William watched those words penetrate, watched Jem deflate even further.
“’ow did you know?” The East End accent was markedly pronounced now, like it had been the first time they’d met all those months ago.
“I saw you. I saw you with my own eyes and heard you with my own ears.” He could no longer keep his anger under control. He no longer felt the need to protect this person.
Jem’s expression turned pleading. “But she was—”
“Your sister. I know. She told us after we captured her. And now she’ll likely suffer the same fate as you.”
Jem paled, licked his lips. “We?”
“Yes. We. Sera and I.” He wrapped his fingers around the bars to the gate. “And that is all you will ever know.”
Jem looked over his shoulder at the mass of convicts and soldiers at the other end of the yard. If he wanted to, he could elbow his way through the rioting convicts and walk right out the broken front gate, become a bolter again. He likely wouldn’t be the only convict to do so on this day.
William said, “I gave you a chance. I gave you many, in fact. But I can’t—I won’t—get you out of this one.”
The inevitability of the gallows haunted Jem’s eyes. “I’m not asking you to.” He released a shuddering sigh. “I’m so sorry.”
But William had already turned around and stalked away.
He reached Sera and took her hand so tightly he thought he might crush her bones. When he tried to loosen his grip, she wouldn’t let him.
He dashed through the Rocks, desperate to get her away from the town. Away from New South Wales. He steered her toward the water—not the busy cove teeming with boats and eyes and the madness of the unrest that had bled in that direction, but farther west, past Fort Philip, where the land pushed jaggedly into Port Jackson.
The urge to flee into the blue-hazed mountains, to run all the way until they found another ocean, another world, another life, tempted him beyond reason.
Past the fort the harbor narrowed until it would eventually become the river they’d followed out of Parramatta. They’d come full circle, he thought, fleeing in the very direction from which they’d arrived.
A single homestead sat back from the shoreline, the yard fenced, a garden growing, a water trough on one side, and sheep mingling about. He hated to be within sight of any civilization, but without food or water—or any kind of plan—they had little choice but to remain where a chance of survival lingered.
A break in the vegetation caught his eye. The narrow path was little more than a line of bent grass and scuffed dirt where colonists had likely gone down to the water to sit among the rocks and throw out a fishing line. He tugged Sera down that way.
At the height of day, the water in the harbor sparkled and slapped against the land. Large chunks of rock had broken away from the mainland and tilted into the lapping water. He guided her across and around and through them, dampening the bottom of her skirt and soaking his boots, at last finding a hidden outcropping covered in soft grass. Rocks on all sides, the blue sky overhead.
Releasing her hand, he spun around and faced her. The breeze whipped between them and he hated the space. Her hairline was damp with sweat, her chest heaved from exertion, and the heat in her eyes pierced him with the force of a metalsmith’s fiery blade.
So much had ended, and so much else was beginning.
“Come here.” The command burned like gravel in his throat.
Without pause Sera came to him. He grabbed her hard around the waist, sweeping her into his embrace as his mouth devoured her.
The sound that reverberated from his chest was filled with anguish and frustration and loss…but also searing hot desire and an emotion he’d only ever heard of before meeting this woman.
The way she curled one leg around his hip and ground herself into him told him she just might feel the same.
He took her down to the grass, her small, writhing, desperate body heavenly underneath him. Their first time together, she’d ridden him. Now she would be his, and he would show her in his own way how deep his passion ran.
They both reached for her skirt at the same time. They scrabbled through yards of cream-colored fabric, their motions messy and uncoordinated. When he had her skirt bunched up around her shoulders, his fists clenched and full, he felt her manic hands pulling hard at the knot on his trousers.
Their eyes locked together as she shoved the trousers down and he lowered himself, immediately feeling her wetness against the tip of his cock.
Her hips circled upward, silently begging. This no longer involved Amonteh. This was not influenced by Ramsesh. This was him and Sera, and a desperate need he wasn’t sure would ever be properly fulfilled.
Her lower lip quivered. He bent down, took her mouth, and finally thrust inside, finding her sleek and tight and welcoming. All the way, as hard and deep as possible.
Her eyelids fluttered. Closed. The way she said yes, the sound drawn out forever, her voice breathless, made him shiver under its beauty.
“Sera.”
She opened those brown eyes. Words perched on his lips—the most delicate and the most powerful he’d ever thought—but he couldn’t say them. He stayed there, unmoving. He wanted to remember exactly what she looked like underneath him. What she felt like around him at this very moment.
“Please,” she begged, and it undid him. It ignited him like flint taken to a gun. He moved. In and out. Slid and dragged. Up and back. Fucking and loving.
Her eyes turned glassy right before her body clutched around him. The feel of that, those gripping pulses along his cock, pulled him hard into a ripping, shuddering ecstasy.
When they’d both calmed, he slipped out of her and sat back on his heels, knotting the rope once again.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked through a dry throat.
She smoothed down her skirt and sat up. The smile she gave him was weary, but beautifully so. “Never.”
And then she touched him. A simple touch—fingertips to his scratchy face—but it caused light and sound and a warm feeling to surround his heart. At first he cursed the poeticism, a bit embarrassed, until he realized that it was not exaggeration. Those sensations were very much real.
Something about her seemed a little brighter. Something perfect had just happened.
Her mouth went slack as her eyes turned distant, as though she were listening to Ramsesh. “Do you hear that? Do you feel that?”
He reached out to touch her. Involuntarily, his hand slid across her belly. Warmth emanated from her and coiled around him. The hum and buzz she shared almost drove him deaf.
The realization came simply and easily.
“My God,” he whispered.
She covered his hand with hers and stared up at him with the biggest eyes he’d ever seen. “I’m pregnant.”
Yes, sounded a woman’s voice inside his head. The word wasn’t spoken in English, the voice cracked with two thousand years of disuse, and yet he knew exactly what she said.
And who she was.
The first emotion that raced through his head was worry. What could he and Sera possibly do with a baby, here in a land where they owned nothing, were nobody? And him with a death sentence over his head?
But then—he couldn’t help it—all that was pushed aside as joy swept in. He, who never thought he’d marry or have a family—or hell, ever lay with a woman again—had created a baby. With Sera. With a woman he loved.
But then he watched as she turned ashen, her body crumpling in on itself. He went to her, taking her face in one hand and touching his forehead to hers.
“Look at me,” he said, and her gaze lazily found its way back to his. “This can be a good thing.”
She drew back. “How? How could this possibly be a good thing?”
Some of the joy dried up, and he frowned. “To begin with, it’s my child and that makes me want to be happy.”
“And what if it’s Amonteh’s, not yours?” she snapped.
The re
st of the joy died, because that could very well be true. But was that necessarily bad?
She ran shaking hands through her hair and left them there, making fists in the black strands. “This doesn’t make sense. I can’t get pregnant. They cut the tubes to my ovaries so I purposely couldn’t have kids and then…” She pressed fingers to her lips, her eyes widening. “Isis.”
Isis, yes. That was the voice he’d heard in his head.
“When I helped Francine, Isis must’ve done something to me then. She must’ve fixed me.”
He thought back to that night, how scared and focused and brave Sera had been. “Did you feel any different then? Could you sense something happening? Because the pain of healing was almost as bad as getting shot, for me. You wouldn’t be able to ignore it.”
“No, but…I was distracted with Francine and so worried I’d get caught or that she’d realize what was going on. And it wasn’t like healing you, sewing up a gunshot wound. If the magic to heal Francine and save her baby had to go through me, it could’ve just fixed me on its way out.”
“Or,” he said, as the thought came to him, “it’s what Isis wanted all along.”
#
The moment William said that, everything clicked together inside Sera’s mind. The past and present and, yes, the future. All these messy, perplexing days—ever since the moment the cuff had sealed itself around her arm in the Egyptian museum basement—made sense.
She was no longer walking blind through a strange land. Now she clutched a map, and all she had to do was figure out how to read it.
“Isis wanted…” All moisture evaporated from her mouth, taking the words with it.
William kissed her then, sweeping his tongue inside and making her dizzy all over again. When she still couldn’t speak, he kissed her until her spine softened. Now he was taking away her concentration, making her want him all over again, when there were much larger things to think about.
She rocked to her feet before him, and she tried hard not to acknowledge how powerfully sexy he looked, sitting there on his heels, hands on his thighs, those blue eyes turned up to her through his golden lashes.
“All along,” she finally said, “she wanted me to have your baby.”
His lips pressed tightly together.
“Think about it,” she said. “When Ramsesh and Amonteh made love in that cave, they became Isis and Osiris, as the goddess intended, as she’d told Ramsesh what would happen in the temple. But they died before they could give Isis the weapon she wanted. Their son: Horus. The one thing she needed to fight and defeat Seth.
“Then Amonteh gave his ka to you and Ramsesh gave her ka to me, but in two different eras, hundreds of years apart. Isis had her pieces but now she had to find a way to bring us together. To send me to you in England was too risky. Seth had taken over Moore, and he was there. So Amonteh gave you the visions. First to keep you one step ahead of Moore, and then, when Moore was getting too close, he sent you as far away from England as possible. He put you on a course so that you and I would meet in a place Isis thought to be safe.”
“New South Wales.” William shook his head, the wind ruffling his curls. “Christ.”
“And Isis couldn’t bring you to me because Malik had already taken me prisoner by the time I wore the cuff. He would’ve killed you, Amonteh’s ka would’ve died with you, and there would’ve been no chance for Horus.”
“So as soon as you left the cave and found Sirius, she sent you here. To me.”
A deep exhale did nothing to calm her.
William slowly reached up, his hands gripping her hip bones. His eyes dropped to her flat belly. He looked reverent. Confused. And maybe just as scared as she was.
Don’t love him. Don’t you dare love him. It only complicates things. I forbid you to love him.
Too late.
“So this”—he leaned forward and nosed up her shirt to kiss the bare skin below her navel, and she shivered—“is supposed to defeat Seth?” Then he turned his head and pressed his cheek to her belly. “We raise him, keep him safe until he’s old enough to challenge Moore. Or whoever Seth might be by then.”
Him. This strange person who didn’t yet exist. This hero.
She wasn’t a mother yet, but she recognized the surge of protectiveness the moment it kicked in.
Behind that came a wave of anger and resentment. Something Isis probably never considered or even cared about.
“How dare she?” she murmured.
William pulled back and stood up. He looked down at her patiently, his brow drawn in his silent, assessing way.
“How dare she do this to us?” Sera said, her fury rising. “Taking both of us away from our worlds, stealing our lives. Giving me all this power I don’t want. Using me as a fucking incubator. And now bringing a baby into it? Bringing an innocent child into a war he’d otherwise know nothing about? Raising him to be some kind of war god?”
William’s hands settled around her shoulders. “He also could be just a child. Our child.”
She knew he was just saying this to talk her down, using that strong, gruff way of his, but it only frustrated her further.
“And give birth to and raise him here?” she cried. “In this awful place?”
The way he glanced around grimly told her he was thinking the same thing. “What’s it like? This colony in the future?”
She threw up her hands. “It still wouldn’t matter. We’re two hundred years away from anything I know.”
That seemed to stun him. He clenched his jaw, looking dazed. “The only thing I know is the sea,” he said softly. “And England. But we have neither.”
“We couldn’t go to England now anyway. Moore is there and…” She gestured vaguely to her belly, thinking about how what she and William had created was nothing more than a clump of molecules right about now. Hardly the effective weapon. “I’m not ready,” she choked out.
Not ready for any of this.
“So we’re supposed to stay here in the colony? I can’t keep running like we have been, Will. Not when I’m huge and fat. And definitely not when I’m holding a baby.” It felt so weird to say.
He nodded dully, then took her hand and held it between his own. Just held it, like he hadn’t realized he’d made the tender gesture and then didn’t know what to do with it. “They aren’t hunting you though. You can blend in, make a life here. Other colonists and freed men are doing it.”
“And what if Seth sends someone else? You think he won’t use another poor soul like he used Elizabeth? If she could stumble on us halfway across the world, so could another. Between America and here, he might consider the possibility the cuff might’ve left for one of the colonies. He could easily take another body and come here. And then what?” He said nothing. She pulled her hand free. “And then what?”
“No one knows you are here, Sera. You’ll be hidden.”
“The Waldgraves do.”
He hissed between his teeth. “Aye, they do.” His face brightened. “So does Viv. You could go to Viv’s again. He lives halfway to nowhere and he’ll keep your secret.”
“And he’s also halfway to dead. What happens when—wait.” A sickly flutter took up in her stomach. “You’re talking like you won’t be around.”
He aimed a level gaze directly at her, and she hated his placidness. “You and I both know what happens to bolters.”
The thought of him not being here with her—the entire concept of going through a pregnancy and birth and existing in this time and place without him—felt like being shoved hard in the chest. She retaliated the only way she knew how: with anger.
“Don’t! Don’t you dare say that.” She threw a hand in his face, but he didn’t recoil. Didn’t even budge.
But they both knew he spoke the truth. They let the doomed future rise between them like a wall of barbed wire. They could see each other through it, but reaching across would slice them to shreds.
Neither one of them blinked. Neither one of them moved. Until the
y both moved at the same time, him taking her hips and hauling her up against him. Her wrapping her arms around his neck and shoulders and constricting him like a snake.
She processed everything he’d just said, and when she came to her own decisions, they matched up with his.
Kissing his neck just below his ear, she said into his skin. “So we go back to Viv’s. It’s the only way.”
The only way to survive. But would that really be life? Could she really do that?
And then William tightened his hold on her. She didn’t think she’d ever tire of the pressure of his strong forearms on her lower back, the way the simple embrace kept her clamped to him.
“Maybe he’ll teach you how to shear a sheep,” she said. “It’s not the worsted wool factory. At least there’s that.”
“Okay,” he said, and she sagged, laughing at what was quickly becoming her favorite word. A foggy sheen mysteriously appeared over her vision.
Sliding his hands up to her ribcage, he gently pushed her away. “We need to go back to Fort Philip first.”
She shook her head. “No, you can’t. Why would you want to do that?”
“The ring. Elizabeth thought I’d put the ring in my pocket when you were questioning her, but I slipped it into my boot instead. Then after you left, I knew that wasn’t safe. You told me to throw it in the harbor, but I just couldn’t do it. There were too many questions around it and not nearly enough answers. Getting rid of it felt like more of a danger than keeping it around. It was why I remained at the fort for a little while, stupidly giving Elizabeth her chance to escape and attack me. I hid the ring before she hit me over the head.”
“Where?”
“I buried it just outside the fort walls.”
“Where?”
“Ah…I don’t remember. I’d have to see the wall to know. There are markings I’ll recognize.”
“Fuck it. Leave it there. Anyone who finds it won’t have a clue what it means, and by then we’ll be long gone.” To where, she didn’t know, but maybe if she kept saying it, they would have to make it true. Maybe they’d actually get away from New South Wales. Eventually.
She’d heard word about Van Diemen’s Land—Tasmania in her time—but they’d need a ship to get there. They needed a ship to get anywhere. The Remembrance still rocked in the harbor but that was a dead end, with William having no contacts on board and she no money to bribe the captain. Sure she could steal some piece by piece, but could she live with herself doing that? And by the time they gathered enough to approach the captain, the ship would likely have sailed. Or they’d be caught.
The Isis Knot Page 32
