Unchained Beauty (The Deadly Beauties Live On 5)

ELLA

Kimber pops into the cellar I’ve invaded, and I blink in surprise.

“You came,” I say, glancing at my phone that still doesn’t have a returned call or message from her since last night when I told her what I planned to do—after I held the baby and watched Slade slink off into the night without me, leaving me behind with my family to pick up the pieces of the safe house while quarantining the newest immortal-soul-eating member and her mother.

“Like you said, this isn’t just about saving you or Slade,” she says, disappearing then returning with a huge white board in tow.

“What’s that?” I ask, confused as she starts setting it up.

“This is a thousand and one timelines with important events. Each line represents another timeline he tried to alter the future, and it shows where the lines intersect for the main events, and which details have changed. The red line is our current, and obviously the most important, timeline. There are still events that overlap, but a lot has also changed. Amy dying as a First is a new change,” she says quietly, pointing at it. “She died usually every time during the battle with the anointed, because Leah killed her. We didn’t even realize we were living on borrowed time with her.”

I exhale shakily, nodding.

“Leah’s a big change from the original timelines,” I say, watching her grimace.

“It’s hard to picture her as one of them.”

“It could be one big reason Slade hated her even more than Roslyn,” comes Kya’s voice from the top of the stairs, causing us both to dart a gaze up.

“What’re you doing here?” Kimber asks in confusion.

“She’s the only person who cares about Slade as much as I do, so I pulled her aside last night before I left to go find him,” I tell Kimber, resuming my task of writing down all the important new variables just this version of Slade has created. “Slade will be able to convince everyone else in the family that I’m wrong and he’s right about how much power I actually have. Everyone seems to doubt me, understandably so,” I explain.

She just stares at me for a second.

“And they won’t really care if he dies in my place,” I go on. “It’ll make them hope for the best that he at least weakens Hannah enough for the rest of us to kill her.”

“I’m still a little confused, but at the same time, it makes sense now that I’ve put thought into it. There’s a reason Slade never wanted me to read, and the slave language is certainly not a language I’ve seen in that book. Trust me. I tried to make it appear,” Kya says.

“Speaking of the journal, where is it?” Kimber asks.

“Back with Slade, though I wrote down as many of the equations as I could,” I tell her.

“I have all the important ones already jotted down from last night when you left it with me before the red moon,” she confesses. “I might have also started working on this before you told me what you wanted to do, because I knew what you would do,” she adds.

“If I’m going to help,” Kya says, jogging the rest of the way down the stairs, “you better ensure me there’s a way to keep you both alive. I’ll put Slade out of his misery myself if you make all his pain pointless,” she tells me pointedly, brokering no room for argument.

“It’s bigger than just the two of us,” I tell her seriously, not admitting how much I really need to save him.

“He’s earned the right to save you,” she adds.

“I know. If there’s no other way out of this, I will do all I can to give him that.”

We stare at each other for a minute before she finally gives me one nod of her head. “Then let’s get started. He’ll be looking for you soon.”

“And I’ll let him find me later, while you two continue to work, then I’ll return when he goes off to run his own army and do his Slade stuff,” I tell them, looking over Kimber’s timelines.

We start discussing the numerous things that have changed, argue over unimportant facts, get annoyed with how much hasn’t changed, despite the fact it really should have, and then argue over what variables are important.

Kimber’s right; it’s really hard to change the future. More so than I ever would have thought.

“We should consider all differences important.”

“Dragonites are different.”

“Only from some timelines,” Kimber points out. “In others, they still appear on the same night. In the ones they don’t appear, Ella gets possessed and her soul gets destroyed on that night, using that cosmic burst.”

“If it was easy for her to destroy souls, she’d have already destroyed Morgana’s, but she hasn’t,” Kya tells us. “Even if Morgana has mentally checked out and no longer really exists in there, her soul is still stuck. Destroying a soul means Hannah would have to infuse her own demonic soul with the new body,” she continues. “And to do so, she needs that extra cosmic boost, but she’d also be easier to kill.”