I did not tell Kael what I had seen in his eyes. That was the first lie I ever told him, and I told it to keep him from doing something that would get us both killed before we were ready, and I have never been sorry for it and never stopped counting it.
"I believe you," I said, which was true, and did not say and my reflection is already slipping, which was also true, and would have made him tear the whole timeline forward before we had the pieces in place.
Because here was the trap the Wend had laid out without naming it as one: the passenger wanted me crowned, and so did I, and so, now, did Kael's war. Everything the thing needed and everything I needed pointed at the exact same throne. The only difference, the whole difference, the difference I would live or die inside, was the half a
