Over the next several days, I got desperate.

I managed to slip Elise a note as I passed her in the hallway the day after my dinner with Calen, and we began a tentative, covert communication channel. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. I'd take any allies I could get.

The idea that Calen had actually died and come back to life terrified me, but I was just as horrified that I'd done it to him. The moral implications weighed on me, warring against the idea that if I didn't manage to end him somehow, so many more people would face death. Some would face circumstances even worse than death, no doubt, forced to live their lives under Calen's thumb. I could justify it, yes, but it didn't make me feel any better about what I had to do.

Maybe that was a good thing, I reasoned. Maybe it meant that I hadn't let my hate and fear take over my sense of reason and humanity.

The problem was, of course, that I still had to kill him in a way that stuck. Poison wasn't on the docket, obviously. I felt sick to my stomach with the idea of slitting Calen's throat, so I hadn't tried that yet. I also hadn't tried strangulation or suffocation, but I'd certainly wondered about it.

The strictly scientific part of me wondered if dumping him in a volcano or chaining him to the bottom of the ocean would work, something that would keep him from regenerating. Or... at least something that would continue to kill him as fast as he regenerated.

The emotional part of me reeled at the thought. Killing him once would probably be more merciful than an eternity of torture in which he died over and over.

The rational part of me put all of that to the side, though, because there was no volcano anywhere near Virginia, and I didn't have any idea how I might manage to get Calen to the bottom of the ocean. There was no point in considering it if it wasn't a productive possibility.

The one thing I couldn't figure out, though, was why Calen's Threads hadn't grown back after I clipped them the night he drank poison. Most Threads grew back with time, knitting themselves back into the natural order of the universe in some way. The energy went somewhere else, the threads fought back to re-form, or something else happened, but his... didn't.

It looked more like dying plants withering away than Threads, which usually protested against being cut. Energy wanted to flow where the Threads were, and Threads formed along the easiest paths. Calen's didn't behave normally, though, and I couldn't figure out what that meant for me.

I was so caught up in my ruminations that I almost crashed into a poor, unsuspecting man walking down the hallway towards the dormitories.

He stopped suddenly, looking up at me with wide eyes. His face was suntanned and freckled, and a mop of dark, unruly curls flopped over his forehead. I'd never seen him before, but that brief moment of eye contact felt like a jolt.

I blinked, shuffling backwards awkwardly.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention," I mumbled, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. Not everyone in the building was loyal to Calen. The least I could do was be polite, even if he interrupted... my... well, murder plans.

That made me feel sick to think about, and I made a mental note not to phrase it that way again until the deed was done.

"It's fine," he said, shaking his head. "Just... ah, take care."

Something tickled a reflex in the back of my brain, something about the way he waved a little awkwardly, something about the quirk of his lips as he spoke. I opened my mouth to introduce myself, but he just slipped around me and walked away, back to whatever he'd been doing.

Strange.

Most of the people here seemed to know who I was, and they greeted me by name. The purple hair was a bit of a giveaway.

I found myself staring at the man as he turned away, continuing down the hall like nothing had changed at all. I could see the outline of Calen's cursed tattoo on his forearm, visible below the rolled-up sleeves of his plain button-down shirt.

Where had I seen him before?

I swore I'd seen him.

It was a bit too late before I thought to call up the Threads. I should have known better by then, known to trust my instincts and intuition. Instead, I decided to shrug it off, take a few deep breaths, and continue walking around the building in circles until I came up with a more plausible plan to murder Calen.

I'd never imagined anything even remotely like that on my daily schedule, but sacrifices had to be made.

"Sunday, come here."

Speak of the devil. I sighed and turned towards his voice, unsurprised to see him peeking out of his office door. Usually, I tried to avoid this hallway at all costs. This time, though, I'd been too distracted to think much about it.

"What?" I deadpanned, plodding over. Sure, I was supposed to be cooperative, but under no circumstances did I have to act like I enjoyed it.

"Keep me company a while," he said, gesturing to the open door.

Great. This wasn't the first time he'd asked, and I was pretty certain it was just to keep an eye on me. I shrugged and went inside, mentally preparing myself for whatever might come next. Sometimes we just sat in silence while he worked. Sometimes he tried to make conversation. Once, he'd tried to kiss me.

I punched him. He hadn't tried again since.

I grabbed a book at random from the shelf and plopped on the sofa, starting to turn pages. It was one I'd read before, or at least skimmed over. I mostly needed to keep up the appearance of reading. In reality, I wanted to examine Calen's Threads.

He hadn't seemed to notice when I cut the Threads at dinner, and he certainly couldn't tell the difference between the old soul mate Thread and the new one I'd woven in place as a temporary replacement. With luck, he wouldn't notice me messing with them.

I liked to use my hands for my magic, but I didn't need to. I worked in a way that was almost like astral work, my magic on another dimension with the Threads while my body stayed in place.

Calen started to ramble about something, but his voice melted into the background as I worked. My eyes were open, but I wasn't looking at the book. I also wasn't looking at Calen. I was in a middle space where Threads ran everywhere, including Calen's chaotic, tangled pattern of them.

And, there, I started to cut.

I couldn't risk going for his lifeline. That was the main Thread that kept everyone connected to their futures, and the second I started working on it, he would notice. I also couldn't risk fiddling with the Thread between the two of us. He'd notice that for sure.

Instead, I worked on the fringes of his swirling pattern of attachments. There were a few, tiny, fraying Threads that went from him on into who knew where. They represented fading attachments, and they were normal for anyone, but they were also the easiest to snip away without notice.

I didn't want to snip something I didn't examine first, though, even if it was fading. I latched onto the Thread, willing it to show me what was at the other end, where it was coming from, who it was connected to. I expected something mundane, like a long lost family member, but instead, I saw someone I recognized.

A blonde woman smiled back at Calen in the memory from the Thread. Her hair was immaculately curled and she was dressed in Victorian style, holding a parasol in one hand as she smiled.

It was Elizabeth- my English past incarnation, the one who went to the theater with Calen, the one whose diary I'd read. I couldn't forget her if I tried, not after what I'd learned about her death. She was a part of me, and... she was still connected to Calen?

That didn't seem possible. At the very least, I hadn't ever seen someone connected to past lives of someone else, but this was a special situation. Elizabeth wasn't even connected to me, or... I didn't think she was? I'd never examined my Threads too closely, especially the fading ones. I'd never looked for past lives- after all, I didn't even think past lives were real until recently!

I wasn't sure if it was instinct, a repulsed reflex, or something else, but I snipped that Thread without even thinking twice. That attachment wanted to fade, but Calen was holding onto it somewhere in the depths of his psyche, weaving it into his very existence. I wanted to get her away from him, to free her, and so... I cut it.

I almost expected some kind of rebound or relapse, but there wasn't one. The Thread didn't put up a fight. In fact, it almost seemed to fade into a wisp, like a sigh on the wind as it floated away.

Panic rising, I had to fight to maintain concentration as I latched onto another one of the fading Threads, looking for a hint of who it might be connected to. It was another woman, and this time I could see a fleeting vision of her soul mate mark.

It looked like mine.

I checked another Thread and another, scanning the fading wisps as quickly as I could, but they all turned out the same.

The small, shimmering Threads all held memories of my past lives. They were all connections to my past selves, to my soul, to parts of me that were long gone and deserved their rest.

I jolted back into myself, mildly sick to my stomach, mentally cursing a blue streak. Those Threads should have resolved with their deaths, but they hadn't. Due to Calen's unnaturally long lifespan, he still had part of that attachment, and they weren't free of him even now... wherever they were.

But... when I cut Elizabeth's thread, it did let go. It died. It unraveled...

Calen rambled on. He hadn't even noticed that I wasn't paying attention. Either that, or he didn't care, had written me off as not being able to do any harm.

"-as a child while witches were burned does things to you," Calen said. "All my life, our kind have been burned. You should understand that I'm doing this for the good of all of us."

I snorted.

He was making a cult with the goal of destroying sylvans and humans so that witches were the only ones left. Fundamentally, genetically, that wouldn't work. We knew that from speaking with the Sylvan Council and from my memories as Ataraxia. Either Ataraxia had never told Calen about the true origins of magic and the need for biological variation, or she'd purposefully kept it from him once she understood how absolutely unhinged he was. In either case, I wasn't interested in trying to explain it to him.

I also wasn't particularly interested in his life story, and I was about to tell him to stuff it where the sun doesn't shine, but then I realized that this might be a helpful conversation after all. I still wasn't interested in Calen's life, but I certainly was interested in the witch burnings, especially if they involved any real witches.

After all, I needed to kill a time witch.

"Always wondered why they burned them... Seems like a weird choice if they needed to kill someone," I muttered, hoping Calen would take the bait.

"Mostly symbolic," he said, shrugging. "Fire as purity. They drowned them, too. Dead is dead."

Dammit. So much for that theory.

"Seems a little silly that they couldn't magic their way out of that," I grumbled, mostly to myself.

"The real ones did." Calen scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Please, you think real witches stood there while flames slowly burned them alive? Hardly. You want to burn a witch, do it all at once."

Well, at least that was one potential death scratched off the list. I could add that to several different types of poison.

"Nice try," Calen said, snorting. "I know what you're thinking, and you're not subtle."

I rolled my eyes. I wasn't really trying to be subtle at this point. If I knew it wouldn't work, there was no point in trying it. As much as I hated him, every attempt on his life also felt like it hacked away at something in me, and I didn't want that.

"Kay," I muttered, flipping another page in the random book I'd picked off the shelf.

That was, apparently, the wrong thing to say.

Calen stormed over to the chair where I sat and ripped the book from my hand, his dark eyes burrowing into mine with a fury that sent chills down my spine. I didn't back down, glaring right back at him. He couldn't scare me out of rebellion.

"Cease your attempts on my life at once," Calen snapped, grabbing my hand as he had during the witch's promise. "Remember: there are other lives on the line."

There were... sort of.

I was supposed to do as I was told. This was the first time he'd actually said anything specific about not trying to kill him, and the witch's promise would adapt to that as surely as it would adapt to protect Callie for me.

It was annoying, but not a terrible setback. Even if I couldn't actively attempt to kill him without endangering my family via the witch's promise, I could still plan for it. Until the promise was broken, though, I couldn't do anything without risking it backfiring on my family members in unpredictable ways.

I yanked my hand free from Calen's grip, shoving him to the side so I could stand.

"Where do you think you're going?" he scoffed.

"On a walk," I grumbled, determined not to let him see me frustrated. I could be as angry as I wanted while I stomped around the building. At least that way, I wouldn't have to hear his mind-numbing voice anymore.

I stomped towards the door of Calen's office, not bothering to hide my annoyance as my boots thudded against the creaky wooden floorboards.

"We are inevitabilities of each other, Sunday!" he called as I left, laughing. "As long as you exist, so do I!"

I slammed the door behind me, pissed that in a way, he was right. I wanted to scream at the closed door, but I knew it wouldn't do any good.

His magic was a result of my- of Ataraxia's magic. If the Moon Goddess hadn't gifted her with the Weaver ability, then the Hourglass would never have formed in the first place. It wasn't like we could time travel and change history, either. I wasn't stupid. I understood that changing the course of history that drastically and that far back would have intense, unpredictable consequences.

Thus, I had very limited options. As long as he had his magic, I couldn't kill him. That was the entire reason that my last incarnation decided to sacrifice herself. She was hoping to muffle his magic drastically by removing the Weaver from the equation, and...

I slowed to a stop in the middle of a random hallway.

Something clicked in my brain.

There was a reason that our magic had temporarily disappeared when I ripped apart that cord between us. Both of us still existed, so both magics still existed, but the lack of a tie made it difficult for that connecting balance to exist. One of us couldn't exist without the other. One magic couldn't exist without the other.

My Threads connected us. My Threads connected me to all of my other lives, too, somewhere along the way. If I was careful about it, I could look to those attachments for help. I could find a way to turn them to my purpose instead of his, and maybe affect his magic in the process.

My heart pounded in my chest, a wave of sudden lightheadedness washing over me.

I knew how to kill him now.

... Or, at the very least, I thought I did. The only problem was that it might kill me, too. Maybe, if I was very unlucky.

Even so, at least it should end us both this time. For good.

I really, really didn't want to die. I wasn't a selfless martyr, and I liked living, but if that was what it took... then I needed to plan. I needed to let him see me storm off, and then I needed to sit and take notes.

Neither of us were at full strength yet, though I was sure Calen wouldn't admit that even if pressed. I couldn't just take him out, either. Even with Calen gone, there was still a massive cult already set up with plenty of people to continue his plans. We were past the point of this stopping with Calen's death, unfortunately. The plan had to end with his death, but it also had to be more than his death.

I had work to do.