“Queen Caitlyn helped to write the Tear Constitution, and many of our current laws come from the time of her reign. It took her more than fifty years to design and build the Tear Parliament, but when she was seventy-seven, she finally handed over her government to Parliament and stepped down from the throne. The Tearling hasn’t had a monarch since!”
Kelsea absorbed this information quietly; it was not the ending she might have foreseen, but in hindsight it made perfect sense. A constitution and a parliament . . . it seemed a marriage of the best of pre-Crossing England and America. Katie might not have known that, but Lear would have, Lear who was a student of history. Katie would have needed all five of them, Gavin and Howell, Lear and Alain and Morgan, all of them with their different gifts. Kelsea found that she liked that, liked the thought of the five of them spending the next sixty years atoning for their crimes. Not many lifetimes, only one. It seemed fair.
“Her jewels are still right here!” the tour guide said breathily, indicating a display case that ran the length of the room. Kelsea peeked over her shoulder and saw them there: two sapphire necklaces, lying on a field of blue velvet. Unreality washed over her, and she had to clutch the edge of the glass case for a moment before she backed away.
When the tour ended, Kelsea followed the tour guide from the room, glancing uneasily back at the glimmer of sapphire in the sunlight, but it was already too late. Somewhere inside her, an alarm had gone off, the same alarm she had felt that first morning in the library. In her long history with these two jewels, they had always been double-edged, and though they no longer belonged to her—might never have belonged to her—they remained an uneasy reminder that nothing was easy. There was always a cost, and for the first time in many days Kelsea thought of Mace, of her Guard. Were they out there, somewhere? Some of them might never have been born; she had absorbed enough of Simon’s talk on the butterfly effect to understand that. But if Carlin was alive, perhaps some of her Guard might be too. Mace and Pen, Elston, Coryn and Kibb . . . she would give anything to see them again.
But could she find them? As she emerged, blinking, into the sunlight, and surveyed the broad horizon of the city before her, Kelsea felt daunted. It was a bigger world, this New London, and there was nothing comparable to the Queen’s Guard. Swordcraft was not valued. Her guards might not stand out at all.
But how could she not try? Something extraordinary had happened, a schism in the timeline of the world, and Kelsea suddenly realized that, more than anything, she had been longing for someone to talk to, someone who had been there with her. She still remembered the past, and if she remembered, surely others would as well. Even if they didn’t believe her about Katie and Row and the rest of it, they could at least talk about the Keep, about old times, about the world they all knew.
Two days later, she saw Pen.
She was at the grocer, looking for grapes—though it was early for them to be in season—when she caught sight of him, walking past just outside the window. Her heart gave a great leap and she dashed out of the grocer, shouting his name.
He did not turn around. He had a leather rucksack slung over his shoulder, and Kelsea followed the rucksack through the crowd, calling after him. He did not seem to hear her, and this made Kelsea wonder all over again if she were crazy, if this was only the most extensive and vivid dream anyone had ever had. Finally, she caught up with him and grabbed his shoulder.
“Pen!”
He turned and looked at her with no recognition at all. “I’m sorry?”
“Pen?” she asked uncertainly. “Isn’t it you?”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, “but I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. My name is Andrew.”
Kelsea stared at him for a long moment. It was Pen, in every detail . . . but he had a different name.
“I wish you a good day,” he told her, patting her shoulder, and then turned and walked away.
Kelsea followed. She was not foolish enough to approach him again—the lack of recognition in his face seemed to have frozen her heart—but she could not just let him disappear, not once she had found him. Keeping well back, she followed him through several streets, until he turned in at a small stone cottage, set well back from the road. As he headed up the front steps, a door opened, and Kelsea saw a woman standing there, a pretty blonde woman with a baby balanced on one hip. Pen kissed her, and they went inside and shut the door.