by April White
“Archer, wait.” My whisper was nearly silent, but I knew he’d hear it anyway. He stopped and turned to face me. His expression was as unreadable as a mask. “What’s going on?”
“Wyatt never signed a confession against Elizabeth Tudor in our history.” Archer’s whispered voice was angry.
“But it’s the thing we came here to get.” I was exasperated with his anger. History may not have recorded that confession, but we both knew what his vision had revealed. “Wyatt just confirmed what we already knew.”
He ran his hands through his hair in a way completely at odds with his normal composure. “It’s really happening.” He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, then opened them. His angry glare was tinged with panic. “It’s not just a theory being handed down in a classroom. Time isn’t correcting itself. Wilder’s actually changing things, Saira, and no matter how hard I try to shake it, no matter how much I convince myself that three people from another time can make a difference, I feel powerless to affect this.”
I stared at Archer. “That’s just it. Wilder set this thing in motion, and he’s as much out of his time as we are. If anything, that makes this three to one. The only difference is we don’t want to cause a time stream split and he either does, or he doesn’t care.” I glared at him to make my point. “But we do care, and that’s why we’re here.”
I stepped forward, into range of Archer’s arms. He stayed motionless so long a sinkhole opened up in my chest, and I almost turned away so he wouldn’t see the tears that threatened. But then, finally, he reached for me and pulled me in. I breathed in the spicy scent of him and felt the sinkhole fill with something not-quite solid. But at least the hollow, sick feeling was going away.
I looked him in the eyes. “What we just learned doesn’t change anything. We came here to find that paper and keep Elizabeth alive, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
His arms tightened around me the instant before he let go, like he’d just tucked some piece of emotional baggage back into a closet. I’d seen him do this before and it scared me a little. The door would close on whatever was bugging him, and when the smile quirked his mouth I knew I’d probably never glimpse the bothersome thing again. And he was doing it now. First the door closed, then the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Well, since we’re out here anyway, let’s take ourselves on a tour. Maybe Ravi will give you a job when we get back home and you’ll be able to put all this knowledge to good use.” He tried to sound light-hearted but I could hear the tension still anchoring his voice.
“You want to run?”
“No. I want to fly.” Archer took off running across the battlements. He leapt up to a window ledge at the end of the line and scrambled up the tower. And in his cloak he truly did look like he was flying.
I ran, and he flew. It’s what we did when we turned away from the things we saw in the mirror. And since I knew the move, had invented my own version of it, I shrugged off the sense of unease his unspoken baggage had left and took off running after him, with wings on my feet and the first hint of lightness in my body since we’d come to the Tower of London.
An Assignment
When Archer and I returned to the Royal Apartments, dawn was only about an hour away. We kept a sharp eye out for Lurch, and since Uncle Fester was snoring with exceptional talent at the main entrance, we slipped up the same tree we’d used the night before and entered the unlatched window in complete silence.
Pancho was curled up asleep in front of the smoldering embers of a fire in the pages’ annex. I covered him with the blanket he’d kicked off and sat at the long table across from Archer. He slid a tankard of ale across to me and I took a sip. It tasted like a sweet beer. I grimaced. “This is all there is to drink? I’m going to dehydrate if it’s my only option.”
“Let’s scavenge up a pot and we can boil water.”
“Maybe I can find some chamomile or peppermint out on the grounds to make tea. And if I can find arnica or St. John’s wort I’ll try to make a salve for the cuts on Wyatt. It won’t save his life, but it’ll help with the pain and infection.”
Archer put his hand on my arm to stop me from heading out the door. “Saira, I need to say something.”
I tried not to read too much into the seriousness of his tone and waited expectantly.
“When I wake up and you’re … gone, I …” He looked away. “I panic.”
Well, that was unexpected. I reached out to touch his arm, and he met my eyes. “Every time it happens I feel helpless and weak because I can’t fight the sleep, and then I get angry because there’s nothing I can do to change it. If anything happened to you while I was down …” He took a deep breath.
There was something in his eyes that I couldn’t decipher – something I could only describe as shame.
Pancho stirred on his bedroll and then rolled over, so I grabbed Archer’s hand and pulled him with me out of the room.
I scanned the Great Hall quickly, then dragged Archer across the room to the tiny chapel on the other side. I closed the heavy wooden door behind me and did a quick search of the room to make sure we were alone. I stood in front of him and made him look at me.
“Last night in this very chapel, the Lady Elizabeth basically told me I treat you like crap.” Eyes wide but mouth shut. Smart. “And then I called her a bunch of completely inappropriate names and ran away like a two-year-old. ‘Cause I’m grown-up like that.”
One corner of Archer’s mouth quirked up in an almost-smile, but he quickly got it under control. “And then, when I was feeling sorry for myself, and making up all kinds of excuses about how over-protective you can be, and how everything’s fine with us, and she doesn’t know me at all, Ringo came along and doubled-down on all of it.”
Now Archer was just listening. I pulled my courage up by its bootstraps and put on my big-girl panties to say the next words. “And they were both right.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Go ahead. You know you want to say it.”
“I love you.”
Well, that pretty much rocked me back on my heels. Not what I expected him to say.
“That’s what Ringo said too. Did you know he once asked me to marry him if things didn’t pan out with you?”
Archer’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and I planted my fists on my hips. “But he took it back last night. He said he would never be able to compete with the way you feel about me and didn’t want to try.”
I could see a whole herd of thoughts go stampeding through his brain, but his eyes never left mine, and I forced another lungful of air into my chest. “The thing about you is you’ve got everything so handled. You know exactly what you’re doing, you’re good at all of it, and you don’t make mistakes. It’s intimidating.” He snorted, but I ignored him. “I know, you’ve had a hundred and twenty-five years to practice, and you’ve got a couple extra skills running through your blood. But I only have seventeen years under my belt, and since I was twelve I’ve had to manage on my own enough times that I earned a few stripes and kept myself alive. So I know I can do it; I’m used to doing it. When you get overprotective on me, I feel like you don’t trust me. And then I do to you what I always did to my mom. I run.”
I closed my eyes. “There’s a part of me that’s afraid to love you without reservation, because it would be so easy to let you take care of me … but then I’d have nothing left of myself.”
“Saira.” He waited until I looked at him. “You carry my heart with you always – carelessly sometimes, especially when you put yourself in danger, but it’s the reason for my protectiveness. As long as you are safe my heart only need fear your rejection, not your injury or death.”
“But that’s too much responsibility.” I didn’t know if I was talking about Archer or myself, and I practically whimpered.
He reached for me and pulled me down to a bench, where I let him cradle me in his arms. My emotions were a tangled mess and they were squeezing the breath from me. Archer spoke into my hair,
and I heard something different in his voice. Something lighter.
“And when you are happy and well and in my arms, I am more than myself. I am you too. I have felt your heart reach for mine before you remember to pull it back and protect it from me, and in those moments I am the biggest, strongest, best version of myself because you love me.”
Oh.
I looked up at him, our faces inches apart. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.” I was whispering, and he heard what I meant. I had hurt him in the past and probably every day since then.
“Then stop.”
Stop. Stop hurting him. Stop running away. Stop holding myself back like I could only exist inside the protective shell I’d built to keep me safe and alive and … free. I guessed that was the real question my brain had been grappling with. Did I give up freedom when I chose to love Archer? Yes. The freedom to be with anyone else, freedom to do what I wanted without thinking about another person’s feelings or wishes, freedom to be completely, unapologetically selfish. But were any of those freedoms worth losing him over?
When I focused on him again after my mini mental debate with myself, he was smiling. “What?”
“I love it when you do that. There’s a moment, when you come to a decision, that your eyes clear and you look at me with the intent to share something true.”
“You’re right.” I inhaled. “This is true. I’m terrified to give you all of me. Totally and completely terrified that it’s too much, that I’ll lose myself, that I’ll suck at it.” He couldn’t help the tiny tug at the corner of his mouth, and I had to look away so I didn’t smile back. Yet.
“But I’m going to try.”
“Do or do not. There is no try.” I stared at Archer in complete shock that he had just pulled a perfect Yoda voice out of his back pocket.
I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him with every single cell in my body. He growled deep in his chest and kissed me back. And I felt the emotions untangle in my chest, and air fill my lungs.
And I could breathe again.
I woke up about midday and carefully slid out of Archer’s arms. He would be out for another four or five hours, and I resolved to be there when he woke up. Pancho was sitting morosely by the fire, poking the ashes with a stick.
“I found your brother last night.”
His face lit up with so much hope it made my heart ache for him. “Can you take me to him?”
“He’s afraid to see you. They’ve hurt him pretty badly and I don’t think he wants to you remember him that way.”
His hands balled into fists and his voice was fierce. “They’ll pay for hurting Thomas.”
“They’re going to do worse than hurt him, Pancho. They’re going to kill him.”
There was a pause while Pancho digested that. It wasn’t news, it was just unwelcome.
“I have to see him then. He cannot die believing he is alone here.”
“You’re going to feel helpless. And seeing him is going to tear your heart out. It did mine, and I don’t even know the guy. Are you strong enough to deal with that?”
Pancho studied me like I was a puzzle to be worked out. “While it is clear you’re without morals or decency and have no liking for me at all, what is unclear is why you would feel sympathy for my family, or indeed, why you would care about something that in your mind is a foregone conclusion.”
My eyes narrowed at him. The little jerk just couldn’t leave superiority in his back pocket. “I’m going out to find herbs to make a salve for his wounds. Archer and I will take you to him after dark.”
And despite the fact I wanted to verbally rip him a new one, I realized it was completely pointless. Pancho was twelve, and his ideas about right, wrong, and true were carved in the stone of privilege and rank. Frankly, I had better things to do.
So I left.
I’d seen the kitchen gardens behind the Royal Apartments, and assumed there were probably bigger gardens elsewhere on the grounds, but I needed to find Ringo before I ventured out on my own in the daylight. There was no one in the Great Hall, so just for practice I ran the length of the building and found the servants’ staircase to the upper floor. The Royal Apartments were laid out in a way that probably made sense to the original builders, but was totally counter-intuitive to me. The ground floor contained the storerooms and kitchens, upstairs was the Great Hall and the various public rooms, including the little windowless pages’ annex we occupied, and above that was the private queen’s apartment. I hadn’t been up there yet, but I figured it must suit Queen Mary to put her sister in her headless mother’s rooms.
I spotted Peterson in the hall outside what must be the queen’s apartment and made a quick detour into a drawing room before he saw me. The furniture was covered in sheets and the place looked nicely haunted, even in full daylight. The walls were paneled in elaborately painted wood, and in less than a second I spotted the door hidden in a panel as if it had been outlined in black sharpie. I loved stuff like that.
There was no handle to the door and it seemed to open into the room I was in, so I hunted around the ridges and swirls in the paneled wood until I found the loose piece, then pushed. I probably needed to make a lot of money in my life, because I wanted my house to be full of secret doors with hidden latches. Maybe even a dumb-waiter or two, and definitely a windowless keep so Archer had a safe place to sleep.
That pulled me up short. Since when did I ever imagine life beyond a couple months from now? And how was I so sure Archer would be in it? I shook my head as if to clear all future thoughts from it and focused on making it to Elizabeth’s rooms without being spotted.
The next room was furnished more simply, and I stopped in the open door. Someone was using this room. It didn’t have that deserted feeling of the one I’d just left. Then I spotted Ringo, up in the heavy cross-beam rafters. He was perched and watching me. There was no smile on his face, even when he knew he’d been spotted.
I quickly scanned the room, then hiked my skirts around my waist and ran for the opposite wall. A table stood near a heavy wooden chandelier. I was able to jump for it and swing close enough to the bracket holding a big beam into the wall. From there it was a quick scramble up and across to plop down next to Ringo.
“I didn’t think of the chandelier. Nice touch.”
I followed his eyes down to the still-swinging fixture. “Flashy, but not smart. Gives too much away.”
“Since when ‘ave ye ever been subtle?”
Since when had I ever been anything but subtle? I had counted on my ability to blend in for my survival through new schools every two years and stealth-tagging on the streets. Although to be fair, ever since I discovered I was descended from Time, I hadn’t been in my element anywhere. And St. Brigid’s was one school I’d never blend into, no matter how much I tried to fade into the woodwork.
“I talked to Archer.” I missed Ringo, and I knew this was still between us. “I’m trying.” Then I heard Archer’s Yoda impression in my head and smirked. “Not trying. Doing.”
He studied me for a moment. “Doin’ what?”
“Well, I promised I’d be there when he wakes up and not out searching the Tower without him, if that gives you an idea.”
Ringo whistled like the cheeky urchin I first met on the streets of Victorian London. “Ye practically ‘anded him yer leash, did ye?”
“Jerk.” I wanted to push him off the beam but had to make do with sticking my tongue out at him instead.
“Ye know, ‘is Lordship doesn’t do so well with bein’ taken care o’either.”
“That’s news? Even when Seth Walters shot him he slunk away and hid out until he healed.” I scoffed. “Not that I could do anything for him anyway. The guy is practically indestructible.”
He watched me carefully, like he was weighing how much to say. “Ye could. Do for ‘im, that is. I did once.”
“What happened?”
“Right after ye left with yer Ma, the Missus gave me the job of huntin’ for ‘im. I had to bring
back whatever I could find, and even better if I’d trapped it alive. ‘E needed the blood, see. The sickness was eatin’ ‘is own blood and starvin’ ‘im. She said it’s why they’re so dangerous at first. It’s all survival for ‘em until there’s nothin’ left for the sickness to consume. They balance out after that. Drink just enough blood to keep the sickness in check. Better if it’s human though. They need less.”
I felt a little like I’d been punched. I had done a very good job of being in denial about Archer’s need for blood. I could deal with the mechanics of it, but I seemed to have kind of a moral squeamishness that made me want to hide my eyes. And Ringo wasn’t letting me.
“No matter how many rabbits and foxes I brought ‘er for ‘im, the sickness was killin’ ‘im.”
My breath caught in my chest. I’d chosen to save my mom, and I’d left Ringo the job of keeping Archer alive.
“The Missus always did a swift job of killing and bleeding the creatures I trapped. She’d give the blood to ‘im and ‘e’d gag and sputter and try to spit, but she always made ‘im drink.” Ringo’s gaze looked very far away. “’E was dyin’ though. ‘‘’Is eyes didn’t see anythin’, even when ‘e was lookin’ right at ye.” He seemed to shake himself out of the memory and his gaze refocused on mine. “I had to do more. So when the Missus left a rabbit to drain, I slit a line in my wrist and let some of my own blood mix in.”
I couldn’t help the gasp that slipped out, and Ringo flinched. “No one knew. No one saw me do it. But it was the right thing. ‘E got better after that. I did it one more time. The other wrist …” Ringo unwrapped one of the leather bands he always wore around his wrist. There was a red line, still welty, but healed closed. “’Is Lordship never knew, but you should … just in case.”
Realization hit me like a two-by-four. “He has your blood in him. That’s why he saw through your eyes. That’s why you were in his vision so clearly.” Ava had said it happened in families sometimes; visions that focused on blood-relations. And it had happened to Archer and Ringo. But Archer still doubted the truth of his visions because he didn’t know he had Ringo’s blood.