Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(72)

“Hold these threads to you,” Aetas told his followers. “Protect them. Feed them into the world. Ensure time continues to unfold. If you grow weak, come to me where I stay with my sister beneath the water. I will give you what strength I can.”

His followers flocked to the shore. They cupped their hands in the water and whispered their hopes and fears to Aetas, who smiled at them from below.

Several years passed in this way. Time servants visited the shores and prayed to Aetas, and fed their energy into time. Every second, every minute, every hour of every day was a blink and a breath to them, necessary and instinctive.

Then the sky began to darken, a rumble deep and building, and lightning sliced into Caelum’s domain like a serpent’s tongue.

Oceana knew it was Chronos. “He is waking up,” she told Aetas. “He must know what you have done.”

Aetas knew this, and knew he could not run from Chronos’s wrath. He had done what was necessary to make certain the earth would be well kept. If he was to be punished for his care, so be it.

The sky growled and lightning bit. The waters boiled. The earth shook.

Aetas stood on the ocean floor as the water above him parted, revealing a storm dark and looming. He told his sister Oceana to run, to find shelter from their creator.

On this spot, he waited for Chronos to descend.





Danny played with the cog in his pocket as he walked through Hyde Park. After Colton had given it to him, he had polished the cog until it shone. He would often take it out to spin it with his fingers, or roll it around his palm, but never in public in case anyone happened to see.

But as he walked through the park, taking in the couples strolling together, he reached into his pocket for its comfort.

He was on his way to see Matthias. Danny had been furious when he learned that Matthias had suggested taking Danny off the Enfield assignments, but after some thought—and after losing his job—he realized his bruised feelings were the least of his problems. He needed someone to talk to. He needed his friend back.

It was time to tell Matthias about Colton.

Matthias would help him. He had been down this uncertain road, had faced the possibility of losing everything. Hopefully they could prevent history from repeating itself.

But when Danny knocked on the door of the white and blue house, no one answered.

Danny fiddled with the cog as he stared at the park, wondering if he could go to Enfield. But the Lead might be tracking his movements now, making sure Danny never stepped foot in a clock tower again. The reality struck low and hard, winding him. No more clock towers. No more time fibers winding through his fingers.

No more Colton.

“Damn it,” he whispered, putting his head in his hands.

He really was losing everything.

The door’s lock scraped, and Danny started. But it wasn’t Matthias behind the faded blue door. A woman peered out from the shadowed crack, narrowing her eyes against the brightness outside.

“Oh. Hullo.” Danny checked that he had the right house. “Is Matthias in?”

She stood a little straighter and shook her head. Danny shifted on the step, wondering how to make a polite getaway. But the woman leaned forward suddenly, scrutinizing his face, and then waved a small white hand at him.

“You may come in and wait.”

“Will he be long?”

“Not long.”

Danny stepped inside and thanked the woman as she closed the door behind him. She wasn’t dressed like a maid, and she couldn’t be Matthias’s housemate. To avoid staring at her, he looked around the house with a sudden thrill. He had never been inside before.

The hallway was narrow and painted almost the same shade of blue as the door. The stairs on his left were dark-stained wood, and a blue carpet runner stretched from the front door to a sitting room at the back of the house. The woman showed him to this room before she disappeared into the kitchen.

Danny was slightly disappointed; it wasn’t how he’d imagined the inside of Matthias’s home. For one thing, the man had grossly exaggerated the state of the house’s disrepair. Danny didn’t notice a single thing out of place. He examined paintings of seaside landscapes that hung along the hallway, all quite similar to one another, before he passed a few framed sketches of a clock tower. Matthias’s signature darkened the bottom right corners.

In the sitting room, Danny lowered himself onto a settee and waited for the woman to return. Or does she mean to leave me here? His leg bounced up and down as he eyed the trinkets on the bookshelves and read the spines of the many books collected there. Matthias and his father had loved collecting books. He saw a tome of classical mythology and touched the cog again. It could have been his imagination, but he swore that the small clock on the mantel ticked louder.

He turned and noticed the woman was standing in the doorway, staring at him. She held a tea tray in her hands, her head cocked slightly to one side. The pose tickled something in Danny’s memory, but he couldn’t think what.

“Tea,” she announced with a small smile.

He stood politely when she walked into the room and set the tray down on the low, wooden table in front of the settee. He could see now that she was a tall, willowy woman, with golden hair and sallow skin. Her eyes were a very light brown.

She sank gracefully into the armchair behind her, and he sat as well. The woman was wearing a lavender dress that fell to her ankles, but with no stockings or shoes. Her bare feet were graceful, like a dancer’s. Since she made no move to pour her own cup, Danny sat forward to pour it for her; it was what his mother would tell him to do. The woman leaned forward to accept the offered cup.