What if it was?
What if that fratricide was a gross gash in the canvas of divine destiny? And what if the cosmos recognized that her soul was too precious to expire with her? What if a troupe of angels themselves flew across time and retrieved everything they could before her body gave up breath and form? What if they searched through centuries for the right person who could share her perfect magic—and they flew to this year to find it?
To find her…
My mind feels like it is juggling cows, but I manage to keep them all in the air while reviewing the ramifications of Max’s suggestion.
That perhaps I am meant to remain here. Ordained to all this oddness. Fated for this wilderness of the future. But for what? Not just to save my sorry skin. Not good enough. Not by half.
But a reunion with my beloved…
If I can truly stretch my mind around the concept…
She would be worth staying for. Worth trying for. Even fighting for, if it comes to that.
I nod with definition, attempting to say as much to Maximillian with the motion. Aloud, I offer more. “All right, then. How do we figure all that out?” I note the change across his face, a reiteration of his earlier earnestness. “How do we…focus on keeping me here?”
A long pause. Perhaps his face changes again, but I don’t know because of his deeply dipped head. When he raises it again, at once casting his stare down the alley, the situation is no better.
This is either very good or very bad.
I wish my heart wasn’t hammering so hard with the need to find out.
“It is a specific set of conditions that must be met,” he finally says. “Within one rotation of the moon.”
The pressure in my chest subsides. A little.
“Fair enough,” I reply. “Unless it is a trip to hell and back, or locating Atlantis, or some insane quest such as—”
“No.” Max lowers onto a decorative bench. He braces elbows to his knees and steeples his fingers. “It is based on the power of the force that got you here.”
I slant a quizzical look. “Fire, then? A crucible of flames?” At a village fair a few months back, Magique and I stopped to watch a troupe of traveling performers. They appeared to swallow fire and even walked across burning coals. Is that the kind of test I am to face?
“Not that.” He presses his fingers harder. Everything but his palms are touching. “The power of what’s inside your heart. Of touching another’s with it, until they declare their love for you before witnesses.”
A long pause.
And another.
Because my brother’s urbanity is going to crack any moment. And then he will confess that jibes are just another form of fraternal fun and we can return to the subject at hand.
After a minute, his game gets grueling.
To the point I realize it is not a game at all.
Fuck.
I husk the word beneath my breath. When I am done, I rake a taut hand through my hair while stabbing a stare up the alley. In the distance, a few sunbeams pierce through the last vestiges of the soggy day. For a few moments, they turn the wet pavement into colorful fire. If only they were all actually fire. A burning maze that would dazzle Kavia, even two hundred and thirty something years in the past, into changing her mind about the insane condition.
But I only stand here, as blinded as before. As blindsided as before. Having to concentrate on bringing enough air to my lungs for a miserable mutter to my brother.
“Are you certain I cannot just discover Atlantis instead?”
RAEGAN
I lean against the little kitchenette table back in our room, hoping one of my two best friends will help erase the awkward pause after the story I’ve just laid on them. Okay, not the basic plot part of the tale. The figurative crickets in the air have more to do with my crazy conclusion…which I’m desperately hoping one of them will talk me out of in some way, shape, or helpful form.
But I still get nothing but their silent blink-blinks.
I should already know better. Like the fact that neither of them are going to bullshit through an awkward moment just to make things less hinky for me.
I should also know that if the look is happening, it’ll be now. That momentary trade of their glances, silently confirming that they need to be talking about some outside help for the friend who’s been locked down for a few too many hours with a guy who just touched down from time-traveling orbit.
So maybe—hopefully—that is the only issue here. Maybe I’m just under-slumbered, oversexed, and too damn desperate to make the impossible happen.
I try to say as much by leaning back in my chair, refusing to qualify the cold dumplings on my plate as a dismal metaphor.
“You know what?” I finally mutter. “Seriously, just forget I said anyth—”
“Ohhh, no.” Allie’s the first to speak up, almost gleeful about the insistence. “No way do you get to be the one running from your De Leon when you led the mission to smuggle mine onto a trans-Atlantic flight last year.”
“You mean after she made room for him on the castle tour hop.” D’s even more eager about hopping on the memory lane tour bus. “And finagling secrets out of the new De Leons about the legends of the old ones.”
I lob a fortune cookie at her. “I seem to remember having help with that one, Mademoiselle Kidman. And now that I think about it, exactly who had the original idea about stowaway Max?”
My question seems to enter the ether as Drue extracts the fortune from her shattered cookie pieces. “Ahhh. Changing the subject is only painting the truth in a worse color.”
Allie taps her fingertips against her opposite palm as if applauding a new course during high tea at the Pembroke. “Very nice!”
“And a wasted effort.” I grab for the slip of paper, only to watch D swipe it through the leftover puddle from the dumplings I managed to get down earlier. “There’s no subject to change here, okay? Obviously Bastien was transported here by accident. Obviously it was an eleventh-hour effort to save his neck—which worked, but not because of me. His heart led the way because Max is part of his heart too. So it’s just coincidence—”
“That you look completely like the woman who was going to be his duchess?” D inserts.
“With a scar in your chest, where that same woman was daggered?” Allie concurs.
Drue tosses her head like a starlet giving sassy game face for the press corps. “As long as we’re on a roll, how about the flashbacks into a language you barely know, referencing occasions you’ve never lived?”
“Not to mention the tall, dark, and decadent detective who’s taken a keener-than-keen interest in our little Eeyore?” Allie adds, earning herself an instant blush-glower from D’s side of the exchange.
“Let’s chalk that delusion up to your jet lag, yeah?” The woman’s aqua ponytail nearly becomes a lethal weapon as she switches her attention back to me. “I stand by my original theory. It won’t be long before Logan has to obey his superiors and move on to leads that yield better results. A day more. Two at best.”
“If that’s true, and I’m not saying it is”—Allie absently swipes at crumbs from the cheesy fish that were part of D’s earlier care package—“we should use the time wisely. We have to burn both your FBI agent outfits, such as they are, and entertain ourselves by thinking of a new hair color for Tiggerfina here.”