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“No, Aella. That’s not what I said.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I didn’t say control. I deliberately didn’t say control.” He leaned forward in his seat, pinning me with his stare. “We weren’t given these powers to have control over the afterlife or time. Time willnotbe controlled. You are only a bridge to the past. You’re not its master.”
“All right, fine,” I cried, throwing up my hands, “but I can still learn how to travel back to where I want to go.”
“What you can do is drive yourself insane trying. I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You think you can go back to the night your mother was taken and make it so it never happened.”
“Is that what you’re thinking?” Selene laughed, making my lips curl. “Silly, stupid girl.”
“So what if I am?” My voice shook. “I can do it. I can try.”
“You can’t, Aella.” Sebastian’s reply was soft. Gentle. Pitying.
It made me feel worse.
“A person’s thread is already determined. Some things can be changed, yes. Different roads can be taken. But something like that...” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no.”
“You don’t know. How the hell would you know? You don’t get to decide!”
Sebastian’s expression didn’t break in face of my anger. “I do know, and so do you. If you think about it. Really think, you’ll see that it’s not possible because you don’t have control over the past. You have the ability to manipulateyourpast. How can that be enough when it’s not just you involved?
“Okay, maybe you could go back to that night. Even more, you could go back far enough, warn your mother they’re coming, and clear out before those monsters ever burst through your door—making it so that night never happens—”
“Exactly, yes. I—”
“But then they track you down the next night in your new home and hiding place, and grab her then. So you go back and make a different choice, and hide in a different place, so they track you down there. Then again, and again. Running and running. Never stopping. Never having a home. Never safe because he always finds you.”
He?
“That’s the thing, Aella. Some things aren’t predetermined because fate’s a bitch. They’re predetermined because our enemies are. When there’s someone on your thread who won’t stop until your life is ruined, hiding in the past won’t protect you. They’ll keep coming until your thread unravels, or is cut short.”
His words were so similar to what Loukia said in her book it made a shiver go up my spine.
“You tell me,” he said, voice low. “This Selene. Does she seem like the type to give up?”
Slowly, achingly, I shook my head no while Selene laughed in my ear.
“Then you know a happy future with you and your mother safe and free, doesn’t lie in the past.”
“Okay,” I rasped. “Okay, I get it.”
“I am sorry, you know.” He sounded it. “You should’ve been safe outside the barrier. Free from war, death, and pain. Free to live your life by your own choices. It’s what your father wanted for you.”
Tears filled heavy on my lids.
“No matter what we do, a demigod is never free. How can you be when the shackles are clamped around your soul?”
It was hard not to agree with him. My life with Mom wouldn’t have been destroyed if eighteen years ago, some damn goddess of fate had fucked off and kept her links and bridges out of my soul.
“Everything my mother sacrificed,” he hissed, fists balling. “And I still ended up right here. Doing my duty whether I like it or not.”
Sebastian got to his feet. “Let’s go.”
“Go?” I swiped at my eyes, banishing the tears. “Go where?”
“You held up your end of the deal. I’ll hold up mine. I’ll show you what the dryads told me.”
