by Jen Greyson
“No, Evy,” he says with a poise I cannot feel, looking down his nose with disdain while I press my curled fists tighter against his chest. “You trusted Penya with that. Until you’re willing to see Penya is not who you believe her to be, she will always be one step ahead of you. I know all too well the lengths she resorts to. You never should have made her aware of Tiana's ability to travel.”
I slam him against the wall again, needing to do something, anything to feel like I’m helping find Tiana. I can’t leave, can’t find her, can’t locate Penya. The coil of fear and anger fights for control and it’s all I can do to keep my lightning in check so he doesn’t disappear. “How do I find her?”
He shakes his head. “Find Penya. She is your only hope.”
“No!” I let go and lean over, gasping for breath and a different solution. I did this. For the second time, I’ve put my own desires first, and it’s cost someone I love. Cost them dearly. My lungs compress and I wheeze. Too much of what he’s saying is ringing true. Penya wasn’t the person I knew when she was in my house, but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to believe that there was a reason she slipped the lightning manacles, that there was a reason she shoved me and raced into the bedroom containing Tesla’s papers, a reason that would explain why she acted so strangely. A dozen feet away, Constantine steps between two buildings and onto the path, hair mussed and wearing only a tunic. He must have woke without me and come searching. His gaze darts from me to Ilif and as his shoulders tighten, I can tell he’s misread the situation and thinks Ilif is the reason I’m struggling to breathe, but I can’t straighten fast enough, can’t grab a breath to stop him. He races past and wraps his fingers around Ilif’s throat, lifting him to his toes.
“What have you done to her?” he growls, his deadly intent evident.
I try to breathe and call him off, but part of me wants him to finish Ilif so I don’t have to figure out who he is and what truths are lies. But Ilif is valuable. He has to figure out how to track Tiana; he’s the only one who can. I find my air and straighten but the trembling won’t stop. Lightning shoots from my hands and slams into the ground. Constantine watches me closely, but his fingers haven’t lessened one fraction on Ilif’s throat.
“Give me your order,” Constantine asks me.
He would do it without hesitation, too. With the slightest tip of my head, he would break Ilif’s neck or slit his throat, and leave his body right here where it fell, then throw me over his shoulder and carry me to safety. I’ve known it from the second we met, he promised me as much while we were naked an hour ago. He protects what’s his. I am his.
“Not yet,” I whisper and clench my fists.
He studies Ilif, then looks at me again. “Are you certain?”
“For now.”
He pulls Ilif closer until their noses almost touch. Constantine towers over Ilif's slight frame and without his full armor, the sheer size of him is imposing. “I will warn you only once. If you hurt her or so much as threaten her, I will you kill you with no remorse.”
Constantine releases Ilif and swiftly pulls me to him. “What troubles you? What happened?”
“My little sister.” My throat constricts and tears well in my eyes.
CHAPTER 6
“COMMANDER.”
AN ARCHER stands ten paces down the walkway. I’ve seen him around before, but he shows no signs of recognition. Constantine doesn’t look away, staring intently at me and asking for more of an answer. I swallow the emotions and look away. “It’s fine.” I can’t expect him to put me before his men, before their missions here. I’ll have to leave him to find Tiana. Maybe it’s good if there are things here requiring his attention. His fingers tighten, then travel down my arms to link our fingers. “It’s not fine.” He turns to his man and nods for him to ask the question he’s come for.
Archer’s gaze shifts uneasily to me. It’s obvious he’s interrupting. “There’s a runner.”
“Bring him,” Constantine gives a curt nod, sending him on his way. He squeezes our fingers “I’ve not forgotten you. Let me hear the runner, then we will solve this mystery of your sister.”
I swallow. “Thank you.”
Ilif clears his throat; Constantine and I both ignore him. My mind is whirling with everything he said to me in the minutes he’s been here. Before I fall apart again, the archer and a slender young boy come racing down the path. The boy pulls a scroll from beneath his arm and thrusts it at Constantine, then jumps back fearfully, glancing from Ilif to me to the archer with extreme discomfort.
The parchment rustles, Constantine scans the missive, then swears. “Ready the men. Feed the boy. We leave in one hour.” The archer doesn’t bother to ask what they’re readying for, knowing only that it must be important or Constantine wouldn’t take all of them. He and the boy scurry away and I take a step back dropping Constantine’s hand. “I have to go. I’ll be back.” I look away quickly unable to meet his gaze.
“I’ll not allow you to go without me. There is danger. You said it yourself.”
“It’s fine.” I can’t keep him from his job here. His men depend on him. History depends on him. We each have our own jobs to do.
He runs a hand through his hair and squeezes the back of his neck—his greatest tell. He’s keeping things from me. Things we haven’t had time to talk about since I’ve been here. I keep hoping were going to get this figured out, but while I might have told him there was dangers surrounding me, he also revealed the truth—I can only give him slices of my in-between. Slices aren’t enough to fill with all the worries and problems of our other lives, lives that are already set in stone on timelines, lives that choose to intersect in the rarest of moments, and in those moments we seem to find so many other ways of expressing ourselves beyond talking. I want to know what’s going on with his men, he wants to know what’s going on with my sister, but the reality of those two events is that there is no time for talking when all we’re given are slices.
I brush my fingers against his cheek and inhale the strength he affords me. While this has become my second home and have been treated with respect from all I’ve encountered, there is still much work to do. “Your men need you. My sister needs me.”
“If I might,” Ilif says, stepping too close and forcing us apart.
We turn and I brace myself for whatever stupid suggestion he’s about to serve up.
CHAPTER 7
PENYA STANDS AT the window, arms crossed, watching Tiana move through ministrations of creating her own lightning. Beyond the window, the training room vibrates with the layers of counter-measures needed to prevent any mishaps while Tiana works through the colored lightning.
The girl is wise and strong. This time will work. This time will not become the debacle it was with her sister. Evy was too strong, too old, too independent. All so obvious now.
“What’s with the girl?” Gelver strides through the glass doors, a thick folder beneath one arm, attention riveted on Tiana as she boxes her way across the training room. Penya cares not for his opinion of her methods, nor his need for explanation. Tiana and her training doesn’t concern the information he’s bringing. Her gaze shifts to the folder. Those had better be results.
“This is the next sister,” Penya answers, turning away from the window.
“Finally giving up on the older one, eh?” His laughter grates on Penya’s nerves but he’s too brilliant a scientist for her to terminate him. She’s come too far to let anything stand in her way now. She put up with decades of Ilif’s incompetencies, pandered to his insufferable insecurities, toiled longer and harder to see success.
He lost sight of what we’d been commissioned to do. Always distracted on other things, things that meant little to the contractors who’d hired us, to the governments who wanted what we could build. Weaponry paid the most. Ilif never got that. Most certainly, we enter the fields of science to better the world, but at the end of the day, that won’t pay the bills.
Luckil
y, Ilif was content to let me handle those details that troubled him, those pesky items like bidding on new contracts, reading the latest research, making sure that we had years of revenue in the bank. He spent over a decade working off those war contracts, never thinking to question who had bled for that money. He didn’t care. Didn’t care for anything that kept him away from his “life’s work.” Didn’t care how many meetings I’d endured, listening to military men talk about what they wanted to do to other countries, pain and torture they wanted to inflict on “them,” no matter the cost. We had the weaponry they needed; the science they’d pay for. This entire lab was built on blood money while Ilif averted his eyes.
Men never change. They are as power-hungry today as they were back in Constantine’s time. That observation gave Penya that first idea to use Ilif’s fancy time machine to go back. Back all the way to the beginning. Back to where she could create something from scratch. Something magical.
That stupid girl Evy thought she’d arrived there on accident. Penya’s stomach nearly curdles at the memory of such pretense on her arrival. What a happy coincidence that Evy just happened to arrive in a tiny Spanish village where Penya happened to be.
Youth. It’s wasted on the young.
Penya supposed that is one good thing that’s come of Ilif’s time travel. All those wasted decades he spent dedicated to one of Telsa’s patents, the one least likely to fund our other endeavors. Nonetheless, he finally succeeded and to my benefit. I am now forever young. With his findings, I can forever fix mistakes, errors, oversight.
I hadn’t counted on that stupid bitch being so bullheaded though. I underestimated her.
No matter. She underestimated me. The girl has been far too long without a matriarch in her family. She forgets. She forgets how powerful a woman scorned can be. A woman who is due her birthright.
He stole it all from me. And that stupid, worthless, Rennae. I should’ve known better. Should’ve known that she could never separate her head from her heart where he was concerned. I’d fallen prey to him, as well. We both had. In the end it had cost us all. But no more. No more.
This time—this time—I’ll get it right. This time I have a blank slate in Tiana. Fresh DNA unhampered by decades of complacency. Evy’s generation didn’t understand that, nor several after. It took far longer than it should have for the research to capitalize on the body’s ability to repair and recode DNA. No one dies with the same DNA they’re born with.
I should have seen the value in Ilif’s time travel research earlier. But that is the benefit of time travel. There’s no such thing as too late. All we needed was a way to manipulate history.
Tiana throws a micro ball of red toward a target, but it doesn’t release from her boxing gloves in time, and the trajectory is off, sending it flying wide to the right. The countermeasures in the room account for the error and diffuse the red ball before it explodes. Tiana huffs and marches back to the other end, muttering encouragement to herself.
Back then they didn’t have enough measurements, thinking only that DNA was to stranded cellular I whatever the pocket is. It took decades of formulating new DNA and studying it over time before we realized how quickly the breakdown occurred. Now we know.
To have Tiana at such a young age. I watch her stride across the room with an unknown grace. That is one trait she shares with her sister—they both possess a confidence in their movements that I’ve seen but rarely. Though I would not reveal that truth to Evy, her physical confidence was what attracted me to her in the beginning, what made me see what she could become.
I was mistaken to think I could control her. But now I have her sister and I will not err the same way again.
Now I can accomplish great things, masterful things. I’ll need Tiana to lead me back to Tesla’s warehouse. But not yet. I’m in no hurry. After all, I have all the time and all the dimensions to get this right.
And Evy has no way to find us. Of that, I’m certain.
CHAPTER 8
“THERE IS ONE solution available to us, one we haven’t yet discussed. I can train your father.”
My stomach drops. “No. It almost killed him last time.”
“We know why the errors occurred. The dangers are no longer present thanks to your encouragement. With his own arcing activated, a repeat of that disaster on the river will not occur. All that remains is a mentor to train him in the nuances.”
Fear rages inside me. I should have gone straight to the warehouse. I should have traced Tiana’s residue. I shouldn’t have left her. I certainly can’t put Papi in danger because of it. “This is my fault. I need to fix it.”
“Evy,” Constantine scolds and wraps his fingers around my upper arm. Worry creeps into his voice and if I’m not careful, he’s not going to let us separate.
I shift my body into the protective curve of his to settle him while I finish grilling Ilif. His hand curls around my waist and his fingers splay wide, holding me tight against his side in a protective cage. “Can you make it work right or will he get stuck in New York? I won’t lose them both.”
“Your father can find Tiana. With the aid of her talisman.”
I throw my hands up. So much for that plan. “She didn’t have one. We never had time to get that far.”
He frowns in an uncharacteristic show of emotion. “That’s troubling. How did she initiate her own travel, then?”
“She followed my residue the first time—to Nikola’s warehouse. But the second time, when she was leaving to come home, Penya forced her to use her own lightning.” I punch my palm with my closed fist. “Knowing it would trigger an alteration.”
“Making it easy to follow Tiana and corrupt her arc.”
“I’m sorry.”
He touches the knot of his tie. “We will abide by what you know. Those details will aid your father in determining where Tiana’s alteration led her. I am able to coach him through this.”
“But it wasn’t a true alteration,” I say, frustrated again at my own stupidity. “It was what Penya wanted it to be. Tiana could be in Africa for all we know. Where would Penya take her?”
“Tell me where you encountered Penya last.”
“My house.”
“And?” His voice is strained. I don’t like that these details are upsetting him. His normal frustration with me is displaced by a concern and hesitation that bothers me.
“She went after Nikola's papers.” I take a breath and he waits expectantly. Telling him the truth might be a terrible idea, but if it helps find Tiana, I have to risk it. “I threw a ball of lightning past her to blow the trap I’d set in the room before it took her out, there was an explosion and when I arced, I ended up here. Alone.” I blurt the disaster and clench my teeth, hoping he’ll overlook some serious details in there. My trap didn’t have anything to do with losing Tiana. That was about keeping Nikola's work safe... Completely separate deal.
Ilif paces, hands clasped tightly behind his back. “I will avoid asking you questions about those new elements of your lightning.” He looks up with a stern glare. “For now.”
I’m not about to let him make me feel guilty for keeping things from him. I figured all that out on my own…well, with Constantine’s help… but not a damn bit from the guy who’s supposed to be my mentor. Until he proves he’s trustworthy, I’m revealing only what I must. Bad enough I’m at his mercy in this. If there were any other option I’d take it, but I’m trusting that he really does know more than I do about arcing, I know about mine, but my lightning behaves differently from Tiana’s and we know all too well that Papi’s arcing isn’t the same either. Whether I like it or not, he's better versed in areas I’m not.
Certainly about Penya and her capabilities.
And deceits.
I can no longer trust my feelings about that woman.
CHAPTER 9
MEN RACE PAST, gathering weapons and armor. Shouts and clanks of metal on flesh permeate the stifling morning air. A cluster of horses fidgets by the far gate and
their stomping impatience echoes off the walls and packed dirt.
The press of time is every bit as loud.
Constantine steps away to address a group of men who’ve come with questions. They hand him clothes, armor, and his weapon. His attention never leaves me while he readies himself and orders them about.
Ilif tugs his sleeve and crowds my comfort zone. “A moment.”
“We don’t have any.” Just because he’s trying to help doesn’t mean I have to be nice about it. Facts remain and he’s manipulated me from the moment we met. There’s still a high possibility he’s doing it right now and I’m too blind to see past the danger my family’s in. I hate everything about my roiling emotions. I hate having this uncertainty smashed up against a different uncertainty of my place with Constantine and how all our lives fit together. Just when I think I have one piece figured out, they all get dumped on the floor in another jumbled mess for me to sort through.
Like always, Ilif ignores my attitude and commands the conversation. “I am aware of the poor timing of my request, but Tiana’s absence does not impact the greater issue at hand. I am still in need of Tesla’s papers.”
Because his needs are always more important than mine, or who’s gone missing. “Tell me what you’re doing—” I hold up a hand to prevent his ‘classified’ bullshit. “We’re past what’s classified and what isn’t. We’re past what I’m allowed to know in order to complete my lightning rider portion of the mission.”
I step closer, stopping just before my chest brushes his image. The snap of ozone lingers on his clothes from traveling. There’s also a hint of starch, making me think he’s almost human. “I’d say this is poor timing. My sister is missing and you still pick now to bring up what you didn’t get? My family is in critical danger. You’ve already lost us once. Do you want to recreate Rafe’s death for Papi?” He flinches.
