Wattys shortlist 2021. One morning the sun rises a few hours early, striking levitating skyscrapers in Soliara ahead of schedule. People in the streets stop to look up at the sky and then down at their watches. Most of them, puzzled but disbelieving...
I found Diana in a heap on a lounge couch. I touched her shoulder and shook her. It may not have been gentle. "Come with me," I said. I remembered the plan and I meant to follow it even though it came from him.
Diana sat up and blinked blearily. "Come," I said again. "Come with me and we'll get Milana to safety. Cristo was wrong, and he figured out he was wrong, and told me what to do. We have to vote for Marius."
She was getting to a stand and said, "I already did."
"The election hasn't happened yet," I snapped.
"I mean I promised," she said. "It's already taken care of. She'll be home before I am."
"So you did vote for him." Had Cristo been wrong about her defiance in the first place?
"I did?" she asked sleepily.
There really was no other way, though, even if he was wrong about that, wrong about a lot of things.
I left her where she was. I remembered the plan. I didn't remember that Nova was dead. I wanted to magic knowing out of my brain, I managed it without magic, I wanted to ask Marius if that was possible. He had a better grasp of theoretical magic science than even I did, I thought, because he would be the one to fix immortality. He would know the answer.
I found him and I promised. Justin Marius wanted me on his side, and I gave him what he wanted because that was the plan and what did anything . . . did it matter in the least? Future President Marius told me he would present me with a present, something beyond anything I could possibly imagine, beyond my wildest hopes and dreams. I don't have any hopes and dreams.
I told him whatever it is, I don't want it.
He said, "Yes, you do. Trust me. It's the only thing you ever wanted," and I have no idea what that means.
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Hand on the hidden gnomon, Franco charged finally at Ilan where the old man who looked no older than thirty with black hair and skin smooth and soft as the day his son was born and ageless as the day he buried his wife a gray haired old lady was looking out the window at the snow waiting for someone to kill him, waiting to see who it would be to come kill him.
Knowing he was defenseless and there was no other way and no way to stop it.
Or at least that's what Franco believed Ilan Potestas was thinking while he looked out the window like that. 'Believed' wasn't even strong enough, 'knew' might not even be either somehow. Maybe 'read,' as if he read the boss's mind. Franco read that the boss knew there was no other way and nothing he could do to stop it.
Lucian was there but Angelus had left. Lucian shot through the crowd to latch himself to Franco, but Franco didn't see him with his eyes on Ilan Potestas, a relic from a far away time, a far behind time, and time would forget him. Even his son would forget the price of the world they were about to make. The amendment they were about to make. An amendment to immortality.
