She at least had the grace to look vaguely embarrassed at the reminder. “No,” she said pointedly, setting her shoulders and lifting her chin. “And you weren’t a prisoner before, I was just trying to—”
“I’m teasing you,” I interrupted. “Settle down. Where is everyone else?” I asked, suddenly worried for my friends. I remembered sending them all off to InterWorld, but . . . “Are they okay?”
“They’re here,” she reassured me, nodding. “They’re all down at the docks. We’re getting your ship fixed up,” she added with a smile.
“My ship . . . ?”
“InterWorld,” she clarified. “Duh.”
“You really just said duh.”
“Yeah, I did. I’m a Time Agent, I can use whatever slang I want.”
“I’m glad to see you feeling better, young man,” her father interrupted, and we both quieted. “But I do have other patients to attend to. You are free to go, with escort, and the bracelet on your wrist can be used to call for medical aid if you need it.”
“Thanks, Daddy,” Acacia said, and he smoothed her hair back affectionately as he went by. My heart ached.
“Thank you,” I managed. I waited until he was gone, then lowered my voice. “Is that really your father?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “And my mother is currently on deck, and Avery is really my brother.” I was going to ask her what “on deck” meant, but her smile faded and she glanced off toward another of the hospital beds. I followed her gaze, noting the sheathed sword leaning up against the wall near the headboard. I couldn’t see who occupied the bed, but by the sword, I assumed it to be Avery.
“Is he okay?” I asked. She bit her lip, forehead wrinkling as her eyes watered.
“Probably,” she said, her voice tight. “Dad’s taking really good care of him. I’m just . . . we lose people all the time.”
“I know how that is,” I said.
“I know you do.” She took my hand again.
“Is he your only sibling?” I asked after a moment. I was genuinely curious; I had wondered, once, if TimeWatch was an organization made up of Acacias like InterWorld was made up of Joeys, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
“No,” she said, looking a little happier. “I have an older sister and a younger one. And a ton of aunts and uncles and cousins.”
“So, TimeWatch is basically . . . just your whole family?”
“It’s a few different families. Mine, and a couple of others. They aren’t exactly my cousins. . . . It’s hard to explain. Suffice to say you aren’t the only one with other versions of you running around.”
“Oh, no.” I said. When she looked at me quizzically, I squinched my face carefully into an expression of distaste. “There’s more than one of you?”
“You’re a jerk,” she told me.
“Am not,” I said. “I’ve just had a bad . . . everything.” The truth of it hit me and I looked away, recalling how much I’d been through and how much I still had to grieve for. “Acacia . . . when you found your way back to InterWorld and Avery said you were out of sync with our timestream, or whatever . . . When you told me my world was in FrostNight’s path . . .” I started. She hung her head. “You said you’d try to help,” I continued, tilting my head to try to look into her eyes. “You said TimeWatch would help, and you didn’t—”
“We did,” she said sharply, lifting her head again. “My aunt died there. She did everything she could.”
I felt a little better knowing they’d tried, and also felt bad that she’d lost someone there, too—was that what I’d seen in all the chaos, when I thought there had been a woman there with the Old Man?—but I was still upset that whatever they’d done hadn’t helped. “It was still destroyed. I’m sorry you lost your aunt, but what did she do, exactly?”
“She reversed it,” Acacia snapped, trying to pull her hand from mine. I let her, trying to keep my expression calm, to reassure her I just wanted answers. “She couldn’t actually stop FrostNight from wiping the world clean, but she created a custom timestream for it. It’ll run parallel to the anchor, now.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means it was restarted rather than destroyed, and it’ll progress faster than others of its timestream would as compared to a fixed point.”
“The anchor.”
“Yes.”
“And what’s the anchor?”