward, fully attentive.

Ying put his cup back onto the tray. ‘The Lius remember what others don’t. We, alone of all the families, remember both the original events and the corrected ones. The cab arriving and the cab driving past.’ He folded his hands together and sighed again. ‘At the end of the last timeline, we began to observe seemingly minor events—parties, appointments—shifting weeks, even months, from their original dates.’ He was silent for a moment, staring down at the fire-made phoenixes behind their metal cut-outs. Then he said, ‘It is a pattern we are seeing again now.’

Aaron whispered: ‘There have been rumours spreading among the Court Guards of unusual fluctuations …’

‘Yes,’ Ying said heavily. ‘I think the timeline is struggling to repair itself.’

Joan took a sharp breath. Signs of disruption. Signs of a breakdown in the timeline.

‘I believe we are at the end of days of this timeline,’ Ying said. ‘We are in a cup riddled with cracks.’

The words echoed in Joan’s head. She saw again the gaping wounds in the timeline, and caught Tom’s eyes. His lips were pressed white. He was thinking of the same thing.

‘We saw something,’ Joan told Ying. Ying tilted his head in question, and she hesitated. ‘We think it was a hole in the timeline.’

There was a moment of silence while Ying took in her words. He didn’t seem to know what to say. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said finally.

‘We saw a tear in the fabric of the timeline itself,’ Tom said. ‘It was concealed behind an Ali seal—we think the Court was hiding it.’

Ying opened his mouth and then closed it again. Joan had met him twice. This was the first time she’d seen him lost for words. ‘Describe this for me.’ His face was carved stiff, but Joan had the impression that he was disturbed underneath.

They hadn’t really talked about it since they’d left the café. Joan looked around at the others and realised that there was a reason for that. Ruth had folded her arms around herself, and Jamie’s forehead was waxy—even the memory was making him sick. Tom’s usually invisible freckles stood out, russet on milky white. They’d all been deeply shaken by the thing.

Jamie answered. ‘It was like the timeline had been ripped open by a force. We saw a hole in midair with ragged edges.’ He swallowed visibly. ‘We saw the void inside it—the black abyss of it.’

Ying took a long moment to respond. ‘You saw the void that surrounds the timeline?’

Joan’s skin crawled. The Monster Court had been surrounded by that shadowy nothingness. There’s nothing there, Ruth had said. It looks like there’s something there, but there’s nothing there. At the time, Joan had had the feeling that if she were to step from the grounds of the Monster Court, she’d have been lost forever.

‘We only saw it for a minute or so,’ Jamie said, ‘and then it was like—’ He hesitated. Joan understood the hesitation. She still wasn’t sure what exactly had happened either. ‘It was like we saw a different timeline inside it,’ Jamie said. ‘A timeline where monsters ruled.’

Ying’s face showed a hint of disturbance now. ‘You saw another timeline?’

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