Keepers of the Flame

by Robin D. Owens

  He caught her gaze with an intense one of his own, and everything inside her stilled. A Big Decision was coming her way.

  Elizabeth’s palms sprang with sweat, matching the dampness of Faucon’s. What the hell was she going to do? She knew when a proposal was coming. She’d been through that before, nerves and sheer delight.

  “It’s a beautiful evening,” Faucon said, his tone only carrying a little strain, his aura erratic.

  Sevair said nothing at all.

  “Ayes,” Elizabeth said. She inhaled, smiled. “The brithenwood tree still scents the air, though we’re into summer.”

  “It’s the bark and leaves,” Sevair said. They’d reached the door to the garden and he made to pull it open. It stuck. He yanked on it and it came off its top two hinges. A muscle flexed in his jaw. “I’ll have someone see to this.”

  Bri snorted a nervous laugh.

  Faucon ducked under the low lintel first, glanced around, ever the warrior, checking security. Elizabeth hesitated and he pulled her through, whirled her into his arms for a quick kiss, flashed the grin she loved. His eyes twinkled as he stood staidly beside her when Bri and Sevair entered.

  Elizabeth’s heart pounded.

  Lifting her hand to his lips, Faucon said, “Please sit.” He released her hand and his chest rose as he took a big breath. “Ayes, the scent is wonderful.” He eyed the garden, wild and colorful. “Lovely.” Looked at her. “Lovelier.”

  Bri separated her fingers from Sevair’s, walked to the bench circling the brithenwood tree. Elizabeth found herself rolling her eyes at her twin, an anxious habit she’d thought she’d mastered in middle school. Nerves betrayed a person. They sat side by side on the bench around the tree, thighs touching so they were connected.

  The men shared a look, then Faucon’s eyebrows lifted and a half-smile played on his lips. He drew a small oblong box from his belt pouch and Elizabeth saw the slight tremble of his fingers. He was as tense as she. That should have reassured her. It didn’t. What was she going to do?

  Sevair cleared his throat. He had a little box, elegantly carved of stone so thin it was nearly translucent.

  “Oh, my,” Bri said.

  Faucon’s box looked like carved ivory. Elizabeth wasn’t sure she’d ever seen ivory outside a museum.

  “Pairbond with me in a coeur de chain,” Sevair said, and slid the top off his box, showing it to Bri.

  “Pairbond with me in a coeur de chain,” Faucon said, and lifted the lid and offered the box to Elizabeth.

  She stared at the wickedly sharp small silver knife, lifted her shocked stare to Bri, who was panting.

  “Knives!” Bri squeaked. “What happened to rings?”

  Sevair angled the box to examine the little knife gleaming against a nest of gray velvet. “It’s a beautiful knife for the ritual. My friends made it especially for you. See the little medica symbols and your healing hand glyph?”

  Faucon smiled, sent a reassuring glance to Elizabeth. “You want a ring? A ring will be forthcoming.”

  “Rings shouldn’t be worn by working people. They can get caught on all sorts of things. I’ve known people who have lost fingers because of rings,” Sevair said.

  A bubble of uneasy laughter erupted from Bri. “Oh, yeah, that’s romantic. We’re both medicas, we know what fingers ripped off look like.” Her hand snaked out and grabbed Elizabeth’s.

  Everything changed.

  A clap of thunder and shimmer of bright rainbow colors encased them.

  “No!” yelled the men, reached for them.

  But the Snap had come.

  Elizabeth and Bri were whisked into the tunnel between dimensions. The wind slowed from hurricane to a steady breeze. They linked both hands, wanting to be closer because they thought they’d be torn apart.

  Despite multiple readings of the Exotiques’ books and personal descriptions, Elizabeth wasn’t prepared. They were actually in the corridor, not flashing between the dimensions as they’d done when they were Summoned. Dread seized her. That wasn’t a good sign, was it?

  It’s like Marian’s experience. A real corridor with portals, Bri said. Since she’d said it, it seemed to solidify around them. They were facing the Earth side, past on their left, beyond Bri, future to Elizabeth’s right.

  They hung between worlds.

  Directly in front of them the portal opened on Elizabeth’s high-rise condo. Shocked exclamations came from the three people there, staring at them. Her mother, her father.

  Cassidy Jones.

  Oh. My. God.

  Decision time, Bri said grimly. We can’t hang around here forever.

  They shuddered.

  Elizabeth couldn’t think. She seethed with a knotted mass of emotions. Fighting the wind, she looked back at the closing portal on the Lladrana side of the corridor and Faucon’s grief-stricken face. She loved him, didn’t she?

  “Elizabeth, Elizabeth!” cried Cassidy. His face twisted in anguish, his arms open for her, pleading. “Come to me. I was stupid and arrogant and cowardly. Come to me!”

  She loved him. Too. More?

  And he loved her. She could feel that, see it in the splashing desperate colors of his aura, yearning for her.

  Another glance at Faucon. His Song was muffled, his aura dimmer. He loved her, but not as much as Cassidy. Didn’t need her as much as Cassidy. Never shared her goals and her life as much as Cassidy.

  But Faucon respected and admired her—and Cassidy?

  Cassidy flung himself at the portal. It looked as if he hit a wall. “Or I’ll come to you. I was wrong, all wrong. You’re such an amazing person, such an incredible physician with something special I could never match. Stupid, arrogant, cowardly,” he repeated, as if he’d said it to himself like a mantra since she’d left. His fingers clenched to fists and bloodied as he hit the portal wall to reach her. He, a surgeon who’d ever been careful of his hands.

  She stared at her old love.

  “I love you,” he shrieked. In front of her parents, her sister, the other two men.

  She loved Cassidy. God help her, she still loved him deeply.

  The scab on her emotions ripped away and she seethed with them. Cassidy. To her shame and dismay, she realized she’d never stopped loving him. Faucon had been a safe love for her, gentle, attractive, respectful. Cassidy had been her passionate, dangerous love, igniting tumultuous emotions. Despite all her outer control, she wanted that kind of love.

  Faucon deserved that kind of love, too. One she couldn’t give him. One he didn’t feel for her.

  As Bri deserved the love she’d found with Sevair.

  Her love for Faucon—rebound love?—tore from her like a tumbleweed and vanished in the corridor. She faced Earth and home. She yearned for her parents, her old life that she’d worked so hard for.

  “Bri,” she said, then stopped. She didn’t have the words, would never have the words to say goodbye to her twin.

  But Bri was focused on something else. The open portal to Earth and the shocked look of their parents who obviously saw them. They could come through! Bri whispered in Elizabeth’s mind. They see us. They KNOW. And I bet they heard those chimes and gongs, too. Mom had the two sacks of spuds! She stretched out an arm, yearning in every line of her body.

  A second of communication among all the members of the family, like a group hug. The love they shared, the bonds that would never be broken. Then their mother stepped back. Tears flowing, sliding down her face, she shook her head.

  Their father had stepped forward, but his arm was around the waist of his wife. He hesitated, then joined her.

  “No!” Bri cried. “No, come.”

  “Bri,” Elizabeth said. “I have to go back. I love Cassidy!”

  “I thought you loved Faucon.”

  “Rebound love,” Elizabeth said.

  “Shit. No.” Bri’s free hand clutched the material of her robe over her heart. “No.”

  “You belong here on Lladrana. Let me go!”

  Bri’s g
rip tightened on her hand. “No.”

  “Yes. Cassidy,” she whispered. But he seemed to hear.

  “I love you,” he yelled again. “I was so wrong!”

  The wind had picked up around them, pushing at Elizabeth more than Bri. Elizabeth swallowed hard and faced her sister. The love and knowledge on Bri’s face matched her own. “You belong on Lladrana.” She raised her voice. “You fit there like you never did on Earth.” Don’t make this so hard, like always.

  I won’t. I can’t hold on to you and pull you back. Or go with you. That would poison us. I love you. She turned to their parents. “I love you!”

  This was goodbye. They’d never see each other in person again.

  With strength she rarely demonstrated, Bri pulled Elizabeth from the winds and into her arms. Hugged her tight, tight, tight. “I love you.”

  “I love you,” Elizabeth said.

  Bri’s voice broke. “Later,” she said, as she always did when her itchy feet had her leaving.

  Then Elizabeth was free and a moment later, she’d landed in her own living room, plush carpet under her feet.

  “Oh, Mom. Oh, Dad!” She flung herself into their arms, and their familiar scents enveloped her and she burst into tears. But this was not the time for tears. She wanted to spill everything like Dorothy back from Oz.

  She stepped back, whipped a handkerchief from her medica gown pocket—one that smelled like brithenwood—and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Then she met her parents’ eyes, and Cassidy’s, lifted her chin.

  “I have a gift.” She tucked away her hankie and raised her palms. “A wonderful gift of healing hands.” She gulped, stuttered a bit before she spit out the next. “I never thought people would accept me if they knew what I was really like.”

  “Oh, darling.” Her mother hugged her again. “We always knew.”

  Elizabeth snuffled. “I suppose so.”

  “We’ll always love you,” said her father.

  “I’ll be discreet, but I’m not going to hide my gift anymore. I may use it and that will reflect on us all. We all may be called weird.”

  Her father shrugged, smiled his dear, lopsided smile. “I’m the Dean of Anthropology at a major university. I’m supposed to be weird.”

  Cassidy stepped toward her, radiating intensity. “I love you. I’ll always love you, no matter what. I was a stupid jerk. Arrogant and cowardly.”

  “Yes, you were,” Elizabeth’s mother said crisply.

  Her father choked. Elizabeth whirled.

  The portal to the dimensional corridor still gaped open. Bri hung in the winds, her hair flying out from her head, her Song so strong and beautiful it kept her in place. Beyond her, other portals to Lladrana were opening. The Brithenwood Garden, the two men. The other man she’d loved. She couldn’t bear the thought of the hurt she was giving him, the sight of his shadow.

  “I left a good man back in Lladrana,” she said unsteadily.

  Cassidy grabbed and kissed her and his tongue and taste was in her mouth and his body radiated heat that warmed her and ignited the firestorm she always felt with him and she was home.

  “I love you, Mommy. I love you, Daddy!” Bri shouted and watched the portal to Earth fade. Elizabeth was kissing Cassidy with a hunger that couldn’t be mistaken. Her life was there.

  Bri’s wasn’t. She belonged to Sevair, and Lladrana, and Amee. They accepted her for who she was.

  The decision made, the wind shrieked around her, shot her toward a bright square that was closing. Elizabeth’s condo had a magic mirror. Bri had to hang on to that knowledge, even as her throat clogged with tears.

  She snapped back to Lladrana, to the springy ground of the Brithenwood Garden. Sevair’s strong arms caught her close. His heart thumped fast. His body was hard. His Song beautiful and mind filling and wild. She held on tight, hugged him, then turned her head so she could breathe.

  She met Faucon’s gaze. His eyes were hard and desperate, wounded. His face went expressionless. He turned on his heel and left. Oh, God! Bri knew how he hurt.

  How she hurt. No more parents or twin. Not in this world.

  “I love you, Bri,” Sevair murmured in her ear. He didn’t let her go. His melody and hers joined, twined together, harmonized.

  “I love you, too,” she said, and all the love inside her ached.

  40

  Faucon didn’t stumble away from the garden. He wanted to. But he’d been too damn well trained for that. He marched from the garden and Sevair embracing Bri. Opened the door, ducked through, and closed it behind him without looking at them.

  Elizabeth was gone. Had not loved him enough to stay, to abandon that career she’d worked so hard and long for. To forsake those parents whom he’d glimpsed, love for their daughters radiant on their faces.

  Those were good reasons to return to Exotique Terre, Earth, but didn’t help the ripping inside him.

  She’d chosen another man. That thought was as bitter as brine in a wound. The ivory box and bonding knife passed down through his family for centuries dragged in his belt pouch like a heavy stone. He’d wanted to fling it away, never see it again, but he hadn’t done so, of course.

  Now he stood in the maze and was glad that high hedges shielded him, though they reminded him of that first night he’d made love with Elizabeth.

  “Faucon.”

  He flinched, saw Luthan in his white leathers round the corner of the path from the keep. “I’m sorry,” Luthan said.

  Faucon didn’t move. For one of the few times in his life he was unsure where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do. The keep? Other Exotiques. Elizabeth’s rooms. No. The Landing Field and fly away? Tempting.

  “You saw this future, didn’t you?” His voice didn’t sound the way it should. Not melodious. Brittle.

  “I saw several futures regarding the Snap. Both twins go. Both stay. Bri stays, Elizabeth goes. Elizabeth stays, Bri leaves.” Luthan waved a hand.

  Faucon didn’t bother to sort out those shadings. His mind wasn’t working. He was all hurt. He’d loved Elizabeth.

  “Tell me, is a woman ever going to love me for myself like I love her!” Anguish wrenched from him. Luthan froze beside him, and Faucon realized his heartfelt plea had been said at the wrong time to the wrong person. Slowly he turned his head. Yes, the man was in that far-seeing, Song spiking, strange trance of prophecy.

  Faucon waited, unable to stop what he’d put in motion. Torn. He wanted the answer with desperate hope. He never wanted to hear a truthful answer on the subject because a negative might be a killing blow.

  Luthan made a strangling noise, turned his head and their gazes clashed. Luthan’s eyes had turned silver!

  “Ayes,” Luthan said. “Ayes. You will have a love and she will have you. But in the end you may rue. For with great love there can be great loss.” He laughed hollowly, his shoulders hunching like an old man’s. “The same for me.” His head turned again and his gaze went to the pathway to the keep.

  Faucon spun, tensed, hand on his sword.

  “You, too, Koz,” Luthan croaked. “You’ll have a love like that, too.”

  The large man stepped from the shadows. His lips twitched up in more grimace than grin. “Thanks for nothing,” he said. Since it didn’t make sense, Faucon figured it was an Exotique Terre saying. He never wanted to hear anything like that again.

  “What happened?” Koz asked. “Everyone heard the Snap come.”

  “Bri stayed. With Sevair Masif. Elizabeth returned….”

  “…home,” Koz said softly. “She returned to the place that is home in her heart. To the life that is right for her.”

  A growl issued from Faucon and he didn’t stop it, let it rip from him. He leapt at Koz and Koz held on to him. Luthan put an iron arm around him, too. For a moment the other men shared his sorrow, then Faucon stepped away.

  He didn’t care what Luthan had said about future love and grief. That didn’t concern him now, wouldn’t for a long, long time, if ever. He didn’t
feel like risking his heart again.

  Bri woke to snoring. Sevair was sprawled in her bed—their bed? One of his arms was outflung, the other was around her, hand on her breast.

  Huh.

  Memories returned with a sweet, horrible ache.

  She was never going back to Earth. She was stuck here in Lladrana, on Amee. A little voice of panic screamed in the back of her mind.

  Already she could feel the difference of being Bri-After-The-Snap. Earth’s Song was but a lingering kiss of blessing, Amee’s Song welled through her quietly, not strong. That was why she was here. To free the planet from the Dark.

  Which would mean she’d be in that last battle at the Dark’s nest, loosing the spellknot. A shiver went through her and Sevair mumbled, drew her close.

  But Bri wanted to torture herself. No, just wanted to make sure Elizabeth’s mirror was working, both their mirrors were working. She’d have to move all Elizabeth’s Lladranan things here, especially the hand mirror. That flipped the sadness switch on again and tears backed behind Bri’s eyes. She didn’t turn to Sevair, but slid from his arms, tiptoed to the door and down one floor to her den-home-office. There she went to the beautiful desk she’d moved from the house—and what was going to happen to the house, now? Opened the drawer and removed the magic mirror from the silk sleeve Koz had made.

  It was dark. She held it in her hand. Wondering. Not daring, but hoping. “Abracadabra,” she whispered.

  Sunshine from the skylight bathed Elizabeth’s living room. Later than Bri thought, then. Bri tilted the mirror, saw the tangle of naked bodies on the floor and a strangled sound caught in her throat. She stared. Cassidy covered most of Elizabeth.

  He had a fine back and butt, though looked as if he’d lost weight. Served him right.

  Okay. Don’t be a peeping Thomasina. Put the mirror away. Obviously the mirror worked, visual at least, from her side. She snickered. Then she looked down at herself and realized she was nude, too. Well, that might have been an all-around awkward conversation.

  “Signing off.” Her knees went weak, she sank into the desk chair, felt the velvet on her bare bottom. Would have taken her a while to work up to handcrafted furniture in Colorado. She wiggled a little. Yeah, the velvet was excellent. Gray velvet, Sevair’s color. She smiled.