Kyra watched Victor's face carefully. This next part of her scheme required a surgeon's touch.

  Victor turned his head away so as to look at her askance. "Why does it feel like these lessons aren't something I can put on a credit card?"

  It would be a mistake to mindlessly use the tricks she'd learned when recruiting her first two disciples. Telling her story and then giving Victor a skill sheet may prove the existence of magic, but he was already a man with an allegiance. Everything she told him could end up in the ears of the Litten government.

  That's why she had to win him over first. And she had to do it without giving away her secrets.

  "Let me ask you hypothetically," she said. "What would it take for you to leave your job and come work on something completely different?"

  "This doesn't sound very hypothetical."

  She smiled sweetly.

  After a moment he shook his head. "It's impossible."

  "Impossible?"

  "The men and women in my team have stuck with me through hell and highwater. I wouldn't let them down for the end of the world."

  Litten soldiers didn't always have the best imagination, but a gentle nudge should get the wheels rolling. "What if it really was the end of the world, and we need you to save it?"

  "Then you'll also need my team."

  "We'll only take you."

  He shook his head again, more vigorously this time. "That's an absurd hypothetical."

  Sometimes a poor imagination was a serious roadblock. It was a dead end if he refused to engage with the question.

  Instead of changing tack, she tried leaning further into it. "Let's say, for example—purely hypothetically—monsters from some sort of dungeon dimensions began invading our world. And there's a secret project to fight them back."

  Victor clapped his hands together with a balled fist. "So we're playing one of those games." This time it didn't take long for him to come to a decision. "Sure, I'd join that project."

  At last some progress.

  "You'd join just like that?"

  "Hell yeah. Secret sci-fi stuff, the world's at stake, shooting literal monsters? My team can get by without me while I go kick some ass."

  He was being flippant, but she had to work with what she had. After all, the world unhypothetically depended on it.

  "So there is a point," she said, "where you'd uproot your entire life?"

  "That's something every soldier has to make peace with when he signs up. We can be rotated around from base to base. Spend years in foreign lands. Makes it hard for anyone trying to start a family."

  "What I mean is, if the world was at stake, would you swear allegiance to a woman like me over the Litten government?"

  At this point he gave her a strange look. "What would allegiance have anything to do with it?"

  She shrugged. "Let's say I'm willing to teach you magic. Fireballs, healing, that sort of thing."

  "Technically I'm a mercenary," he replied. "Which means that my allegiance ends with my paycheck. I'd be up for flinging fireballs into the dungeon dimensions anytime."

  "You make it sound like you embody the mercenary spirit, but we both know you've got red blood pumping through your veins."

  From her reading of his profile, she was convinced that the soldier never left the man. The fire that made him sign up for the army still burned strong today.

  He replied, "I don't see how that would be a problem."

  "There may be times when your loyalties will be divided," she said.

  He sighed. "Can we move on from this silly hypothetical?"

  She never expected to get far with this approach, but it would have been nice if she'd been able to get him to put more thought into the question.

  There was no way forward from here without taking a risk. This was her last chance to back out and choose a different recruit. She actually had a backup prepared.

  Her gut told her to push forward. It couldn't point to any particular reason, and that was always a sign of ego-driven self-confidence. But if her judgement proved to be wrong here, then she was never going to make it very far into this timeline anyway.

  "What if it isn't a hypothetical?" she said. "If I show you the truth, will you serve me?"

  At first Victor tried to laugh it off. But Kyra kept her face straight until he realized she was serious.

  This was the turning point in her entire scheme. Was the mystique she'd built up enough to keep him from walking away? Or was talk of magic and saving the world too far over the crazy horizon for the veteran soldier?

  "Supposing everything you say is true," he replied, "why don't you start by showing me magic? And showing me monsters? Then we can see from there."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  She shook her head. "Because that will only prove to you that there's magic, that there's monsters. But what I really need is for you to believe in me. For you to stick by me to the very end."

  With Lori, the chain was her mother. With Tristis, it was knowledge that his brother needed this timeline to survive. This was why she had to pretend to be a regressor.

  But she had no such leverage over Victor. His family were rich and successful. The only problems she could solve were temporary and gave her no lasting way to bind him.

  She'd gone over the soldier's life in detail with Benny—or at least as much as the regressor could remember. Which in the end turned out not to be all that much. Most of Benny's memories were about a future that was yet to happen and which may never happen. What she needed to know was about the Victor of the past.

  How do you secure the loyalty of a man who'd abandoned a life of wealth to become a warrior? A man lived in pursuit of what he perceived to be the greater good?

  "I suppose you're right," Victor said. "If there are monsters invading from another dimension, I don't see why we wouldn't just take this problem to the government and send in some rockets."

  "What if we already know that won't work?" she said.

  "How would we know that?"

  "Because I've seen the future."

  "Do you mean like a clairvoyant or a time traveler?" he asked.

  "Time traveler. But I can only jump backward into my own body."

  It was a risky lie because she didn't have a good way to prove it. With Tristis, she'd predicted the warehouse fire. Here, she was going to need some sleight of hand.

  Victor let out a loud, hearty laugh. "Wow! That's a good one. But bold. Very bold. All right. If you can prove to me that you're a time traveler, I'll believe everything else you have to say. Because if you really can turn back time, then why can't there also be magic and monsters?" He held up a finger. "But when I say prove, that means there can be no other explanation for it."

  "And you'll pledge allegiance to me?" she asked.

  Victor hesitated. This was a good sign. It meant that he was taking her question seriously.

  To understand Victor, you had to understand why he'd become a mercenary.

  Mercenaries often have a bad reputation as guns for hire. In many cases that reputation is well deserved. But in Victor's case he didn't need the money. Even now, if he wanted to return, his family would welcome him . . . maybe not with open arms, but certainly an open door, or maybe a window.

  "The reason you became a mercenary," she said, "is because you want to choose. A soldier doesn't have a choice. A soldier can't just quit because he disagrees with the wars his leaders have started. You want to do something worthwhile with your life. This is what I'm offering you, but it requires a leap of faith on your part."

  A man who has been disillusioned in the past will have trouble trusting again. This was the hurdle she had to overcome.

  "If I accept that you can really see the future," he said, "then I have to take it on faith everything you say. For something of this magnitude, the proof will have to be extraordinary."

  "But because of the nature of my power, I can only bring back knowledge," she said.

  "And it can't be something as simple as predicting the next person to walk down that path or the plate number of the next car to drive past," he added. "That wouldn't be extraordinary enough. Something like that can still be a trick, even if I can't see how it's done. The level of faith you're asking of me, the proof will need to be irrefutable."

  "And I can't do it often," she said. "The costs are significant. You can ask of me one demonstration."

  "I can ask you to predict the weather tomorrow, but we already have weather forecasters without time travel. I can ask for the moves on tomorrow's financial markets, but there are ways to manipulate those too. That wouldn't be hard for someone capable of magic."

  "You're thinking too far out," she said. "I still have much to show you tonight, so let's get this out of the way."

  "I'm thinking of a number," he said.

  "I could just get lucky."

  "A word then."

  "Only needs a bit more luck."

  "It's a word you'll never guess."

  "If we're going to do this, let's go for something that leaves absolutely no doubt," she said. "Your idea with the guessing game is that you'll tell me the answer and then I'll take the knowledge back in time. Right?"

  "Since the only way I can know for sure that it isn't a setup is if it's something involving me," he replied.

  "Until you start accusing me of using telepathy," she said.

  His frown told her that the thought hadn't occurred to him.

  "So let's try something telepathy-proof," she suggested. "What if I can tell you something from your past? Something that only you would know but haven't been thinking about. That would be proof that you've shared it with me in the future, wouldn't it?"

  After a moment's thought, he nodded. "I suppose it would."

  This had been her plan all along. To make use of the one thing that Benny remembered from Victor's childhood, the only weapon in her arsenal to win him over. Everything about tonight had been orchestrated to set up the conditions for her to use this piece of knowledge. Like a car dealer carefully shepherding a customer to the most expensive truck on the lot while making it feel like the only logical option for a young soldier holding his first paycheck.

  "When you were a child," she began, "your sister had a favorite toy."

  From the way his face froze, she knew she had him.

  "It was a small, white plushie," she continued. "Handmade. Crocheted. You aren't sure what animal. Maybe a bear, maybe a lion. You're sure your sister remembers, but you're afraid to ask her."

  Victor had closed his eyes, and it looked like her words were bringing him pain. But he didn't ask her to stop, so she continued.

  "Why was this toy so important?" she said. "Surely there's nothing a family of your means can't replace. There are many toymakers in the Litten Dominion. Any of them can make an identical toy from identical materials.

  "What made this toy irreplacable was that it was a gift from your grandmother. She made it herself. A hobby, and her only creation before she tragically passed away. And your sister cherished it. It was yellowed from all the handling and all the little tea parties. She refused to let anyone wash it. You weren't even allowed to touch it. She used to get angry with you every time you took it off its shelf."

  Victor had his face buried in his hands. In that moment, this giant man looked so small.

  "One day the toy went missing. Your sister searched for weeks, hoping it had just fallen from its shelf and got swept into a forgotten corner. Your father thought one of the staff had stolen it. He questioned everyone. For weeks it seemed like they were all going to lose their jobs. You felt terrible, but you couldn't bring yourself to own up. That you had taken the toy and burned it. All for a reason you were too ashamed to tell me."

  Victor was shaking his head while his eyes remained distant. "No. I wouldn't be holding back out of shame. But because I'm not entirely sure of it myself."

  As is often the case with the actions we most regret, the shame lingers long after the reasons have faded from memory.

  He continued, "Luckily my father never ended up firing anyone. Maybe if he had, I would have mustered the courage to speak up. I don't know. Maybe what ended up happening was worse. There was a shadow that hung over the house and never went away."

  She let him stew silently in his thoughts. This was the final part of the performance she'd composed for him, and it was a part that he must dance alone.

  There was a reason she hadn't come right out with this story. When you only have one line to deliver, it's important not to speak it too soon. You want it to have maximum impact, and for that, the audience must be ready to receive. Telling Victor this story when they first met would have only raised his hackles. He wouldn't have accepted it as proof of time travel but treated it as a matter of suspicion. And if she then managed to talk him back on the path toward this point, he would have asked for a second proof. A proof that she couldn't give.

  At last Victor spoke.

  "Can you show me magic? Can I see the monsters?"

  She smiled. There is that moment when you're scaling a mountain and you manage to get one leg up over the ledge. There's still work to be done, but the hardest part is behind you.

  "There's a dungeon not far from here," she said. "I'll show you everything."