Only one figure, bringing up the rear of the first group, risked a look back at them. He or she was the only one who allowed themselves to break from the quick march of the others, moving slowly, with an almost labored gait. Hurt, or old, maybe. Etta narrowed her eyes, wishing it wasn’t so dark. Because it looked like, it seemed like…
That person is slowing down. Drifting back intentionally. Etta felt for the small dagger she’d plucked off a knight in Jerusalem, dread combing its cold, clammy hands through her hair, down her neck. She was so wholly focused on the figure that she did not see the movement in the forest just to the left of Julian, until something lashed out, hooking a black-cloaked arm around his neck. His shout of alarm was smothered by the gloved hand smashing against his face.
Etta dove into the forest after them, the dagger in her hand. It was just like the attack in Russia. The attacker was shrouded in black, and the blade was pressed against Julian’s throat, even as he struggled to disentangle himself from the powerful grip. She was a step behind the attacker, and drew her blade back to stab—
The weight hit Etta’s back and brought her down before she could catch Julian’s attacker, but it was the mountain itself, its sharp decline, that sent her rolling, spinning over the soft earth and ferns, until finally her back collided with a tree big enough to catch her weight. The blow knocked the dizziness from her mind, enough that she ignored the bruising she’d taken and climbed back onto her knees, searching for Julian in the darkness above her. A short distance away, tangled in the ferns and obscured by the small stone marker, were the twisted, white-robed legs of her own attacker.
Etta scrambled up the hill on hands and feet, the blade of her dagger clenched between her teeth until the ground flattened out enough for her to stand. She swung around the edge of the stone marker, her gasping breaths steaming the inside of her mask. At the very last second, rather than stab with her right hand, she threw her left fist forward, smashing into the attacker’s mask and knocking them flat on their back just as they made to rise. She dropped to her knees on their chest, ripping their mask off and bringing the blade up to their jugular.
She knew this face.
She loved this face.
“Oh my God,” Etta gasped, flying back, pulling her own mask up. “Oh my God—”
His eyes widened, equally stunned by the sight of her.
Her hands sank into the dirt, shaking. She pulled up leaves and roots, trying to ground herself in that moment, to make it feel real to her. That valley between them that had devastated her with his absence, the one she hadn’t let herself fall into, opened up again.
One single, soft word reached her: “Hi.”
Etta’s heart broke open, and the relief was as painful as it was necessary. The way he looked at her now, like she was a pearl in the darkness; the way his hand reached for her, waiting for her hand, its twin—she crashed into him just as he sat up, her lips on his, stealing his breath, his surprised laughter. Stealing him back into herself.
“Hi,” she managed, her hands cupping his face, kissing him, kissing him—
“Where…have you been?” he asked when he could.
“Where have you been?” she demanded back, feeling his hands sink into her braid, weaving sweetness into it.
“I’ve been quite occupied…with looking for you,” he said. “Had a…damned time of it. I might have known you’d find me first.”
“Saw you—the beach—” She tasted blood from his split lip, but she didn’t care, she didn’t care—
“I know, I know—thought you were—”
“I know, I’m sorry—why did you chase me now? Why are you here?” Etta forced herself to stop, to pull back and wrap her arms around him so he’d have the opportunity to answer. His arm came up to lock around her waist, and his forehead rested against her shoulder; he was breathing hard.
“Are we incapable of meeting under remotely typical circumstances?” Etta heard him wonder. The damp ground was soaking through her robe, straight to her skin, but she hardly felt it. Nicholas’s pulse was fluttering against her cheek, nothing at all like the steady, driving beat she remembered from even their most desperate moments.
It was the darkness, she was sure of it—it was only the hunger, the exhaustion, and the shadows that made him look so frail. But when her hands skimmed over his back, she felt each knob of his spine. The ridges of his ribs. Etta leaned back so she could brush a half-open kiss against his lips, his labored breathing mingling with hers.
“I can’t even hold you,” he whispered. “It’s too much, it’s all too fast—I wasn’t afraid before, but I find myself—I find myself just that slightest bit afraid now.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, trying to shift so she could study him, see his face. He only held her tighter, his arm shaking with the effort. Her hands came up to slide through his tufts of hair, and his scalp was warm against her palms. Nicholas strained to kiss her again, his mouth grazing the soft corner of her lips.
“—I was just going for whoever looked to be about my—” Sophia’s voice said behind them.
“I am not your size!” That was Julian.
“Well, would you prefer I said I went for whoever looked easiest to take down?”
She heard Sophia and Julian approach, felt the moment they were seen. The silence that followed was its own century.
“What are you still doing here?” Sophia aimed the words at Nicholas, coating them with anger. “He’s going to notice you’re gone if you don’t hurry back.”
“Thought she—that Etta was—someone who could—hurt you—”
It was difficult to piece together the soft fragments of his words. Her mind did the best it could: Sophia had unwittingly snared Julian to steal his robes for the auction, and, seeing a disguised Etta pursue them, Nicholas had panicked, worrying that Sophia wouldn’t be able to fight two people at once.
“Why are you—?” Etta asked. “Tell me what’s happening—Nicholas!”
The cold wash of fear as he sagged against her was nothing compared to the hurricane that came with Sophia’s sharp oath. She leaped over the fallen tree that stood between them and seized Nicholas’s shoulders, giving him a hard, jaw-snapping shake.
“Damn you, Carter,” she said, “not now, damn you—”
“Nicholas?” Etta couldn’t stop saying his name, as if that would be enough to pull him back to consciousness. “Tell me what’s happening!”
“We’re running out of time, that’s what’s bloody happening,” Sophia said, and with no other warning, slapped him across the face.
EVEN AS HE CAME TO AGAIN, the darkness in his vision remained like a halo around her face, as if to dash away the dream of her. But she was still there.
Etta was still there.
She knelt in front of him, smelling of fire smoke, warm, sweet bread, a home. The mud that was smeared across her face had caught a single strand of her hair, sticking it to her cheek. For the life of him, he could not say why he found this unbearably endearing.
“You’re not okay, are you?” she whispered.
He knew it was Sophia behind him, propping him up so he could face them—them, because Julian was hovering a few short feet away, looking so uncertain he was nearly unrecognizable to Nicholas.
“Julian,” he said, letting his relief bleed into the words. He hadn’t realized it until now, how grateful he was that these two had found one another. Etta would protect Julian; and Julian would ensure Etta didn’t have to be alone.
Hearing his name, his half brother drew closer to their small circle. “This is the part where I tell you I’m a fool and an ingrate, and you punch me.”
Meeting his gaze, seeing Julian’s face, Nicholas thought of the rage that he’d always imagined would pour through him, boiling with years’ worth of resentment and ill-humored thoughts and words. But what he felt now was simply peace. That small part of him was resolved, and thankful, and above all, glad; this was his brother, and not even death had
changed his love for him. “Perhaps another time?”
He gave Sophia a meaningful look, then glanced at Etta.
“Fine,” Sophia said. And then, to Etta: “I’m sorry about the way I treated you. I’m also sorry your mother is a demon from hell.”
“I’m sorry about what happened to you, and the things I said, except for when you deserved them,” Etta said, her words wavering, even as she tried to steady them. “But why won’t anyone answer my question? What’s happening?”
His abominable pride did not let him ask for help to stand, but the others offered it regardless. Etta held both of his forearms, keeping his balance for him. The fear on her face tore at him. Nicholas turned to look at Sophia and Julian. “I need a moment.”
“We don’t have long,” Sophia said. “I can explain it to them. Just go!”
He shook his head. God grant me time enough for this. “It’ll only be a moment. Please.”
He was sure she would fight him until the breath left both of their bodies. But instead, Sophia let out a small huff and nodded. She drew Julian away, back up toward the edge of the trail.
Etta turned his face back toward her own.
“Tell me,” she said. “Please, just tell me what’s going on. Why were you with Ironwood? Are you all right? What happened to your arm?”
Of course she had noticed.
“I am not completely myself at the moment,” Nicholas admitted. “There isn’t time for it all, only what is necessary. If I could pluck this moment out of time and keep us here forever, I would. But we cannot stop time; we can only right it again.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Etta said. Her heart shone in her face, lit softly like a candle, as she brought it close to his, as if trying to give him her light. He burned with the regret of it, not trusting his body to hold her the way he wanted to, without collapsing again.
“But our plan,” she continued, her lips close to his ear, “it has to change. We can’t destroy it.”
And he knew devastation. Pure, unadulterated pain. Etta saw it flash in his face, and knew from the way denial pooled in her eyes…on this, they could not be reconciled. He captured her mouth again, trying to soften the blow, to find the words he needed. The cool night bit at his skin, but her lips were hot, insistent, moving over his own as if to launch her own argument.
Nicholas tore himself away, trying to still her long enough to reintroduce her to reason.
“It has to be destroyed, you said as much yourself,” he said. “I know the consequences, I know what might come of it, but Etta—do you see? Do you feel how much of this is outside our hands? If this is ever going to end, let it be now. Your mother—she came to me in the desert, just after you were orphaned. She spoke of a war to come.”
“I know all about this,” Etta interrupted.
“She wasn’t wrong. This is the war which never ends. The one that exists between the families,” he said. “There’s a shape to this, a pattern.”
Etta flinched at that word, already shaking her head, trying to capture his lips again, keep him from finishing. “No, no, no—don’t say that, don’t use that word—”
He deserved a bloody medal for having the will to stop her from kissing him.
“I cannot help but think there is no lasting peace between the families because there is something deeply unnatural about us, what we can do,” he continued. “It must be time’s revenge that we inherently repel one another. It feels to me as if these conflicts are trying to force us back to our natural times, where we’re meant to be.”
She lifted her pale eyes, hardened now like chips of ice. “There is nothing more natural than families. You haven’t seen what I have. These are people who love and need one another. We can still fix the timeline—it’ll take longer, yes, but it’s possible to do it one piece at a time.”
“And then what?” he prompted. “The astrolabe is hidden again? We risk someone else resuming the search, finding it, unraveling everything we’ve done? This is the only way to hold Ironwood accountable, to make him answer for what he’s done to us all. If not for that reason, then think of the millions upon millions of lives he’s toyed with, the disregard and apathy he’s shown them. He is not the exception, Etta, he is the rule. There is too much power in what we can do.”
Nicholas knew it was unfair of him that he could make this decision with the callousness it required, knowing it would be one of his last. But only days before, he’d been running toward vengeance like a man on fire, burning up the last parts of his soul. Some part of her, at least, seemed to see the truth in his last argument. Her whole body tensed in frustration.
He was staring down another loss, and, though he had been so logical, though he knew her to be logical, he saw the stricken look of betrayal on her face, and all of those arguments threatened to fly away from him. What was history anyway but the lies of the winning few? Why was it worth protecting, when it forgot the starving child under siege, the slave woman on her deathbed, the man lost at sea? It was an imperfect record written by a biased hand, diluted to garner the most agreement from competing parties. He was tempted to see her point, to imagine that she could realign the past and present and future into something beautiful. God, if anyone was capable of it, it would be her.
But their history, the one forged by travelers, was one of violence, war, and revenge; they had not simply made it. They were made by it.
“And what about us?” she asked, running her small, lovely hands up to his shoulders, his neck, his face. Nicholas leaned into the callused tips of her fingers. “What if I love you, and I need you? What was the point of this? Why did we fight so hard, if you were only ever going to give up?”
“Carter!”
The man’s voice echoed down to them, still a distance away. Owen.
Etta made as if to draw him behind her, and he wanted to kiss her then more than he wanted his next breath. The seconds unraveled around him, blistered his raw heart.
“Stay with me,” she begged. “Stay with me. This isn’t over yet.”
“This is freedom—this, the freedom from fear, is what it means to rewrite the rules,” he said. “A world in which the astrolabe exists is a world in which either of us could be taken at a moment’s notice. If nothing else, I’ll know you’ll be safe.”
“Alone,” she corrected sharply.
“Never alone,” he promised. “Did you not feel me with you in all of our days apart?”
Can you not feel my heart beating for you?
“It’s not the same,” she said, her eyes flashing again. “And you know it.”
“I only know this: our paths were separated by centuries, but we converged. No matter the outcome, my destiny has always been joined to yours.”
“Carter! Where the hell are you?”
Etta leaned forward into him, her face against the curve of his neck. “Don’t do this—please don’t do this.”
“Do you believe in that world you spoke of, the one made for us?” She swallowed, nodding. Her soft lips were against his bare skin, and he was a man, damn it all, and he was burning for her. The words that escaped him were choked with emotion. “If we aren’t to have it in this life, then in the next. If not now, then we’ll have forever.”
She pulled back, only to surge up onto her toes and grip him fiercely by his robe. The kiss shot down his spine like lightning striking a mast, blowing him apart.
It wasn’t a retreat, and it was far from a surrender. She invaded his every sense at once, the way the sun first breaks in the morning and illuminates the horizon. The taste of her, the smell of her, those small sounds she made in her throat; all of these things were secrets entrusted to him, prizes he had fought so desperately to retake. Etta seized every part of him at once, and he pushed the deadening dread away, let the frantic joy of her rush through him, flooding the empty places, turning him inside out.
His skin felt drum-tight wherever her lips touched, and Nicholas wondered, in those spaces between the battering of
his heart, how it was possible that she was so soft, when all of the days that had led them here had been so very hard. She did not cry, his brave girl, but he felt the rage beneath her skin, moving her to fit against his body, to disappear into him.
“Nicholas!” Sophia called softly. “He’s coming!”
The blade hanging over them fell at last.
Nicholas eased back from her, wondering if this was what death would feel like—the painful release. He had envisioned it so many times as wading out into dark, cool water, letting it rise past his hips, his shoulders, his head. This was a breaking, a thunderclap of agony. How short a person’s life was, but how very many times they were asked to die inside.
“I love you,” he told her softly. “Time can never steal that.”
And somehow, before she spoke, Nicholas knew what she was about to say. Her face was steeled, defiant.
“I’m not giving up,” Etta said, the loose strands of her hair flying about her face. A shining storm of a girl. “I won’t destroy it. This isn’t the end.”
Nicholas turned her hand over, pressing one last burning kiss into her palm. “Then may the best pirate win.”
“HURRY IT UP, WILL YOU?” OWEN WASN’T A LARGE MAN BY ANY MEANS, but his voice could absolutely thunder when the situation called for it. He had lifted his mask, and was scanning the dark line of the forest for Nicholas. Sophia was right, then. The old man had noticed he was gone, and more quickly than he would have expected.
“I managed to get turned around,” Nicholas said, limping up to him.
The other man took in the sorry state of his stained robes. “What kind of fool falls while taking a piss?”
“You do.” Sophia had moved so quickly, looping in a large circle back up to the trail behind Owen, that neither man noticed her until she brought the rock crashing down on his head.
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