The only time my work becomes difficult is when tears blur my vision. But I dab them away and keep going.
Although I want to go after Paul, I don’t. As badly as he’s hurting, maybe right now that’s what he needs. When we’re in pain, people are too quick to say, Get over it, move on, it’s not that bad. But we don’t get over grief by denying it. We have to feel it. We have to give it its due. Sometimes that means doing the exact opposite of “moving on.” We have to dive down to the very depths of our sorrow, relive every terrible moment, and endure the torture of asking what could have been—and what will now be. We have to bleed out before our hearts can start beating again.
That’s what Paul is doing now. Bleeding out.
After a few hours, I finally hear footsteps in the stone passageway. Hope lifts me away from my work, and I look in that direction, eager to see him. Instead, Theo walks in. It takes all my self-control not to let my disappointment show.
“How’s the work going?” Theo steps closer, hands behind his back. “Our Russian friend seems to be in a terrible temper. Has been ever since he left you behind.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about it.” This Theo probably believes Paul and I had a spat, and this is his big opportunity. I have exactly zero patience to deal with that.
He wipes his brow, which has a fine sheen of sweat. “The only escape from the damned heat is in the homes of the dead. Strange, isn’t it?”
“Never thought of it that way.” The air is cool and musty in here, which wouldn’t seem like such sweet relief if the alternative were anything but the scorching sun of the desert. “I should probably go back to the campsite, huh?”
“No rush. Take your time, Meg.”
Meg.
No wonder he sounded so familiar. The Triadverse Theo has followed me here.
I turn to look at this Theo—the one who kidnapped my father, framed Paul for murder, and helped Wicked hijack my body. When he sees the recognition in my eyes, he sighs. “I knew it. Am I really the only one in the multiverse who nicknamed you Meg?”
“Yes. Are you here to inject me with Nightthief again?” I demand.
“No,” Theo says as he steps closer. Now I can see that he’s pale, and his movements have become slow, reluctant. Whatever he’s here to do is bad.
My only potential weapons are a box of colored pencils and a sketchpad. But I bet a pencil to the eye would stop almost anyone.
“Listen to me.” He holds up his hands, and I pause, unsure what he’s going to pull next. “I know you’re angry with Conley and Triad, and I don’t blame you. But don’t let your temper blind you to what’s really going on here. You can turn this whole thing around in a second, just by agreeing to cooperate.”
“Stop trying to negotiate with me!” I back away from him, although this only leads me farther into the tomb, away from the exit. “When will you guys at Triad get it through your thick skulls that I’m never, ever working for you? How do you not see that this is crazy?”
“Actually, yes, I do see it,” Theo says, and this may be the first time he’s ever told me the entire truth. “If I’d known at the start this was what I was getting into, no way in hell would I have signed up. But now I’m here. Now I know. And if any universes are going to be destroyed, I intend to be in one of the ones left standing.”
I can’t argue with his goals, but I have a big problem with his methods. “This isn’t just about saving your skin. It’s about saving trillions of lives. Literally! How can you not fight this with everything you’ve got?”
“Because everything I’ve got isn’t enough to stop them! Meg, will you calm down and think? It’s too late. Triad is too far ahead. You want to start running a race with them while they’re about an inch short of the finish line. How pointless is that? Conley and Triad still want you on their side, despite everything—”
The sound I make can only be called a snort. “Oh, yeah, they’ve got so much to forgive me for.”
Theo grimaces in exasperation. “Dammit, why are you doing this to yourself? There’s still time for you to save your whole dimension! Billions of people there, every animal, every plant on the entire Earth—you’re risking them all in this crazy chase. Don’t you owe them your loyalty first?”
I never thought about it in terms of loyalty. If I could only protect one dimension, wouldn’t it have to be the one I call home?
But I refuse to let Theo turn this around on me. “I’m not the one putting my universe in danger. That’s Triad’s responsibility.”
“All I’m saying is, your actions have consequences.” Theo’s face is heavily shadowed in the dim passageway. He has yet to take up the heavy flashlight dangling from his belt. “Those other universes could be no more than—choices nobody ever made.”
For the length of one breath, I am no longer in Egypt. Instead, I lie beneath warm furs in a dacha in Russia while a snowstorm rages outside and Paul holds me close. At the same time, I sit in an opulent Parisian hotel room, hand splayed across my belly, dizzy with the new knowledge that in that dimension I carried Paul’s child.
I have regretted making that choice for the grand duchess ever since—and yet it would be infinitely worse to erase that choice, all those lives, that dimension forever.
“Those people deserve a chance to live,” I tell Theo. “They have the right to create their own destiny.”
“You haven’t always respected your other selves’ choices so carefully, have you?” Even in the darkness I can see the spark of anger in Theo’s eyes.
“I’ve messed up,” I admit. “More than once. But what you’re talking about is different.”
Theo shoots back, “So where do you draw the line, Meg? Anywhere you like, as long as I’m on the wrong side of it?”
I could scream. “Cut out the stupid word games! I made a mistake, but you’re deliberately committing genocide! That is way, way off the scale of anything I would ever do. And you know what else? My Theo wouldn’t ever do that either. So how did you get so screwed up?”
He lunges toward me. His tackle catches me under the ribs, knocking the breath out of me and sending my pencils flying. I claw at his face as Theo grabs my lace scarf, which comes loose from my hat. His knee presses down my left arm as he straddles me and fumbles around my throat.