They chased after Leofrik and arrived at a landing where he’d cornered the last man, his blade pressed close to the enemy’s neck. He shoved the man toward the stairs. “Go. Do not get in our way.”
The man nodded emphatically and turned to the stairs.
“Sarlic will get him,” Zeph said.
One more curve of stairs and they came to a rickety door. Leofrik tried the handle. It didn’t give. He stood back and kicked it in.
A small room appeared with a single window across the way.
A squeal pierced their ears. Alexia hurried forward, pushing past the men and into the room. A little girl leapt at her. Jangling chains. Light flashed up.
Not light. A blade, Alexia realized too late.
Startled eyes pierced into her as fire raced down her side, pain radiating out from where the dagger burrowed between her ribs.
Alexia gasped.
Heat spilled from the wound, the warmth of life, escaping quickly.
Reality crashed in with nauseating force. Alexia dropped to her knees and onto her side, the blow reverberating through her womb, tearing something free.
Fifty
Fated
Kiren sucked in a hard breath, his side aching with phantom pain. He elbowed Zeph and the knight aside. Alexia lay on the floor, her robe changing color from a sage brown to rich-damp soil. Except that wasn’t water.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and touched the blade, unable to grasp what it was doing there, why it protruded from his beloved wife.
The murmur of voices agitated him, background noise to the buzzing in his brain.
Alexia was injured. His greatest fears were coming true, and no matter how he’d vowed to keep her safe, she was going to die. He’d condemned her by allowing her to come. No, he’d condemned her by claiming her, just as he’d condemned all he loved. He couldn’t draw in enough breath. His lungs were failing.
No, not his. Hers.
Her palm touched his cheek, her lips moving. He focused on them: “Heal me.”
He shook the stupor free and focused inward. The knife had punctured her lung. He tugged the blade free and called for the tissue to mend. Power surged through him and into her chest. The room swam.
Alexia’s back arched, and her grip tightened around his arm. Sweat beaded her brow. She panted and screamed.
Kiren held her, fighting dizziness and listening for her heart to slow, but it didn’t. It was pumping faster. He didn’t understand. Her lung was whole. She should be mended.
Unless…
He placed a hand over her womb. Blood pooled beneath the surface. She was bleeding internally. Again. Her fall had ruptured her previously healed wounds. This wasn’t something he could heal in a prison tower. He’d already given her all he could spare. The injury would take all he had and expose their entire party to capture.
“Sleep.” He drew on the chemicals in the brain that would force her to rest, to slow, to minimize the danger. He ripped a blanket from the straw bed and tied it around his wife, at an angle that would put the most pressure on the rupture, holding it together. “Zeph, you have to take her. Take her somewhere safe and then come get me.”
His friend’s wings unfurled.
The little girl gasped.
“Go now. Fast as you can. Faster than you have ever flown!”
Zephaniah squeezed through the window and reached back for Alexia. Kiren and Leofrik carefully maneuvered her out. An arrow hissed past Zeph’s wing. Kiren met his friend’s wide eyes, catching his thought: Waesucks! That was close.
“Go!”
Zeph grabbed Alexia and flew straight up.
Kiren watched him disappear, heart thundering an ominous foreboding. This was it. This was when he’d fail her.
He vaguely registered Leofrik’s voice, a soothing coo. “Your mother sent me. We have come to bring you to her.”
“But what I did to that woman…” The girl’s voice faltered, her eyes fixed on the window.
“Child, Velia wished your freedom, and I have vowed to make it so, but we must leave.”
“You know her name,” the girl whispered. “She really did send you. But my father—”
“You saw the man with wings? The man who healed the knife wound before you? They are like you. There are others. Your father will not stop us.”
Kiren turned as the girl nodded up at the knight. She lifted her arm to expose her chain. Leofrik pulled his blade and smacked the hilt of his weapon into the cuff once, twice, three times.
“That will not work,” Kiren promised. He pulled a seed out of his pocket and placed it in the locking mechanism. Leofrik backed away as Kiren held his fingers over the opening and felt for the seed. It waited. He offered it life, growth, energy. It lapped up his offering and burst outward. Metal cracked under the sudden pressure of a tiny tree.
Ironwood.
Kiren knocked the wood free, and the shackle dropped to the floor. Instant color flooded the child’s face.
Leofrik offered a hand and she took it. He led her toward the exit.
Decision time.
Kiren glanced out the window, back after the girl and knight, out the window… He could take his chances waiting here for Zeph to return, or help the others escape. His gut was a knotted rope, twisting tighter under the weight of Alexia’s dangling life.
He could do no good here. Remaining was a guarantee of his eventual capture. He followed the two out the door—the same instant a shout carried up at them. He shared a look with Leofrik, and they sped down the steps.
Sarlic was bent over at the waist, chest heaving as he held both hands in front of himself. He could inflict on a single person without issue, but each mind he touched simultaneously multiplied his efforts. He’d already employed his gift on so many. Three men lay crumpled at his feet, but more thundered down the hall.
They were trapped.
Fifty-One
Waylaid
Kiren pulled his dagger and readied for impact. Bodies blocked out the torchlight, undoubtedly drawn by Alexia’s scream. Sarlic stumbled back, his feet hitting the lowest stair, sweat spilling down his face. Leofrik loosed his sword, poised for combat.
The child retreated back up the steps.
Three of them against a fort full of humans. Amos and Regin likely faced the same odds, and Mae… They should have brought more people, or never come. Kiren understood the tactic. It had been a strategic move as much as a compassionate one. Velia’s daughter would one day be a powerful tool and asset, but for Alexia’s sake, they should have chosen another way.
Alexia would die because he couldn’t escape this. Not in time. He’d put the life of Velia’s child, a girl he didn’t even know, over all he cherished. And yet, Alexia would want this. Were she here, she would stop time and whisk the girl to safety before thinking for an instant of herself.
Kiren stepped squarely to the center of the stairwell, blocking the passage as men filled the crossroads of corridors, cornering them.
Leofrik stepped forward, sword swinging. It clashed against the first combatants. The hallway was too narrow for anyone to pass their whirling blades. Back and forth they went, losing a step, gaining one, muscles straining. Every second more of the enemy flooded in. And Alexia was that much closer to death.
Wind whooshed past Kiren’s shoulder. A crossbow bolt embedded itself in the mortar behind him. He turned on the crowd and found the weapon. The man who had shot at him was loading another bolt. Kiren lifted his dagger, the only shield he possessed. The crossbowman raised his weapon up once more, taking aim.
Sarlic stepped in front of Kiren, reaching out. The man howled, his hands crinkling at odd angles, the crossbow dropping from his grasp.
Whunk!
Leofrik cried out. His weapon scraped along the stone wall and caught in the mortar, trapped. He ducked a blow. The enemy swung again.
Sarlic growled, knuckles popping in his hand, shoulders lifted and tense. The attacker grabbed his head and screamed, tumbling
to the floor. Others spilled forward. Leofrik dodged their weapons, falling back into the stairwell.
Blades lifted toward Leofrik’s and Sarlic’s throats. The crossbow had been retrieved and was now pointed squarely at Kiren’s head.
I know I have not been the truest of servants, Holy Father, Kiren muttered silently, but spare me, and I will serve until I can give no more. I will give all I am. Like Alexia.
His throat tightened. His Alexia, who might even at this moment be dead.
I beg thee, he pleaded. Beg thee. “Let her live” was how he longed to end the prayer, but he couldn’t mutter the words, knowing it was impossible. God heard his heart. God would do as he had designed, and Kiren would have to trust that no matter how his heart broke, it was the right solution.
Fifty-Two
Abandoned
Muscles screamed, balling so tightly Alexia knew they would break her. She panted through it, feeling blindly for someone, anyone. She was alone.
Rotting wood filled her nose, along with the stink of rodents. She forced her eyes open. Gaping floorboards cut into her shoulder, sunlight streaming through narrow slats overhead. She must be in an old barn or abandoned house, one that had long since been empty.
Her lower extremities seized. Pain melted in and out through bouts of intensity.
Tightening. Agony. Loosening. Panting for breath.
Silence.
She was going to die. This was it. She’d known it was coming all along, but not like this. Alone. Abandoned. She didn’t want to die alone.
“Yer not alone.”
She blinked her eyes open, and there stood Grandfather. Outside of time? Within regular time? She couldn’t tell. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a tender smile. “None of us what alter time do anything alone. I am here. Always.”
Fifty-Three
Abandoned
Kiren lifted his chin and looked the crossbowman in the eye. If it was his time, he would face it bravely…or he could duck out of the way and live another hour. He liked that option.
Alexia said he would live centuries. This was not the end for him, but that didn’t mean he could avoid being caught, bound, thrown in a prison, and becoming a new toy for the lord of the fort.
All while the woman he loved faded from this world.
Kiren reached up slowly and wrapped a hand around his pendant. He had drawn life out of a man. It made his gut rot, but perhaps with the aid of the necklace, he could give his companions a fighting chance.
One soldier near the crossroads of hallways dropped. Straight down. Onto his face. Another dropped. A third. Five down.
Men turned to the other hall, facing something on the other side of the bend, beyond Kiren’s view. An entire ring of men trembled and fell. The rest backed away, their hearts filling Kiren’s ears with a symphony of terror.
Mae emerged from around the corner. She clasped and unclasped the cuff around her arm.
A crossbow bolt shot toward her. She stepped aside. The shooter crumbled to the floor. Men ran away, the ones who still could. Two faltered and dropped in their frenzied escape. The rest remained on the ground, their skin graying, dark energy swirling from their collapsed forms toward the woman’s skirts.
Mae firmly clasped the bracelet. She turned toward them. “I thought you might need some help.”
Sarlic stumbled forward, dancing between collapsed bodies. “I could kiss you right now.”
“And join them?” She pointed to the fallen. “Heavens, no.”
He stopped short.
Leofrik pulled his sword free and retreated back up the stairs as Kiren waded forward, past the reaper. “If ever I wished for an ally in battle, I would take you.”
Her face pinked.
He continued. “You truly are breathtaking in your own element—and look how you preserved them without taking a single life!”
Leofrik ducked down the stairs with the little girl.
Mae clasped both hands before her. “And there she is, the precious little one. Come, child. No one will harm you further.”
The girl eyed the fallen with something between wonder and fear as Leofrik guided her forward. He halted and knelt to face the child. “You must go with them now.”
“But what about you?”
He lifted his head, gaze fixed down the hallway where the men had retreated. “I have one final thing to do.”
Her little head bowed.
I wonder, will Alexia’s child be like this one—so fragile and small? Kiren pondered. He shook the thought free. Her babe would not survive, nor would its mother if he didn’t find a way to her right now.
“Come!” He waved everyone forward. Mae fell into step next to the child, and Sarlic took up the rear. The little girl kept glancing backward to where Leofrik watched them, until he turned and paced down the dark hallway, alone.
***
Men crowded the courtyard, rallying around the plume of midnight at the gate. A wall of slumbering bodies hedged the exit in. Both stood between Kiren and freedom—the advantage being that none of the soldiers were paying attention to him and his companions.
“Mae,” he muttered, “Perhaps Regin could use your assistance.”
She loosened her cuff and pointed to the battlement walls. “Up there for safety.”
Kiren seized the little girl’s hand, and Sarlic guarded them as they climbed the stairs to the top of the wall.
One by one, the men fell. A collective gasp filled the courtyard along with a couple shrieks as realization hit. Mae walked forward, hands out to her sides as the essence of energy sizzled into her limbs from the fallen. She reached the wall of sleeping men and reattached her bracelet.
Kiren peered over the battlement at the other side.
More men rallied on the outside of the gate. He hated how exposed this action had made his people.
His people.
When had he begun thinking of them that way? Already he was planning the future, how they’d go to ground and slowly blend in with humanity, placing a person here, a person there, each with a strong communication system to keep watch on their enemies.
All because Alexia insisted he lead. Because she opened his heart. Because he’d promised to stay if she agreed to be his.
Wings flapped in the distance—gray-green wings. His pulse jumped. Zeph. Kiren eyed the men below, the number of bows present. Terrible odds.
“Mae, press through the gate!” he called.
The gates inched open. Regin appeared from the darkness below, backing away from the murk. Amos also appeared. The darkness faded. Men surged toward the small opening. True to fashion, they began collapsing, unconscious.
Zeph’s figure could no longer be mistaken as a bird, but the men below were too distracted to notice.
Kiren turned to Sarlic and the little girl. “I must leave now. Sarlic, protect her. Flee with the others, and I will join you when Alexia is whole.”
The branded man took the little girl’s hand. “Save our Alexia.”
Kiren gave him a nod, and hands latched under his arms, hefting him into the air and away.
Fifty-Four
Ulric
Leofrik pressed the door open into the large chamber where Ulric had summoned him not long ago. The nobleman sat in a high-backed chair, fully dressed for war, pondering his hands. “And I thought perhaps you were dead.” He rested an elbow on the chair. “If only I were so lucky.”
“You will wish it was so by the end of this day.”
Ulric lifted his head, his eyes burning cinders through Leofrik’s chest. “Oh, I wish it now. Attack.”
Footfalls thudded behind him, three sets. Leofrik whirled and blocked a blade.
Fifty-Five
New Life
Kiren landed before the old barn, repulsed by the stink of rodent feces. The building was well away from the roads, so far from notice that no one would come this way. And yet the idea of Alexia giving birth here…
He hurried forward. “Zeph, go fo
r clean water and cloths.”
Wings flapped, wind stirring around him and kicking dust into the entry. Kiren shielded his eyes and stepped through. Alexia lay in a crimson puddle, her life ebbing slowly away, but he couldn’t move. He’d been kicked in the gut. Twice.
Draped around her neck, fully exposed on the floor next to her head was a pendant.
A flat pewter diamond with ancient symbols: a large Z with a cross stroke and rounded tail, encircled by a ring of smaller characters.
His pendant.
And yet his necklace weighed against his chest, safely tucked away.
She had come from the future.
He’d never surrender the medallion, which meant in her time, he must be dead. Had she come through time to stop his tragic end from occurring? But for her to bear the necklace, she would have to be of the royal bloodline. A blood relative.
His stomach roiled like an egg in a skillet.
Alexia whimpered. Her skin was white, so pale he feared she would slip away into the next life. Kiren dropped to her side, fumbling through his horror to find her injury.
She must be his or Kiri’s granddaughter. Blood. And he’d forced her hand…
This must be the great secret she was shielding him from. He could make it right. He could pretend he never knew, cover the truth and live out a lifetime of bitter-sweetness.
“Oh, twisted man that I am,” he barely whispered. “Reviling flesh.” His gaze turned heavenward. “This is my punishment for forsaking the cloth, is it not?”
She was dying. Was it wrong that he loved her, that he would do anything for her, even if being her husband was the greatest perversion of his existence? She’d been a test for him. One he’d failed.
Timeless (Maiden Of Time Book 3) Page 23
