“I have to keep going,” I tell him. The spell book sits on the table like a warning. Now that Latham is on to me, I don’t know how much time I have. And I shouldn’t leave the bones out of the nutrient solution for too long—if the bone dries out, it will die off and lose its ability to heal. I pick up a sewing needle. “Maybe blood will make things easier.” I prick my finger. Speckle Gran’s bones in crimson. Try again.

I stand at the branch point between two paths. On one, Latham’s father not only succeeds in having Avalina’s parents imprisoned, but manages to secure the same fate for her as well. On the other path, Avalina goes back to Leiden after she’s dismissed from Ivory Hall. I already know what happens on the second path, so I turn down the first.

And I’m suddenly back in Midwood, standing in my bedroom. I hover above the vision and turn in a slow circle. The blood must have connected me to my own future on this path and not Latham’s. I’m just about to pull my fingers from the bone and try again when my mother walks by, her arms full of boxes.

“Saskia,” she calls, “could you come in here and give me a hand?”

All the breath leaves my lungs. My mother. Alive in the future.

I sink deeper into the vision, until I feel as if I’m one with the Saskia who responds.

“Be right there.”

I follow myself into the kitchen, where my mother is carefully placing dishes into boxes.

“I don’t want to go,” I tell her.

She leans across the table and strokes my cheek with the back of her hand. I can feel her fingers against my face, smell the sweet vanilla fragrance that she used to dab behind each ear. My chest fills with an exquisite blend of joy and grief, expanding so quickly, I feel like I might burst. I desperately want to control this future version of myself. To force her to lean in, to fit herself into the hollow at my mother’s side and the safety I always felt there.

But I’m helpless to do anything except watch.

“I know you don’t, bluebird, but it’s not safe here anymore.”

Outside the vision, I want to scream questions. Not safe where? Midwood? All of Kastelia?

“Maybe we won’t have to leave,” I watch myself say. “Maybe the vote won’t go through.”

My mother purses her lips. “It will. It’s a sham vote designed to avoid an uprising. By this time next week, Kastelia will be a kingdom, and Latham will be sovereign.”

The vision ends abruptly, and I pull away from the bones, gutted.