Even as I’m racing full-out, I can sense that something is wrong. There is something . . . unreal about what I’m experiencing. I get to the door right as it closes behind young Nicole and Griffin.

“There’s still time,” I gasp, reaching for the closing door. “I can still—”

My fingers glide right through the golden handle.

“What the—?”

I try to grab the handle, the door itself, anything, but my hand moves through the surfaces as if they’re nothing more than illusion.

In a last-ditch effort, I step fully through the door, no longer shocked to find myself standing the nursery just as Griffin is about to deliver the immortality-killing dose.

“NO!” I scream.

Tears streak down my cheeks as I watch my young self cheer Griffin on as he feeds the drops of golden liquid to the baby.

Footsteps echo in the hall outside the nursery.

I know what’s coming—who’s coming. Hera and her entourage are on their way to check on the baby, and they’re going to find him drained of his immortality, with me and Griffin standing over the crib.

I can’t watch.

As the queen enters the room, I walk through a side wall, into an unused chamber.

My first response is disbelief. After everything I’ve been through, everything my friends and I have worked hard to achieve, I can’t believe it amounted to nothing. I visited Olympus, Poseidon’s palace, and Hades. I confronted the god of time, the queen of the underworld, and finally the Fates themselves. All those challenges, all those successes can’t have been for nothing.

My second response is anger. Wrath. Pure, unadulterated fury. I met every requirement. I overcame every obstacle. I’ve earned the right to fix things. I’ve earned the right to be something more than a pawn in some twisted game.

I let out a primal scream, putting all of my fury and frustration into the release.

But the release doesn’t come. The fury doesn’t release, and I feel like a bottle of soda ready to explode as soon as someone loosens the cap.

There is only one way to relieve the pressure.

“Moirae!” I scream. “You tricked me! Your own daughter, you cheated me like the gods have been cheating humans for millennia! How dare you? Cowards!”

I just want to yell. I just want them to know how betrayed I feel—about everything. I know they can hear me, even in the future.

I don’t expect them to show up.

When the three sisters shimmer into the spot in front of me, they don’t look the least bit embarrassed. They should be ashamed or contrite or at least look guilty as Hades for sending me on a goose chase to the past.

But no, they look completely undisturbed.

“You tricked me,” I accuse.

“It was no trick,” the middle-aged one says.