by Jenn Stark
I ruthlessly forced all that I had learned about Armaeus at our ocean-side home from my mind. I was not months or years older, I was merely minutes older than what I’d been when I’d gone into that rabbit hole of the beach and the ocean and the forest and—and an Armaeus who had never been, never would be. I needed to focus on the facts, and that was what I was being presented. Possibly. But at least this was something I could verify, on the outside. There would potentially be records of this village, this fire.
“This is history?”
“Preserved for all eternity,” Sariah said, her voice wry. “You’ll notice, though, Hell doesn’t really go in for the happy memories.”
“But is it memory, or history?” It didn’t matter. I already had one leg over the wall, and I could smell the pungent forest, the wasting fire. It was spring, I realized. Everything was wet with rain and buds and blossoms. A fire would not have started easily. It had to have been set.
Whatever Sariah said after that was lost in the howling wind as I jumped off the rocky wall and stumbled the rest of the way down a steep embankment. After I half rolled to a landing, I paused, gathering my wits. The fire was close enough to create a haze of false light, and my belief that this was some sort of medieval settlement was reinforced. Had Armaeus ascended yet? Become the Magician? Somehow I hadn’t imagined him coming from such a simple place. Then again, it’d been the twelfth century. Civilization had an entirely different meaning back then.
Either way, I was done with moving forward without guidance I could count on. Stepping into the lee of a tree, I fished into the pouch hanging around my neck, pulling out three chips. The gloom was too heavy for me to quickly discern them, but I gripped the chips in one fist as I edged forward. I could hear the screams now, the chaos, as the village pulled together to save the houses that had been set ablaze.
When I got close enough to see detail, I opened my hand, flipping over the chips until they were faceup. Drawing them this way, I had no idea what came first or last, but I could easily see the miniature painted surfaces to know what lay in store.
Five of Swords. Two of Cups. Ten of Swords.
Some days, it didn’t pay to get up in the morning. “But is this real?” I muttered, thrusting my hand back into the pouch one last time and quickly flipping up a disc. Sun. There was no stronger “Yes” card in the deck, for all that there was nothing sunny about the chaos in front of me now.
I dropped the chips back into my pouch and tucked it under my tank top, zipping up my hoodie fully. I would be a stranger to these people, but it was dark and everything was ablaze. No one would notice me.
A woman’s scream set my feet in motion, and I burst forth, rushing into the tiny village. The first thing I noticed was the heat. The second was the smell of burning timber.
“Oh! Oh!” shouted a man in my ear before thrusting two heavy pails at me. He rushed off as soon as I staggered beneath the weight. He was no taller than I was, but sturdily built, and I could barely haul the buckets of water forward. I had no idea where I was, but I heard the thick accents all around me and the flow of words, and almost recognized the cadence. French. The villagers were speaking a type of old French.
I didn’t know French, but I was less ignorant of it than the rest of the world’s languages outside of English. The word for water was “L’eau.” Even in medieval times, apparently. As I stumbled forward, I grimaced, recalling the scene in the park with Officer Brody. I’d been studying French that day, at the tail end of my first year of the language. First and only year, since I’d never gone back to school after that, let alone college.
I shook my head to clear it, the memory evaporating as I plunged into the small crowd of villagers hacking, pounding, beating at the houses. Instantly, I saw the problem. There had been a storm of some sort, not a deliberately set blaze. The trees standing closest to these houses had caught fire, possibly by lightning, and had fallen forward into a sort of paddock filled with straw. That straw had caught on fire, and the fire had swept forward, licking along the fence line toward the two huts huddled closest to the forest.
“L’eau!” I cried, thrusting my buckets at the nearest knot of villagers. A man took them without really seeing me and barreled forth, clearing the crowd in his wake. I hung tightly behind, scanning the crowd. These people were small, smaller than I would have expected, most of them no taller than I was. They all were dressed in rough-cut tunics and wrapped leggings of some sort, men and women alike, but some of them had wound strips of wet cloth around their faces as well. As they approached the wall of heat, they slowed, but the ones with the head wrappings leapt forward with shovels and buckets. Medieval firemen to the rescue.
I rushed forward as well, pulling my hoodie up to cover my mouth, keeping low as I encountered the surge of smoke. The space between the two houses was barely wide enough to fit a pair of horses through, and as I ran into it, I heard a woman screaming for help. I headed toward the noise, only to be shoved out of the way by strong hands.
“Mirabel!” The voice was loud and full of force. And familiar.
So was the electrical connection.
I wasn’t alone in noticing it either. The man whipped around, his eyes wild, his face hard, confusion evident on his achingly young face as his gaze raked over me. I stumbled back, trying to understand what I was seeing, but Armaeus Bertrand paid no more attention to me as he surged toward the smaller of the two houses, ignoring the flames and the heat. He didn’t flinch as he pounded his fist against the door—through the door. He practically broke the thing down in one thrust. Definitely the Magician, and definitely pissed. Another loud crack, and I realized he wasn’t coming back this way.
The smoke around me cleared enough for me to also figure out that no one else had ventured this far into the blaze. They wouldn’t know Armaeus was here, necessarily, they would be focusing on stopping the fire from moving farther into the village. So of course Armaeus would flee the opposite direction—through the forest.
Instead of going into the hut itself, I circled it, but the flames were too intense to the right, and by the time I made it around to the left, I could see that the pathway Armaeus had cut through the back paddock was already closing, the fire licking forth once more. I leapt forward and felt the sting of magic around me. This corridor was not a natural one, hewn by hand or scythe. The bundled straw had been cut clear through with an edge as sharp and straight as a razor. I ran into that breach as the fire leapt back over the open space, and the farther I got from the house, the clearer the way was before me. The paddock fence crackled and shuddered as I raced through its broken gate, and then I was into the forest once more, running fast.
It seemed to take another hour to get far enough into the forest to be able to take a deep breath, and I nearly devolved into a coughing fit as I did so. My lungs almost burst with pain but my brain insisted that silence was the better course. I sucked in oxygen in shallow, panting breaths as I tried to get my bearings. When the sound of my own frantic pulse finally dimmed in my ears, however, I heard voices.
I crept forward to the edge of a ravine, then sagged against a tree as I stared down.
The ravine opened into a grotto of sorts, with a stream that bent at an angle, allowing a deep pool to form before it spilled over several rocks and continued on its way. The village sounds were far distant now. I had no idea how far we’d run through the forest, but Armaeus was the Magician and could run at incredible speeds, and I’d apparently held my own with him. Now he was crouched over the body of a woman at the close edge of the pool, sluicing water over her, his hands moving in long, sweeping motions as his words sent a haze of power sizzling forth. I couldn’t understand the language he was speaking—it wasn’t French. It wasn’t exactly Latin. But it was definitely arcane, and I leaned forward, struggling for a better view.
The woman on the rocks moaned, a pitiable sound, and Armaeus edged closer still.
“Mirabel.” He spoke the word with a resonating force strong enoug
h to make the earth beneath my feet tremble. He’d used vocal projection with me before, but this was infinitely stronger. Who was this woman to him, I wondered. His sister? His mother?
“Mirabel, you cannot die,” Armaeus said. And though he used a language I couldn’t decipher, the words were translated in my head as neatly as if he’d implanted a Rosetta Stone there. “You are my first and only love.”
My eyes flew wide. Definitely not his mother.
Chapter Fourteen
I felt like the dirtiest of voyeurs, but I couldn’t help leaning forward.
As Armaeus shifted back, Mirabel already seemed much better for her stint in his care. She was sturdy and fair, her features disarmingly beautiful beneath a mass of dark curls that tumbled around her head, surrounding her face in a wild corona. Though her shift was ripped and charred, it appeared well made, not the pieced-together robe of a poor serf, and as Armaeus continued to whisper to her, the color gradually returned to her face. At length, her lips parted and she exhaled a ragged gasp. Beside her, the Magician sagged with relief.
She lay without moving for a long moment. Then Armaeus bent swiftly, touching his lips to hers, the gesture so infinitely tender that it ripped open a wound inside me I hadn’t realized existed.
I pressed my fist against my mouth. This had all happened over eight hundred years ago. This meant nothing—could mean nothing to him anymore. And yet I couldn’t stop the hopelessness that dawned within me as Mirabel struggled back toward consciousness, her body convulsing with a coughing fit as Armaeus propped her up, allowing her lungs to clear as he wiped her face and eased water into her mouth with his own cupped hands.
Then he started speaking to her again, his words too quiet for me to hear, but his manner so gentle yet intense that they could only be endearments, only be exhortations for her to live, to thrive, to continue on, or that his heart would break.
My burning lungs could finally endure no more, and my own hacking cough broke free. Armaeus instantly looked up, his body taut, a warrior ready to protect his mate.
“Witch,” he snarled, glaring directly at me. “Make yourself useful.”
I stiffened with shock and embarrassment at being caught out, even if he didn’t fully recognize me. What could I say—what could I—
“Charming as ever, Armaeus.”
I flinched back, deeper into the shadows, and Eshe stepped out of the trees beside me.
The High Priestess of the Arcana Council was dressed as excessively over the top as always. No forest fire in the middle of Dark Ages France was going to cramp her style, judging by the long, flowing toga-style dress she wore and the gold jewelry at her neck, ears, and wrists. The one concession to the terrain was her footwear. She wore beautifully woven leather sandals that stretched all the way up her calves, reminiscent of Nikki’s gladiator heels but flat—as if they’d actually been made for gladiators.
Now she strode forth, and her gaze swept over me, then paused.
She saw me. Truly saw me.
She gave no indication, though, and strode on, dropping lightly over the ridge to the grotto below in a vault that would have made an Olympian proud…and probably had. Straightening, the High Priestess approached Armaeus. “What is it you would have me do?”
Once again, Eshe’s words were clear as truth in my mind, though they spoke Medieval French and I shouldn’t be able to understand them.
“You know what was done to me,” Armaeus pleaded. “Do it to her.”
“Are you mad?” Eshe’s mocking laugh filled the small grotto. “Armaeus, you earned the right to your position by your birth and your abilities. This woman you love has neither.”
My eyes flew wide at her words. This woman you love? Did everyone know the Magician’s history with Mirabel but me?
Armaeus sagged, and the truth of it was evident in his face. “I would do anything,” he said. His words would have been weak in another man, but in his broken voice, they took on a resonance that stretched across dimensions and time. “Whatever you ask, I will do. Whatever you need me to be, I will be.”
“Armaeus.” Eshe’s voice was softer than I would have thought she could manage on her best day. She was about as tender as a starving hyena. “There is nothing you can offer me that will change this, as tempting as the offer is. Your role as Magician is full of choices. You must give this woman up. You know that. You must give up any love for any mortal. Do it now, and you will spare yourself a millennia of pain.”
“As you have done?” Armaeus held the woman closer to his chest, but his face was an agonized mask. “Your heart was cut out a long time ago, Eshe. You have nothing left to give. I do not want to be you. I don’t want this role if there is no love in it.”
To her credit, Eshe didn’t flinch at Armaeus’s harsh rebuke. Then again, at this point she’d been kicking around for well over a thousand years. It’d be like getting dissed by an infant.
Her next words confirmed that. “It’s hardest this time, Armaeus. It will fade.”
“I don’t want it to fade!” His energy crackled in a cloud over the woman, and her coughing increased, her eyes fluttering open.
“Armaeus?” she said, and though I hadn’t thought this scene could get any worse, it did. Mirabel’s voice was ethereal, musical despite her rasp of his name. She sounded like an angel sent down to earth to give men hope for living. She probably talked to animals too.
I grimaced, trying to focus.
Armaeus gazed down at her, his face rapt with emotion as Mirabel’s eyes closed again. “Mirabel,” he breathed, and in that one word, a thousand hopes and dreams were shared. The love he felt for this woman was not sexual, not completely. It transcended that. It transcended anything I would have thought possible from him, and I’d known him for over a year—known his thoughts, his powers, his desires, his truth.
Or I’d thought I did. But the way Armaeus was holding this woman, this mortal who was no more Connected than a piece of fruit, made me doubt everything I’d ever held real. He ached with desire for her, a desire to be with her and to protect her, shelter her, to make the world better for her than it had ever been for him. I’d never seen a man look at another woman like that. I’d certainly never experienced it myself.
A quick surge of revulsion bit through me as I forced my own petulance away. This wasn’t my history, wasn’t my experience. This was Armaeus’s. And if I wanted to understand the man who was opening up my powers bit by painful bit, then I’d damned well better start paying attention. Even if it hurt.
Especially if it hurt.
I forced myself to refocus on the scene. “She cannot die, Eshe,” Armaeus was saying now. “I won’t be able to bear it. She must exist, somehow.”
“You would have her be a ghost?” Once again, Eshe’s seeming harshness had a thick seed of concern at its heart. “You would have her haunt this world as a wraith, not able to go on and experience her next life, her next step on the path? We choose our fates, Armaeus. You chose yours. Allow her to choose death, if she means to die.”
“She did not choose this!” Armaeus growled. “She did not call down this storm upon her village, threatening her life, her people, her—”
“Of course she did, Armaeus,” Eshe said, and though I could not see her face, angled as she was, I imagined her rolling her eyes. “You’re not the only one who loves, you fool.”
Eshe raised her hand, and the words she spoke next called to mind the garbled utterances of the oracles. Then an orb appeared in her hands, and she spread her fingers wide to brace it until the bubble was three feet wide. In that bubble, Mirabel knelt in prayer next to another figure, robed and bowed as well, with lined hands that worked over a circle filled with symbols, drawn into the sand.
The Magician gasped. “But—who? How?”
“She wanted you to come, Armaeus,” Eshe said. “She knows you are changed, that magic fills you. She knows, and she’s afraid, and she wanted you to come anyway. So she did the one thing she could. She paid a dark
practitioner to bring you to her side. I’m sure she didn’t expect all this to happen. I’m equally sure she didn’t expect to bring down fire upon her own village. But she did it, nonetheless.”
“Paid what?” Armaeus’s stare was fierce. “I’ll kill him.”
“It was a she.” Eshe’s tone was derisive. “And not like that. She bartered information. Information about the very soul she craved.”
At that moment, Mirabel’s eyes fluttered open once more. The expression on her face as she realized that she was being held in Armaeus’s arms took his mind completely off what Eshe was saying, but it didn’t dislodge me. Information? What kind of information? What information did Mirabel have that would be worth anything to a sorceress of the medieval world? Had Armaeus confided in her? Told her his secrets? Had she betrayed Armaeus himself?
That last was impossible to believe as Mirabel cried out with joy, Armaeus crushing him to her with a relief that was so palpable, it shimmered through the grotto in waves. Even Eshe stepped back for a moment before she rallied, crossing her arms with a haughty toss of her head that neither Armaeus nor Mirabel seemed to notice, let alone mind. As she watched them, however, I watched her. The smirk on her face was quickly replaced by a resignation, then sadness. She didn’t give the two their privacy, though, but stood as sentinel as they kissed and whispered and sighed.
I tried to give them privacy, however. I did. But I simply…couldn’t leave. I needed to burn this image into my brain. I needed to understand why her, why this Mirabel, why this Unconnected woman who was like any other woman, no matter her beauty or the fact that angels probably wept when she cried, why she had captured Armaeus’s heart. I needed to understand why he loved her…her, and not me. It was humiliating, but it was why I had come into this history in the first place, I realized now. To see the inevitable end of the vision he had shown me so recently of himself, desperately lost, desperately hunting for something. Someone, I knew now. Someone who still held sway in his mind nearly a thousand years later.