A Conflict of Futures
Raven’s rented cottage just off campus is quiet, save for the scratch of my pen as I hunch over yet another astrological chart and mark out the ancient symbols of celestial bodies. Light from the tallest building on the campus spills through the open window, silvering the scattered scrolls and star maps littering the table. If I have to make yet another trip to the St. Augustine Special Collections Library tomorrow to look for some other clue to my future, I will.
Only days remain until I meet Shelby.
Only nights until my foretold demise.
I suppress a shudder at the thought, gritting my teeth as I check my calculations again. There must be an error, a discrepancy I’ve overlooked that explains this accelerated timeline. The alternative—that hostile forces have hijacked the very stars themselves—is too terrible to contemplate. Not even Aoife has that ability.
Or does she?
Before, my hyleg had been my Sun in Leo, yet now my hyleg is my Ascendant in Scorpio. Pluto has been my alcochoden, but now, it’s Venus that is my alcochoden. All the astrological malefics that pointed to the end of my life at age ninety have changed, and now they point to the coming week.
I pull the pendant fastened to a worn silver chain up through the neckline of my peasant blouse, thread it through my lace vest, and rub my thumb across its textured surface. The star map on the pendant has been a reminder for decades of the moment I meet Shelby for the first time, but the painted-on stars no longer align with the heavens. A fleck of the paint tears under my thumb-tip and falls to the table. My future is no longer set in stone.
Across the room, Raven plops down beside fresh linens on the sofa, which will be his bed tonight, so the two bedrooms are free for his guests. Nike, his most trusted priestess friend, is late, but I’m glad Raven insisted I stay here until he returns to Dublin.
Nike is also Aoife’s twenty-something stepsister, but they’re not exactly close. She and Raven are more like siblings than she and Aoife. The younger woman has worked with Terre for years, according to Raven, and she’s offered to help in our search for answers, not just in settling Terre’s affairs but for me as well. I’ll take any help she can give. Hope has dwindled with each dead end—Terre’s tattoo, the discrepancies in the charts, my own visions spiraling into shadow.
Raking both hands through my hair, I set down my pen with a frustrated sigh. Days of tireless research, of sleepless nights and ancient rites, all for naught. I’ve failed to notice the clock over the fireplace until now. It ticks away like a metronome until I can no longer stand it. I stomp over to the power cord and yank it out of the wall, then stomp back to my table.
“This isn’t working, Raven.” Despair leaks into my voice.
“Maybe,” he says, “we’re missing something.” He rises from the sofa, crosses the room, and places a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Scrying for yourself could help, Veronica. It might reveal something that we’ve overlooked.” He hands me my scrying mirror. “I know you say it doesn’t work when you do it for yourself, but I’ll help you.”
His idea seems desperate, but desperation is the only luxury I can afford right now.
It never takes me long to dive into scrying. It’s as familiar to me as breathing, but usually, it’s for other people whose future I don’t remember or never witnessed firsthand. When I scry for myself, it doesn’t work as well, almost as if there’s some kind of binding spell to prevent my success.
Raven sits across from me, the mirror facing upward on the table between us. He presses his thumbs together and holds his hands above his half of the mirror. He nods for me to match the arrangement of his hands. Our little fingers touch and complete the circuit of energy, and I feel the spark as we create a planchette with our hands over the oracle. Unbidden, the wisps of fog begin to rise.
As I gaze into the reflecting glass, the future unfurls before me like a twisted reel of film. In the curls of fog, I see myself walking into a dark room, the door closing ominously behind me. I strain to see what lies in the shadows, to discern the identity of the figure lurking behind me, but all I see is darkness. A sense of dread creeps over me, chilling me to the bone. This is my future now. An unseen assailant I never know and can’t remember.
“Well?” Raven regards me impatiently.
“You can’t see it?”
He shakes his head. “It’s your vision. I’m just here to give you some juice to get past your block. And it is a block. Someone very powerful blocked that ability, probably in your childhood.”
I barely hear him. I’m more focused on my future—or lack thereof—than on some distant past that I don’t have the extravagance of unpacking now.
“I walk into a dark room,” I whisper as the fog seeps back into the mirror. “I never see who is behind me. And I never see anything again after the door closes. That’s-that’s the last moment of this lifetime.”
Raven pulls his hands away from mine and wriggles his fingers to rid himself of the excess energy. I do the same but less to shake off the tingles in my hands and more to hide the fact that I’m shivering. Noticing, he leaps up and closes the window, but the night itself is pleasantly warm.
He moves to my side of the table and pulls me close, letting me rest my head on his shoulder. No platitudes—just the genuine comfort of human contact.
“It was just a glimpse, not yet real,” he murmurs. “You still have choices.”
“What choices?” I bleat. “My path ends in darkness, at the hands of a faceless assassin. I never see it coming.”
And I’ve spent my entire life seeing everything coming.
“Then we’ll just make sure you don’t walk into a dark room in the next few nights. And then we’ll get you to Vail in time to fall in love with Shelby.”
A brisk knock sounds at the door, jolting me from my restless thoughts. Raven pries himself quickly from our hug, then crosses the room in swift strides. He peers through the peephole before unlocking the door.
“Nike.” He greets her affectionately, ushering our visitor inside as he hugs her tightly and checks to see if the airport shuttle has left.
Nike Jung smiles wearily, brushing perspiration-damp hair from her face. Hair the color of Aoife’s. And strangely, the color of mine. But with the black roots of her Korean heritage. Aoife may demand she dye her hair to suggest a greater resemblance of sisterhood, but everyone in the priesthood knows that the famous geneticist Aoife’s mother married and later divorced was not her biological father. Dr. Jung’s only child was born to his second wife, Nike’s mother, long missing from her life.
Dark circles ring Nike’s brown eyes, betraying sleepless nights and godawful travel, but they brighten at the sight of Raven. Her exhaustion clear in the lines of her face, she carries a small, battered, black suitcase in her arms.
“Sorry, I’m late. My flight was delayed in Reykjavik,” she says, stepping inside. Noticing my distressed state, she frowns. “What’s happened?”
“You mean what else has happened?” Raven quickly explains about the scrying ritual while Nike sets her suitcase on the coffee table. He rushes off to the kitchen for a tall glass of ice water for her.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, placing her hand on my shoulder. “But I may have some answers for you. For both of you.” Skipping the introductions, she unfastens the latches, one by one, on her hard-shell suitcase. “Do you mind if I ask you a question, Zephyr? I know you’re naturally gifted with omnipresence, so you have actual memories of things that haven’t happened yet. Is this, um, is this the first time we’ve met?”
I stare at her. There’s a reason Daeganeans don’t use psychic spying on one another, and they’re allowed to know their entire life’s memories, but the psychological mire of knowing too much has been the number one reason for premature death in the priesthood. Murder is a close second. Nike doesn’t realize it, but she is dangerously close to somewhere she doesn’t want to go.
“Yes,” I answer truthfully. “It’s the first time we’ve met.” Though, in my memories, I didn’t meet her until after her girlfriend died, and Nike was already on a downhill slide into despair.
“Cool. So, this is my first time meeting you, but you must remember tons about me. I almost feel exposed.” She laughs as if I make her nervous. “Don’t time paradoxes give you a headache?” Before I can answer, she adds, “So you know everything about me? Are we, like, best friends in the future?”
I suck in my breath. “I…I don’t really know anymore. That future has changed, so I have no idea.”
And I don’t.
“What did you find?” Raven asks, handing Nike the glass of water.
She downs half of it before handing it back to him and then reverently opens the suitcase lid to reveal two packages wrapped in cloth and a small clear bag of toiletries. She shrugs. “I had to travel light. I’m hoping I can borrow some clothes while I wash what I’m wearing. Anyway, these artifacts will go into Drusilla’s library for safekeeping. Probably Gate Nine.”
“Gate Nine! Are you sure?” I suck in my breath. That would mean that these are two of the most dangerous books currently in existence.
“Positive. I thought I was going to have to travel far and wide to find answers, but once I realized something, I only had to travel far. And fast. Illyria and I went through Terre’s journals and found a few breadcrumbs leading to one person who had access to certain books. Books that we couldn’t locate in the Darbyshire library where they were supposed to be. Books on End Times technology.”
I almost snicker. Daeganean libraries are nothing but archives of End Times technology. Well, with some medieval astrology and alchemy thrown in.
“Who took the books?” Raven asks, looming over us for a better look at the wrapped rectangles in the suitcase. “Jakin Crutchfield?”
Nike rolls her eyes. I guess in all timelines, she hates Jakin Crutchfield almost as much as Raven does.
“Nooooo, Raven. Not that narcissistic bastard. Unless those books offer some kind of power he can leverage to get what he wants, he could not care less. You two have been thinking about present-day enemies in the priesthood. Once you see these books, you’ll understand why there was a failed coup, Raven, when you were still a kid. And what it cost you.”
“What coups? What are you talking about?” Tension oozes from Raven’s body as he towers over us, scowling. His eyes radiate anger and dread as if he knows exactly what she’s talking about.
“I’m talking about your adopted mom, Tessa.”
He winces visibly and takes a step backward. “Tessa’s dead, Nike. And she hasn’t reincarnated.”
Neither have Raven’s parents. All of them had been Aoife’s enemies, but they’d all returned to us under my leadership of the priesthood. At least, in the future I remember where Aoife lost her role as leader. But first, it had been his parents, murdered, unsolved even though we all suspected Aoife’s mother of orchestrating it. Tessa had been a recruiter for the priesthood, the last before me. When the Darbyshires died, Tessa took in Raven and then took him on the run to keep him far from Aoife, but after Tessa’s murder, he’d been manipulated into becoming the Last Priest. That’s how Aoife took advantage of the power the Last Priest carried in his seventh chakra.
In my memories of the future, Stewart, Erica, and Tessa had all been instrumental in the work to block Aoife from taking over the priesthood from Siobhan when the older woman’s health began to decline. I never knew everything they’d tried, only that the Darbyshires and their best friend, Tessa, had died trying. When they failed, the next line of defense, years later, included Emry, who set me up for success and later became my dearest advisor. All that is different now from what I remember, and either the future I remember or the unfolding present is a lie.
Nike lifts one book from the suitcase and begins unwrapping it. “I read some of Tessa’s notes. I had no idea, Zephyr, that she’d met you when you were a child. She was quite impressed.”
How badly skewed are the timelines? I wonder. Is the past I remember changing, too?
Instead, I say, “Really? I don’t recall ever meeting Tessa when I was a child, but it’s possible.”
“Ha, well, she remembered you. ‘The Little Wolf Queen,’ she called you. Tessa collected all the books that could prevent Aoife’s reign and could be turned over to someone more suitable to lead us.”
I shift uncomfortably on my chair. Me, I’m that leader. Twenty years and change in the military, retired as a colonel, and the leader of warriors in the last age and the leader of what’s left of humanity in the next age. I was that person, with my beloved Shelby by my side.
Or, I was to have been that person, had the timeline not changed.
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