I woke up gasping for breath. If cutting Threads wasn't fun, turning back time might have been torture. It felt like your bones disintegrated into dust and then put themselves back together, leaving my muscles wobbling like jelly and a horrible, metallic taste in my mouth.

Blood. That was blood, I realized, though I didn't know from where, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to find out. My head felt like it was full of cotton balls, and not just in the sense of hearing. It was like I couldn't think too terribly hard about the events of the last couple of days, or else a serious headache started to build.

Did Calen get this, too, I wondered? Did he have to deal with this every time he rewound to try something a second or third or hundredth time?

Probably not, I wagered. In the same way that I didn't always directly pay the price for changes to the Threads, I imagined that Calen had his own special exceptions with his time magic. It probably didn't make him feel like he was ripped into two people, blended up, and then shoved into one person again.

At the very least, I remembered where I was and what I was supposed to be doing, though. That was enough for now.

I was lying in bed beside Dante, who was still sound asleep. I knew exactly which morning this was, too, because I remembered that I'd tossed my shoes very haphazardly by the settee when we... well... best not think about that right now.

It took a large amount of my self-control not to cry when I saw him breathing, safe, and whole, but I reminded myself that crying would amount to waking him up. I wouldn't put it past Calen to have someone ready to shoot if I didn't follow orders exactly how he wanted me to.

Part of me wanted to curl into bed, but there was too much at stake. I needed to get up, get dressed, and then figure out exactly what I had to do to wipe that time-leaping son of a bitch off the face of the universe for the rest of known time.

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't proud of the fact that I was certainly planning to murder Calen. I didn't know of another way to stop him, though. There wasn't any way to remove his magic permanently, at least not that I knew of, and... Well, if he was as old as I thought he was, removing his magic would kill him, anyways.

Calen had to die for the rest of the world to get out of this unscathed.

Of course, there was always the option that my last incarnation chose. She decided suicide was the better option, that removing the balance of power and rendering his magic as harmless as possible was the best solution.

I didn't want that, though. If that was the only remaining option, then I'd have to consider it, but I wanted to live.

After all, it seemed proven that I'd just reincarnate, anyways. My next incarnation would have to start from scratch, and I wasn't sure I wanted to put all my faith in some future version of me to figure things out and fix it. That seemed a little irresponsible when I had the tools to do something right now. Or, um, I thought I had the tools?

I may have, in a fit of sheer anger, woven something dark and desperate into the new Thread between Calen and I, but I didn't have any clue how I was supposed to make that happen. That part was always the tricky bit. Sure, you could put anything into the Threads that you wanted, but if you wove in winning the jackpot on a lotto ticket and never bought one, well... that can't happen.

For now, I knew my instructions: get dressed, get out, and find the assassin Calen sent before he killed Dante. I was supposed to give him a code phrase, and he'd go back with me.

Calen had the upper hand, and he knew it. No matter who he threatened, I'd go along with it for the sake of their safety, because that was who I was. I couldn't beat him by trying to strong arm him, but I might be able to use his own cockiness against him. He thought he had me in a corner without any other options, and in a way, he did.

However, I still had twenty minutes... and there might be eyes on the room, but there weren't eyes on the bathroom.

I didn't have a pen or paper in the bathroom, but I still had options. I had to leave something to warn him, to let them know I hadn't just left.

It took a bit of sifting, but I did find what I needed: a pot of eyeliner and a brush. Jackpot!

Working as quickly as I could, I left a message on the mirror in black, sparkling eyeliner, flushed the toilet to make it seem like a legitimate bathroom visit, and then left the room as quickly and quietly as possible.

I risked one more glance at Dante's sleeping form before I left, happy to see the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. Hand on the strap of my messenger bag, I closed the door soundlessly behind me.

When Dante woke, he'd see a very brief message on the mirror: RAY CHECK PASSAGE. S.

I crept through the hallways soundlessly in my worn boots, moving as quickly as I could towards the same secret passage that Ray had shown me before. It was the quickest way to get me out to the garden, where Calen's plant was waiting for me, but it would also offer me a small amount of privacy.

I had a notebook and pen in my messenger bag, and in the small area of the cobwebbed passage, I'd be able to hear if anyone opened the door to spy on me. I scribbled a quick explanation on the notepad in bullet points, mostly focusing on Calen blackmailing me, the possible attempts on Dante's life, and the address of the new base of operations where they could find me.

Closing the notepad, I tucked it halfway behind one of the exposed wooden structural beams, hoping it was sticking out right at about Ray's eye level.

Hopefully that would be enough.