Page 107 of Across Eternity

No.

I stare at the hole, at her empty eyes.

I understand in a second’s time and yet I understand nothing. It’s Edouard who recovers first, who yanks me into the truck before I’m shot again. There’s a sharp pain in my abdomen but I ignore it.

“No,” I whisper to him, looking at Charlotte. “No, no. We can fix it!”

Edouard lifts my face. “You can’t fix this, Amelie. I’m sorry.”

Cece and Lucien are weeping, bullets are flying at the truck, and Charlotte—my sweet Charlotte who wanted to marry Daniel and live in Nanterre forever—is dead.

Shock and grief seem to empty me. Marie begins driving and I can only stare at my little girl, desperately trying to come up with a way to undo this. I begin shaking her, as if it’s a sleepy morning in Nanterre and she is refusing to wake. Edouard grabs my shoulders. “Amelie, she’s gone,” he says. “You need to pull it together.”

I look at him and hear his words, finally. And my grief is replaced by rage. Not clear and cold and rational the way it’s been in the past. This time I want to burn the world down. I want to kill those soldiers and the time traveler and everyone they’ve ever loved.

Henri wanted so much for me to put this behind us. But suddenly I know, in a way I never did before, that I am meant to feel this way. That I am meant to be ruthless, and to stop at nothing to keep the child inside me safe.

And I will start with the time traveler who made all this happen.

I picture her, standing on the hillside, and I land behind her.

There’s nothing dramatic about it. I don’t give her a speech about how she needs to pay for what she’s done, and I don’t ask her what she was after—warning her of my presence in any way will just provide her time to escape.

My arm goes around her neck and then, with the other hand, I snap it, just the way I was trained. She crumples to the ground. There’s no victory in it. She’s just another casualty, one of many who will die to bring the prophecy to fruition.

The soldiers firing at the truck turn their guns on me, but I’m already time traveling away, picturing the manhole cover by Genevieve’s as hard as I can.

I land, but another of those pains seizes my stomach and sends me to my knees, gasping. It makes the bullet wound in my shoulder seem minimal by contrast. A contraction, I suddenly realize. I should jump to my own time now, but there’s a chance Henri’s not dead. If he still lives, I can fix this. I can jump back to kill the time traveler sooner, before she put this plan in motion.

I begin to climb through the tunnel. My eyes adjust to the dim light—and I see a body at the other end. I crawl to it, knowing what I will find.

Henri.

His eyes are closed, and he looks boyish with those long lashes sweeping his cheeks, like a child who snuck off somewhere and fell asleep along the way. I press my lips to his cheek. His skin is cold, and I know that he is gone. I know it, and yet I remain beside him, trying to find an answer.

“Henri,” I cry. “Come back. Just come back.”

Another contraction hits, and my body jerks in response. I’m fading, being pulled to my own time whether I want to go or not.

I fight it for only a moment. It’s what Henri wanted. It’s what I already knew I had to do. I press my lips to Henri’s, one last time.

And then I’m gone.

51

SARAH

I land not in the tunnel, but on Genevieve’s basement floor, mid-contraction and in too much pain to push myself up, though I know this home must belong to someone else by now. I hear footsteps, running, and in a moment there’s a hand in mine.

Cecelia—adult Cecelia—is beside me. “I’m here,” she says. “You won’t have to do it alone this time.”

The contraction ends and I sit up, pressing my hands to my face, weeping. “Henri and Charlotte—”

Her hand is on my back. “I know.”

I only want to go back to him and yet I’d be refusing to give him the one thing he asked of me. My breaths are huge and gasping and painful, wrenched from my lungs. Another contraction comes and I can barely tell one kind of pain from the other.

“You need to focus now,” Cecelia whispers. “You’re about to bring my sister into the world.”