Outshine (House of Oak Book 5)

by Nichole Van

And he would have it . . . even if he had to destroy time itself.

  Deleted Scene: Emme and James

  In Outshine, I wanted to give all the characters from the previous four books little cameos. Unfortunately, that proved too difficult, particularly with James and Emme from Intertwine. Initially, I had all the characters who were outside their original time periods (like James) suffering the same effects as Jasmine. But that angle on the story fell by the wayside and so this small glimpse of James and Emme was cut. This scene occurs toward the end of the book when the characters are gathered in the cellar of Duir Cottage, right after Jasmine and Timothy disappear through the portal but before Daniel and Fossi leave 1828.

  The air over the portal shimmered.

  Emme appeared holding a barely conscious James against her body, his blond head lolling to the side.

  “Daniel!” she gasped. “Help me!”

  Fossi stopped singing. The portal crashed, energy running amok.

  Daniel leaped forward, helping Emme pull James out of the depression and gently easing him down to lean against the wall. James’ breathing was shallow, skin chilled.

  “What on earth.” Daniel crouched beside his friend.

  Emme was half holding James in her arms.

  “He’s been fading over the past several months.” Emme brushed her husband’s hair off his forehead. “At first, we thought it might be cancer or something—”

  “It’s the portal,” James mumbled, nuzzling his head into Emme’s hand. A puppy looking for more affection. “I could feel my body out of alignment with the time period. But being back here . . .” James lifted his head on a sigh. Color was already returning to his cheeks. He took in a deep breath. “Wow. It’s like everything suddenly snapped back together.”

  Emme nodded. “It’s what we thought. Those who have been out of the time periods of their birth the longest were suffering.” She looked around. “Where’s Jas?”

  “She collapsed completely. Timothy vanished with her.”

  Emme nodded. “Probably off to her correct time period then.” She helped James to his feet. Only then noticing Fossi standing behind Daniel.

  “Oh. Hello.” Emme smiled at Fossi. “Who is this?”

  Daniel made introductions.

  “What happened to make the portal stop working?” James asked, pushing himself more upright. “It’s been nearly two years since we saw each other.”

  “It’s been too long, my friend.”

  Daniel explained everything, starting with his mistake and Simon’s death, the subsequent earthquake, Daniel’s hunt for the author of Fourier’s Nemesis, and how Fossi had found a solution, at least temporarily, for the portal.

  Given how Emme was staring between Fossi and himself as he talked, she perhaps saw much more than the simple narrative he related.

  “Daniel, how awful.” Emme clutched a hand over her stomach, eyes bright. “Poor, sweet Simon.”

  “All will be well, Emme. We’ll get him back.”

  She nodded.

  “Shall I sing to restore you to your proper time?” Fossi asked Emme in her polite, direct way.

  Emme looked to James and pondered for a moment. “I feel fine. I think it’s a slow, cumulative effect of misalignment for those who have been out of the time of their birth. I’m content to stay here for now. Perhaps we can sneak in a visit to Georgiana.” She turned to Daniel. “Frankly, I’m surprised you’re doing so well, Daniel.”

  Daniel shrugged. Who knew why he was all right? Maybe because he was the cause of Simon’s death and the subsequent timeline fracture? The fulcrum, so to speak? Or because he was the one who had to fix it?

  Which thinking of that . . .

  “The sooner I restore the timeline to how it should have been, the better.”

  About the Author

  An international bestselling author, Nichole Van is an artist who feels life is too short to only have one obsession. In former lives, she has been a contemporary dancer, pianist, art historian, choreographer, culinary artist and English professor.

  Most notably, however, Nichole is an acclaimed photographer, winning over thirty international accolades for her work, including Portrait of the Year from WPPI in 2007. (Think Oscars for wedding and portrait photographers.) Her unique photography style has been featured in many magazines, including Rangefinder and Professional Photographer. She is also the creative mind behind the popular website Flourish Emporium which provides resources for photographers.

  All that said, Nichole has always been a writer at heart. With an MA in English, she taught technical writing at Brigham Young University for ten years and has written more technical manuals than she can quickly count. She decided in late 2013 to start writing fiction and has since become an Amazon #1 bestselling author and RONE Award finalist. Additionally, her late 2016 release, Love’s Shadow, was selected as a Whitney Award finalist.

  In February 2017, Nichole, her husband and three crazy children moved from the Rocky Mountains in the USA to Bridge of Weir, Scotland. They currently live in a former Victorian orphanage nestled against the Scottish highlands and enjoy walks through the countryside and along the lochs.

  She is known as NicholeVan all over the web: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Visit http://www.NicholeVan.com to sign up for her author newsletter and be notified of new book releases. Additionally, you can see her photographic work at http://photography.nicholeV.com and http://www.nicholeV.com

  If you enjoyed this book, please leave a short review on Amazon.com. Wonderful reviews are the elixir of life for authors. Even better than dark chocolate.

  Copyright

  Outshine © 2017 by Nichole Van Valkenburgh

  Cover design © Nichole Van Valkenburgh

  Interior design © Nichole Van Valkenburgh

  Published by Fiorenza Publishing

  Kindle Digital Edition 1.0

  Outshine is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ISBN: 978-0-9968936-3-3

  Turn the page for a preview of

  Intertwine

  House of Oak Book 1

  James and Emme's story and the first book in the House of Oak series.

  Intertwine

  House of Oak Book 1

  The obsession began on June 12, 2008 around 11:23 A.M.

  Though secretly Emme Wilde considered it more of a ‘spiritual connection’ than an actual full-blown neurosis.

  Of course, her brother, Marc, her mother and a series of therapists all begged to disagree.

  Thankfully her best friend, Jasmine, regularly validated the connection and considered herself to be Emme’s guide through this divinely mystical union of predestined souls (her words, not Emme’s). Marc asserted that Jasmine was not so much a guide as an incense-addled enabler (again, his words, not Emme’s). Emme was just grateful that anyone considered the whole affair normal—even if it was only Jasmine’s loose sense of ‘normal.’

  Jasmine always insisted Emme come with her to estate sales, and this one outside Portland, Oregon proved no exception. Though Jasmine contended this particular estate sale would be significant for Emme, rambling on about circles colliding in the vast cosmic ocean creating necessary links between lives—blah, blah. All typical Jasmine-speak.

  Emme brushed it off, assuming that Jasmine really just wanted someone to organize the trip: plan the best route to avoid traffic, find a quirky restaurant for lunch, entertain her on the long drive from Seattle.

  At the estate sale, Emme roamed through the stifling tents, touching the cool wood of old furniture, the air heavy with that mix of dust, moth balls and disuse that marks
aged things. Jasmine predictably disappeared into a corner piled with antique quilts, hunting yet again for that elusive log cabin design with black centers instead of the traditional red.

  But Emme drifted deeper, something pulling her farther and farther into the debris of lives past and spent. To the trace of human passing, like fingerprints left in the paint of a pioneer cupboard door. Stark and clear.

  Usually Emme would have stopped to listen to the stories around her, the history grad student in her analyzing each detail. Yet that day she didn’t. She just wandered, looking for something. Something specific.

  If only she could remember what.

  Skirting around a low settee in a back corner, Emme first saw the antique trunk. A typical mid-nineteenth century traveling chest, solid with mellow aged wood. It did not call attention to itself. But it stood apart somehow, almost as if the air were a little lighter around it.

  She first opened the lid out of curiosity, expecting the trunk to be empty. Instead, she found it full. Carefully shifting old books and papers, Emme found nothing of real interest.

  Until she reached the bottom right corner.

  There she found a small object tucked inside a brittle cotton handkerchief. Gently unwrapping the aged fabric, she pulled out an oval locket. Untouched and expectant.

  Filigree covered the front, its gilt frame still bright and untarnished, as if nearly new.

  Emme turned the locket over, feeling its heft in her hand, the metal cool against her palm. It hummed with an almost electric pulse. How long had the locket lain wrapped in the trunk?

  Transparent crystal partially covered the back. Under the crystal, two locks of hair were woven into an intricate pattern—one bright and fair, the other a dark chocolate brown. Gilded on top of the crystal, two initials nestled together into a stylized gold symbol.

  She touched the initials, trying to make them out. One was clearly an F. But she puzzled over the other for a moment, tracing the design with her eyes. And then she saw it. Emme sucked in a sharp breath. An E. The other initial was an E.

  She opened the locket, hearing the small pop of the catch.

  A gasp.

  Her hands tingled.

  A sizzling shock started at the back of her neck and then spread.

  Him.

  There are moments in life that sear into the soul. Brief glimpses of some larger force. When so many threads collapse into one. Coalesce into a single truth.

  Seeing him for the first time was one of those moments.

  He gazed intently out from within the right side of the locket: blond, blue-eyed, chiseled with a mouth hinting at shared laughter. Emme’s historian mind quickly dated his blue-green, high collared jacket and crisp, white shirt and neckcloth to the mid-Regency era, probably around 1812, give or take a year.

  Emme continued to look at the man—well, stare actually. His golden hair finger-combed and deliciously disheveled. Broad shoulders angled slightly toward the viewer. Perhaps his face a shade too long and his nose a little too sharp for true beauty. But striking. Handsome even.

  Looking expectant, as if he had been waiting for her.

  Emme would forever remember the jolt of it.

  Surprise and recognition.

  She knew him. Had known him.

  Somehow, somewhere, in some place.

  He felt agonizingly familiar. That phantom part of her she had never realized was lost.

  The sensation wasn’t quite deja vu.

  More like memory.

  Like suddenly finding that vital thing you didn’t realize had been misplaced. Like coming up, gasping for air, after nearly drowning and seeing the world bright and sparkling and new.

  She stood mesmerized by him until Jasmine joined her.

  “Oooh, you found him.” The hushed respect in her voice was remarkable. This was Jasmine after all.

  Emme nodded mutely.

  “Your circles are so closely intertwined. Amazing.”

  Jasmine turned the locket in Emme’s hand.

  “What does this inscription say?” she asked.

  Emme hadn’t noticed the engraved words on the inside left of the locket case. But now she read them. Her sudden sharp inhalation seared, painfully clenching.

  Oh. Oh!

  The words reverberated through her soul, shattering and profound.

  Emme didn’t recall much more of that day—Jasmine purchasing the locket or even the little restaurant where they ate lunch. Instead, she only remembered the endless blur of passing trees on the drive home, the inscription echoing over and over:

  To E

  throughout all time

  heart of my soul

  your F

  To continue the story purchase Intertwine from Amazon today!

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  Gladly Beyond

  A Brothers Maledetti Romance

  Gladly Beyond

  Book One of the Brother's Maledetti Romance series

  Prologue

  When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

  —Oscar Wilde—

  History would call him il Conte del Maledetto—the Damned Earl.

  His descendants would call him ‘that damned idiot.’

  For his part, Giovanni D’Angelo simply called himself desperate:

  Desperate to preserve his family.

  Desperate to win at any cost.

  Desperate enough to seek a forbidden solution.

  On a dark moonless night in 1294 A.D., Giovanni slipped through the eastern gate of San Gimignano, past the gurgling fonti and into the woods beyond. Silently making his way to the camp of the zingari—the gypsies.

  Giovanni begged the old gypsy woman—la zingara—to grant his request: the gift of Sight. To see, hear, feel what had been . . . what would come. An unholy boon from her pagan gods.

  “Knowledge. It is double-edged.” The zingara tried to explain in her broken Italian, firelight skimming her face. “You are sure?”

  “Sì.” He nodded, eager and bright-eyed.

  Giovanni did not understand her words. Not then.

  The wrinkled zingara took her payment and performed the required ritual. Made the necessary sacrifice. Bestowed her gift on Giovanni and his heirs . . . forever.

  Giovanni was reborn. Like birds on the wind, whisperings reached his ears. Tales of what his enemies had done, fleeting glimpses of the future.

  With his newfound talents, Giovanni saved his family, outmaneuvered his opponents, crushed his rivals.

  But all too soon, whispering evolved into vivid immersion. Giovanni constantly pivoted round, tracking invisible things—the past and future swirling about him.

  The voices destroyed him in the end.

  Not the sights nor the feelings.

  No.

  It was the never-ending noise.

  Giovanni threw himself off the church bell tower at the age of forty-one. Raving mad.

  Twenty-five years later, his son was found swinging from the southern city gate, foam and blood dripping from his mouth.

  A generation after that, his grandson strapped himself to the front of a newly-invented cannon and lit the fuse.

  And so it went. Relentless.

  The gift passed from first-born son to first-born son. Each D’Angelo heir dying, usually by his own hand, before his thirty-fifth year. The gypsy’s gift splintering the mind.

  The family tried to remove the gift from their bloodline, but later zingari knew nothing of the original power used—the secret lost to history.

  It continued for seven hundred years. Until a more modern age arrived.

  Another first-born D’Angelo sired a child.

  But in the very instant of conception—that breathless moment when life combines and sparks anew—the unforeseen happened.

  Life infused . . . not once.

  But twice.

  And then . . . split in half again.

  Fracturing. Shattering.

  Forever altering what had been.
>
  One

  Florence, Italy

  2015

  Claire Raythorn

  I’ve always thought Italian cities are like guys I knew in college:

  Rome—the hot frat boy I was dying to go out with (and I did, and it was awesome). But, turns out, everyone dated Rome.

  Naples—Rome’s frat house roommate. The guy on no sleep and his tenth can of Red Bull. No one messed with him cause he knew people who knew people . . . catch my drift . . .

  Venice—the dreamily gorgeous philosophy major. Brilliantly eccentric but exotic enough that no one quite knew what to make of him.

  Milan—the second-year MBA student who was big on power-ties and power-lunches. Basically, the organized guy who held everyone else together.

  And then there was Florence.

  Firenze, to those who knew him.

  Quiet and unassuming. When we first met, I wondered what all the fuss was about.

  But Firenze . . . he was a subtle seducer. If I asked, he could talk for hours about art and history. But, generally, Firenze simply listened. Peaceful. Steady. Ready to shoulder my sorrows.

  Firenze is the guy I never got out of my system.

  Truth.

  I took a sip of my hotel coffee and studied the huge Piazza della Signoria around me.

  Classic Firenze.

  Stately buildings squished around the perimeter, arched green shutters pushed open, looking out like so many eyes. Across from me, golden April sunlight cheerily danced across the ancient stone of the town hall—the Palazzo Vecchio. (Thirteenth century. Crenelated clock tower.)

  Though still early, people filled the piazza. Retired couples nose-deep in Frommers. Rowdy school kids waiting in line for the Uffizi museum. African street vendors offering selfie-sticks for purchase. A line of Japanese tourists cut through, their guide holding a red umbrella aloft like a war banner.