I knelt next to Tritetia, unsure what to do as she seemed to struggle to breathe after what I had said. I didn’t understand; while surprising, nothing I had said should have been this difficult to accept. And yet, Tritetia was collapsed in on herself like someone had split her in two. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach, her head down, hair falling in loose curtains to hide her face, but I could hear the soft wheezing sounds between her teeth. Not sobs. Not crying. Breathing, just too fast and too shallow, like she couldn’t get the air in right.

  “Tritetia?” I reached out cautiously, brushing her shoulder with the edge of my hand. Her skin felt cold. Not like before—shy or nervous or strange in the way she always was. No, this was different. This was ice through blood. My fingers jerked back instinctively, and I froze when I noticed it: the smell of salt.

  It wasn’t just her scent anymore. The entire room was starting to smell like the ocean; brine and chill and something deeper, like the pressure of standing beneath a hundred feet of water. I stared, watching as her legs twitched beneath her dress and her hands clawed tighter at her ribs. Her panic was causing her to lose control of her form and once I saw her dress compress in on itself and giant wet stains appear, I reacted.

  I quickly picked Tritetia up, not thinking as I moved to the door, the fabric of her dress clinging to my arms like something half-melted. I carried her to the next room, shoving it open with my shoulder and crossing straight to the pool without slowing. The water shimmered faintly under the dim lighting, and I tossed her in. She hit the surface with a splash, and I stepped back to avoid getting more wet. My shirt was steaming from where her dress had touched it and I pulled on the fabric to adjust it across my skin.

  I heard another splash as Tritetia broke the surface, and I glanced up to make sure she had calmed down. “Tri–”

  But I was struck squarely in the face with a thick, slimy substance as a wet splorch echoed through the room. I reeled back, blinking hard as the mucus slid down my cheek, warm and viscous with the faint sting of salt. It smelled like kelp and something faintly acidic—like she'd dredged it up from somewhere deeper than lungs were meant to reach. My jaw clenched as I wiped it off, fingers flicking the mess away with sharp movements. Tritetia was glaring at me from the middle of the pool, hair plastered to her face, eyes glowing between the strands. Her arms were splayed across the water’s surface, half-submerged and shaking from the effort of staying upright, but her eyes were locked on me.

  “Don’t you ever throw me again, Cyran Trohka,” she spat, literally and verbally, the anger in her voice sharp enough to cut through the briny haze still clinging to the air. I could do little more than blink, my surprise eclipsing my anger. I didn’t know Tritetia had it in her to be angry about anything. “I could have drowned.”

  I blinked again, scrubbing the remnants of mucus from my jaw with the edge of my sleeve. I would have been impressed, if she weren’t still glowering at me like she was planning to summon a sea beast from the bottom of the pool to drag me under.

  “You were already drowning. You were sitting on the floor barely breathing.” I spat back, refusing to return her glare but not backing down either. My sleeve was still damp with slime, and the smell of salt still burned faintly in my nose. “What was I supposed to do?”

  Tritetia let out a hiss through her teeth, slapping one hand against the surface of the water as she pushed herself backward, gaining a few inches of distance from me. Her legs had fully shifted now, the eel like tail spilling out from underneath the wet dress like a ribbon of smoke and shadow, iridescent in the low light. Dark violet and green shimmered across her scales, flecks of pale light pulsing along the length like distant stars glimpsed through deep water. She didn’t try to hide it; either too angry to care or too desperate to stay afloat to bother.

  “I wasn’t drowning. I was remembering!”

  “Remembering what?”

  “My death!” she snapped, her voice brittle but firm. “My dreams. The dreams I can only tell you about. Dreams where I live a different life, and where I died at the end.”

  Silence filled the room as I stared at Tritetia, her words echoing in my ears as she finally seemed to break. She covered her face with her hands, curling into herself as if she could tuck the truth back behind her ribs and hide it there forever. The water around her rippled violently for a moment, then slowly began to settle, the waves calming with each shallow breath she took. I stayed where I was, frozen halfway between tension and confusion, one hand still smeared with the remnants of whatever she’d spit at me.

  “You… remembering dying?” I asked cautiously, my brain attempting to understand what she was implying. Cyldri told me no one had ever made a wish to reset time, so obviously she didn’t remember what I had done. So why did Tritetia? “You remember what happened?”

  “No! Yes, I guess, maybe… I thought they were just dreams!” Tritetia sobbed, her voice cracking around the words as she kept her face hidden. “I thought they were just awful dreams of my future. Seers aren’t supposed to see our own futures, so I… thought that’s why I couldn’t talk about it. B-b-b-b–”

  “But it’s because it already happened and never happened,” I finished, watching as Tritetia nodded. It made a certain amount of sense; Cyldri said time was a thread and I had gone back and snipped the thread with my wish. It was rebuilding itself, and that meant the previous thread had been cast away. It was like trying to describe an impossible color or sound; there were no longer words for what we went through.

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  But why did Tritetia remember it too?

  “What do you dream about, Tritetia?” I asked quietly, not wanting my own frustrations to scare her again. My own confusion had caused me to approach her too aggressively, and I knew that if I wanted Tritetia to still agree to our deal, then I needed to not give her a reason to finish pulling away.

  “Just… bits and pieces. Nothing is clear, like I said, it felt like looking into my future,” she sobbed, wiping both her tears and the hair from her face as she pulled herself toward the edge of the pool. Her tail moved weakly behind her, the light from the surface casting shifting patterns across the scales. She still wasn’t looking at me, but the rawness in her voice had softened—not from fear, but from exhaustion.

  “I remember being someone else. Still me, but not… the me I am now. I remember dressing different, speaking less, hiding more. I remember Amalia laughing at me—different things than she’s ever said, but it still hurts like it’s real. My mother’s death, choosing my temple…” She stopped, curling in against the wall of the pool. “I remember Valaine’s voice. Screaming. The pain, and blood.”

  “You weren’t at the palace?” I asked, trying to piece together what I could remember about that night. The Marquess and Yssac had brought me to the palace in order to finally try and replace Caspian, but I couldn’t remember why. It hadn’t been important to me at the time; all that night was to me was a chance to destroy both the men and system that had allowed my mother to be murdered.

  “No. I had my own temple, and Valaine was staying with me. Amalia had killed Seymour and planted his body at Valaine’s palace, accusing her of the murder,” Tritetia whispered and I made a noise of understanding. That’s why she told me not to kill Seymour; she had already seen Amalia’s trick in her dreams. In her memories. “That’s… when Amalia came to my temple. She wanted to pin another murder on Valaine, and what better way to also ensure Aehorus would turn against the Emperor and Empress than to kill a seer living in Naera?”

  “So, you died the same night I attacked the palace and Caspian killed me,” I muttered, glancing down as Tritetia finally looked up at me. As soon as our eyes met, I watched as her’s filmed over, the sign she was seeing into my future. It only lasted for a moment, but when her vision cleared, something in her expression had shifted. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing has changed. I can’t see what happens after you transform,” she repeated, her voice now quiet, almost apologetic. Her tail curled tighter beneath her, vanishing into the folds of water like it wanted to drag her under again. “They aren’t… dreams.”

  “No, but why do I remember clearly and you don’t?”

  “Maybe I’m not supposed to remember,” Tritetia muttered, her voice barely above a whisper as she finally lifted herself out of the pool, and I noticed her tail was finally shrinking. “After all, no one else seems to, and we can only tell each other. Maybe I can only see what I do because I’m a seer and I died on the same night.”

  I let the silence linger as I considered her words. It made a certain amount of sense; her magic allowed her to see where the thread of time was likely to go and it made sense that even if the thread was cut, she could maintain some connection to the lost piece. But then why did I remember it clearly? Was it because I was the one who cut the thread?

  I groaned, rubbing my temples as I struggled to understand. Too much had happened since I woke up, and I didn’t know what to make of everything I was learning. I finally knew why I had suddenly woken up on the day of my father’s funeral, but nothing else made sense. Why that day? Why was everyone insisting I wouldn’t have been able to become a dragon this time, despite the fact I had survived every change just fine in my first life? Had resetting time done something irreversible to me, something that made it harder for me to survive?

  “Cyran,” Tritetia’s voice pulled me from my own thoughts and I looked up to notice she was in her human form again, the fabric of her wet dress piled in her lap as she kept her gaze down. Her skin was back to simply shining with the normal iridescence I was used to, and the scent of the ocean had vanished completely. “I think we should go to Roxarry Academy.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s a school in Caizar, where they teach people like us and humans with strong affinity for magic. I went in my previous life, but I… was…” Tritetia took a deep breath and it was easy to guess what she was going to say. Nothing good happened there. “I think we should go.”

  “Why?” I asked, watching as she finally stood, walking toward her closet. I turned as I realized she was about to change, not wanting her to spit at me again. It was both strange and good to know she wasn’t completely helpless, and if she also remembered bits and pieces of the previous thread, then she could help me piece together what had been happening in the palace while I was trapped with the Marquess.

  “Well, the… next Sovereign will be attending this year. The one who replaces my mother. I hadn’t thought much of it before because I only saw him in dreams but… I don’t know. I think I need to see him.” Tritetia’s voice grew soft and I had to focus to even understand her words. “Also, your magic has increased, and I don’t want to go alone.”

  “What about Valaine?”

  “She can’t attend until she turns thirteen. It would be too late by then,” I listened as Tritetia changed from the wet fabric and I was hit by her natural scent. A part of me wanted to look, to see why it had changed, but I closed my eyes instead, trying to focus on her voice. “The Sylvani are more closely tied to spirits and magic than us, so maybe… we…”

  “Can find out exactly what I did.” I agreed, turning as soon as I heard that she had finished fastening the new dress. She was still facing away from me, gripping the door to the armoire tightly. “I’ll have to see if Caspian and Isadora will let me.”

  “Okay,” Tritetia whispered and I watched her for another moment before I turned to leave. It was clear she was still shaken and wasn’t up for more conversation. “Cyran.”

  “What?”

  “I…I’m sorry for spitting on you.”

  “Sorry I threw you in the pool.” I shrugged, surprised by how easy the words came out. I didn’t feel any different about it, and despite not getting the answers I wanted, the night hadn’t been a total waste of time. “I’ll talk to you later, Tritetia.”

  “Okay,” was her soft reply and with that, I left her alone to process her thoughts, if she could.