The Infinite

by Lori M. Lee

  “What’s happening?” I whispered.

  “You were born of the River,” he said, echoing Irra from months ago. “Your existence gives it strength, and it strengthens you in return. You just needed to learn how to open yourself to it. What does it feel like?”

  I pressed my palm to my chest, feeling my magic there like a second heartbeat pulsing in perfect rhythm to mine. “Home.” I lowered my chin, my shoulders curving over my knees, guarding that precious feeling close. How could I have let this go? How could I have thought I’d be better off? “It feels like coming home.”

  His hand touched my shoulder. “Magic isn’t something to be feared, Kai. At its best, magic is life and energy and wonder. Think of what you’ve done with your magic.”

  I opened my eyes. The cold of my cell returned, sinking beneath my skin as I thought of Avan and where he’d be now if not for me.

  Kronos gestured to Mason’s sleeping form. “Look at the boy over there.”

  Mason looked uncomfortable, the chains of his shackled ankle tangled at his feet.

  “Is the fact that you saved his life worth nothing when compared to your grief?”

  I exhaled slowly. I wanted to remind him that my “grief” was a result of his meddling, but that wouldn’t cancel out the fact that he was right. Terrible things had happened as a result of my being Kronos’s daughter. But good things had happened as well—if not for Kronos, I wouldn’t have even met Reev.

  “Okay,” I said. “I understand. But then how do I get out of here?”

  “You’ve made peace with the River.” He stood and held out his hand. “Just as you’ve welcomed it into yourself, it will welcome you into its current.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, I placed my hand in his. Even though he wasn’t at his full health, his grip was strong and sure as he helped me to my feet. The wound in my side protested the movement, and I bit down a groan. A weight lifted from my ankle. I looked down to see the iron shackle disintegrating into the stone.

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Decay is but the passage of time.”

  “You could have a contest with Irra,” I said.

  “We have.” He stepped back, lifting our clasped hands between us.

  I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not. I wanted to ask who’d won.

  The threads quivered around me, drawing my attention. My cell began to fade as the threads grew brighter, each brilliant thread sharpening into perfect focus. My gaze fell on Mason’s indistinct form.

  “Wait!” I tried to pull away from Kronos. “I can’t leave without Mason.”

  “Your friend cannot enter the River,” he said, sounding offended by the mere notion.

  The floor fell away. I gasped. My stomach lurched. I kicked my legs ineffectually. The walls of the dungeons unraveled, scattering into a trillion shining threads.

  “Take me back,” I demanded.

  “You have a choice,” Kronos said harshly. “You can remain a prisoner while your enemy marches on Ninurta, or you can use your powers to reach Ninurta first and warn them.”

  I scowled, flailing my arms like I was sinking, even though the threads held me suspended. “Can’t you just take me back for a minute so I can free him?”

  “His fate is not my concern.”

  I tried to rip my hand from his, but his fingers were like steel. He had the same mind-set as Irra—they would interfere only when the situation coincided with their own goals or when it upset their “balance.”

  “Let go of me,” he said, “and I cannot promise you’ll make it out of the River. You haven’t yet learned to navigate its current.”

  My chest stung with worry for Mason. I had to decide. With Lanathrill’s army marching at dawn, possibly only hours away, I doubted anyone would even notice I was gone until the guards came around to deliver our meals, and that was only if they decided to feed us. The only real threat to him was their goddess, and why would she care about a single imprisoned sentinel? The guards he could handle, even while shackled.

  I gave Kronos a curt nod. I would have to trust that Mason would be okay until I had the chance to go back for him.

  Kronos seemed perfectly at ease, his hair billowing over his shoulders, his robes swaying along in a sea of gossamer threads.

  No, not a sea. A River.

  My hair floated around my face. I brushed it back, entranced by how everything moved as if submerged in water. I relaxed my muscles and examined where Kronos had taken me.

  The threads shifted between colors, each shade glimmering like sunlight through water. My finger plucked a thread. Images flashed through my mind: the smoky air of a crowded market, the cloying scent of incense, a weathered temple, the statue of a rearing horse and its fearsome, hooded rider.

  “Every moment of every person in all the world has passed through this River,” Kronos said. The threads brightened, as if responding to him.

  His hand released mine. I spun around in time to see him swallowed by the River. My pulse jumped. “Kronos!”

  “Relax,” came his voice, an echo that rode the threads from one side of me to the other. “I’m here.”

  I sucked in air to keep myself from panicking. “You said I’d be lost in here without you,” I accused.

  “I said you didn’t yet know how to navigate the current. Now you’ll learn. Find the right threads. They’ll take you where you need to go.”

  “Well, that clears it up.” I kicked my legs and waved my arms, hoping the movement might push me along. “You can’t just throw me in the water without teaching me how to swim.”

  “You can’t drown,” he said, sounding infuriatingly reasonable. “You were born of this, remember?”

  “This is a really bad time for a lesson.” I forced my limbs to move slowly, fighting the urge to flail as if I were actually drowning. The fear was only in my head. Focus, Kai. Ninurta was in danger, which meant Reev was in danger. I had to find my way out and warn Miraya.

  Ninurta might not be an ideal city—far from it—but Ninurta’s people needed guidance and hope and the chance to be better. They didn’t need the heavy hand of another conqueror. Without the Infinite, the sentinels were Ninurta’s best hope, but with the division within their ranks, who knew what would happen once Lanathrill attacked? Even if Miraya could rally the Watchmen and the sentinels in time to put up a good defense, I didn’t know if Ninurta could withstand a siege. It was unprecedented. There were no protocols for an enemy attack because we’d always believed we were alone.

  But none of that mattered if Lanathrill’s plan of attack was to allow their “goddess” to work her magic over Ninurta. Her song would knock out the sentinels and stir that same bloodlust in the Watchmen that I’d seen in Emryn’s soldiers, and the city would collapse upon itself.

  “You’re not focusing.”

  I tried to turn back the way I’d come, but I had no sense of direction here. The threads parted to allow me through as I fumbled along, but there were only more threads, iridescent, ghostly, brushing against my skin without any true physical sensation and filling my mind with images of the past. There was nowhere to go other than to follow the current and allow the threads to carry me along.

  “Don’t lose yourself in the current, Kai.” Kronos sounded concerned, but it barely registered. Already, his voice was a muffled hum beneath the gentle ebb and swell of the River.

  I closed my eyes. The threads tangled in my hair, wove through my fingers, coiled around my legs. Images flooded through me: horse-drawn carriages; acres of golden wheat; the warmth of the sun against a blue sky; processions of mahjo in bright robes, their hands spinning storms and summoning flames to delight a worshipful crowd; towering spires of metal and glass; a fiery torrent of magic and manpower sweeping across the cities, scorching everything in its path.

  My head hurt. It was too much. I pressed my palms against my temples.

  Warmth grazed my side. I turned, something familiar in the way those threads called to me. My body floated
forward, other threads curving away as I passed, parting like curtains to reveal something strange: severed threads.

  I skimmed my fingers along the blunt ends, and gasped as images of Avan hurtled through me. Heart in my throat, I leaned over and curled my hands around the precious, precious threads.

  These were Avan’s memories.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE THREADS OF Avan’s past caressed my palms, swaying like blades of kelp in the current.

  I hugged them to my chest. More memories flickered through me. A young boy with a shock of dark hair hid in a cabinet, his slim back trembling as his dad stomped through their apartment, boots slamming into furniture as he bellowed Avan’s name. A beautiful woman with sad eyes, cradling Avan in her arms as she told him a story in between customers at their shop. A slightly older but more inquisitive Avan sneaking his way into his first underground club. A couple of years later, his first kiss—I flinched with irrational but unavoidable jealousy—when he learned to replace the ache in his heart with another kind of ache.

  I nudged those threads aside. Those were memories I didn’t want to see.

  My own face flitted through my mind. I startled, wondering if I’d lost his memories to the current. But no, these were still Avan’s—Avan’s memories of me.

  I glimpsed versions of me through the years, seen through Avan’s perspective, slowly growing into my skinny legs and gangly arms. There was that moment when I used my power in his store and he’d seen it; his hands brushing mine as he handed me a package of dried apple slices; the shock and then the surging fear for me when I kicked his dad; that night he found me trapped in the sewer; when he tagged along on my DMC route and teased me about whether I’d have to wear their hideous uniform; furtive glances in the halls at school when I hadn’t noticed his gaze.

  My fingers glided through the threads, reaching his more recent memories: his wonder and distrust when Kronos appeared to him, bargaining his safety for my own; my body pressed to his back on his scout and the pounding of his heart when he wrapped around me during our night in the Void; his indecision in Etu Gahl as we lay in his room, our fingers laced; that instant when he rushed to protect me from Reev’s blade without a single thought as to what it would mean for himself.

  My throat grew tight and heat swelled behind my eyes. Everything he’d been feeling in those moments remained like an imprint on each memory. I clutched his threads, livid for the time that he’d lost, for the memories he would never be able to make.

  Warmth pulsed from the threads. The severed ends prodded my fingertips as if seeking out contact. My hands prickled with magic that vibrated through the waves around me like a call that wanted to be answered.

  The realization seized me: I could mend his threads. I had the power. I could weave his memories back into the fabric of time. That’s all the River was—one long tapestry stretching into Infinity.

  I could fix Avan.

  My breath quickened, my powers surging within me. I gathered each broken thread, my magic seeking just the right place to reconnect them. I had to be careful not to disrupt the other threads.

  Another memory surfaced within me—this one mine.

  “You could come,” a beaming Avan said as he walked backward along the sidewalk so he could see me. “We’re just hanging out. It’s an empty building off the old train tracks.”

  “Can’t. My brother would kill me.”

  “Oh, come on,” he said, flashing me a gorgeous dimpled grin that made my heart skip a beat, “never sneaked out before? I’ve been getting past my dad since I was six.”

  I looked down at my feet, suddenly embarrassed. I hopped back and forth on the sidewalk to avoid stepping on cracks. “No. I don’t know.”

  “How do you not know?” He sounded genuinely curious.

  I shrugged. “Because I can’t remember.”

  He tilted his head so he could see my averted face. I blushed at his attention. He’d grown what seemed like half a foot in the last year, and his shoulders had gotten wider, his face more angular. With all those changes, he was still beautiful.

  “What do you mean you can’t remember?” he asked.

  “Just what it sounds like. I can’t remember anything before I was eight.” I felt stupid admitting it, and I wondered what Reev would say. Avan was the first person I’d ever told, but he was also one of the few people I trusted. I knew he wouldn’t tell anyone about it.

  Avan didn’t say anything for a long time, and I began to wonder if he believed me. What if he thought I was a liar? I peeked up at him.

  He was frowning. He looked past me, not really focusing on anything. Something dark passed over his face.

  “Avan?”

  When he looked at me again, his expression was shuttered and his eyes were dull. I wanted to reach out and take his hand, but I couldn’t.

  “You’re lucky,” he said. “I wish I couldn’t remember, either.”

  I dropped the threads. They fanned out around me, catching the current again. I swallowed past the vise constricting my throat.

  “You’re waiting for me to remember,” he’d said. “I don’t know what it is I’m waiting for anymore.”

  A sob rose in my chest, and I choked it down. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment to stem the tears. I couldn’t do it. I wanted to. With all my heart, I wanted to.

  But it wasn’t my decision to make, and I couldn’t rob him of that choice. Even if it meant I would never have my Avan back. Even if it meant he would leave with Irra and Kalla for the realm of the Infinite, and I would never see him again.

  It wasn’t up to me to “fix” him.

  I watched his threads sway and ripple for a moment longer. Then I turned away.

  Closing my eyes again, I envisioned what I wanted: the palace in the White Court, its milky stone walls a stunning contrast to the shadow glass of Vethe’s citadel. The River shifted around me as the threads bumped against my fingers, coming to me instead of forcing me to find them. I felt Kronos’s approval sing along the threads. Guess that meant he’d found me.

  My feet touched the ground. The palace rose above me, its crimson banners snapping in the wind.

  A presence disturbed the threads, and Kronos emerged from the River.

  “If you accepted your true form as an Infinite,” he said, stepping onto the flagstones, “you wouldn’t need to use the threads. You could move through all of time and space with nothing but a thought. It is an ability no other Infinite possesses, not even Death.”

  The River began to fade back into what I was used to seeing: sheer threads connecting everything from the buildings to the stone at my feet, unobtrusive and ethereal. The threads grew clearer in my mind as I focused on them. The palace grounds hadn’t yet fully solidified, and I could still feel the weightlessness of the River’s current.

  “You said time can only flow forward.”

  “We only observe the past. Interference is forbidden by the laws of the Infinite. We watch and we listen and we remember.” He looked down at me, the long strands of his dark hair floating back over his shoulders. “Changing history would have unknown, far-reaching consequences. The River could unravel. I have never dared to try.”

  “Have you ever been tempted?”

  A smile brushed his lips. “Yes. But although we have this ability, it isn’t absolute power. As you witnessed with Ninu, balance must be maintained even within the Infinite. No matter how powerful one of us might be, there must always be ways to stop one another.”

  I nodded, reminded of the imbalance happening to the mahjo in Lanathrill. Their use of magic drained them and ultimately would probably cost them their lives. Although I no longer cared about the toll the magic took on them, I did care to find out why their magic had manifested. Whether it was the Dust or the sepulcher, I needed to know so we could prevent this from happening again.

  “Have you heard anything about the sepulcher?” I asked.

  Kronos went still. Those pale blue eyes sharpened on me with what I m
ight have called alarm if he wasn’t always so placid.

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “How do you know of the sepulcher?” he asked, the threads darkening around him.

  “Irra told me. He and Kalla went to check on it. He said something might have happened to the sepulcher, which would explain why the mahjo in Lanathrill have magic again. But I also found out that they’re eating the earth from the Void, so I’m not sure if that’s the real reason for their magic or if it’s just made them all crazy.”

  He looked away, his expression pensive. “I have not been in contact with either Irra or Kalla since Ninu’s passing. I have to go.”

  He vanished into the threads.

  “Hey!” I called out, floundering, but he was gone. I wasn’t sure how to leave the River completely. Focusing on my surroundings, I felt the air shift with actual wind and the ground solidify beneath me. That sense of weightlessness dropped away. I stumbled, finding my balance—

  —and collided with Avan.

  His hands came down on my shoulders to steady me. He looked just as bewildered as I felt staring up at him.

  “Avan,” I breathed, drinking in the sight of him. His memories were still fresh in my mind, and seeing that he was here made me weak with relief. Before I could think it through, I cupped his face and guided his mouth down to mine.

  Avan tensed. A breath later, his hands were tangling in my hair, smoothing down my back and circling my waist to pull me tight against him. I gasped against his mouth, and he took the invitation by sliding his tongue along my lower lip. Fire lit in my belly, the heat spreading through me like a fever.

  My fingers clenched around his arms, and it took all my willpower to break the kiss.

  I dragged in air as Avan curled over me, pressing his lips against the top of my shoulder, his breaths hot even through my tunic. He flattened his palms against my spine and hugged me close.

  He turned his head, his mouth against the curve of my neck. “Kai,” he murmured.