When she had transported his men to the remote mountain, one small group at a time, wearying herself until she’d collapsed, he was impressed by her determination. He had even been saddened by her departure. Something of her sultry teasing had aroused a long-abandoned want inside him. Now he saw her for what she truly was: a snake in the grass.
Her eyelids drooped. In the shade, her skin was so ashen he questioned if she would begin to crumble.
“Set me free.”
She snapped awake and glared.
“We had an agreement.”
She rose, sunlight revealing the shape of her legs through the thin skirt—no doubt her intention that he be distracted by the view. She knelt in front of him and touched his cheek.
If I free you now, they will know what part I played, since I am charged with guarding you. I have orchestrated a coming conflict where you will be able to fulfill your vow. Patience.
He groaned and lunged forward, knocking her onto her back beneath him. “Treacherous woman, you will see me tortured and imprisoned and love every moment of it.”
Her chest heaved below him, but she didn’t melt away. Instead, she leaned up and placed a kiss on the corner of his mouth.
Leofrik stiffened.
She smirked and rubbed a finger across his brow. They will enter your mind to learn of our accord. Not to worry. Mist melted off her little finger and sank into his skull. Your secrets are safe.
Thirty-Six
Torture
The trees reminded Alexia of Wilhamshire. Of Sarah. Of Kiren’s secret home in the woods. A stone wall cut through the forest, rising just above her shoulder.
Already they had erected tents and established sleeping, eating, and washing areas. They were resilient.
A scream ripped through camp.
People cringed but went about their routines. Alexia hurried to the other side of the crumbling wall. Mae, Sarlic, and Lucian stood over the captive knight, bound in ropes on the ground. His white tunic was bloodied over leather armor and chainmail, a trail of blood trickling down his lip. He was not a particularly attractive man. The lines on his face said he was no stranger to harsh weather, long nights, and battle.
Alexia stiffened. He had led the charge against the Passionate.
Sarlic lifted a hand toward the knight, a wicked sneer tweaking his cheeks. “You will tell us how you found us.”
The man bowed his head, breathing hard. Sarlic’s fist clenched. The knight’s back arched. A vein bulged in his forehead, and his mouth burst open in another shriek.
“Stop!” she commanded.
Sarlic turned, his fist loosening. The knight collapsed to the ground.
“We do not torture information out of people.” She met each of their stares. Mae averted hers. Sarlic’s mouth popped open to protest, but Lucian beat him.
“Amos insisted.”
Alexia backed away, confused, then she rushed off to find Amos.
His head was bowed over a tree-stump/makeshift table where he examined the scrolls they’d intercepted. Deamus leaned over his shoulder, pointing to the words as he read them to their leader.
“This is not what we do.” Alexia slammed a palm on the stump.
Amos glanced up at her and wearily back at the text before him.
“Amos, you must tell them to stop.”
“We have a traitor, and he will make them known.”
She pointed back at the wall. “Why has his mind not been infiltrated?”
He met her stare, lips cutting a hard line. “We tried. Something is blocking it.”
She straightened. “There must be another way.”
“How many more will we lose, Alexia?” He rose. “I will not see them suffer. I will not see them die. This ends.”
Her fingers bit into her palms. She glanced at Deamus who shrugged.
“There is still this other world,” she said.
Amos met her gaze once more. He turned on Deamus. “Do you have a way?”
“I…”
“As I thought. Alexia, find this gate and I will follow you through. Until then, I have enough to worry about.”
She took her assignment with a heavy sigh. They would figure it out together.
***
Deamus rubbed at his arm so incessantly it might fall off, spectacles sitting askew as they paced away into the woods.
“You said you know how to open this gateway if we can provide enough energy.” She lifted her eyes to his face.
He opened his mouth and drew in breath, then closed it, gaze downcast.
Alexia stopped and placed a hand on his arm.
He groaned. “I tried to open the gateway, twice.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “But the power needed to do so—?”
“It cracked, but I think…”
“Cracked?” Her mind flashed to Deamus’s story of the Soul Eater, the barrier between worlds. They all insisted it was a children’s story, but what if it wasn’t? What if that was what had been attacking them?
He paced forward. “It did not work. I think the gateway may only be opened at a specific location, the place it was created. The place I entered this world.”
She shook the idea away. “Is that where I first found you?”
He nodded.
She recalled the isolated grove that was now missing one of its willow trees, the tree that was a man, but that had been right after her arrival in this time. She had traveled so many places since. No matter how she strained to remember, she couldn’t envision its location. Perhaps Velia could help them. “Do you know where that is?”
“I…no. I am sorry. I thought maybe…” He shook his head. “I was wrong. And then there are the stars.”
“What about them?”
“When they align, the bridge naturally appears, but they will not be in alignment for many hundred years.”
Alexia stopped him with a hand on the arm. “Can the gate be opened without an alignment?”
His head shook, shoulders lifting. He backed away, putting more space between them.
“There is something more, something you’re not telling me.”
His eyebrows lifted, lips pressed tight. They burst open. “I wanted to confess this to you before, but…”
She squeezed his arm. Let this not be something related to the entity.
He twitched and looked away, opening his mouth several times and closing it. Finally, his shoulders straightened. “I am not like you, Alexia. Not like any of you.” He glanced back through the trees, the direction of the camp. “I am human.”
She blinked at him several times. That wasn’t what she’d been expecting.
She laughed.
He wasn’t laughing.
“But I have seen you use powers. You cannot possibly be human, at least not entirely. I myself am half human. There is no shame in it.”
His shoulders drooped. “It is true. Not a drop of Passionate blood in me. There are very few humans who can feel the world around them, and even fewer who can reshape the energy.”
“So you borrow our strength, so to speak, having none of your own? But you have participated in sharings. How is that possible?”
He shrugged timidly. “Borrowing. Only a little.”
She stood back. “But you have intimate knowledge of the gateway and this other world.”
“I am from there. My father was like me, and he was present when the gateway first opened.”
Her brain hurt. “How many years back was that?”
He scuffed the heel of his boot into the ground. “Time is not the same here. It had been centuries here since the great departure and a handful of years to my world.”
Her head spun. Different times on each world? She turned the conversation back to the subject at hand. “Your heritage changes nothing.” She touched his shoulder. “You are my friend. We will find the gateway. Together.” And perhaps it would lead her to the source of this enemy, this Soul Eater.
***
Alexia left c
amp, not far, unwilling to return and listen to the torture. It was difficult enough knowing it was happening from the spring she’d located. Amos would be angry with her for wandering off alone, but she needed the silence, the isolation. The thing that would become the Soulless hadn’t manifested here, and she hoped it had well and truly been left behind. Regardless, her dagger remained strapped to her hip.
She splashed water over her face as the stream gurgled past. Thumps pounded her womb, the baby ready to join the world. She pressed a hand over the kicks, smiling to herself. This beautiful little girl was the greatest comfort she found in the dark world she inhabited. And yet the child’s future was so uncertain.
“Why is it I always find you near water? Are you part selkie?”
Alexia jumped, hand flying to her weapon. Kiren leaned on a hip, eyeing her up and down.
She turned back to the water, flutters curling through her chest. Her mind spun with the memory of him sneaking up on her under her favorite rowan tree or on the roof. So much of her Kiren was in him.
She rose and turned to leave.
He stepped in her path, arms crossed. The set of his shoulders was one she’d deflated many a time with a well-stated argument. Here stood the proud man who believed he could heal the world.
She sidestepped him, and his arm curled around her center.
“Avoid me to your heart’s fulfillment after this, but you accused me of abandoning my family. Allow me to enlighten you.”
She pried his arm free, stood back, and waited.
He wouldn’t meet her stare. “I am terrified of what has become of my sister, that everything my father worked for is gone, that no matter how it pains me, I will never be able to take up his mantle.” He lifted a brilliant purple flower and slid it into her hair, just above her ear. “I am frightened by what I feel for you.”
She blushed and touched the bloom. A foreign blossom. She’d seen its like only once before, in Kiren’s forested haven.
He brushed her hand away from the petals. “It reminds me of home.”
Her stomach fluttered. “The place your family lived, in this other world?”
Kiren let out a painful breath and nodded. Sadness filled his eyes, an entire sea of it. He cleared his throat. “Certainly you are missing your home and family.” He waved at her womb.
She gave a half-smile. “Indeed.” Her husband most of all. “Though many of the people I most wish for are dead—my sister, my mother, my surrogate mother.”
“Is there no one else?”
Alexia closed her eyes.
“There was someone. The father?”
She sighed.
Fingers landed on her shoulder. “It is strange to me that a man could have or would have abandoned you in this state—unless he was a villain. Methinks you have suffered some great tragedy.”
She smiled sadly. “Tragedy is part of us. An intimate part.”
“This is true.” His head tilted, fingers tightening on her shoulder. “But I wish to understand yours.”
Alexia placed her fingers over his, ready to remove his hand.
His ocean swells pulled her into their undertow. “You do not trust me, so whatever is going happen, I must deserve it.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her through the trees to a clearing. “Let me earn your trust.”
Frosty wind tickled her neck, lifting her hair toward the horizon, a bare line that disappeared over the crest of a hill, disrupted by a small building and a single, tall willow tree. The stream they’d left glistened in the morning light, as wide as she was tall, originating from a formation of stones she recognized. The stone bench from Kiren’s forested sanctum.
Nausea curdled her belly.
Purple blooms mixed with red and yellow across the meadow, all the way up to the nearby building. Wooden slats framed the small structure with a steeple, three steps leading up to the door. The lack of windows surprised her, but she recognized the rudimentary structure of its architecture. She had seen a much further advancement of these same skills.
He’d built a church? In his sanctuary? And how had they landed so close to this haven—not that she’d complain. He was much more relaxed when surrounded by the familiar. Perhaps he had suggested a location to Velia before leaving the mountains.
Kiren slipped a key out of his pocket and placed it to the building’s lock.
“Why a church?” she asked. “Why not a house?”
He paused in the doorway and exhaled, then stepped into the building. If it had ever been used for worship, it wasn’t by a populace. The roof was riddled with windows, ones she could only know existed from being inside. Beveled glass poured light like waves on the ocean. The largest one occupied the center, casting oscillations of luminescence on a woven mat, the only furniture in the entire building. Resting across the mat was a friar’s robe. He stooped and slipped it over his head.
Squares of light circled the outer edges of the room, illuminating multiple murals that covered the white-washed walls. The paint strokes were wide, as if painted by fingers. The art wasn’t particularly refined, but it possessed an emotional quality that moved her—extremes of light and darkness, vivid colors, harrowing scenes.
Kiren stood in the center of the room, dressed in his priestly attire, head bowed. He lifted his eyes. “Here I am.”
She turned back to the walls, fascinated.
Nearest the door, lightning zipped from a clear sky, exploding against the ground and illuminating the crouched silhouette of a boy. The next image was a knight, riding atop a horse, dragging a tether that looped a terrified boy’s neck—a boy dressed in a fine white jacket and decorated breeches.
Alexia stepped toward the poor child.
“The knight was Sir Godwin.” Kiren’s voice carried from the middle of the room. “At first he hoped I might win him a reward, but over time I became an annoyance, and then a slave.”
She traced the next image, a building under construction, the slightly older boy dragging timber toward it.
Alexia’s breath caught. The following scene depicted a priest offering a hand to the boy who knelt on the ground in rags.
Kiren’s voice lowered. “But God is good to those who need him.”
She glanced back at him, his head bowed.
In the fifth depiction, two silhouettes fled in the night, bright stars overhead. A church appeared next, the knight and a number of men standing out front, fists raised as they spoke with the priest, and the boy huddled beneath the floorboards of the building, gripping the pendant around his neck.
The lad and priest sat in candlelight, the priest pointing to words in a book, mouth open in speech, the boy holding a quill to a parchment, letters trailing behind his pen.
She moved to a stormy sea, Viking ships breaking the waves. On a hill overlooking the ocean, fire consumed the little church, the priest’s face pressed to the window in terror.
“Everything I love is doomed.” Kiren’s words startled her.
She drew her fingers across the next scene, an adolescent boy sitting in the ash, face hidden in his hands. And then there was a crowd of silhouettes encircling the boy, a crown hovering over his head. The massacre had been captured as well, a tortured young man crouched over the prostrate bodies, frantically searching for a way to revive the dead.
She had reached the back of the building, a giant cross painted from ceiling to floor in white. On the other side was a teenage girl with fiery red hair and striking green eyes, both beautiful and terrifying. Behind her, a white palace with seven spires brightened the sky. The rest of the walls were blank.
“I have been searching for a way to her, Alexia. My sister. She found me briefly, and suddenly, she was gone.” He lifted both hands. “I am not here to lead these people. I am here by mistake and must return to my home.”
“But these are your people.”
He huffed and pointed to the castle. “My kingdom is elsewhere.”
She turned to him. “So you have a right to not care about these suff
ering souls? Your kin?”
He shook his head. “It is safer for them if I do not.” He brought both hands together in front of him. “I did once. Do you know what happened?”
“Yes.” The small admission drew him up short. His eyes flashed and he swallowed, gaze dropping.
He continued in a smaller voice. “I travel the continents, searching for a way back while performing miracles for the poor, despondent souls of this world. In time, God will provide me a way home.”
She snorted. No he wouldn’t.
Kiren’s eyes burned into her, warning against her light response.
“Have you considered that God is not part of this debacle and you are here because life is cruel?”
He advanced toward her. “There is a higher reason.”
In his righteous anger, he looked so much like the man she’d met while imprisoned at Haunted House of Stark, the hour she’d lost her heart and head completely to him. She averted her gaze and held her breath, determined not to take in his oaken musk.
“Everything we pass through is to prepare us for what will come.” He stopped right before her. “Except perhaps you.” His hand lifted, fingers outstretched. They grazed over her womb and she sucked in a breath. His palm flattened, warming her skin through the fabric. His voice softened, slightly breathless. “I have not yet discovered what part you play in my destiny.”
The baby pressed against his touch. Alexia gasped.
His eyes flickered up. “Perhaps I am to save your child and that is why God brought us together.”
She stared at him, saddened. If only he knew the truth.
“Why do I think of you always?” he whispered, placing his other hand at the base of her jaw. “Why can I not stop? And do not tell me it is because of a few mistaken kisses.”
She wished with her whole soul that he could be her Kiren, the tender man who sacrificed everything for others. This glimpse hurt too much.
She backed away, lowering her eyes. A tear slipped down her cheek. “I thank you for sharing this with me.”
Kiren reached her in a single step. The earnest waves of his all-encompassing sea dragged her under, swallowing her whole. She couldn’t breathe, and she never wanted to again. Here was her eternity, waiting for her to seize it, to say just the right thing and lay claim.
Timeless (Maiden Of Time Book 3) Page 15
