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“You see, Dolph might be able to take magic through the marks they wear, but I can take their will. Thanks to the Delphi’s Tear, I can make them dance like puppets on a string,” Nibsy told him. And to Harte’s horror, both Jianyu and Viola began to shake. “I can make them kneel.” The second the words were out, they collapsed to their knees.
Viola gasped, and it was clear from the way her features were twisted in agony that she was fighting something, but the cold power around them surged, and a terrible scream tore from Esta’s throat.
“Your friends might try to fight me, but they’ll only be hurting themselves.” He stepped forward. “Convenient, isn’t it, that you figured out the sigils could control a demon? Just think of what they can do to a girl. Thanks to your friends here and their willingness to wear Dolph’s mark, I’ll be able to take Esta’s power just as you took that demon’s. But I have no plans to unmake that power. Not when I can use it.”
Esta was struggling against whatever magic Nibsy had her wrapped in, but she wasn’t succeeding. Tears streamed down her face, and when she looked up at him, there was terror in her eyes.
“Such a valiant effort. But in the end, she’ll succumb. They all will.” He took a step forward. “You never really had a chance, you know, Darrigan. It was always going to end here, like this. I was always going to win. But then, you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“Harte—”
Esta jerked from his arms, her head thrown back at an awkward angle. “You can’t— You can’t let him… Please—” She gasped in pain as her golden eyes found his. “You promised.”
“No—” He knew what she was asking for, but he couldn’t. The gun he’d taken from the man in the future was tucked into his jacket. There was one last bullet, and she wanted him to take her out of the equation. But he couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
Drawing the gun, he turned to Nibsy.
But the bespectacled boy only smiled. “You can’t kill me, Darrigan. Not without dooming her as well.” He shrugged. “I suppose she’s doomed either way, but at least I will make her end mean something. With her affinity, I’ll change the world.”
“She’s not dying, Nibsy,” Harte said, lifting the gun. Taking aim. “Not today.”
ONE IMPOSSIBILITY
Esta was caught up in a power she didn’t understand. The sigils had been turned against her, just as she had used them against Thoth, and there was nothing she could do. As long as Viola and Jianyu wore Dolph’s mark, they couldn’t break free of Nibsy’s hold.
The boundary around them pulsed and shivered, and she felt her own affinity drawing away from her. Nibsy was standing outside the boundary, with the Delphi’s Tear on his finger and the top of Dolph’s cane in his hand.
She’d read pieces of this future on the page of the diary. She’d seen glimpses of it when she tumbled back through the past. She’d known there was a chance that Nibsy could best them, but she’d convinced herself they could get around him somehow. She’d convinced herself they could avoid the fate that stupid diary had foretold.
She should have guessed he’d be as slippery as a snake. She should have known he’d find a way around them.
Now it was too late. They’d played into his hand—or he’d directed them there, pushing and maneuvering until they were right where he wanted them, just as the Professor had promised. Harte was lifting the gun, taking aim at Nibsy, and there was nothing she would have liked better than to see the traitorous bastard fall. But he couldn’t. Not if there was any chance for the rest of them. Not if there was any chance for the girl to do things better the next time around.
“No!” she shouted, her voice clawing out of her throat as she struggled against the draw of Nibsy’s power. She had to fight. If Thoth could, then so could she. Because she refused to succumb. She refused to let him win.
“You can’t,” she shouted, but her voice was barely a whisper over the roaring power around her.
He turned to her, panic and pain shadowing his eyes. “He has to die. This has to end.”
“If you end him, you end me as well. You promised, Harte,” she reminded him. “If you end him, there’s no one for the girl to go to. It will erase everything—all that we’ve had together. All that we’ve been together. It can’t happen without him.”
“I can’t, Esta.” His voice shook, but the gun in his hand was steady. “You can’t ask me to do this.”
“You have to.” She felt tears streaming down her face, but she struggled on. “Do it, Harte. Now. Before it’s too late. Give that girl the future that can lead to us. Give her a chance to do what we couldn’t. To change what we couldn’t.”
His jaw clenched as he refused her pleas. In his hand, the gun shook, but it was still aimed at Nibsy. “I can’t. I won’t lose you.”
“You won’t,” she told him, willing him to understand. “It’s the only way.” Time was a twisting knot, unknowable and unforgiving. “This is only one possibility. One of infinite possibilities, but if you kill him instead of me, you end them all.”
He was shaking his head. “What good are infinite possibilities if they always come to this? If this is our fate, I refuse to accept it.”
Then he turned resolute toward Nibsy and lifted the gun.
Esta tried to reach for her affinity, tried to stop the seconds, but she was still caught in the buzzing power of the sigil’s energy. Her power wasn’t her own. “No—” she pleaded.
Viola cried suddenly, and a shot rang out. But the bullet went wide and ricocheted off a wall. It wasn’t Nibsy who went down.
Suddenly Harte gasped and clutched his chest as he collapsed to the floor.
