“Blood? Are you injured?”
“It bit me… my ankle, my leg, and my side…,”
“Hurry,” Eric interrupted. Minutes later, the cool air within the castle allowed me to breathe deeply, and Will shoved the blanket away.
“I took us back here… with my dream?”
“I do not know,” Will continued on toward the infirmary, and I winced, shaking my head.
“No- our room. The feather,” I gasped at the pain.
He nodded suddenly, as if remembering. I must have lost consciousness; moments later, Will was placing the quill in my hand. I waved it across my eyes, waiting for the enchantment to begin.
The dreamless sleep held me well into evening. By nightfall, I turned in the bed, watching Yvette moving around the bedroom efficiently. “Where is Will?”
She covered her heart and screeched, as if my voice had terrified her. “Oh, your majesty. I am sorry; you slept so soundly, I did not expect your words.” She rushed to my side. “His majesty is in his office, and has ordered me to fetch him the moment you awaken.”
“Thank you,” I managed. My dry throat pained beneath the weight of my words. “Please get him.”
She curtsied, bustling from the room.
What happened?! I remembered the fight with my father, and then falling asleep in my bedroom at home with my head on Will’s chest. And then the dream of the ocean, and something biting me from below.
The tunnel. I remembered the tunnel from my recurring childhood dreams, but had never tried for it. I took us back here. Another portal, under the ocean.
I just disappeared; my family must be worried sick. My dad…
Thinking of the terrible words that I spoke to my father, I covered my face, cringing. I waited for long minutes before finally getting up, using the bathroom and absently brushing my teeth. I still wore my sundress stained on the side with my blood, but someone had removed my flats and left them next to the bed. Shoving my feet into my shoes, I hurried from the room and down the hall.
Not halfway to the stairs, I caught the golden flash of hair from a hallway across from ours.
Gabrielle. I hadn’t seen her since my wedding day feast, and I narrowed my eyes at her figure. She froze, recognizing me immediately.
“Were you coming to see Will?” I demanded, my glare snapping to her pretty face. She covered her middle protectively, lowering her eyes to the stone floor.
“Yes, your majesty.” I nearly blanched at her honesty.
“So you think it’s just okay to sneak to the room that I share with my husband?”
She drew a shaking breath, and I watched her delicate fingers tremble over her gown. “I wished only to tell him of my… condition.”
“Your condition?”
As her dark eyes met mine, the shrewdness of her gaze chilled me. “I am with child, your majesty.”
I gathered all of my strength, biting my tongue to keep the words from rushing from brain to mouth. With child? She’s pregnant?
With Will’s child?
“It is his majesty’s right to know. He asked me to come to him.”
I wondered if it was wrong to tornado kick a pregnant woman.
“Go… away…,” I pointed to the stairs, knowing my nostrils must have been flaring to my ears. So much for etiquette.
She bowed and hurried down the stairs.
The chandeliers above me began to shake; icicle-like crystals smashed against each other. The candelabras that had been replaced in our absence caught fire, and the floor quaked beneath my feet. Control yourself, control yourself…
Incensed, I broke into a run, panting by the time I reached my grandfather’s tower. “Grandfather! Grandfather!”
He was nowhere in sight. I burst into his laboratory, slamming the door against the wall. “Asher!”
Nothing.
Rage, uncontrollable wrath, burned deep ravines through my veins. Tears threatened, but I screamed and bit them back, kicking at a table. Watching the contents of a caldron spill over to the floor, I roared with fury.
I hate all of this! The prophecy, the dreams, the sun…
What Troy did to my mother…
My birth.
“Erase it all,” I caught my reflection in the mirror across from me just before it shattered beneath the heat of my gaze. My eyes, glowing amber, pierced the darkness of the tower. “From the beginning… to end. Erase. Forget!”
“Eva!” Will’s voice from the doorway interrupted my thoughts; I turned his way, and he took a step back. “Eva, stop!”
“It is done.” I remembered the last lesson my grandfather had given me, in my dreams as a child, sealing my words and sending my curse into motion.
The same feeling that I had when traveling through the inclined plane invaded my body; I lifted my hand to my face, watching as my fingers slowly began to disappear. Suddenly, Asher’s voice thundered in my ears, and I watched him materialize out of the air by the window.
“1375!” He roared, turning his dark eyes on me. “Right this wrong. Find your father.” I opened my mouth to speak, but already I’d lost the ability to form words. “It is done.”
The world around me shifted; I landed on a pile of brush with a heavy thud, feeling the air rush from my lungs. Waiting for my ability to breathe again, I scratched at the dirt, panicking.
When I could finally gasp for air, I screamed. A man stood over me, grinning disgustingly. He tipped a bottle back over his lips, taking a long swig before dragging his dirty coat sleeve across his mouth. “Fortune smiles,” he slurred, tossing the bottle to the grass as I backed away. “What have we here?”
“Get away from me-…,”
He dropped to his knees over me, and I leveled my hands flat behind my head, arching my back before sending him reeling with a vicious kick to the face. Thoroughly knocking him unconscious, I climbed to my feet, brushing the dirt off of my hands.
“What have you done?” Will’s voice startled me, and I jumped as he reached for my arm, pulling me down behind the overgrown greenery of the forest.
“I don’t know… what happened,” I turned to Will, and he pulled me closer to the interior of the bush.
“Like hell,” he hissed, grasping my chin in his hands. He searched my eyes intently before releasing me. “Green. They had better stay that color. No magic.”
“Did I do this? Where are we?”
“I assume,” he hushed, his eyes darting nervously back to the unconscious man in the wooded path, “that you are the one who took away your father’s memory of the past… with that adolescent tantrum in Asher’s tower.”
“I… did what?” I shivered, the dampness of the overgrown bush chilly against my thin, blood-stained sundress. “I just wanted it all to go away…,”
“You were the one who removed your father’s memories of Icepond, all of those years ago. We are in 1375, England.”
“No… oh no…,” I reached for Will, but he shrugged away from me.
“Good God, Eva, is there no end to your irresponsibility?”
Overcompensating for my escalating emotions, I gasped for air, trying to steady my breathing. He ignored me, visibly gathering information on our surroundings.
“We are in England, under the reign of Edward III.” His eyes swept over my dress. “We need to find Asher.”
“Or my father!”
“When we find Asher, we find your father.” He slipped his arm around my back, lifting me to my feet. “Do not speak, not a word, until I say so.”
I nodded, running to keep up with his long stride. He led us deeper into the forest, creating distance between us and the wooded path. After more than twenty minutes, I longed to ask him to stop. Do not speak. I bit my tongue until I tasted blood.
My ankles were scratched and torn from the thorns and strange brush, but I relaxed as soon as I saw that one large gash had healed in less than two minutes. I’m immortal here.
“Here.” A small pond broke the landscape, and he pulled us into the open
ing of a tree that appeared to have been struck by lightning. “I have fifteen shots in this magazine.” He checked his Beretta, leaning back against the tree. “I cannot believe this.”
I sighed, covering my face with my dirty hands. “I can’t believe I did this. I was just so… so angry, and I…,”
“What in the hell could have made you so angry, so quickly? Your maid summoned me the moment you woke!”
“It was Gabrielle… she was in our hallway, coming to find you… and she told me she was pregnant.”
Jealous tears threatened, but I blinked away the burn. He pulled my hands away from my face, turning me to face him.
“And you believed that the child was mine?”
“She said it was!”
“That is impossible. I have not lain with Gabrielle.”
I focused on the bark of the tree, thinking hard. Did she say it was his?
No. She made it sound like it was his.
“I- she said you deserved to know, and that you’d told her to come to you.”
He groaned, narrowing his eyes. “On the day I broke our engagement, she confessed that she loved another, and suspected that she was with child. His child. Her lover was killed in an uprising the day of our marriage. I comforted her in the great hall; nothing more.”
I gripped my hair in my hands, lifting my eyes to the clear, blue sky. I remembered him hugging her while she sobbed; Eric had tried to distract me. “Oh my God, Will, I just fucked everything up.”
“Yes, love, you’ve fucked everything up.” Hearing him curse forced an uncontrollable laugh to my throat, and he sighed, pulling me to his chest. “Asher knew this was fated. This was part of the prophecy.”
“What do I have to do?”
“You have to tell your father about the prophecy. He must know his purpose.”
“I can warn him! I can tell him about each… life…,” I fell back, staring at the pond. “I don’t know about any life except this last one, Will! My mom and dad never told me any details…,”
“First, we must find shelter. Attire that is appropriate for this time. My clothing will pass,” he gestured to his black pants and white, fluttery shirt. “I have nothing in my pockets, but you have your ring on your finger. A diamond will surely secure what we need.”
“My wedding ring?”
“Replaceable.” He took my hand and slid the ring off of my finger, tucking it into his pocket and focusing on the blood stain on my dress.
I stared at my bare finger longingly before pinching the bridge of my nose and cringing at the gritty dirt beneath my fingernails. The pond rippled with life beneath. “Do you think it’s safe to rinse my hands off in there?”
“I was just wondering if it is safe to drink.”
“Drink? I’ll go work at the brothel before I drink pond water.” Puffing air from my lips, I marched to the edge of the water.
“What do you know of brothels?”
“I paid a little attention to my parent’s boring lectures. Only to the interesting parts.”
He joined my side, shaking his head, defeated. “I have no idea how to tame you. You are beyond reproach.”
“I’m not really sure if you’re insulting me or not, so I’m just going to say… thank you.”
Laughing, he rolled back on heels, sitting on the ground. “Ah, Eva. Come here.”
“I’m dirty.”
“I do not care.”
I threw myself into his arms, relishing in his forgiving kiss as his lips pressed to my forehead. “I’m so sorry, Will… I have to control myself… I’ll make this right, I promise, and I’ll get us out of here. I’m sorry.”
“Hush. We are in danger here, love, you mustn’t forget that. Do not leave my side.”
“I’m immortal here…,” I pulled away, searching his eyes. “But… you’re not.”
“Not here.”
“I’ll protect you,” I promised, curling into his arms.
He brushed his hand over my shoulder, kissing my forehead once more.
Chapter Fifteen
We walked for hours, and as the sun lowered in the sky, I moved closer to him. “I’m freezing. It has to be an early spring month. It’s so cold.”
“What month was your father born?”
“March.”
“It was his twenty-seventh birthday when he met you, correct?”
I listened to his logic, nodding. “I think so.”
“We’ll need shelter before nightfall.” A clearing edged before us, and I watched torch light bobbing outside the farmhouse. He gestured to the farm. “Well?”
“Give me the gun, and if you can find something to tie them up with-…,”
“We are not using force unless necessary.” He reached for the buttons of my cardigan, and I watched him push the sweater off of my shoulders.
“Um, this is not helping the ‘I’m cold’ situation.”
“Slide this under your dress, as though you are with child; it will shift and mask the blood stain. We were robbed- your diamond is all that we have remaining of the fortune that we traveled with. We are both clean and manicured, and we appear to be upper class. Speak as little as possible. Thank you, many thanks, that sort of response. Allow me to speak.”
“Okay.” I lifted the skirt of my sundress, balling the cardigan and shoving it at my waist. “You think they’ll buy it?”
“I do not know.” He swept me off of my feet and into his arms before I could struggle, and I shrieked.
“Will, you have to warn me before you do that. You’re incredibly tall, and I’m afraid of heights.”
He turned to me, the amusement in his expression grating my nerves. “Did you just admit to being afraid of something?”
“Just that one thing. Nothing else scares me.”
“So, when I hold you, you are at my mercy.”
“Pretty much. If I attack you, I fall.” My heart skipped as I verbalized a very real scenario, and I gripped his neck even tighter. “I know it makes no sense.”
His eyes swept over my face with a tender, faraway look. “I would kiss your perfect lips right now, but a forest fire will surely cause some commotion.”
I grinned, tucking my face against his chest. “We wouldn’t want that.”
He carried me through the field as the sun began to set, and we were met halfway with shouts as two men rode on horseback to us. When they saw me in Will’s arms, they dismounted, drawing swords but keeping them lowered to the ground. “Good sirs, I am Lord William Reed. My wife will give birth any day. We were robbed by vagabonds and deprived of our horses. Have you room for us this night?”
Will has a last name? I nearly laughed when I realized I’d never asked him.
“You are well come, Lord William. Please accept our hospitality.”
“Many thanks,” he responded, following after them.
The farmhouse was small but warm, and the woman within ushered us inside, hastily moving into the kitchen. The man on the horse introduced himself as John, and in the dim candlelight I could see that the other man was actually a boy- his son, Robert. “Mary, please see to our guest,” he ordered a young girl in a tattered, worn gown.
“Yes, father.” Will allowed me to follow the girl to a ladder, and I climbed after her to a loft. She eyed my sundress in confusion. “From where do you travel?”
“Carolina. In the north.” I shifted nervously as the sleeve of my cardigan started to come loose and fall between my legs.
“Ah,” she nodded, pulling a gown from a trunk. The thin, brown dress smelled like cedar, and I inhaled deeply.
“Thank you,” I searched for some kind of partition, realizing there was a makeshift curtain in the corner of the loft. “Behind there?”
She nodded. I hurriedly changed, readjusting the cardigan to appear as a pregnant belly. The gown was far too small, and my breasts pushed the ties at my chest to their limits. I have to get back to Will. Mary had already climbed down the ladder, and I stared at the thin wood in fear. Why is i
t so much easier going up rather than down? Shit.
“Come.” Will appeared at the top of the ladder, and I hurried to him, thankful he was right below me as I nervously placed both feet on each rung.
Dinner was served- I think. The mug of cloudy water was surely pumped straight from the pond a few miles back. The stew, made from the same water but boiling hot and salted, was polluted with floating cabbage and onions. The piece of bread accompanying the meal, hardened beyond stale, crumbled in my fingers. I turned to Will, watching him eat graciously. He spoke to John about the thieves. “These are lawless times,” John lamented with a disgusted shake of the head.
I reached for my ankle, scratching at the sudden sting. Another quickly followed, and I nearly shrieked as I looked down; fleas jumped from the floor to my foot, dotting my skin like ink drops. “Ew…,”
“Wife?” Will turned to me quickly, delivering a solid kick to my foot. “Does the child pain you?”
“No,” I glowered and rubbed my ankle against the chair leg, lowering my eyes to my soup. Picking up the damp, wooden spoon, I cringed. Germfest.
“John and his family have kindly offered the loft in the barn this night.”
“Many thanks,” I recited. Mary and Robert stared at me as though I was brain damaged, and Mrs. John (I hadn’t caught her name yet) looked to her husband coolly. Only then did I realize that John’s eyes were locked at my cleavage as he ripped at his large piece of rock-bread.
Somehow I made it though the dinner despite John’s vulgar ogling. Once we were safely in the barn loft, I watched Will draw the ladder up behind us.
“That was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“It was difficult,” Will admitted, chambering a bullet in the Beretta. “But we are clothed, and fed, and have shelter. And you still possess your diamond.”
“My skin is crawling- that guy wouldn’t stop staring.” I tugged the cardigan out from the dress, relieved as the material fell softly against my skin. “And the fleas were eating me alive.”
He knelt in front of me, sliding my gown up and over my knee. I sucked in my breath as his hands ran over my bare leg and ankle. “You’ve healed already. I fear that I shall be scratching for days.”
Rule (Roam Series, Book Five) Page 14