“Okay,” Saxony said. “There’s still just one problem.”

“Of course you have a problem,” Wesley said.

Saxony turned to him, hands on her hips like a scolding parent. “You can get through Creije blindfolded. And, Many Gods, maybe the three of us could too. We could run through the shadows unseen. We could become shadows. But that’s four people, not an army.”

The three of them looked at each other in silence, their frowns a mirror, and the exasperation in the air like a wave of darkness dimming any light they saw in their plan.

Thankfully, Tavia wasn’t so easily swayed.

“Time,” she said. “We could use time to sneak everyone into the city.”

“Like bang, one moment we’re here and the next we’re in the future, on Ashwood’s doorstep?” Wesley asked.

Saxony shook her head. “Time doesn’t work that way. You can’t just skip over it like it’s not there.”

“But you can pause it.” Tavia’s smile was low. “Like we did with Wesley’s explosive barrels back on Ashwood’s hidden island.”

Saxony’s head whipped to face her and a wide grin spread across her lips.

Her grin mirrored Wesley’s so alarmingly that Tavia almost blinked. Many Gods, the similarities between them were so blinding that she felt a little ashamed not to have noticed before. How the lines of their faces curved in the same way and their eyes narrowed in equally frightening measure and when they were both at their most dastardly, their smiles set fire to the skies.

“We can pause everyone but us,” Saxony said. “Make our army immune just like we did before.”

“Do you think Schulze will go for it?” Tavia asked. “It’ll mean using Crafter magic, and we all know how much the Doyen hates that.”

“She’ll go for anything that keeps her in power,” Wesley said.

Good priorities, Tavia thought.

She’d be happy when it was over so she could keep clear of any future political battles and the arrogant little bastards who wanted to argue over who got to rule the world.

“Then the four of us can easily sneak into Creije and head for the bridge that divides the city,” Tavia said. “Detonate the time barrels from there, giving half our army the chance to cross into Yejlath unseen and the other half the upper hand when they attack Ashwood’s forces in Creije.”

“But we’d need something lighter than barrels,” Wesley said. “It’d take at least a dozen to cover the length of the city, and that’s too much for the four of us to carry.”

“The Star Egg!” Tavia said.

She knew that bastard Nolan would come in handy somehow.

“It’s a dispersion device. All we need to do is load a bunch of them up with the time magic, then set them off and watch them rain down on the entire city.”