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Chapter1
Darkness’ Call
“Teddy, you need to eat something.”
With a sigh, I stick my finger on the parchment page to mark my place, rub my burning eyes, and look up at my husband.
He gives me a soft smile, tinged with sadness. The same smile he’s been giving me since I showed up with my other husband days ago, demanding his help to get back to my own Time. Today, deep lines score his forehead. Although Gabe’s a decade older than I am in this timeline, he’s not that rugged yet.
This is his worried face.
I smile back to try to alleviate his worry. “I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”
His smile twists, turning wry. Any mention of Time right now evokes that wry smile. It’s Time that’s brought us together, a year after he lost future-me.
If my magic ever comes back, it’s Time that will pull us apart.
Gabe taps the tray he brought me, probably several hours ago, with a bowl of tomato soup and a roast beef sandwich on sourdough. My favorites. With an apologetic smile, I pull the tray towards me, shift the Arcana I’ve been reading to the side, and eat.
The fae prince sitting across from me at the long trestle table snags a cracker off the plate under the soup and munches it down while he continues to read. He doesn’t share his son’s aversion to Saltines, evidently.
I don’t object to Callan stealing my food. I don’t object to anything he’s done since I appeared in his court. I’ve had serious issues with his treatment of his son in the past, both in my Time and in his. But Gabe and Darwin tell me their-Teddy settled those differences and became Callan’s favorite princess.
The fact that their-Teddy killed her own father in front of Callan probably didn’t hurt; the fae prize ruthlessness.
I haven’t killed anyone in my Time, and my Da’s murder is one of the mistakes future-me made that I have to find a way to correct. Otherwise, this future, where I’m dead and my boys are alone, could become mine, too.
But first, I have to find a way to return to my own Time.
A shiver, like an earthquake, only shallow and localized, runs through the hard-packed dirt beneath my feet.
The fae prince glances up at me before stealing another cracker. “Stop thinking about it.”
I hide my grimace in the now-cold mug of tea Gabe’s brought me.
Another temblor runs through the cave, causing the precious stones scattered across the table between me and Callan to rattle. Most of the stones glint in the amber witchlight illuminating the cave. But a few are dark and cracked.
Enchanting stones is my oldest, strongest talent. My first connection with my Element and the one I’m most comfortable with. Even that’s abandoned me. All I’ve managed so far is to destroy a handful of gems and create a void stone, which Callan grabbed and disappeared with before it sucked out our souls.
He promised he placed it in containment, but knowing him, he probably stuck it under a rival’s pillow.
Although I’ve created more than a few null stones while mastering my Earth-magic, I’ve never created a void stone before, either by accident or purposefully.
I’m a little worried that I’m creating them now, and what that might mean.
Gabe gently rubs my shoulders while I finish my dinner, the heat of his body warming my back as he stands behind me. When I’ve polished off the last crumbs and Callan’s stolen the final cracker, Gabe kisses the top of my head. He takes the tray and walks away toward the cave’s entrance, nodding at the two fae knights standing at attention in their golden armor. Given that I’m sitting with a prince of the Thistlemist Court, you’d think they were his bodyguards.
You’d be wrong.
Since I can’t do magic—other than accidentally producing soul-stealing stones—and since future-me had enough enemies that she was murdered a little over a year ago, Callan decided I needed protection. I have a retinue of six fairy warriors who follow me from the houseboat where I spend my nights with my husbands, to the cave where I spend my days researching how to heal the magickal injury I dealt myself and return to my own Time.
There’s even a female warrior among them who has proven she’s happy to protect me in the loo. Now that I’m away from the fae court and just shuttling back and forth between the houseboat and cave, hopefully we won’t have a repeat ofthatexperience.
“Before you go back to it,” Callan says. “Try another stone.”
He’s just as high-handed as his son, but I don’t argue. I pick up a polished rose quartz, the cheapest stone on the table, and hold it in my hand while Ireachwithin, to my Element, the source of my magic. I’ve always thought of it as a tap I could turn on. After I merged my magic with my boys’, it became a bubbling wellspring. The well was so deep and our connection so strong that I even wielded Gabe’s Air-magic to close a portal to another dimension.
Then I tried to channel Fire and burned my wellspring dark and dry.
