by Lila Dubois
“He’s married?” Alma asked.
Giovanni raised his chin. “Yes. To my daughter.”
Chapter Twenty-One
He had odd dreams. Doctors and nurses speaking to him, though the words were always muffled and far away. The bright white rectangles of the overhead lights. Then Sophia and James—crying, talking, their faces growing larger as they leaned down to speak with him. He wanted to ask why they were crying, but he couldn’t form the words.
The dreams came and went, the rest periods in between sometimes years long, other times lasting only a blink.
Then he had a more traditional sort of dream. In it, he was walking through a castle. He wore a full suit of armor, but it was black, not silver. His sword was in his hand, and it blazed with white light, making the shadows on the stone walls flicker and dance as he walked.
A figure made of shadow and smoke dropped down from the ceiling. He slashed it in half with a mighty blow of his sword. It collapsed into a circle of mist that danced and flickered for a moment before disappearing altogether. Three gold coins were left on the floor. He picked up the coins and kept walking. Again and again the shadowy monsters attacked him. Again and again he swung his sword, striking them down.
His arm started to burn with pain from all the fighting. He looked at his right hand, and it was now glowing with white light, as if it were part of the sword. But the white light was no longer cool and benign. It was glowing hot, like the heart of a star. He gritted his teeth against the pain.
The burning white light now engulfed his wrist, then spread halfway up his forearm.
He gritted his teeth and tried to release the sword, to drop it so his hand and arm were no longer burning, but he couldn’t get his fingers to work.
He screamed through gritted teeth.
“Tristan, Tristan. It’s okay, man, you’re okay.”
The voice pulled him from the dream, dropping him back into the familiar yet foreign bed.
“It’s James. We’re here.” A heavy hand rested on his left shoulder.
Smooth, delicate fingers stroked his hair back from his face. The woman they were attached to was murmuring in a language he didn’t know, yet the words comforted him, and her voice was familiar.
He didn’t know who they were talking to. Who was Tristan?
He struggled to open his eyes. He had to blink a few times before he could focus on the people leaning over his bed. A large brown-skinned man on his left, and a gorgeous woman with a cloud of black hair on his right.
He knew them. They were important to him.
He tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry. The man held a straw to his lips and he gratefully sucked down water.
His mind was clearing, but he couldn’t shake the dream. His right hand and arm still burned with pain, as if he held the white-hot sword.
“Tristan?” the woman asked.
He was Tristan?
Tristan Knight.
He inhaled as his brain finally started working again. He was Tristan Knight. The people leaning over the bed were his trinity—Sophia and James. And this wasn’t just a bed. It was a hospital bed. He’d been shot.
Tristan took a deep breath and dragged himself out of the mental fog that was hampering him. Answers. He needed answers.
“The admiral?” he asked, looking at James. His voice was rough and almost unintelligible.
James shook his head.
“Gawain?”
Another head shake. Tristan closed his eyes. Fuck.
“The admiral of Castile is dead too,” Sophia murmured.
That Tristan knew. There was no way to survive with that much of a head missing.
The battle—he didn’t know how else to think of it—was coming back to him in pieces.
“The shooter, did they catch him?” Tristan asked.
“I spoke with my brother. He arrived in London last night to support the search. Nothing yet. But they found where he was shooting from. And they recovered the gun and are hoping to track where he got it. He left a domino.”
“A mask?” Tristan asked.
“No, a domino piece. Two ones.” She held up two fingers.
“Snake eyes,” James said.
“It was the Domino, then.”
“Or his apprentice. The man they had captive on the Isle of Man may have been the Domino.” Sophia’s eyes were a cop’s eyes now, hard and calculating. “Or it may be that there is no longer just a master and an apprentice.”
Tristan’s right arm wouldn’t stop hurting. That damned dream. He started to lift it, but Sophia put her hand on his bicep, keeping his arm in place.
When he looked at her in confusion, tears filled her eyes.
“Sophia?”
She pressed her lips together and looked at James.
James crossed his arms. “Tristan…” James frowned. “Actually, what’s your real name?”
“Real name?” Sophia asked.
“The knights all change their names,” James told her.
“Only to Knight. In Rome, they change their family name to Cavaliere. Riddari in Kalmar.”
Tristan was doing his best to follow the conversation, but the burning in his right arm was distracting. “Not in England. We change both our names.”
“Why?” She stroked his hair back from his head. The touch was familiar, comfortingly so. She must have done it before, while he’d been sleeping. How long had he been sliding in and out of consciousness?
“We each take on the name of one of the knights of the Round Table,” Tristan told her.
“Ah. Yes, yes, yes, like the stories and books. Very romantic. King Arthur and his knights.”
Tristan chuckled.
“What’s funny?” James asked.
“King Arthur and his knights. My real name is Arthur. Arthur Billings.”
“Arthur Billings…” Sophia spoke the name slowly, and it was jolting to hear his real name after so many years as Tristan.
“Arthur suits you,” James said.
“Arthur, the leader of the knights. The king of England.” Sophia smiled down at him, but her eyes were sad.
“Tristan,” he corrected them. “I’m a knight. I’m Tristan.”
Sophia and James shared a look. His right hand burned.
And he knew.
He remembered the bones of his arm jutting through his skin. Remembered burning pain that actually preceded the sound of the ceiling exploding from the force of the bullet.
The same bullet that had killed the admiral of Castile had pierced his arm. Then he’d grabbed the ceiling, trying to disconnect the heat sensor, and his already damaged arm had broken, the bones ripping through skin and muscle.
Tristan sucked in air through his nose. He turned his head to look at his right arm. There was a pillow tucked beside him, and his upper arm and elbow rested on it.
That’s all that was left of his right arm. His hand and most of his forearm were gone.
Tristan closed his eyes, bile rising in his throat.
“They did their best to save your arm, but there was too much… Your bone wasn’t just broken, it was shattered, and the soft tissue damage was extensive.”
His sword hand was gone. He could no longer hold his sword.
Tristan gritted his teeth, but an agonized sound escaped his mouth.
James’s big hands settled on his shoulders, not precisely holding him down, but preventing him from sitting up. “They did everything they could,” he repeated. “Your arm was too badly damaged to be saved.”
“My arm is gone.” The words hurt as they left his throat, as if they’d been torn from him.
“I’m so sorry, mi amore.” Sophia stroked his hair.
“It can’t be gone. It can’t be. I can feel it. It hurts.”
Sophia started crying in earnest. She covered his face in soft kisses. He wanted to both shove her away and hold her close. James laced his fingers with Tristan’s, squeezing his hand.
His one remaining hand.
The pain in his right arm built, but he didn’t know if it was real or imagined. When it became too much, he started to scream through his teeth. Doctors and nurses entered. They spoke to him, but Tristan was lost in his own emotional agony. Then he was lost to the dreams as pain medication flooded through him via an IV.
Your arm is gone, Tristan.
He thought voicing the fact, even within the quiet of his mind, would make it more real, make it easier to deal with.
You’re not Tristan anymore. You can’t be a knight if you can’t wield your sword
Not Tristan anymore.
His temples were wet with tears when he finally fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A paper take-out cup appeared in her line of vision. If she hadn’t been so tired, she might have yelped in surprise. Exhaustion weighed heavily on her limbs, and her only reaction was a little shudder of surprise.
The to-go cup was not the kind the hospital cafe gave out. She was intimately acquainted with those cups—blue with stylized coffee beans and too-thin plastic lids. This cup was a natural brown with a black lid, and it smelled heavenly.
“Cappuccino.” James wiggled the cup a little. “I went to an actual coffee shop around the corner.”
Sophia wrapped her fingers around the cup and inhaled. It smelled like real coffee, not that horrible drip or instant stuff people in England seemed to enjoy.
“Grazie.” The first sip tasted like heaven. The second sip made her tear up with homesickness.
“Prego.” The reply was a bit hesitant, but his pronunciation was good.
James sat beside her on the couch in the waiting area. When they’d first come to the hospital, she’d thought how elegant the waiting room was. Now she would happily burn every piece of furniture in here and cut the tasteful, neutral photos of the English countryside into angry little pieces.
James put his arm around her and Sophia leaned into his side. They fit together comfortably, as if they’d been together for years instead of…
How long had it been?
“What day is it?”
“Thursday.”
Sophia hummed as if that answered her question, then sighed. “I don’t remember what day we got here.”
“Tuesday. The conclave was on Tuesday.”
“It feels like we’ve been here for years.”
“I know.” James rubbed her arm. “I don’t know when the last time was that either of us slept a full night in a bed.”
Sophia had to stop and think about it. They’d taken turns going back to the hotel to shower and nap, but had spent most of the past two days in the hospital. “Not since Rome.”
James shifted to look down at her. Sophia kept her eyes on her coffee. She was so tired that sometimes looking at James’s kind face was enough to make her cry.
“We’ve known each other barely a week,” he murmured.
“But we’re married.” Sophia swallowed. “You, Tristan, and I.”
James squeezed her shoulder. “He’ll be okay.”
Sophia’s throat tightened with the need to cry, but her eyes remained dry. Maybe she had run out of tears.
“He hasn’t spoken since yesterday. Since he realized… Not one word,” she whispered in misery.
“Losing his hand, especially his right hand, is going to be hard.” James reached down to rub his bad leg as he spoke. “Plus, he watched our admiral and his fellow knight getting shot. All that plus losing the hand are enough to make anyone need some time to process.”
“I hope he’ll talk to him, to the…” Sophia waved her hand, too tired to think of the word in English.
“Psychiatrist. I hope so too.”
As one, they looked at the clock on the wall. They’d been booted out of Tristan’s room, where they’d spent most of their time, so he could have his first therapy session.
James’s massive chest expanded as he took a deep breath, which he then let out with a sigh. “I wonder what’s happening with the manhunt.”
Sophia considered grabbing her phone. Antonio was in England, and he would know what was going on. She’d told him, via text, that she was married to one of the knights who’d been shot, and that she’d been there when the fleet admiral was killed. After some astonished replies and cursing—and like a good sister, she’d reminded him that he had ignored what she’d said about the message on the coins—he’d stopped trying to “protect” her from information about what was going on.
But that didn’t mean he was volunteering anything. If she wanted to know, she’d have to bug him.
She didn’t have the energy for that right now.
The door opened. As one, Sophia and James came to their feet, their fingers weaving together so that they held hands.
The psychiatrist walked in. “Mr. Rathmann, Ms. Starabba.” He nodded in greeting.
“How is he?”
The psychiatrist was Indian, and younger than Sophia had expected—mid-thirties at most. His eyebrows rose at her question, showing above his thin wire-framed glasses. “Ms. Starabba, my sessions with your—”
“Husband,” James interjected. His voice was deeper than normal, and tinged with anger.
The doctor—who had surely told Sophia his name, but she couldn’t remember what it was—shifted his weight back onto his heels, and for a second it looked like he might physically retreat from James’s anger.
“Yes, your husband.” He pulled off his spectacles and examined them, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and cleaning the lenses. “He’s suffered several serious shocks. First there is the loss of his limb, which is a catastrophic event in both the clinical and emotional sense. He was witness to, and a victim of, extreme violence, and…” The doctor put his glasses back on. “And he was recently and unexpectedly married.”
Sophia stiffened and unlaced her fingers from James’. She wanted to cross her arms, but she still held the coffee, so she settled for cupping that in both hands and taking a sip.
“You’re a member,” James growled. “That’s how it is.”
“Usually there is advance notice given. People are notified that it’s time for them to be married, even if they don’t know to whom.”
“We didn’t know either,” James insisted.
The doctor held up his hands. “I am well aware of that, Mr. Rathmann. And frankly, I’m worried about both of you as well.”
“Why?” Sophia asked.
“Because your relationship is fragile, precisely because it is so new. From what Mr. Knight told me, you haven’t spent any time together without external pressures guiding you.”
“And what does that mean?” James asked.
“It means that your relationship doesn’t have a baseline. It’s like a…” The doctor looked at James. “You came on the field after regular play, in injury time, and you’re playing with 14 men. Fourteen men you don’t know and have never played with before.”
James grunted as if that meant something to him. Sophia shrugged. She wasn’t sure if she was too tired to translate, or if they were using rugby terms she didn’t understand. James had played professional rugby—she knew that much. And she knew he’d played for the All Blacks and that it was a famous team.
Mentally, she added “learn more about rugby” to her growing to-do list.
The door to the waiting room opened and two cavalieri pushed into the room, swords drawn. The doctor, closest to the door, whirled and took a step back. The knight on the right lunged, pressing the tip of his rapier against the doctor’s tie.
“Who are you?” the Italian knight asked.
“I’m Dr. Sahil Kapoor.”
“Doctor?” The cavaliere drew his sword back, but didn’t sheath it. The second knight ducked into the hall, saying something in Italian that Sophia couldn’t quite make out.
She was so shocked by the sudden appearance of the knights that she didn’t react right away. Neither of them was Martino, who’d escorted them to the hospital on that fateful day.
Th
e second knight pulled back into the room and said. “You may go, Doctor.”
Dr. Kapoor raised his brows. “I’m speaking with my patient’s family. I do not need your permission to be here, and I will not leave because you threaten me.”
Sophia shook herself out of the surprised stupor seeing the cavalieri had thrown her into.
“Saverio, Vico,” she snapped. “What are you doing here? How dare you treat the doctor this way?”
At the sound of her voice, both knights snapped to attention. They shared an uncomfortable look before Vico replied, speaking Italian as she had.
“My deepest apologies, Principessa. The ammiraglio is here.”
Sophia wanted to scream. How dare her father barge in. She needed to take care of her husband. That meant talking to Dr. Kapoor.
“I will not see him now.” She tossed her hands in the air in frustration. “He should return to Rome.”
Dr. Kapoor was frowning at her. “Tristan called you the princess. I thought it was a pet name, but you’re…” He cleared his throat. “You’re the principessa of Rome.”
“No,” Sophia told him. “I am Sophia Starabba, member of the Carabinieri and wife to Tristan Knight and James Rathmann.”
“Bloody fucking right you are,” James said with enthusiasm.
Sophia twisted to smile and wink at James.
The door opened and Antonio walked in. Her brother looked tired—his hair was messier than usual, his already deep-set eyes appearing sunken into his face. He wore black slacks and a dress shirt, which probably meant he’d been trying to blend in somewhere in London. Normally he wore black T-shirts with the logo of the security firm that was a front for Rome’s security operations.
“Antonio?” she asked.
He grinned and opened his arms. “Polpetta.”
Sophia slid into her brother’s embrace, hugging him fiercely. Her eyes prickled with tears as another wave of homesickness hit her. It had been a long time since her brother had used that nickname for her and hearing it brought back too many memories.
Sophia pulled back and wiped her eyes with one hand. “I’m not a meatball,” she said in English.
Antonio switched languages. “You are.”