Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
TAVISH
The world twisted, then spat us out.
My boots hit the ground, and I staggered over a carpet of dead leaves. Gnarled trees surrounded me, their branches stabbing a cold, gray sky.
I spun, searching for Albie and Portia. Relief punched through me when I spotted them a few feet away.
Portia was on her hands and knees, but she already pushed to her feet. Albie slumped against a tree trunk, his spectacles dangling crooked on his nose.
I was at his side in three strides. “Are you hurt?”
“Fine,” he said, but his voice was strained.
Taking his shoulders, I searched his face. Sweat dotted his brow, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. Behind his spectacles, his good eye was clear, but the cursed one—
“Your eye,” I said, sliding the spectacles into place.
“It’s just a small headache.” He pulled away, one hand going to his nape. He massaged the muscle as he avoided my gaze. “I slept wrong last night.”
Liar. I could always tell when the witch’s curse pained him. When it got really bad, it turned him inside out, leaving him hanging off the edge of the bed vomiting.
I wanted to argue, but Portia rushed over, leaves stuck in her hair. “Is he all right?”
“Aye,” Albie said before I could answer. He managed a weak smile. “Just disoriented.”
Portia didn’t look convinced, but she nodded.
“You still have the chronomancer’s spell?” I asked.
She reached into her bodice and pulled out the velvet bag.
“Good,” I said. “Put it back for now, lass.”
She stuffed it deeper, securing it between her breasts. I dragged my gaze away before I did something stupid like stare. There’d be time enough for that later. Right now, I had to figure out where the fuck we were.
Stepping away from Albie, I sniffed the air. Damp earth. Rotting leaves. Smoke—but not from a hearth. Deep in my mind, my dragon recoiled. The land smelled different. Wrong.
“This isn’t Scotland,” I said. “It’s England.”
Portia looked around, her brow furrowing. “How can you tell?”
“I can tell,” I said, distaste in my mouth.
She turned slowly, and anxiety laced her voice as she said, “I wasn’t supposed to end up in England.”
Noises drifted through the trees. Creaking wood, along with voices raised in anger. Something—and someone—was coming.
I grabbed Portia’s arm and yanked her behind a thick tree. Albie followed, quick despite his pain.
The creaking grew louder. Peering around the trunk, I caught flashes of movement.
Humans.
Easing forward, I hunched, staying low to the ground.
Portia and Albie pressed close behind me.
A break in the foliage showed a path that was more mud than road.
A horse pulled a wagon along it, the wheels squelching through the muck.
Villagers walked on either side. A wooden cage sat in the wagon bed, the contraption creaking and swaying as the wagon bumped over branches and ruts.
In the center of the cage, a female prisoner in a dirty gray shift sat on a crude bench.
It was tough to guess her age, but her blond hair was untouched by gray, and I put her at perhaps twenty-five.
Her shift had been a fine piece of clothing once, but the dirt-streaked fabric was in tatters around her bare calves.
She stared straight ahead, her head high and her red-rimmed eyes focused on a spot in the distance.
The men and women keeping pace with the wagon jeered and shouted.
Wimples covered the women’s hair. The men wore tunics and loose trews made of coarse linen.
A man in a leather cap stooped and collected a clod of mud from the ground.
He lobbed it at the cage, and it struck the bars and broke apart, splattering muck over the prisoner’s shift and face.
She winced but recovered quickly, her back stiff and straight.
I caught Albie’s eye, and grim understanding passed between us. We hadn’t just traveled to England. We’d traveled back in time.
“How far back did we go?” Portia whispered.
It didn’t surprise me that she’d figured it out. She was intelligent and observant, her mind as sharp as her tongue. And she wasn’t exactly a stranger to time travel.
“A fair bit,” I said under my breath. “Five or six hundred years.”
“Fuck,” she said.
The wagon moved into a clearing, and the driver pulled the horse to a stop next to a wooden post. Bundles of sticks were heaped around its base.
Portia tensed.
“We should go,” I said, taking her arm.
“No.”
The wagon driver climbed down. Men yanked the woman from the cage. She came alive, her listless expression giving way to wide-eyed terror. The crowd surged around her, but several men splayed their arms, holding them back as the men dragged the thrashing woman to the stake.
Albie took Portia’s other arm. “Princess, we can’t linger—”
“I’m not leaving,” she said, yanking free of his grip. “They’re going to burn her!”
The woman screamed, scratching and clawing as the men slammed her against the post and wrapped ropes around her body.
I met Albie’s gaze over Portia’s head.
Let’s go, I mouthed.
I’m trying, he mouthed back, a harried look on his face.
A man in a dark robe stepped forward. His voice boomed over the crowd. “This woman has been found guilty of witchcraft! She stands accused of stealing the life force from those she was meant to heal!”
“No!” the woman sobbed. A rope cinched tight under her breasts. Several more lengths lashed her to the post. Her hands were bound behind her back, the strain on her shoulders obvious. “Please, I didn’t—”
“Silence, witch!” the robed man barked.
The crowd roared its approval.
Beside me, Portia stiffened. “We have to stop this.”
“No,” I said flatly.
“They’re going to burn her alive!”
“Aye, and we can’t interfere.”
Her green eyes blazed. “It’s barbaric!”
“It’s the past,” Albie said quietly. “The chronomancer warned us not to mess with it.”
“I don’t care what he said!” Portia hissed. “We can’t just stand here and watch them murder her!”
The executioner stepped forward with a lit torch. Flames danced at its tip.
I gripped Portia under the elbow. “Away with us, now, lass. This is no place for—”
She slammed the heel of her boot onto my toes.
“Fu—” I clamped my mouth shut as she darted away, black hair streaming behind her. Ignoring the pain in my foot, I lunged forward.
She twisted into smoke and slipped through my grasp. Her skirts and corset dropped to the ground. Her boots tumbled over the leaves.
“Fuck,” Albie finished for me.
Portia streaked through the trees in shadow form. She took human form beside the stake, her sleek nudity drawing a gasp from the crowd. Her black hair tangled down her back, and her round tits heaved as she ripped the ropes away with a dragon shifter’s strength.
“It’s the devil!” a woman shrieked.
Portia flung the last rope away, and the woman in the shift collapsed in her arms.
The crowd surged forward with murder in their eyes.
Later, I wouldn’t recall shifting. One minute, I watched the crowd go for Portia. The next, I soared over the clearing with my wings wide and a roar in my throat.
Humans screamed and scattered. Several fell, scrambled to their feet, and then fell again in their haste to flee.
Smoke poured from my nostrils. Fire danced in the back of my throat, my greatest weapon ready and willing to be unleashed. But the threat to my woman dissipated quickly, the humans stumbling over each other and disappearing into the woods.
The horse hitched to the wagon reared, its eyes rolling in terror. Then it slammed its hooves to the ground and jolted forward. The cage tipped from the wagon bed and crashed to the ground. The horse bolted, dragging the splintered wagon behind it.
Another roar echoed through the clearing, and Albie’s golden form burst above the canopy. He swung his head around, clearly hunting for stragglers. But the forest was still, the clearing empty except for the abandoned stake.
Albie pumped his wings once, then descended in a graceful swoop. He shifted before he hit the ground, and stepped onto the leaves with his kilt swinging around his thighs. He looked up at me as he straightened his spectacles.
Snorting smoke, I swept to the ground and shifted back.
“There,” Albie said, pointing. Portia sat fully dressed at the base of a tree with her arm wrapped around the blond woman.
Swallowing a curse, I strode to them.
Portia’s eyes were defiant, but they held a hint of fear as she tipped her head back. “They were going to burn her.”
“Aye,” I said. Now that my panic was gone, anger was free to take its place. “That’s typically what people do when they tie someone to a very large stake.”
Portia gave an outraged gasp. “How dare you make light of this?”
The woman gaped at me, then swung frightened blue eyes to Albie. “You’re… You both… I saw…”
“Nothing,” Albie said, pulling a bag of coins from his coat. Gold clinked as he crouched and placed the bag in the woman’s palm. “You saw nothing at all.” For a moment, fire leapt in his brown eyes, which were uncharacteristically hard. “Understand?”
The woman nodded slowly, and her voice was sluggish as she said, “Yes.”
He straightened. “Do you have kin somewhere else?”
She nodded slowly. “In the north.”
“Go to them. And don’t speak of this to anyone.”
Portia stood, then reached for the woman. When their hands brushed, something snapped in the air.
“Ow!” Portia cried, jerking her hand back. The woman scrambled to her feet, fear flooding her face as she cowered against the tree.
“I’m sorry!”
“What happened?” I demanded.
Portia shook her fingers. “Nothing. Just static electricity.”
“What?” the woman and I asked at the same time. For a moment, flames danced in the woman’s eyes.
Everything within me stilled. Beside me, Albie stiffened.
A man burst from the woods, panting. “Mistress Drexel!” He skidded to a stop, his gaze darting from Portia to Albie to me. His eyes lingered on our kilts, and wariness entered his gaze.
“It’s all right, John,” the woman said, stepping toward him. She gestured to the three of us. “These good folk helped me.”
Portia stared at the woman as if she’d seen a ghost. “I’m sorry, did you say your name is Drexel?”
Now, the woman looked wary. “That’s right. I was the village healer until the blacksmith’s child died three nights ago.” Her chin wobbled, and she clutched Albie’s bag of coins in a tighter grip. “They blamed me. Accused me of causing it. But I did no such thing.”
“Who are you?” I asked the man.
He shrank back. “No one.”
I stepped toward him, my hand itching for a sword. “I’ll have your name.”
“John Taylor!” he cried. “I’m just a friend. I don’t want trouble.”
Albie put a staying hand on my arm. “You won’t find any here,” he told the man. “Can you help Mistress Drexel with safe passage to her kin?”
“Gladly.”
“Go, then,” Albie said. “Quickly now before the villagers come back.”
John grabbed Mistress Drexel, and the two of them hurried away. They got a few steps, and Mistress Drexel turned back, her blue eyes finding Portia.
“Thank you.”
Portia just stared, her face drained of color.
The humans vanished into the forest, and silence fell.
“That woman was a donum,” Albie said, staring after them. “I’ve never seen the gift manifest in a human.”
“I have,” Portia croaked. She swallowed hard. “I know her name.”
“What of it?” I asked, something unsettling creeping over me.
“Mistress Drexel.” Portia wrung her hands. “I know of one other human who can temporarily borrow gifts from immortals. Oh gods, I think I just saved Chloe Drexel’s ancestor.”
Albie frowned. “Chloe?”
“She’s mated to Alec Murray and Lachlan MacKay.”
I searched my memories. “I’ve heard of MacKay. I don’t know Alec.”
Portia shook her head. “He’s a lot younger than Lachlan. I’m not sure he was alive in your time.” She looked at the stake. “And definitely not in this one.”
Understanding dawned. I looked at the spot where the woman had disappeared. “You interfered with the past. This Chloe of yours might not exist in the future now.”
Portia jerked angry eyes to me. “You think I don’t know that?”
Shock stole my breath—but only for a second. She’d jeopardized everything, and she was angry with me?
I stepped close and lifted a finger. “The chronomancer gave you one rule, lass, and you spent a scant five minutes in this time before you broke it to pieces.”
Her snarl was loud in the clearing. “You’re not helping!”
“Ha! That makes two of us.”
She balled her fists. “What would you have done in my place? Stand there while they burned her alive?”
I stepped closer, towering over her. “That’s exactly what I would have done.”
She recoiled as if I’d struck her. “You’re a monster.”
“A monster who’s not supposed to be here at all.” I stabbed a finger at the stake. “That has already happened in both my time and yours.”
Portia went even paler.
“You just changed history,” I growled. “The chronomancer said that guarantees disaster. You wanted to save this Chloe’s ancestor? Well, you might have just erased her from existence!”
Portia clapped a hand over her mouth.
I nodded. “That’s right. And don’t forget what the chronomancer said about the jumps. You messed this one up, Princess. You might have just stranded all three of us in the past.”
Moisture filled her eyes. Guilt swamped me, the sight of her tears twisting my guts.
“Lass…” I said, stepping forward.
“No!” She scrambled back, then fumbled with her bodice, withdrawing the plum-colored bag. “I-I can try again.”
Wind ruffled my hair, and then Albie stood a short distance away with the bag in his hand. He’d moved too swiftly to track.
“Not here,” he said, tucking the bag inside his jacket. “This isn’t the sort of thing you rush into. And we can’t stay in this forest. We need to find a safe place to think.”
Portia wiped her eyes. “You’re right.” She swept an apprehensive look around the woods. “But where can we go?”
I jerked my head toward the trees behind her. “That way.”
Portia turned. “Why that way?”
“It’s as good as any other.”
She swung back, eyes glittering. “You—”
“We should go,” Albie said smoothly. He went to Portia and took her arm. “Don’t fash yourself, lass. Tavish and I know our way around a forest. We’ll find a comfortable spot to come up with a plan.”
She nodded, and she let him guide her from the clearing.
I fell into step behind them, my ears pricked for the sound of humans. But none appeared, and we slipped through the forest with the light steps and graceful movements of our kind. Images of the blond-haired woman flashed in my head, her blue eyes filled with borrowed flame.
She’d been unaware of her gift. I’d stake a tidy sum on it. But if Portia was right, she’d passed her magic onto her descendant. We’d saved a donum from burning.
And only the gods knew what that meant for the future.