Etta looked up, surprised to find herself crying. “I don’t understand—what does that mean, Ironwood wants to save one life? Whose? Augustus? Julian?”

Nicholas knew, but Hasan answered. “His first wife. Minerva.”

“What?” She fought the urge to reach over, to force Nicholas to explain why he looked like the world was crashing down around him.

“He wants it all, then,” Nicholas said finally. “Bloody hell, the bastard—”

Hasan cleared his throat with a meaningful look in Etta’s direction.

“Minerva was married to him for a few years when they were both young,” Nicholas continued. “I don’t know the details of it, only what Julian’s told me. It was a love match, rare for travelers, but it occurred during an incredibly unstable and violent time in the war between the families. His rivals from the other families took advantage of the fact that Ironwood had hidden her somewhere in the past for her safety. They discovered her location, and waited for a year in which there was no passage for Ironwood to use to intervene, then murdered her in retribution. In effect, they rendered her murder unpreventable, unless Ironwood chose to warn himself to return and live that year straight through—to be present when she was killed in 1456. That would have, of course, altered his fate and the shape of the world around him. If he’d given up and lived a normal life with her that year, not traveling around waging his little war of terror, he would not have garnered the power or alliances he needed to become Grand Master.”

Oh my God. The letter fell out of her limp hands onto the floor. “He chose power.”

But that—that didn’t make sense. He loved this woman enough to sacrifice sons and grandchildren to find the astrolabe, in order to save her…but his first choice had been his newly acquired wealth, power, and control over the families.

The one thing he truly wanted had been taken from him. Had he always been the way he was now, or had the loss torn some vital part of him away? Would he be the person he was now if she hadn’t been killed?

“He remarried Augustus and Virgil’s mother, but…my God,” Nicholas said. “He must have figured out which events were crucial to his success and seen there was still an opening to travel back and save her. He could get a message to his past self—or get the astrolabe to himself. And September thirtieth? His wife was killed on October first. He set that deadline with the goal of immediately acting.”

“There are rules, but rules may be rewritten if only one hand holds the ink.” Hasan nodded. Etta spun toward Nicholas. “If he changes the past, won’t that prevent your father, and then you, from being born?”

He shook his head. “No, I’ll simply be orphaned by my time—thrown to whatever last common point there was between the old timeline and the new. My future, and the guardians’…they are at stake, as is yours.”

Could such a change ripple out so far, so wildly, from one act? Why should saving one life mean so many more—Alice’s and Oskar’s, and all of the millions and billions of people living and working in the world—might not exist, or would not exist as they had?

“These ašwaak—Thorns—they are no better. These travelers and guardians desire it for similar reasons—to undo everything Ironwood has built for himself, and restore the world they know,” Hasan said. “Rose was swayed by their passion, by how many of our family had been slaughtered by Ironwood for refusing to come to his table. Abbi was destroyed when Rose left to seek them out, but how could she not? Ironwood had taken her parents. She was furious that Abbi only wished to hide.”

So. Her grandparents—Rose’s parents—hadn’t been killed in a Christmas car accident after all.

“It’s so extreme,” Etta said, trying to reconcile this angry young woman with the one who had raised her. “I understand her motivations, but—changing the whole future?”

Hasan made a thoughtful sound. “At first, all the Thorns wished was to bring Ironwood to his knees—to restore the council of families, save their loved ones from service to him. The timeline they knew was the original timeline, you see. Can you argue that it is meant to be, more than the one that exists now?”

Meaning that she really had grown up in an altered timeline of what was actually meant to be. Everything she knew was a product of the changes Ironwood had made in his conquest of the families. So—which timeline deserved to exist? Hers? Theirs?

The full weight of her exhaustion hit her at once. Etta felt as though her head was stuffed with cotton, her knees suddenly hollow. The room tilted sideways a second before two hands caught her; they held her steady until the black spots cleared from her vision.

“Etta?” Nicholas’s face floated in front of hers.

“I’m okay,” she promised. “Just…”

Hasan’s face transformed, sharpening. “Who are you to be so familiar with my little niece? Remove your hands before I do.”

“Familar?” she repeated, just as Nicholas’s grip tightened and he said, “Her husband.”

Etta choked. Nicholas’s hands squeezed her arms once, in silent warning. He wrapped both arms around her shoulders—a mimic of a loving embrace. When she dug her heel down into his foot, he barely grimaced.

Excuse me? Excuse me?

If the lie lit a fuse in her, it had the opposite effect on Hasan, stamping out the flare of fury that had turned his handsome features almost ominous. Mostly stamping it out, anyway.