The Duke of Evernight stood before his changing seat, a ceremonial soup ladle in one hand and his now-adolescent mustache trembling with outrage.
"Let me summarize," he said, voice cracking mid-sentence. "My castle is unbuilding itself, my ghosts are fading, and my youngest daughter is currently winning a staring contest with the fabric of time?"
Across the war room, now missing two walls and half a ceiling the Duchess calmly sipped tea that kept unsteeping itself.
"Yes, dear."
A doll's head rolled past, still singing "Ring Around the Temporal Anomaly" in reverse.
The Duke poured himself a drink. The bottle unopened halfway through.
"I hate today."
…..
The Duchess' embroidery needle flashed as she stitched forward through time, a skill learned from watching Evangeline's mark undoing. Each thread pulled tightened against reality's erasing edges.
"Lucien," she said without looking up, "explain the theoretical way to stop a temporal paradox."
Lucien now with eyebrows in seven different time zones adjusted his flickering spectacles.
"Well, hypothetically, if one were to, oh dear—" His left ear unaged sixty years mid-sentence.
Dante's hair, currently braided into a fourth-dimensional knot, spelled out.
"JUST THROW SOUP AT IT."
Cedric, covered in chronologically confused cream soup, nodded vigorously.
…..
Lucien staggered through the collapsing archives, grabbing books that no longer existed in alternating moments.
"Fascinating!" he wheezed, catching A History of the Castle That Wasn't before it faded. "The Empress isn't just erasing time—she's replacing it with her version!"
A doll made of forgotten birthday wishes giggled from the shelves.
Dante's hair snatched Lucien back just as his concept of elbows briefly disappeared.
"FOCUS. HOW DO WE STOP HER?"
Lucien blinked.
"...Do we own a really large hourglass?"
The Duchess' needle paused.
"The Prophet."
Somewhere below, the Clockwork Prophet's gears screamed.
…..
The family room was unbecoming itself, curtains reverting to wool, stained glass melting into sand.
The Duke stood before his not-quite-real crown, gripping the edges of the war table currently losing an argument with geometry.
"Options," he demanded.
The Duchess tied a golden thread around her wrist, the same shade as Evangeline's mark. "We anchor time. But it requires..." Her eyes flicked to Dante.
Dante's hair went perfectly still.
"NO."
Lucien adjusted his temporary glasses.
"The hair is literally braided into the timeline now. If we—"
"ABSOLUTELY NOT."
The Duke sighed.
"What if we promised unlimited conditioner?"
The hair hesitated.
Somewhere, a doll laughed.
…..
Oil pooled around the prophet's knees as he unmade his own gears one by one. Selphina watched, cutlass loose in her grip.
"You knew," she accused. "This whole time—you knew it would come to this."
The prophet's remaining eye focused on Evangeline, who was happily folding time into origami shapes.
"She was never the lock," he whispered. "She was the key."
Then, with a sound like a music box winding down he unraveled his last secret.
The lavender scent wasn't from the Empress.
It was from Evangeline's future.