To Those Who Never Knew (A Monksblood Bible Novel Book 1)

by Isabella Anton

  “He has but I guess magic can’t fix everything. It’ll be fine in another week or so.” Before I could even finish my sentence Anwen had turned on Tristan with the speed of a hungry falcon going in for the kill.

  “Did you have a hand in this?” she pointed at me, and for some reason, I felt like I was the smallest person in the room.

  Tristan hid his gaze under his brow and tried not to make contact with me; his voice detached as he finally found it. “Aye, Milady, sadly it was I who knocked her out in the first place.”

  I didn’t know that. No wonder he wouldn’t look at me.

  He said it with such sincerity that even I was ready to forgive him for it. Anwen, on the other hand, was not.

  “Say you are sorry.”

  I looked at her in shock. How was she allowed to talk to the captain of the Royal Guard like he was a ten-year-old who just broke a plate? Before he could be humiliated in front of his bosses I quickly stepped in. “No, no, I’m okay. The captain was right. I could have been anyone.” Everyone in the room looked at me with acceptance at my forgiveness and understanding. Everyone but the captain—he still wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  “Tristan, please,” he pleaded, eyes still hidden. “I feel it is more appropriate.”

  I couldn’t deny him that, and if we were to forget about the past, it seemed like the next stepping-stone. “Then you must call me Jade,” I countered.

  He finally looked up, a stunning smile on his lips. “I think I can handle that.”

  “Well, there you have it,” Lord Gruffydd chimed in. “Let us leave it at that and talk of different matters.”

  “Yes,” his wife agreed. “Jade, where is it you come from?”

  Oh you know a country that won’t exist for another five hundred odd years… Am I allowed to tell them?

  “Oh, yes! Master Lewis has told us you come from the future!” Anwen squealed beside me.

  Well that answers that question.

  For the next five hours I told them my story: where I was from, why I went to Wales, and how I actually ended up here. They ‘ooh-ed’ and ‘ah-ed’ in all the right places, cups of wine and platters of food going in and out as we finished them. They had endless amounts of questions about the new world and how the future would turn out. They understood more than I thought they would about political and economic strife, though technology was obviously a foreign concept.

  “I have no idea what will happen now that I’ve told you everything. Usually in movies, the hero isn’t supposed to tell people from the past about the future. Butterfly effect and all that jazz.”

  “What about butterflies?” Anwen’s interest stayed high throughout my tale.

  Before I could fully explain, trumpets interrupted us and His Lordship stood, running with haste to the doors. Tristan followed on his heels.

  “What is going on? Why have the sirens been sounded?”

  A guard in a red and white uniform ran up to him, out of breath. “Milord, a prisoner has escaped the dungeons.”

  Just the mention of the word dungeon made me remember the state I had arrived in and I realized my hands were shaking.

  “Who?” His Lordship asked.

  “Bowen’s kin.”

  “Where is Bowen?” Lord Gruffydd looked as if his head was about to explode. “Tristan! Get down there and see what he is doing and why his brother has suddenly disappeared!”

  Tristan stood to attention before taking the young guard with him.

  “Tra bod yr hwrod yn codi, mae’r defaid yn cysgu heb ffŵcin ots,” His Lordship said with a sharp tongue.

  “Dear, please refrain from such language in front of the ladies,” Her Ladyship reprimanded as she straightened her belt and went up to console her husband.

  “But every time… whenever there is a situation involving the Brotherhood, Bowen’s anger gets the better of him. When he finds him, he will probably kill him.”

  My mouth turned down in disgust. “Would he really do that?” I asked, the thought of it making my hair stand on end.

  He eyed me, as if deciding whether to trust me with this information.

  “Just tell her, Rhys,” his wife scolded, “she is family now.”

  He nodded in agreement. “Aye.” He answered me, “Considering Finch is in league with the Brotherhood, I have no doubt he would do anything to find out their secrets.”

  My eyes strayed to the huge entrance. Was I expecting Bowen to walk in and lightheartedly say nothing was wrong? That he didn’t just slaughter his own brother? The harsh realization that this was not my own world, again, came crashing down on me.

  XVI.

  Bowen

  Bowen sat in front of his brother’s cell and waited for him to wake. He had gone there the past couple of weeks and interrogated him daily for information, but there was little advancement in that department.

  He heard Finch’s heavy breathing and a groan that indicated he had risen. Bowen stood and opened the wooden door. In the middle of the cell’s cold stone room, Finch lay chained to the floor by his hands, but sat up when he saw his brother enter, his manner not that of a man kept in darkness for days end, but instead smiled like a fool.

  “Brother! How long has it been? You know the last time I saw you, you were trying to ask me something, but I guess I could not quite understand what it was you wanted.”

  Bowen was not impressed by his sarcastic tone, the Welsh dialect he used an insult to the memory of their diseased parents.

  “In all seriousness, brother, could you remind me again what our conversation was about? My memory does not seem to stretch that far.”

  Bowen said nothing, only brought his closed fist against Finch’s face. A flow of blood trickled out of his nose. Finch went to wipe it away but his shackled hands were jerked back in place.

  “Ah, I think there’s something.” Bowen pause mid-punch waiting for a response. “No, I was wrong.”

  This time an uppercut to the chin.

  “You know, perhaps you could give me a hint?” Finch said between bloodied teeth, spitting out the excess onto the floor.

  Bowen brought back his knee and slammed it into his chest, winding him. The chains that restricted Finch pulled taught with the force. He stood there and waited for his brother’s next lie. But all Finch did was quietly laugh, the sound manic. He punched him again, it did nothing—his brother’s voice filling the sunless room.

  “Is she here?”

  That stopped him cold.

  “The one everyone has been gossiping about? Jade, I think her name is.” Bowen could not move. His heart ached at the thought of her: the woman he had mercilessly tortured. He could still see the flash of pain in her beautiful green eyes as he had inflicted it. He had spent the last week in prayer without food, cleansing his body of the sins he had committed on an innocent. He had yet to see her, to talk to her and beg for forgiveness, even if that meant cutting off a finger or two. Hearing her name for the first time… there was a pang of jealousy at the fact that his confined brother had known it even before he did.

  “What do you know of her?” Bowen approached the subject with caution.

  “Oh, the man speaks now,” he leaned back against the wall. “Well, I know she is one important lady to both us and you.”

  “It is too bad that we got to her first then. You cannot infect her mind with the senseless dribble your cult spouts.”

  “It is you who are the infection!” he shot back, the chains grinding together as he tried to dart forward. “But no matter, she will not be here for long.”

  Bowen’s head shot up, rage filling his eyes, and kicked Finch hard in the stomach. “What is it that you want?” he yelled, pulling at his brother’s hair so his face was level with his. The stench of Finch’s soured breath left him with more disgust. “What is the Brotherhood planning? Tell me and I might spare you.”
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  “You would kill your own brother?” Finch’s smile made the question sadistic. “Well, I guess that would be fair. Do you remember last year…? When your Catherine died?”

  Bowen went pale.

  “You were running for their lives just as your home became quickly engulfed in flames.” His mouth turned up in satisfaction at the look on his brother’s face. “It was almost like magic, that their bodies were eaten away so quickly, their bodies burnt right down to the bone.”

  Bowen shook with rage, his heart beating fast at the memory. “Shut it,” he whispered.

  “That you fell to your knees, Tristan by your side, as you both watched?” His eyes shone with the insanity in his words.

  “Shut it.”

  “And you cried and screamed while Tristan held you back?”

  “Shut it.”

  “But what you did not know was… I did it. I set that blaze.”

  His heart stopped. All of his movements stopped. He stood there, holding his brother in tense, stunned silence. His brain tried to process the new information, but failed.

  It was abominable. A true horror that Bowen had never seen coming. Finch took that pause to chant a breaking spell, his chains falling to the ground.

  Bowen’s reaction was too slow, the tragedy of his wife’s and children’s murders being undertaken by his own brother was too much. He tried to fight the rising grief but he became lost in it. He let out a cry, incapable of action.

  Finch mumbled a constricting spell, binding Bowen tightly in invisible ropes.

  As seconds passed, his grief turned to overwhelming anger, and rage blinded his senses. He was out for blood and all he wanted to do was strangle the life out of his brother.

  No, not his brother, not anymore.

  But he was too late. Bowen struggled ineffectively against the bindings. He had always relied on his physical strength, more so than his magical abilities, and on this day it would cost him dearly.

  “Oh. That thing you wanted to know?” Finch stood above him. “Do not for a second think Jade is safe. Especially with you. We will be coming for her.”

  He grabbed the keys from Bowen’s belt and ran out of the cell and into the evening dusk.

  XVII.

  Jackie

  Jackie pulled out another flier from her bag, Jade’s smiling face staring back at her. The first day Jackie had written her disappearance off—it wasn’t unusual in university to go hours at a time without seeing people. But then a couple of days had gone by and still nothing.

  She shook the creeping, horrid thoughts from her head. Jackie had scoured every inch of the campus, walked up and down town looking in every side street, but still, there was no sign of Jade. The police hadn’t even known about her disappearance until she had gone to them earlier that morning.

  “Lampeter isn’t that big, she’ll turn up at some point,” they had said.

  Some point. They weren’t even taking this seriously, as if she were just another college student on a spur-of-the-moment holiday. Jade wasn’t answering her phone, and though Lampeter’s reception was bad, it wasn’t that bad.

  She took her stapler and tacked the missing poster onto the community message board. Jackie was just about to walk away when someone came up next to her and ripped the flier from its place.

  “You shouldn’t be posting these,” the man said, his brown eyes hard.

  “Excuse me?” Jackie couldn’t believe the gall of him. Though she wasn’t surprised, his thousand-pound suit seemed to exude confidence. He got in closer, his voice hushed.

  “You have no right to be looking for Jade. She’s not missing.” He crumpled up the paper and threw it in the bin.

  She wanted to rip the beard off this man.

  “You have no right!” Jackie yelled. “My friend has been missing for more than forty-eight hours! The police have nothing–”

  “You went to the police?” Now his eyes were deadly as he pulled out his phone.

  She wanted to back away but held her ground. “Of course I did. And who the hell are you anyway?”

  He held up his finger as he dialed a number. Her temptation to break it died when she heard who he had called.

  “Chief Inspector Ron, it’s Bowen.” Jackie gawked at the man who literally had the police chief on speed dial. “Yes, I’m calling because someone reported a woman named Jade missing… It was a mistake.”

  Jackie listened intently, trying to catch what the inspector was saying on the other line.

  “What do you mean you can’t stop the process of the report?” Bowen glared at Jackie. Another pause and his voice went up an octave. “You’ve already called her parents?”

  Jackie breathed a small sigh. At least they had the decency to do that.

  Bowen growled into the receiver, “No. No. Fine. I’ll deal with it on my end.” And hung up.

  “How dare you,” Jackie spat. “Who are you? My friend is missing.”

  “She’s not missing!” Bowen rubbed his beard in frustration. “Look. I know you were only trying to help, but now you’ve made things more complicated.”

  Jackie’s danger radar hit level ten.

  “What do you mean more complicated? Do you know where Jade is?” She balled up her fists, ready to beat this guy down if he was involved with Jade’s disappearance.

  “Yes and no…” He let out a frustrated cry. “I can’t tell you.”

  “You better fucking tell me before I kick your fucking face in.” She assessed the muscles that slightly bulged out when he moved and though she wasn’t sure she could take him down, she could at least do some serious damage to his eyes and groin.

  “She’s looking for her birth parents.”

  That brought Jackie up short.

  “You didn’t know she was adopted?” he said with a smirk.

  “Yes, I did. I just didn’t know she was looking…”

  “Well, I’m a friend of the Morrisons and they asked me to watch out for her while she’s here.”

  “So you know where she is?” Jackie wasn’t convinced at all by this man. She had known so many liars in her past, this was just one to add to the list.

  “I believe she’s somewhere in Europe—Italy, maybe? I haven’t been in contact with her since she told me she was leaving.”

  Another lie that rolled off his tongue.

  Jackie’s jaw jutted out in annoyance. There was no way she was going to leave this alone.

  Jade’s mother sat in her kitchen waiting for Bowen’s call. It had been days since his last update. She knew Jade was already gone. November 11th had been marked on her calendar for years now, but she needed Bowen’s confirmation.

  It was only seven at night in California and the eight-hour difference between there and Wales meant Bowen would probably be asleep.

  Enough of this. I don’t give a crap what time it is over there, I’ve held out long enough. Grabbing the telephone, she was just about to dial when it rang. She quickly picked up. “Bowen?” Her voice was angry yet hungry for the need of information.

  “No, sorry. Is this Janet Morrison?” The man’s Welsh accent was morose.

  “Yes…”

  “Mrs. Morrison, I’m Detective Ronald Kant of the police department in Lampeter.” There it was, she knew at some point someone would be calling to inform her that her daughter had gone missing, a fact she already knew. She played along.

  “Oh my! Is everything alright?”

  “I’m calling you about your daughter, Jade Morrison, ma’am. Now please, don’t worry, but the university hasn’t seen her for a couple of days. She hasn’t shown up to classes and her friends said that last they saw, she was headed towards the library. I’m calling to see if she is with you or if you have any knowledge of her whereabouts.”

  “Oh I can’t believe it! What happened? Why haven’t you found h
er yet? Lampeter can’t be that big!”

  “We’ve interviewed those who knew her and of course, searched the village. As a precaution we’re going to extend our perimeter to the surrounding areas, including the valleys bordering the university. I’m sure she couldn’t have gone far.”

  That’s what you think…“My husband and I will get a flight out tomorrow. We can’t be of any help sitting here thousands of miles away,” she said dramatically.

  “Yes ma’am. We can have a car come pick you up.”

  “That won’t be needed,” Janet quickly jumped on him. “We have a family friend who lives close by who will see us there.” If possible she wanted to keep her interactions with the police to a minimum, a six-hour car ride was too perfect an opportunity for them to question her.

  “Alright, then when you arrive please contact the local police station. Once again, don’t worry, we’ll keep looking.”

  “Thank you,” and she hung up the phone. She stood there, incapable of moving. This time instead of the theatrics she had used over the phone, real tears started to roll down her cheeks.

  “Who was that, hun?” Dave yelled from his office. “Sounded like you gave him your best acting voice.”

  She composed herself as much as she could. “It was the Lampeter police…”

  Dave walked into the kitchen where his wife was tightly gripping the phone and rushed over to embrace her.

  “I can’t do this Dave,” she blurted out, “we don’t even know how long she’ll be stuck in 1350!”

  “You need to trust that Bowen–”

  “Bowen,” she angrily echoed.

  “He’ll be there with her, every step of the way.”

  “But not the Bowen you and I know. You remember the stories he told us of how they first met? The anger, the... cruelty he had in him, I don’t know if he’s the right man to look after her.” Janet knew that the Bowen of the past and the Bowen of the present were two different people, but people didn’t always change that easily.

  “He’s had more than six centuries to feel guilty about the things he’s done. He’s harder on himself than you’ll ever be,” Dave brought her face up to his. “Trust me. We’ll fly over and then go from there.”