by Kyra Jacobs
Addie stared as he produced the watch, a Timex she’d won in her first photography contest. She reached a trembling hand to grasp its resin band, surprised its battery hadn’t died by now. The moment her fingers touched his, she was swept away from the dark, quiet cottage to the backside of a hedgerow bordering a noisy playground. Nearby, a dozen or so children played upon a field of lush green grass beneath a sky of endless blue.
But this was no random playground—it was the small park down the street from where she grew up. The smattering of benches lining its perimeter were filled with pairs of adults, mostly mothers chatting amongst themselves…all save one. Perched on the closest bench to the shield of hedges sat a teenager, her blonde hair pulled into a messy bun and face hidden by a bulky black camera.
Everything about the girl was eerily familiar, from her frayed jeans and paint-stained pink hoodie to the model of Nikon and its zoom attachment in her hand. Addie stood frozen, telling herself it couldn’t be who she thought it was, that what she was seeing wasn’t possible. But then the girl lowered her camera and proved yet again that anything in this infernal realm was possible.
The girl on the bench was Addie, and the scene before them from four years ago.
She watched her younger self smile in response to two young boys in crisp, colorful cotton shirts playing catch with a shiny new red ball. They looked to be maybe five and eight or so and had huge smiles plastered across their faces. But adult Addie cringed from the scene. She knew how it would play out.
Sure enough, moments later, an older boy stepped between the brothers and asked if he could join them. He was several years older and at least a head taller than the oldest brother, but the boys were too trusting and innocent to refuse. With a shrug, one happily tossed him the ball. The older, wiser Addie recognized the smile on the older boy’s face as that of triumph, not delight. She stood and shouted to the younger boys, warning them not to trust the newcomer, but they ignored her cries.
“They can’t hear you, Adelaide,” said Berinon, who she now realized stood beside her.
She turned back in time to see the older boy catch the ball, laugh and call them “stupid idiots,” and then turn to chuck it into a nearby pond.
“No!” she cried in echo of her younger self.
The brat trotted off, chest puffed with pride over his deplorable behavior, and Addie’s gaze flashed to the smallest boy. His lower lip trembled as reality sunk in, and then he promptly burst into tears. All these years later, the sight still cut Addie to the core.
“Don’t worry,” the younger her called out as she stripped the watch from her wrist. “I’ll help you get your ball back.”
“But it’s too far, we can’t reach it,” the little boy cried as he shifted his red-rimmed gaze from the pond to her. “Oh, we’ll never get it back.”
“Nah, it’s not that far.” She hurried over to them and pulled the camera strap up and over her head. “Here, if you hold these, I’ll get it for you.”
The older brother nodded like a bobblehead doll and took her things, holding them awkwardly away from his body, as though they were made of glass. With a wink, she’d kicked off her shoes and trotted toward the pond. Addie heard her younger self gasp as she stepped into the icy cold water and remembered how it had cut like razorblades through her jeans.
“You could have let the ball go,” Berinon said, his voice soft.
Addie shook her head, unable to look away from the scene. “No. I grew up living under a bully’s roof. I knew how they felt.”
It had taken her hours to thaw out afterwards, she remembered. The pond had still been ringed with ice until just a few weeks prior. But it hadn’t mattered. She’d been determined to rescue the ball, to be somebody’s hero.
That day, she had been.
“Why did you bring me here?” she whispered.
“Watch,” Berinon replied.
And so Addie did. Her younger self waded back out of the knee-high ice water and onto the shore, where the smallest boy had broken into a dance of joy. When she handed him the ball, he shrieked with glee and bounced up and down with it above his head. The older brother carefully handed Addie her things then began to hop and cheer as well. She lowered the camera strap over her neck once more and was trying to put her watch back on when the youngest boy lunged to throw his arms around her in an exuberant hug.
The look of gratitude on his face and the humility on hers was priceless, and suddenly Addie longed to have a camera in her hands to capture the moment. Then again, she didn’t need one—it had already been captured forever in her heart. Now, even more so.
She was about to ask the wizard another question, when she spied her younger self tuck her watch into the top of her jeans’ pocket. Or at least that was what she remembered trying to do. But between her hands still shaking from the cold and the exuberant, bouncy boy in her arms, the watch never made it there. When the boy released her shoulders and took her hand instead, begging for her to join their game of catch, her watch fell silently to the ground.
“You see,” Berinon said in the softest of voices. “The only item stolen from you this day was your heart.”
It was true. The months leading up to that day had been particularly dark in her life, and she’d begun to think happiness would always remain just beyond her grasp. But that hug, so freely given, had reignited her heart with the most powerful emotion of all: hope.
Addie blinked back a fresh round of tears as guilt pricked at her heart. “I thought for sure my father had taken it. But how do you know all this?” She looked up suddenly to meet the wizard’s gaze. “We didn’t travel back in time, did we? This is a memory—your memory. Why? Why were you there?”
She stood and cast one last glance at the playground. It was empty, the kids, their parents, her watch all gone. When her gaze shifted back to Berinon, he’d vanished from sight too.
“Wait! You owe me another answer!”
“All in due time,” his voice replied lightly as a strong breeze kicked up around her. “For now, I offer you this: stay hidden, away from the masses for three days’ time while the two kingdoms come to accept your reappearance. Prince Zayne alone can protect you—stay with him, and no harm will come to either of you.”
“Three more days? But I have to get back! I don’t belong here!”
The wind blew stronger, knocking her back a step, then another. Dust and leaves swirled around her, stinging her skin. Addie raised a hand to shield her eyes and catch one more glimpse of her surroundings but could see nothing. She stumbled back one more step and bumped into something, though she didn’t remember anything being there. In a blink, the wind stopped, its roar traded for the silence of a rustic yet vaguely familiar hallway. Its floors were made of flagstone, its walls decorated with scenic oil paintings and authentic-looking coat of arms.
Addie spun to find Zayne standing behind her, eyes wide with surprise. Without warning, he drew her into a bone-crushing embrace then quickly stepped back to hold her at arm’s length, his brows drawn low. “I must know—what did he mean by reappearance?”
“You…heard all that?”
“Addie,” he growled. “What truths have you been keeping from me?”
“No, h-he lied. I-I’ve never been here before, I swear!”
Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps. Zayne dropped his hands and shifted farther from her.
“Sire, you’ve returned!”
Addie whirled around to spy a young servant girl. With a sinking feeling, she now recognized where they were—it was the royal cottage where Zayne had first brought her after rescuing her from the wolves. Panic curled tight around her chest as she realized Zayne’s trust in her now hung in the balance. Without it, how could she possibly stay safe the next three days? But how could she prove any of this when the one person in this crazy, mixed-up world—the riddlesome wizard—had vanished?
Chapter Nineteen
A knock sounded at the door to Forath’s
royal bedroom suite, and Rosalind’s two suitors stilled beneath the bed’s silken covers.
“Did I say either of you could stop?” she hissed playfully. “The king will be gone for hours yet. You have nothing to fear save my wrath if I am left half-pleasured.”
The archer at her left breast flashed a conspiratorial grin, then claimed her taut nipple in his mouth once more. The sergeant at her right breast, however, remained frozen. Rosalind planned to allow neither a knock nor a war to prevent her from enjoying this last unmarried fortnight. There were far too many handsome, willing warriors in the castle yet to experience.
“’Tis but the guard, likely searching for me,” she reassured him. “Shall I ask him to join us as well?”
Lust returned to his eyes as he reclaimed her other peak. She bit back a cry of delight, then ran a hand into each of their heads of thick hair to hold them in place as she bellowed in as low a voice as she could muster, “Enter.”
The door to the suite formerly shared by the king and her late mother swung open, revealing not just any guardsman, but one of Forath’s highest ranking knights.
“Quinn,” Rosalind purred. “What a pleasant surprise. Join us?”
A pointless question, as both men in the bed had already scrambled to their feet at the voicing of their captain’s name. The sight was nearly comical as they stood at attention in the buff, awaiting orders from a red-faced, dark-eyed Quinn.
“Was this the instruction given to you both? To pleasure the royals, rather than protect them?” he roared. One of the young soldiers opened his mouth to speak, but Quinn continued. “It matters not what the princess asked of you. This type of behavior is strictly forbidden.” His eyes flashed a bright scarlet as he stalked forward, his voice low and deadly. “And if I ever catch either of you inside these chamber walls again without security reasons, I shall decapitate you myself. Now get dressed and back to your posts. Immediately.”
The men scrambled for their clothes, drew them quickly on, and dashed from the room. Rosalind sighed with disappointment. Virgins, both—they would have been such fun as a pair. She slid from the bed and came to stand before Quinn. His chest rose and fell beneath his armored tunic as though he’d sprinted through the castle, not just stepped across a threshold.
“Was that truly necessary?” she asked with a pout.
Quinn glared at her, his eyes still glowing the color of fading embers. “You invited them into your bed?”
Rosalind shrugged and ran her hand down his bare, bulging bicep. “My days as an unmarried woman are numbered, you know.”
Quinn took her by the arm and hauled her into his chest. As the air whooshed out of her lungs, he spun her so he was pressed to Rosalind’s back. One arm pinned her against his growing erection; the other snaked up between her breasts so that his hand could clamp around her throat. “You are mine.”
“I am no one’s.” She made the comment to goad him further and was pleased to feel his grip on her tighten.
“You are mine.” With a growl, Quinn marched them forward until they were at the queen’s bedside. “Now…”
He bent her over.
“…tomorrow…”
He tore his trousers down and swept a foot between hers to spread them wide.
“…and again when I pry your betrothed’s cold dead hands off his throne.”
With that, Quinn drove hard inside her.
“Yes!” Rosalind cried out. This was what she’d wanted, what she needed. She hated that everyone else in this ridiculous castle treated her as though she were made of the most brittle pottery, that if they so much as touched her she might break. But not Quinn, never Quinn. She savored his aggressive ways, thrived on them.
“Yes, sire,” he corrected, pulled back and drove inside her again, deeper, harder.
“Yes, sire.”
“Not good enough.” His hands dug into Rosalind’s hips as he thrust into her, harder and harder, faster and faster. Sex with Quinn was always rough, but she’d have it no other way. To feel pain proved she was still capable of feeling something, anything at all. That the royal nonsense she’d been born into had yet to drown her in normality. One of his hands slid around her neck, and spots formed in her vision. “Tell me what you know to be true.”
“Yes, my king! My future king!”
He slowed to a stop and released her neck. “Much better. For that, I shall reward you.”
Quinn withdrew, rolled Rosalind onto her back, then laid her down onto the center of the bed to ravage her body with alternating bites and kisses. His hands were everywhere, scorching her body at their every touch. And as he brought her to climax with his strong, skilled hands, she clutched at the sheets and bit back a scream of pleasure. He wasted no time entering her once more, on his knees with her ankles in his grasp and held high before his face. This time she bit back a cry of pain as her center was forced to accept him so close to her shattering, but dared not deny him—not when the line between man and beast was so nearly blurred. In but a moment, the pain ended as his steady rhythm was interrupted by the surge of his own orgasm.
Haste, for them, had always been a necessity. Brief encounters shared behind closed doors and in utter secrecy was all they knew, all they’d ever known, since first becoming lovers. But as he collapsed onto the bed beside Rosalind and turned to place a gentle kiss upon her forehead, she knew there would never be another to understand her better than Quinn.
Soon their days of secrecy would be over. With her upon the throne in Edana, and Zayne’s family eliminated, she would bring Quinn alongside her to be king. Not until they ruled side by side would she acquiesce and allow him to show her the gentleness a queen deserved.
“What has happened that you would seek me out in the middle of the day, my lover?” she asked softly.
Quinn’s gaze met hers. “A scroll arrived for the king. One that threatens to disrupt our plan.”
“Oh? From whom?”
“Berinon, Edana’s high wizard.”
Rosalind rolled to face Quinn and propped herself on one elbow. “Do not leave me in suspense, man. What did it say?”
“That Prince Zayne and the girl have been to visit him.”
“And what did they ask of him? For a binding spell to nullify our betrothal? A potion to make my father forget of our engagement?”
“Mysteriously, no.” Quinn’s gaze shifted from hers as he sat up. “They came seeking help in sending the girl home, but the wizard insists your father see them first. He wrote, ‘The curse has been broken, the one you seek has been found.’”
“Curse? What curse?” Rosalind shook her head. Wizards and their damned riddles. “And found whom? The girl? What would my father want with some silly woodland peasant?”
“I do not know.” His voice was low and calculating. “But if our plan is to work, we must keep her safe from your father’s clutches.”
“Safe from his, but not from ours.”
An appreciative smirk tugged at Quinn’s lips. “Precisely. Though what am I to do with the scroll? It threatens to complicate matters entirely, but to destroy it would be punishable by death.”
“Not a soul in the land is powerful enough to destroy you, my warrior. And besides, I would never allow it. Destroy the scroll and leave my father in the dark once more.”
“Your father would strike me down whether you allow it or not, princess. Though, what he does not know cannot be used against me.” His gaze shifted to a nearby window, the scarlet glow now extinguished from his eyes. “And what of the wizard? Berinon would never meddle in affairs of no value to him.”
“Perhaps the girl is worth more to us than we know.” Rosalind sat up and followed Quinn’s gaze to the window. Outside, the sun began to dip beyond the horizon. “Edana’s castle walls have ears. I shall obtain the girl’s location so you may bring her here. We shall extract the truth from her together.”
“And if the truth is to our displeasure?” he asked, an evil grin snaking across his lips.
&nbs
p; “Then we silence her.” Rosalind crawled onto Quinn’s lap and nipped at his chin. “Forever.”
Chapter Twenty
Addie climbed the stairs leading to her borrowed room and tried to ignore the exchange of harsh whispers between Zayne and Emeline behind her. Relief had washed over the older woman’s countenance upon glimpsing her prince in the foyer, but just as clear on her face was the look of disapproval at spying Addie there beside him.
Addie could relate—she’d hoped to have long since returned to her hotel.
But that hadn’t happened. So instead of heading for a shower in her own world, complete with hot, running water, bottled body wash and her bright pink bath scrunchie, Addie was headed back toward her guest room, where someone was supposedly preparing a bath for her. She hoped like hell the tub would be larger than a wash basin and the water would stay warm long enough for her to take a good long soak. Not only did she relish the idea of washing away two days’ worth of sweat and grime, Addie also needed some time to unwind. Maybe then she could think clearly enough to make sense of all that Berinon had said.
She reached the top of the stairs and turned toward her room, but Zayne’s hand caught her arm. Addie turned to find him staring at her, his golden eyes dark and unreadable.
“Speak to no one of where we went or what you were told,” he said, a commanding tone in his low voice. “If they ask, tell them you were with me, and that our group fell under attack. Not a word more.”
“And the others? Have they returned yet?”
“Yes.”
“H-how many?”
Zayne looked toward the stairwell. “All, save Korey.”
Addie winced as guilt washed over her anew. “Zayne, I—”
“Not a word to anyone.” With that, he turned and headed down the hall to his room, leaving her behind to wonder what had gotten into him. The protective, caring Zayne had disappeared the moment they arrived back inside his family domicile. Was it finally sinking in that he’d lost one of his own, or was he as irritated as Emeline clearly was to be stuck with her for three more days?