I choose pressed further. Knowing that we were moving in a better more hopeful timeline. I just had to be sure I could hold time.
"Is there a version of this world where Knight and I work together and Diana lives a full life?"
"Yes."
Knight spoke at last, voice low.
"And what's the cost?" Knight asked, voice low, precise.
But before the Seer could answer, I cut in.
"No," I said sharply, eyes still fixed on the table. "What does he have to pay?"
Knight turned his head, slowly, and gave me that look he always did when he wasn't sure if I was trying to protect him or bait him.
The Seer, however, threw her head back and laughed.
It was a rich, crackling sound—like glass breaking in reverse, like a thunderclap that had waited a century to be heard.
"Oh, dear girl," she said, wiping an imaginary tear from her eye. "His payment was made a long time ago pull from right under you."
Knight didn't move, but something flickered behind his expression.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
The Seer's smile widened, sharp as the horizon. "It means you've been paying in installments. Across lifetimes. Across choices."
I inhaled slowly.
Of course he had. It was habit.
Knight frowned. "Then why don't I remember?"
The Seer leaned in, eyes glinting. "Because remembering was part of the price."
The Seer's eyes gleamed like polished obsidian, her fingers tracing the rune-line edge of the prophecy table as if drawing blood from stone.
"Let us begin, then," she murmured.
The air shivered.
No light. No sound. Just a shift—like the world took one deep breath and exhaled wrong.
And suddenly we were not in the House anymore.
We were there.
At the beginning.
Not the beginning of this life, or the one before it—but the beginning. The first time Diana stood at the center of it all. Magic too loud in her bones. Power building. The fault lines of fate opening like jaws beneath her feet.
I stood to her left, younger then—unscarred, unburned. Reckless in a way I can only envy now.
Knight stood on her right. Armor not yet broken. Eyes too clear.
The three of us in a line before the flame that would crack the world.
Trying to stop it.
The Seer's voice followed us like smoke.
"This was the first fall," she whispered. "She was too powerful. You were too late."
Diana was crying. Screaming. The bonds in her soul tearing open faster than they could seal. Magic surged out of her like a flood—and when it touched the sky, it fractured.
Cities burned. Oceans rose. The veil shattered.
Knight lunged forward, trying to stop it. I dragged him back.
"I said she wasn't ready!" I shouted.
"You said we were out of time!" he snapped.
And we both watched it collapse.
All of it.
The Seer let the scene freeze.
"You lost the world here," she said. "And you weren't the only ones who paid."
The vision shifted—colors smearing like wet paint across reality. Reassembling into something sharper. Smaller.
A temple. Old. Quiet. Lit by a thousand candles flickering in airless dark.
Two figures at the altar.
Me.
And Knight.
Kneeling.
Bleeding.
Each of us with a blade pressed to the palm of our own hand, magic circling in runes and ash between us.
"I remember this," I whispered.
Knight said nothing. His expression was blank—but his eyes moved.
The Seer stepped into the circle with us—not real, not exactly, but present.
"This was the deal you made," she said. "To buy the second chance."
Knight's voice was hoarse. "What did we give?"
She tilted her head toward him.
"You gave everything. Your memory. Your bond. Your role."
Then to me.
"And she gave what was left."
The spell completed—our blood falling into the carved basin, the magic flaring in one final ring of light.
The temple fell away.
Back to the House.
The Seer smiled softly.
"Now," she said. "Let's see what you do with it."
The Seer blinked once, and the air shifted again.
The threads snapped back into the table like strings released from tension. The vision—the temple, the altar, the beginning—melted away like frost beneath sunlight.
The library of the Seer's House reformed, shelves groaning into existence, the scent of candle ash and ink returning like a held breath released.
Without a word, the Seer lifted her hand—and the doorway behind us unlatched.
Stone shimmered into place.
We were no longer in the House.
We were in Knight's lair.
His sanctum.
Still dim. Still silent. Still steeped in that heavy, electric hum of old power buried in stone. I hadn't seen it in this life—not this close. But my bones remembered it.
My heart, unfortunately, did too.
Knight said nothing. He stood still at the center of the room, as if bracing for something else to be taken from him.
I sighed. Soft. Tired.
There wasn't anything left to say. Not yet.
So I moved automatically.
To the small shelf near the wall—polished obsidian and iron, still exactly where it had always been, like nothing about us had ever changed.
Without thinking, I pulled down two glasses.
I poured one for him.
One for me.
Knight turned, watching me in silence.
"You always did that," he said, his voice quiet now. "After we came back from the Between. You'd pour the drink before we even spoke."
I handed him the glass. "Muscle memory."
He took it.
Didn't drink.
Just stood there, holding it in his palm like it might tell him the rest of the story.
I raised my glass and drank mine.
It tasted like regret. And good whiskey.
"I'm going to need answers," he said at last.
I nodded. "Then you'd better start asking better questions."
It wasn't the type of conversation I was ready to have but it was happening anyway. There was no avoiding answering him truthful and I didn't have the heart to lie.