I took a deep breath to steel myself, but it came with a shudder. A look of pain washed over Ristriel’s face. He moved toward me and took my hand, pulling me closer to the cobbler shop until he was out of the moonlight.
Then he held me, and my heart broke, fresh tears coming to my eyes. I leaned into him, smelling snow and autumn skies, my own heat reflecting back to me. His shirt was soft. Had it always been that way, or had he made it soft for me?
“What happened?” he asked. “What did they say?”
I shook my head against his shoulder. “No one spoke to me. No one living.”
Pulling back just enough to see my face, Ristriel asked, “What?”
“Agradaise’s tomb is in there,” I whispered. “Star mother. And I saw her. She spoke to me somehow. I saw the hereafter where she lived, and I knew I was meant to be there. My family was meant to be there. But I don’t know if they went there, or if I will, or if I’ll ever see them again.” Sniffing, I wiped my eyes with the pad of my thumb. “I’m lost, Ris. I’m lost, and I don’t know where to go.”
He didn’t answer immediately. His chest rose and fell, and I rose and fell with it. “We will find them.”
“But are they even mine to find?” I gripped his shirt tightly in my fist. “Only so I can watch them die, over and over . . . and over.”
Another shuddering breath shook me. I turned my head into Ristriel’s neck, but he stepped away, leaving me even colder than I was before. I looked at him, confused, but he didn’t return my gaze. He looked at the cobblestones, beyond them.
“I’m so sorry, Ceris.”
Again I wiped my eyes. “You are the only constant I have.”
But he shook his head. “I am not.” He stepped away from the wall, his hands in tight fists at his sides, and looked upward, every inch the picture of a man supplicating heaven. “Do you know how time works, Ceris?”
I blinked, uncertain I had heard him correctly. Clearing my throat, I answered, “Of course I do. Sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day. Three months to a season, four seasons to a year—”
He shook his head, and my voice cut off.
“Mortals have depicted time in many ways.” He looked just beyond me, his dark eyes boring into another plane. “Circle, loops, falling sand . . . but time isn’t like that at all. Time is like music. Imagine the keys of a harpsichord, or the strings of a harp, only they play ever higher and ever lower, never ceasing. Eternal music. Time is like that.
“Time is a realm beyond our own. It is not a god or a being, but a piece of the universe itself. It is older than all else and yet has no age. It is an endless orchestra, for every living creature and spirit has a song.
“When I escaped—” He paused, throat working, choosing his words with care. “When I broke my chains and fled, I fled into the chords of time. Time is more eternal than those who would capture me. Time makes others forget. I thought . . . if I could lose myself in time, or take enough of it, they would forget about me, and I would be free.”
My heart cracked at the story, and I moved toward him, but he lifted a stiff hand, stopping me.
“I found a weak spot. A soft note, and it allowed me to pass through. To enter time itself. And I strung its music around me. As much as I could get. But Sun and His soldiers realized what was happening and came for me, forcing me to flee. I stole enough for mortals to forget me, but not for gods to.”
He met my eyes, shadowy hair falling across his forehead. “Ceris.” He swallowed. “I took seven hundred years.”
The number made my heart jump.
“I knew it was yours after . . . after I used time to pull us from that field.” He hugged himself, shrinking. “The song was the same. Your song. It was your time I took. I didn’t know. I didn’t know you.”
I opened my mouth, closed it. Tried to wet my dry tongue and found it nearly impossible. My pulse hammered in my neck and wrists. “Seven hundred years,” I repeated.
He nodded.
I needed to sit, but there were no chairs, so I leaned against the shop wall. Its cool, smooth surface sucked heat from my skin.
And I thought of the long grasses, the rotting trees, the autumn leaves in the midst of spring. I thought of my spoiled meat and rusted coins, of long hair and long nails. I knew he had broken the law in the field, but I hadn’t realized the extent. Time was leaking from him, altering the things around us any time we stayed in one place too long. Perhaps even making a trail for Yar and Shu to follow.