Timeless (Maiden Of Time Book 3)

by Crystal Collier

  “Not our only one.” She shook her head.

  No reply. His eyes were fixed straight ahead.

  Light burst through the trees before them, a pillar of brilliance stretching beyond their view into the heavens.

  Something yanked at her chest, tugging her forward as if she were tethered to a rope on a pulley. Kiren gasped. One hand flew to his sternum.

  The gateway.

  If Kiren’s only weapon had been utilized, he was no good to her, and fearing for his safety would only hinder her. Alexia froze time, pressed a kiss to his still lips, and tore through the distance. Air fell heavily in her lungs, moving like putty, but she forced it to flow. The stillness parted for her, creating a tunnel of freedom. She had never been so alive, so free. This must be what Lester felt when he ran—that the world was his to control.

  Branches parted.

  Alexia froze. People knelt or lay prostrate, writhing, their faces contorted in pain. Skin had shriveled, forms thinned to a structure of bone and flesh until she barely recognized them—like how she’d first discovered Mae. A stream of something translucent tugged from their chests to Deamus’s open hand where he stood, silhouetted by light, holding her baby and funneling power into the gateway.

  Thirteen of the Passionate. Amos. Sarlic. Oriel. Filia. Oluchi. Silivia. Beatrice. So many others. No Regin, Willem, or Lucian…

  She wobbled forward, Deamus’s face coming into focus. He was grinning like a lunatic.

  A madman.

  The Soulless were born because thirteen souls gave themselves into the hands of a madman. It was happening. This was the moment.

  Alexia stepped closer and froze. A barely visible ribbon hung in the air before her nose, coursing from the trees beyond, straight to Deamus. She squinted and focused on several other streams, eleven thicker sources. Each of the remaining Passionate. But there were more, narrower threads, hundreds of them stretching beyond her senses.

  The gateway had been open mere seconds, and already Amos and Oriel looked close to death.

  Deamus was using them to get home. He either didn’t intend to bring them with him or was blind to what he was doing—controlled by the entity. The Passionate would be dead before he finished his escape.

  All of them.

  Had he been using them all along? Using her? She’d trusted him entirely, believed in him, even considered him a friend. This must be the entity’s doing.

  Her nails cut into her palms. Somehow she could stop him, keep him from destroying the Passionate. And she would.

  Alexia stalked forward, fists balled, ready to shatter Deamus’s nose if that was what it took to put him down.

  A chilly breeze curled around her wrist.

  She twisted around, startled. Nothing filled the space but a murky cloud, yet in the cloud she sensed something more: Intelligence. Malice. Despair.

  The Soul Eater.

  It reared up in front of her, creating a wall. Its tentacles spread across the space before her, reaching out and touching each of the dying Passionate. Sinister joy filled its presence.

  Alexia stumbled backward. She had no weapon to fight this. A dagger could not wound something without a body. It was not bound by the laws of time like every other foe she’d faced. She could feel the thing grinning at her as each tentacle became a hook. They slammed into the thirteen Passionate like daggers. Their bodies jolted.

  “Stop!” she begged.

  The blackness pulsed with glee, mocking her.

  She had to stop it. What had Grandfather told her?

  That she would need Mae.

  Alexia swiveled around, but her friend was not among the prostrate nor in the woods beyond.

  The Passionate were doomed.

  The black cloud lifted a limb over Alexia, the end forming a barb. She dodged to the left, releasing time and rolling onto the ground. Strength surged from her center, sucked free. She shrieked.

  Deamus’s head turned her direction. His grin widened. He licked his lips.

  Alexia curled into the mossy ground, helpless against the foe. No, not helpless. Even if every advantage was ripped away, she would save her baby, the Passionate, her husband.

  She had to stop Deamus.

  Alexia’s limbs trembled. She was freezing, like the marrow had been sucked out of her bones as surely as when the Soulless attacked. She didn’t have much left. She could stop time again and face the monstrous essence that would take possession of her soul. But there was no escape.

  This was always where she’d been meant to die.

  She should have brought Kiren with her. At least then she’d have someone to turn to in the end, a way to confess her eternal love, her remorse, to beg his forgiveness for sacrificing herself so foolishly.

  Now that it was here, she didn’t want to die.

  Sixty-Four

  Inside

  Alexia lifted her sword. She needed Mae. She had to save her baby. She had to save the Passionate!

  Every desperate instinct balled in her chest and tightened. They squeezed and twisted in such a fury of need that they tore at her very cells.

  Her desperation exploded. The world shattered around her like glass, the fragments dancing outward and freezing. They hung suspended around her in a vast nothingness. No ground beneath her feet. No sky above her head. She floated with the fragments, but she wasn’t outside of time. She hadn’t slowed or stopped time.

  Each shard of reality depicted a different moment, a different person, a completely different reality. In one, John held Sarah’s hand as her sister stared into the eyes of their surviving baby. In another, Father played peek-a-boo with toddler Corona. Another showed Miles living in a country cottage where his children played while his parents stood on either side of him, beaming. Each of her friends and loved ones dangled about her, all with their happiest possible life.

  “Where am I?” she muttered.

  “Yer inside time,” Grandfather’s voice echoed.

  She twisted and found his face reflected in one of the fragments.

  “You have slowed time, sped it, escaped it, and altered it. You’ve stepped outside before, but now yer at its core. Breathe it in, Sparrow.” He grinned. “You are the Maiden of Time.”

  She closed her eyes and stretched out her hands, relaxing and inhaling. Her mind burst wide open and she saw everything: a beautiful queen giving birth to Kiren, a giant explosion on the yet unknown American continent in the far future, the birth of the Soulless… Not only could she see everything, she could feel every possibility. In the blink of a second, all was laid before her. What would happen if Kiren were never born? His father would die in a war, leaving no heir. The far distant explosion in America would mark a new era for peace and world order that the Passionate couldn’t even begin to imagine. And the Soulless…

  The Soul Eater. It was the essence of the Soulless. It would be contained within thirteen of the most selfless Passionate. But what if it wasn’t? Alexia watched as the darkness infested the leaders of each nation, one by one, turning them on each other. Mass genocide. War and fires. Destruction. The annihilation of one kingdom after another until the final man pressed a button and burned the Earth to nothing with a weapon too horrifying to exist.

  But must the Soulless exist? There had to be another way.

  She tweaked time so that she didn’t liberate Deamus from his tree prison. The darkness was freed by someone in the other world, and when the gateway opened between worlds, it slipped through and destroyed everything.

  She went back and placed Mae at the gateway when the thing entered. Her friend absorbed the entity’s strength and stopped it from reaching its goal. All was well. But Mae started lashing out at people. Small things at first: snapping at perceived offenses, stealing bits of energy to silence people she didn’t like, consuming greater quantities of power for the high it gave her. In time she was clearing entire villages for the joy of people’s screams. Then she was razing the Earth.

  Alexia tried again, destroying both of Ki
ren’s medallions so that the gateway could never be opened. Ages went by. Kiren lost his purpose, even the desire to lead the Passionate. He was tired. Eventually he and several of the Passionate fell into the hands of future doctors, then scientists. These men and women prodded and poked until they tapped into the source of Passionate power. After decades of experiments, they pulled so hard on a primal force that they tore a hole in the seam between worlds. The darkness leaked through.

  She explored infinite possibilities and every single one resulted in chaos winning. Except for one.

  The Soulless must become.

  If the darkness was trapped within the breast of thirteen of the purest Passionate who lacked access to their gifts, the rest of the world would live. The rest of the Passionate would live. These thirteen would become the eternal embodiment of the Soul Eater’s monstrous appetite. Corporeal prisons.

  The lesser of evils.

  Alexia came back in time not to stop the Soulless, but to create them. She had always been destined to do this.

  And of her baby… A lifetime rushed upon her: she left the darkness behind and fled with her husband and child to this other world. She listened to Kiren sing lullabies to Corona every night, swelled with pride over her little girl’s first word, rejoiced over her daughter’s first step, ached when Corona fell and broke her first bone, dressed her daughter up in beautiful gowns, and thought her heart would explode with love when a little brother was born. Each success and failure filled her heart. Her young ones grew. They began to use eloquent language, fulfilling the role of princess and prince while their father ruled the land, always guided and consoled by Alexia. The children matured into stunning young people. They married. They brought the greatest joy to Alexia through grandchildren. Her life was beautiful and so full. Kiren’s smile lines deepened with time, but he never aged, and she remained youthful along with him—whether because of their bond or her natural gifts, they never knew or cared. And then the day it all ended. When the man destroyed the Earth, her world burned as well. It melted from the inside out because of the metaphysical bond between worlds.

  Alexia could barely breathe for the sweetness and sorrow of all she’d experienced. It was a full life, and it was hers. She could have it if she wished.

  But there was another possibility. Many years of pain, loneliness, and suffering stretched out before her, but in the end, grievances would be answered. Mae would marry. Miles would find love. And Sarah…

  She squinted into the murk of possibilities.

  Her sister, her best friend, the one person she couldn’t stand to have lost…

  Alexia stood in Mae’s inn the day Sarah had taken her own life after the stillbirth of her child. John set Sarah’s dead body at Alexia’s feet. She crumpled over her sister, tracing the raven curls that hid sightless eyes. Tears spilled down her cheeks. It didn’t matter that it had happened a year ago but not for another five hundred years. The pain was here and now. Alexia remembered the squeal of joy as two young girls gallivanted through Father’s gardens, mucking their dress hems and shoes. She felt the press of down blankets while a storm lashed at the windows, Sarah’s protective arms wrapped around her. She grinned into the mirror as Sarah pulled a brush through her hair, their discussion of prospective beaus both disgruntling and hilarious.

  Alexia touched her sister’s unmoving breast. Borrowing unintentionally from Kiren’s gift, she found Sarah’s heart, stilled because it had bled out after being pierced with a dagger that could kill the Soulless. Her sister who had been the most vibrant person she knew. So full of life. Now empty.

  But it didn’t have to be that way. “I can still save Sarah.”

  Time rearranged itself to Mae’s hidden cellar as Sarah lifted the dagger to her chest. Alexia reach out on instinct, not knowing what she was doing or how, and tapped her sister’s brow. Sarah’s mind froze. Her heart stopped instantly, her life essence lifting free and hanging, suspended within time. The dagger pierced Sarah’s skin, but it did not penetrate to her heart. It stopped shy and, though her body appeared dead, she lived.

  Inside time.

  Alexia sped to the night John went to bury Sarah. Her brother-in-law stood, stars mocking him from above, looking down on his lifeless wife. He lifted the shovel to dig an inelegant hole, and crumpled. He couldn’t do it. He wept over her for hours until at last, he rose and faced the cold stars, his jaw set with rage. He stomped away. Alexia pushed her sister’s life back into her and touched Kiren’s mind. “Give her strength. Save her. But you cannot let me know. I must go back. You know I must.”

  Kiren emerged from the inn, scratching his head. He saw Sarah’s prone body. Following Alexia’s guidance, he touched her.

  And Sarah gasped, eyes launching wide.

  Alexia withdrew from the future/past and found herself back inside time, all realities twinkling around her. Sarah would live. That single assurance filled her with so much joy she could barely contain it. But what about herself? Was being inside of time what would cost her life?

  Snatches of life created a hallway, glimmers of playing with Sarah in her father’s woods, meeting Bellezza in a dark cellar and finding Baron Galedrew dead, Kiren kissing her on Father’s roof as the sunrise filtered around them… Every moment flickered before her—snippets she’d forgotten, times she’d dreaded being a woman, the tension and joys of finally learning her identity… All things she recalled. Nothing new.

  A door appeared between fragments. It was detailed by three swirling vortexes, each with moving hands like the face of a different clock. Intricate lattice work had her reaching for the wood and metal frame before she’d realized it.

  “Stop!”

  She paused.

  Grandfather’s voice echoed over her shoulder. “That door be what leads to the end of time.”

  “I only wished to know what will become of me.”

  “Alexia, step through that door and you’ll end time.”

  She backed away. “But my pathway leads to this door.”

  “Not yet.”

  She glanced back at him, a face in a sliver of glass. “I am destined to end time?”

  “It’s the end of yer time.”

  She was definitely not ready for that.

  Off to save both worlds and begin the reign of the Soulless then. No wonder Kiren had called their death a release. It was a release from their guardianship of terrors no mortal could bear. They gave all people the greatest service through their unending misery. Truly, their death was a mercy, a well-earned mercy. So long as there were enough Soulless to fragment the Soul Eater, it would never gain its freedom.

  They would sacrifice all, and Alexia only had to offer…her daughter.

  These memories inside of time would have to be enough for her aching mother-heart. “I am so sorry, Corona.” Her baby would not have her parents as she grew. It was the only way.

  Time for the Soulless to be born.

  Alexia settled into Kiren’s arms in the barn an hour earlier. Mae stood at the door, a hand clenched at her collar after announcing that Corona was missing. Kiren sped out into the night. Alexia paused beside her friend. “You must go to the field where the others went, to the gateway. Keep your distance. When I arrive, come to me. Remember what we practiced? Pushing energy away from you?”

  Mae turned sad eyes on her, startled. She gave a firm nod.

  “Tonight we prove you. Tonight we birth the Soulless.”

  And then Alexia returned. From inside time.

  Screams and flickering energy clogged the air, set against a backdrop of light where she lay sprawled on the ground, life bleeding from her and into Deamus’s gateway. The entity created an impenetrable net between Alexia and the gateway.

  Moment of truth.

  Sixty-Five

  Reaper

  Feet stopped next to Alexia’s face. Mae crouched over her, the gateway siphon pulling from her chest as well—except she had the power to pull back. She gave Alexia a nod and unclasped her bracelet.
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br />   Nothing happened.

  Ironic. All that effort, all her hope… Perhaps the vision had been a wishful thing, not a reality.

  The veil of darkness shivered.

  Or perhaps not.

  The pitch wobbled and fell to the ground, a writhing mist, snakes of smoke.

  “It must go into them.” Alexia waved to the thirteen.

  Mae’s brow crinkled as she focused, grunting as she pushed outward with both hands. The snakes continued to squirm. A voiceless laugh swirled through the air.

  Mae was losing.

  Abruptly, the laugh stopped. Mists grated across the ground, forcefully slipping toward the thirteen, like grains of black sugar through a funnel. The darkness entered each body, and their friends jolted in protest.

  Deamus stood above all this, focused on the incandescence before him, hardly aware that he still held Corona.

  Alexia lifted her head. With the chaos contained, she had to save her child and send Corona off to her fate. Time to fight for her baby.

  The gateway illuminated Deamus’s face as he tilted his head back, washing away the shadows and irradiating his utter look of bliss. Did he know what he was doing? If he was still possessed by the entity and stepped into this other world, he would carry that monster with him. Unwittingly. She had to stop him.

  His foot lifted and he stepped forward.

  Alexia slid the sword from her belt and lifted onto her elbows, grating her teeth as her lungs crushed together.

  Deamus’s leg disappeared into the light, his body swaying forward.

  “Alexia!”

  Her name registered, but she hadn’t the strength to acknowledge it, only enough stamina to freeze time.

  Deamus’s back slipped into the brilliance.

  She yanked the seconds to a growing stillness and shoved off the ground, weapon clutched in one fist. She surged forward.

  A mist of ebony reared up before her, all that remained of the malicious cloud. She sliced through it with her saber, rending it like a slicing a sheer drapery. The shreds grazed her arms, clawing at her like dying insects as she sprinted for the light. The air vibrated with a silent wail as the onyx smog slithered free of her skin and faded.