Timeless (Maiden Of Time Book 3)

by Crystal Collier

  Yet in all his travels, he’d never encountered something like her. Not in the Holy Land, nor France, nor all of the German lands. If he took news of her to the holy pope, he questioned what would happen. Had the Church any idea things such as this existed?

  His gaze touched on the blackened flesh at her neckline. Could she be one of the Nephilim, here to try his heart and prove him worthy or not of God’s allegiance?

  He slipped his sword home. She could have turned the blade on him in his distraction, but she hadn’t. It had only been her intention to escape, not to slay him. Heaven knew how prone he’d made himself in her grasp.

  Then she wasn’t a murderer. A witch. Vicious. Not a killer.

  Studying her serene face, he questioned what her life was like. Who had she been? A vagabond child or the offspring of a loving family? Some mythical creature who fought battles in Heaven and now on Earth? Were the men in her childhood villains or heroes?

  She stirred and he shifted back a safe distance. Her eyes fluttered open, and he tossed a turnip at her.

  “Let us not do that again, shall we? Eat and regain your health. If you are going to best me, you will need all of your strength.”

  Twenty-Six

  Angels and Demons

  Alexia’s scream wasn’t an expression of horror. It was an expression of sorrow.

  A dagger protruded through dark skin, spearing the woman to the heart.

  Alexia’s dagger.

  She patted her hip and found an empty sheath. Had she misplaced the weapon some time throughout the day? Had someone taken it? Who would do this?

  Voices crowded her thoughts, startled voices, cries and shouts, but she was fixated on that weapon, an accusation. Someone was framing her.

  Hands latched around her arms, strong hands. They drew her away and she lifted her eyes through a daze.

  Kiren cradled her cheeks, his mouth moving.

  She pulled out of his hold and stumbled away.

  Six months. Six months they’d been building this company, and while mild disagreements had occurred, no one would have slain another. An enemy could not possibly have entered their village. Not in the middle of the night with Amos’s shrouding darkness up. Not while friends slept close. Not after their jump across landmasses.

  Yet her nose told her the same thing as her eyes.

  One of their own, a soul she had diligently cared for and shouldered hardships beside, was dead. And it looked like it had happened at her hand.

  She dreamed of death so regularly, terrible nightmares where she woke gasping for air after drowning in the pool of the Soulless’s blackened blood. It couldn’t be happening again. It wasn’t possible.

  Amos grabbed Alexia’s shoulder. The tension in his jaw said he recognized the dagger, but didn’t believe she was capable of using it. She knew exactly what he was thinking, that she should use her gifts to investigate.

  And keep it from happening.

  “Go,” he encouraged.

  She reached into the void, and the sands of time shifted through her fingers, ready to be altered. Alexia snatched onto a moment in the late afternoon, an hour at which she was certain Ravia lived.

  She jumped.

  And slammed into a black wall. Pitch slid across her limbs, swallowing her fists and ankles like cooling tar. It enveloped her skirt, her skin, sliding its way up her neck and over her chin. It fought to ooze its way through her nose and mouth. She ripped herself out of the darkness and landed hard on the ground.

  Pain seized her midsection. Alexia curled in on herself. Dirt scraped into her cheek and arms as she lifted her head to search for help. She lay in the pathway between huts, womb contracting with a fury.

  Calm. It will not be tonight.

  The tension eased, her muscles limp like noodles.

  Since when had time become her enemy?

  She breathed in night air. She had traveled through time, just not as far as she’d wished. Perhaps Regin was correct when he insisted she was too far along to demand so much of herself, but that pitch substance…

  Another contraction seized her. She breathed through it, squeezed into a ball.

  “Grandfather,” she whispered. She wasn’t ready for this, not ready to die. The world around her melted away to the absence of time. Her pain eased. She pressed up onto her elbows and Grandfather sat next to her.

  “It’s dark out here,” he said.

  She caught her breath, muscles relaxing.

  “Too dark.”

  She turned to him. His profile reminded her of another, if the nose were slightly larger, the chin a little less firm and the hair gray…

  “Lester!”

  He glanced at her. “You grant me a new name?”

  “Oh no, not unless you wish for one.” It had to be him. The realization settled something within her, like finding her favorite book in a time before books. A warm corner in a frozen wasteland. She wasn’t alone. She’d never been alone. Somehow Grandfather Time had always been part of her life. Watching over her. So close.

  She blinked through her memories of him, the gruff old man in the Wilhamshire prison, a steady and kind fellow, the man who ran faster than anyone had ever run…because he could alter time.

  How was it possible? Her mother had insisted there could only be one to govern the flow of time. Had Grandfather given up that role when her mother was born?

  “There can only be one,” she whispered. “In the future, how can we both exist if both of us can alter time?”

  He grinned and ruffled her hair. “Aye, she’s figured it out. Knew ye’d come to it soon. Bright, this one.”

  “Grandfather.”

  “Meh. There be two worlds what need us. Two worlds, two of us.”

  “But my mother died when I was born so that I could become the Maiden of Time.”

  “There be only two worlds.” He looked pointedly at her, then at himself. “I were in the absence of time when it happened, and young Dana chose to give her life so you could be.”

  Sadness passed through her, for her mother’s fate, for the sacrifice she’d made.

  Lester glanced back at the murk. “Too dark.”

  She studied the gloom. “Is that a riddle? You know what has happened in the village this evening, and who did it.”

  He climbed to his feet. “Have you dreamed of chaos recently?”

  What a strange question. She rose to join him. “Death, perhaps. Not chaos. I tried to jump through time and hit a wall.”

  His lip twitched. Kind eyes turned on her. “We have an enemy in our midst.”

  She was confused. “An enemy within time?”

  The corner of his mouth pulled upward. “An enemy what has no bounds. An enemy what was sealed away long, long ago. Stay away from the darkness.”

  “The darkness inside of time?”

  He gave a nod, his mouth set in a way that she knew she would not get more out of him. There was something larger at play here.

  “We already have a traitor, and you are telling me we have another enemy?”

  “Those what govern time have many enemies.”

  She exhaled a heavy breath. In her own era it had been the factions of the Passionate, the Soulless, and men who collected the Passionate for their own gain. This felt like a simpler age, but perhaps she’d dismissed the complexities too readily. Alexia squared her shoulders, willing to face the challenges. Her babe lurched. She stumbled.

  Grandfather/Lester caught her arm, helping her straighten.

  She smiled at him. Here was a piece of her world, restored to balance, and to think he’d been with her all along, watching over her. She patted a hand over his. “You are so careful with me. I am not a fragile creature.”

  “What, like a sparrow?” He returned a knowing wink. It was his nickname for her in her own time. “Even them what take wing can fall.”

  “Not when they have so apt a protector watching over them.”

  His head tilted. “You have a baby to stop from birthin’ and so
meone what can help you do it. Go.”

  She blushed and nodded.

  ***

  “Kiren,” she whimpered through the pain. Surviving childbirth was difficult for the Passionate, but Kiren had…or would save many women in the coming years. Perhaps his arrival had been an intervention of whatever greater force governed life. He would insist it was God. She called it luck. Maybe Grandfather had even orchestrated his arrival. Alexia squeezed a hand around her necklace, begging for strength. “Kiren.”

  A shadow dropped over her.

  “Be calm. Relax.” The words were clipped.

  She obeyed him, slowing her heart in time with her breaths. Fingers landed on her forehead, individual points of light as brilliant as a summer day, summoning her peace, her joy, the happiness of cuddling with him while watching clouds drift by. The only thing that existed was this frozen memory where no evil, no sorrow could ever touch it.

  Never let go, she begged.

  But his fingers pulled away.

  Her eyes fluttered open and she met his stare, his lips pressed tight. Moonlight caught the edges of his frown, brightening the trouble in his stare.

  “What just happened?” he asked. “You were leaving the hut, and then you were gone.”

  Alexia groaned. She had only made it seconds. It must have appeared she’d run off on him after their war of words. She pushed onto her hands and knees getting one foot, then the other, below her. Kiren caught her elbow and lifted her. A tenderness filled his gaze, despite the flexing jaw muscles.

  Willem stumbled by.

  Kiren’s nostrils flared. His mouth dropped open, and he turned the direction of Ravia’s hut. He took off running. She followed and arrived as he shoved the curtain door of Ravia’s hut aside.

  Alexia’s heart sank. She couldn’t be too late. Not again.

  She patted her hip. No dagger.

  Kiren knelt over Ravia, the dagger pinned through her chest, dark blood seeping down her sides. He pressed two fingers to her neck and groaned. He bowed his head. “She’s warm.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Death

  Alexia stared at the corpse. Four years ago the sight would have terrified her. Now it only saddened her. How had she come to this point? More importantly, who had stolen her dagger and done this?

  “You still believe this is a safe haven?”

  She bit down at Kiren’s jab and pulled her dagger free from the woman’s chest. She expected blood to gush from the wound, but it stagnated like a well of midnight tar.

  Blood stained her blade. A blade that was meant to kill the Soulless. She wiped the weapon on the mattress and tugged a blanket over the woman’s wounds. Alexia slipped the dagger home and dropped her head into her hands. Ravia was dead. Her friend.

  “Seems you have a problem,” Kiren said.

  She met his stare. His accusation softened to an aching compassion, such a familiar look that Alexia couldn’t breathe. She was standing next to a time traveler, the man she’d left in the future—except that he possessed no scar.

  She looked away. “It could have been anyone.”

  His shoulder nudged hers. “Including me?”

  “No. Not you.”

  “Well, that is a relief. Where were you?”

  Silence. “I went back to stop it. I failed.”

  He wrapped an arm around her, and as much as she longed to remain within its comforting fold, she took a deep breath and shrugged it off.

  Alexia wiped away the tears. “We should call Amos.”

  ***

  Amos decided to keep the cause of Ravia’s death among council members in order to investigate silently, and he claimed it was a suicide to the others. They held a firelight farewell for her, complete with Willem shaking open the earth to accept Ravia’s body. It was tradition that a seedling be planted over the deceased, but people gasped in awe when Kiren knelt over the planted seed, one hand to the soil, and hummed a farewell song. Green limbs sprang up between his fingers and grew to a young sapling. Alexia loved seeing him finally appreciated for the wonder he was.

  The instant the ceremony ended, Amos employed the council to search out the murderer.

  Alexia found nothing. No reason. No one with a motive.

  Air hung thick with humidity. Heavy clouds dangled above, threatening to drop their stock as she stepped into the trees. Her joints ached, and her body weighed like the stone that protected their home, dragging her toward collapse.

  She hadn’t slept the rest of the night. She’d sat, envisioning the dead woman and wondering if she might have somehow prevented this outcome, but failed.

  She was only supposed to be here to stop the Soulless from existing.

  Alexia had no idea when it would happen or how to recognize the time. She’d been told that thirteen of the purest Passionate would give themselves to a madman, that they would be drained and become eternally hungry, unable to die. She had yet to meet a madman, especially one who was demanding Passionate loyalty. Unless Kiren was the one. But he hadn’t asked for anyone’s allegiance. Not yet. So long as she kept vigil, that outcome could be prevented. Of that she was certain.

  Unless she died first.

  She slowed. It was entirely possible her time would come before the Soulless were born and she had merely given up half a year—or a lifetime—of joy in her husband’s embrace. Should she have stayed with her Kiren?

  Alexia lifted his medallion about her neck and pressed it to her lips. Energy surged into her bones. She missed him. More desperately than the earth needed the rain, she craved the man who had taken her heart and loved her enough to let her go.

  She arrived at the pool and her weariness washed away. There he stood, watching her with a mix of dejection and a desire to comfort. His arms opened to embrace her.

  Perhaps he wasn’t the man who sacrificed and adored, but for this moment, he was enough.

  Twenty-Eight

  Coup

  Leofrik stoked a fire. She sat next to him, arms tucked as tightly across her chest as possible with bound wrists, her knees drawn up to preserve body heat.

  He had taken to speaking when she would not or could not, believing that if he formed a bond or found some aspect of life to which she responded, he might crack her exterior and begin the true negotiation. “We fought together and bled together, placing ourselves as a shield between pilgrims to the Holy Land and the infidels who sought to end their righteous lives.” He chewed a piece of salted pork. “They are my brothers, and yet I am forced away from them and my sworn duties to hunt creatures whose faces countenance the very angels. But you are not an angel, are you? A demon perhaps? Something not of this Earth.”

  Her mouth scrunched, and she shivered.

  “Are you now feeling the cold, my lady? Your vesture would suggest you take no heed of the weather’s power.”

  The flames lit her face like flares of gold across gray marble.

  He rose and shook out his bedroll, removing the blanket. He dropped it around her shoulders and returned to his place, poking the flames higher in order to roast the rabbit he’d caught. The nobles would have his head for poaching, but it was not like his companion could betray his trespass.

  “But you know about that—the bond of brotherhood or family, I daresay. It shows through your silence, which I admire.” He sighed, placing a hand to the bandage over his right temple. “I pray thee understand, I wish you no ill, whatever you are. I only desire to return to my fellows. Fulfilling this assignment is the way to bring that about. I could hunt your kind and make this a bloody endeavor, but I have chosen the path of diplomacy. If you choose not to cooperate with me, others will come. They will slaughter your loved ones. I, at least, offer the alternative of a peaceful surrender and continued life.”

  She scowled as if he’d insulted her sensibilities.

  An emotional response. Perhaps that was the way to breech her voice. “I had hoped you might see reason, but perhaps women are too daft for reason.”

  She bristled
, eyes flaming.

  “These are things she has heard before! Well, as they say—once is a laugh, twice is a gaffe, but three times is a truth.”

  She leapt at him. Chilled fingers locked around his jaw before he could lift a weapon. Thoughts slammed into his brain with the force of a full mounted regiment.

  Flames ate through roofs, women and children fleeing amidst screams, men on horses slicing through all who dared escape into the night. He, no, she—the little girl he was seeing through—ducked behind a barrel and held her breath. “Velia!” her mother screamed as the roof of her home collapsed in. And then Mother was silent. Velia remained hidden until flames ate their way down the side of the house and she had to run. By then the soldiers had vacated. She stumbled into the arms of a man with copper skin and chestnut hair. He created a veil of darkness around them and led her away.

  Time passed. Much. She flitted happily through the French garden on a breeze, loving the freedom and at peace—even with the others mulling about, planting, or gabbing. She solidified on the rise, taking in the view of her happy home…when pain sliced through her shoulder. She gasped and reached to find a metal crossbow bolt burning through her flesh. Men crawled up the rise behind her, so many in armor, wearing white colours with red crosses.

  Velia opened her mouth to scream, to warn the others. A fist slammed into her throat. She choked and dropped to one knee, unable to summon a voice. Soldiers rushed in on all sides. Her people fought back, but they were caught by surprise. They fled, the strongest holding back the tide until they were crushed by the enemy. She pulled at the bolt in her flesh.