Sacrifice

by Heather McCollum

  For a moment, you looked like Anna. She hadn’t been able to get Winston Murdock to repeat his early statement or explain what he meant. Each time she asked, he’d flush scarlet and leave the room as quickly as possible.

  Anna held her hand over her mouth. Did Drustan think that she’d given herself to Winston Murdock? “Good God,” she breathed the words. “He hates me.”

  The realization pressed the tears from her eyes like a boulder falling into a bucket already filled to the rim. Hot and plentiful they washed down her cheeks, following her jaw to wet her neck and chest above her nightgown. Her breath caught in her throat, and the baby stilled as if listening. She sobbed then, pulling in anguished breaths. Drustan hadn’t felt love since he was a week old. He wouldn’t question a betrayal, not when he was constantly surrounded by it.

  Warmth spread up through Anna, making her gasp. She stared down at her large stomach. The feeling squeezed her chest and made her pulse race like butterflies fluttering within her. Despite the tears, her mouth dipped upward into a smile. Love. It was the feeling of love, spreading throughout her, filling her with the giddy pressure of a soft joy like an embrace. And with love came hope, something Anna had been surviving without.

  Anna laughed a little and wiped her face with the back of one hand. Energy coursed through her with heady abandon. “I love you, too, baby girl,” she whispered down at her stomach. “We will keep each other safe, but I think we need to go find your father.” Anna slid out from the blankets, determination mixing with the continued power she felt infusing her limbs.

  The trip back to the tree house would be difficult, considering how large Anna had become. Matilda and Merewin had agreed that the baby was fully formed. Full term. But Anna barely felt the aches and largeness as she climbed on Mazy’s back. It was as if the baby was helping her. She covered her hair with her cloak and guided the horse to the gate.

  Hamish scrutinized each wagon and visitor. William had sent for supplies and had the smithy busy creating enough iron blades to defeat an army if the final battle did not turn out the way everyone hoped.

  Anna pulled back on Mazy’s reins. How would she get past the guard? He’d never let her by.

  Go. The thought moved through Anna’s mind. She blinked, looking down as the baby turned in her. Go.

  Anna pressed her heels into Mazy’s sides, and the horse continued to clop across the pebbled walk. Anna’s fingers dug into the leather reins and looked down. She gasped. There was only bare ground beneath her. No horse, no legs, no body. Yet she felt Mazy’s gentle sway as they moved. Helen carried a basket of eggs through the gate and nearly ran straight into Mazy. Yet, the housekeeper didn’t even look her way.

  Go, came once again through her mind. “Baby girl?” Anna whispered. As if Mazy heard the command, too, she picked up her pace into a gentle canter to ride through the winding road out onto the meadow before Kylkern. Now to find her way to Drustan’s tree house. Hopefully her daughter had a better sense of direction than she.

  Several hours later, Anna let Mazy follow the stream she remembered from the time Drustan had walked her home. She leaned forward, her shoulders bent. The energy from before was just about used up. She needed to rest, drink, and eat. “It’s not much further,” she said and patted Mazy. The horse veered to the left. Was the baby reading Anna’s memories and relaying them to Mazy? My world is completely insane. Anna breathed deeply.

  As they neared the soaring trees that held the beautifully built cottage, Mazy lifted her head, ears twitching as they walked through the frosty, dead leaves on the forest floor.

  “What is it?” Anna inhaled, but nothing tainted the breeze. From the bushes came Tenebris, his golden eyes focused directly on her. The large wolf stopped by the trunk of the tree. “Tenebris,” Anna said, quelling the nervousness in her stomach. He was a friend, not some wild wolf looking for its next meal. “Do you know where he is?” she asked. “He’s not here, is he?” She glanced upward to the porch. How would she get up there without the ladder?

  As if she had power that acted without conscious thought, the trap door above flipped open, and the ladder dropped down. Tenebris skittered away, looking at the swaying ropes. Anna laid her hand on her belly. “Well now.”

  She swung a leg over Mazy so that she sat on the horse and slowly lowered her bulk, her back sliding against the mare. She nodded at Tenebris who still looked wary. “I know, Baby Girl startles me, too.” Anna placed her hand on her stomach where little kicks reminded her that she definitely needed to use the necessary inside Drustan’s house.

  “I’m going up.” She pointed. Anna grabbed hold of the rungs and lifted one leg. Looking up she felt dizzy. “Good Lord,” she cursed between her teeth. The climb would have been challenging even without being the equivalent of eight months’ pregnant. “A little help, Baby Girl,” she whispered.

  Instantly, she felt lighter as if her whole body were being lifted. Anna wondered if she’d float if she let go, but wasn’t about to do something so risky. In fact, she held tighter. Keeping three points of contact on the ladder with each step, she took her time.

  At the top, Anna squeaked as she felt a lift. She clawed the air and was gently lowered to stand on the deck. She breathed heavily and righted the large green frock that swathed her body and served as a dress. Her heart thudded. “Thank you,” she said, “but let’s keep Mother’s feet on something solid.”

  Anna tried the doorknob. Jackson hadn’t been able to get inside with Drustan’s wards. The door swung inward as she pushed. Apparently his wards, just like his magic, didn’t work on her. “Hello?” she called inside, knowing that it was empty just from the hollow feel. The interior was still beautiful with sunlight adding to the soft glow of the polished wood, but the whole house felt cold and lonely without its master. The feeling penetrated Anna, and she fought to keep her tears inside. She rubbed a hand down her face. “I’m an emotional mess.”

  Anna walked through to the back of the den where one of the necessary closets sat tucked into the outer wall. As she passed the center table, she spied Kailin’s journals along with a few of the old tomes from Kylkern. She hurried to empty her bladder and returned. All of the books were closed except for one journal. It splayed open, held by a polished rock. Anna slid the paperweight off and picked up the book, reading Kailin’s slanted script.

  …Drakkina sees a woman, auburn hair, green eyes. The prophecies are still hazy, but more and more of them include the woman. She is my brother’s mate and can stop his magic like Jackson stops mine. But when does she surface in Drustan’s life? From where does she come? She is alive somewhere this very moment, living her life, unaware that she could be the fulcrum that decides whether the world as we know it survives or is torn apart by Semiazaz and his demons.

  Anna set the book down and sighed. “Where are you, Drustan?”

  She walked slowly through the space. It smelled of him. Fresh wood, clean, an undertone of herbs from the stocked kitchen. Anna walked slowly up the mounted half-logs that served as a hanging staircase. “Drustan?” she called before the shut door to his bedroom but knew he wouldn’t answer. She turned the knob and walked in, stopping.

  Anna’s heart slammed in her chest as she took in the mess before her. Canvases sat around the perimeter of the room, papers scattered all over the bed, all over the floor, amongst dry pallets of watercolors, charcoal pencils and brushes. A hundred sets of the same two eyes all stared back at her, looking out from various emotions and backgrounds. Sorrow, anger, joy, fear. All of them set in a face she knew very well.

  Anna walked further into the room, trying to avoid the sketches and watercolors of herself littering the floor, but unwilling to bend to pick them up. Everywhere her gaze alighted, she saw herself staring back from the pages. She stopped at one of the canvases. It was a picture of the stone circle where she’d first met Drustan. Her stomach large, she lay on the center slab. Tears ran down her face as an arm extended over her, a knife in its hand. She couldn’t see
who wielded the weapon, but it was clear he meant to hurt the baby. Anna slid her hands over her stomach as a fierce need to protect filled her with a mother’s strength.

  She stood at the center of the room and turned in a tight circle, feeling her heart pound and her breath stutter at all the images of her in the stones, of her and the baby at the final battle. No matter what, it wasn’t going to end well, at least not for Anna.

  She moved the pictures over on the bed and sat down. “What are we going to do, Baby Girl?” she whispered, suddenly feeling completely exhausted. The morning had taken so much energy, even with the help from the baby. Anna reached behind her, carefully parting the pictures to either side. She scooted higher until she reached Drustan’s pillows. One pillow was empty and one cushioned a neat pile of pictures as if Drustan had laid there looking at them. Anna placed her head on the empty pillow, turning her nose into it and inhaling his scent. She closed her eyes for a long moment until the pain of missing him dimmed enough for her to look at the pictures.

  These were different. She held up one at a time, studying them. Her face still featured in each, but her face was filled with joy and contentment whereas most around the room showed misery. One watercolor depicted her laughing, the colors coming subtly from her open lips looked like sheer happiness.

  Anna held another over her face as she lay back on Drustan’s pillow. The charcoal lines were precise, capturing the softness of her eyes. The varying shades of gray and black wrapped around each other until he’d captured a shine in her gaze, one that could only be love radiating outward. Anna blinked away the tears that warped the image before her and reached for the last sketch in the stack. She rolled onto her elbow to peer down at the sheet. It was the only one she’d seen in the entire room that didn’t focus on her own face.

  The picture was rendered in soft flesh tones, a mix of watercolor paints. Two hands. One was feminine with long slender fingers, palm upward and open. The other hand was small and chubby, with dimples at the knuckles and lay flat inside the woman’s hand, resting. Anna ran her long, slender fingers down her stomach, knowing exactly who in the picture was holding hands. Had Drustan figured that out, too? Did he think that the baby in his picture was some distant prophecy instead of a daughter soon to be born?

  Anna lay her head back on Drustan’s pillow and closed her eyes. “Where are you, Drustan?” she whispered, her hand lying flat on top of the painting depicting the two joined hands.

  ****

  “A woman’s proper place is in her home, raising children and keeping her house. Not traipsing the halls of a hospital, looking at undressed people.” Gray cut through the auburn of the man’s hair to match his modest suit. He paced along polished oak floorboards before a hearth, stopping to gaze with lowered eyebrows at the young woman sitting straight-backed on a stool. Drustan recognized Anna immediately even though her hair was tied tightly about her head, and she looked younger, almost still a child.

  “I do not look at undressed people, Father,” she said, her hands folded in her lap. “I leave that to the men.”

  Her father pointed as he yelled. “Do not sass me, child.”

  “I mean no disrespect, Father.” Anna met his eyes. “I only wish to help people, learn to heal them. Women have been healers for centuries. It comes naturally to us where war and killing comes naturally to men.”

  Drustan stood silently, cloaked by the shadows in the corner. He couldn’t help the feeling of pride as he watched a young Anna work her way through her father’s arguments. One by one she met them, turning them subtly this way and that until his own words came back to him, rearranged to support her cause.

  Finally her father threw himself into a chair opposite her. “You could talk a monk out of his robes.” He shook his head. “And make him thank you for it as well.”

  Anna’s lips twitched slightly. “Again Father, I will leave the undressing of monks to the male doctors.”

  Her father grunted. “As stubborn and intelligent as your mother.”

  The smile fled Anna’s face. “I would become a doctor, Father, so I can help save other mothers. So other husbands won’t have to feel the loss that you feel.”

  He looked at her for a long solemn moment. “Your best argument yet, Anna.”

  Anna stood, resting her slender hand on his arm. Despite the fragile look of her form, Drustan knew incredible strength lay beneath her skin. Strength of mind and heart. Beautiful, intelligent, and strong. A worthy queen. If only Winston Murdock hadn’t come to the Highlands.

  The thought hardened in Drustan, bringing back the pain. There was no escaping it. He turned from the scene to thread. Semiazaz would be waiting for Drustan back in his time period. The wizard’s nightly talks and strategizing would have to wait. With a concentrated thought Drustan thinned into a thread and followed another timeline, expanding in the darkness of a closet on the third floor of London’s Kensington Hospital. He’d fine-tuned his ability to drop into a second on a timeline after exploring the temporal web now for weeks. Turning the knob Drustan stepped out amidst hurrying nurses in white caps and smocks and self-important men in suits.

  “Did you hear what she said next?” one man said, and Drustan fell in behind them.

  “I cannot even offer a guess,” the second man shook his head. “Was it vile?”

  “Certainly. She said that she would cut off a man’s penis to carry with her so that she’d be allowed in surgery.”

  The second man gasped. “Horrendous. And yet Murdock does nothing to have her thrown out. I will report it to the board.”

  “I believe,” Drustan said from behind. “That it was the penis of a cadaver, not one from a living man, although perhaps one of you would care to volunteer.”

  The two doctors stopped, turning with irate shock. “How dare you eavesdrop on a conversation between two doctors,” the first reprimanded. “I will have you escorted from the hospital.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to be doctors Bradley and Newton?” Drustan asked, as he stared down at the red-faced men.

  The second doctor had enough sense to look nervous under Drustan’s scrutiny. “We are,” he answered. “And who, might I ask, are you? Someone who has befriended Anna Pemberlin apparently.”

  “Not yet,” Drustan answered and leaned forward, dropping his voice. “But one day she will rule the world by my side, and I will make certain that you two little men treat her with the respect she deserves.”

  “What in God’s name are you talking about?” the first doctor asked. He looked at the second. “He needs to be locked in the mental ward.”

  Drustan took a step closer and allowed a bit of his magic to radiate up into the color of his eyes until he was certain they flickered fire. “You will stop harassing Anna Pemberlin. From this moment forward, you will support her causes and treat her with the respect she is due as a talented doctor.”

  Both men took a step back, nodding and swallowing. “What are you?” the first doctor asked.

  What was he? Drustan had no solid answer so he continued to glare. “Do we have an understanding?” he asked. Both doctors nodded vigorously, and he straightened up, glancing down the hall. “Dr. Pemberlin is back that way?”

  Doctor number two pointed, and Drustan traipsed down the hallway.

  What was he doing? He knew he shouldn’t interfere with things that had already occurred. The future often hinged on the tiniest of details, seeds that sprouted into large trees, branching into history. It was why Semiazaz said he’d never shown Drustan how to move through time, promising him that once they had power over the timelines, it would be safe. But when he’d heard those bastards talking about Anna he’d thrown all sense into the tempest that seemed to constantly swirl inside him since that evening, the evening he wouldn’t think about.

  Drustan made himself invisible so as not to impact the details on this thread. He moved along the white tiled floors that smelled of bleach, avoiding people. Drustan walked quickly through double doors that a nurse le
t swing shut behind her.

  “Anna, you cannot go around threatening a doctor’s manhood.” Winston Murdock’s voice came from a room off to the right. Drustan stopped outside it as Anna’s voice reached him.

  “They purposely shut me out of cases, Winston, time and again. It creates chaos and could bring harm to a patient. I was actually threatening the penis of a cadaver on this occasion, but that is something to consider.”

  Murdock coughed into his hand. “Actually Anna, they probably deserved that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I really…well I was hoping to catch you alone…I would like to ask you something,” the man stuttered.

  It was much harder to read someone’s mind in another time thread, but Drustan didn’t need his abilities to know that Winston Murdock was going to ask Anna something personal. Would he ask her to picnic with him, attend a ball? Would he ask for her hand in marriage? The thought propelled Drustan into the room. He stood back along the wall, watching.

  His gut tightened as his eyes greedily took her in. Anna was beautiful, even with her auburn hair swept up tight. Her blue eyes held spark and fortitude. Her skin looked so soft, and he remembered running his hands down her neck and shoulders to her—

  “Can we help you?” she asked, looking directly at him.

  Murdock swung around, his gaze roaming the room. “Is someone there?” he asked.

  Hell. Of course his magic didn’t work on Anna. She’d be able to see him when others could not. Drustan made himself visible, and Murdock jumped. The doctor squeezed his eyes shut and opened them wide. “I think I’ve been working too long.”

  Anna’s gaze never left Drustan. “Can I help you?” she asked again.

  “No,” Drustan said softly. “I…I just thought you were someone I knew.” He stood there gazing back at her.

  Murdock cleared his throat. “Make sure to send my regards to your sister,” he said to Anna. “And hurry back after the wedding.” He turned to Drustan. “Sir, I will show you out unless you have further business. We don’t allow vagrants to meander about the hospital.”