Chapter Twenty-Two
“OH MY God, I’m looking at one of them,” Jake whispered. “Except it’d be more accurate to say one of them is staring right at me , as if I’m there in the room with him.”
“Which one?”
“I have no idea.” The man in front of him was tall, with long dark brown hair tied back from his shoulders.
He wore what appeared to be a linen shirt and breeches, and around his shoulders was a warm red wool cloak, fastened on the left with a brooch in red and blue enamel, with intricate patterning worked over it in gold.
His shoes seemed to be fashioned from soft leather.
He gazed at Jake, his eyes bright with amusement, and Jake knew this was an intelligent man.
Then he saw the stick clasped in the man’s left hand, and a wave of shock rolled over Jake when he realized who he was seeing.
“It’s Ansger, after his accident.” Jake hardly dared breathe in case his words caused the vision to disappear. “It must be. He has a cane to help him walk.”
Ansger spoke, and Jake struggled to understand what he was saying, until he realized it sounded a little like German.
“This is so weird. He’s still looking at me as if I’m right there with him, but that can’t be.” Jake let out a sigh. “Where’s a mirror when you want one? I have to see if it’s me he’s staring at.”
“You won’t find one,” Orsini told him. “There were none at that time. They believed the devil was watching the world from the opposite side of glass mirrors.”
Jake scanned the room. “Wait a sec.” On the wall was a burnished shield placed over a pair of crossed swords. He walked toward it, and caught his breath at his reflection.
“I don’t look like me.” But he did resemble Ansger. The same shape of the nose, the same eye color, even the shade of hair.
Holy fuck.
He was looking at Ansfrid. It had to be .
“How can I be Ansfrid?”
“There is only one explanation. You must be a direct descendant,” Orsini told him. “Perhaps you are seeing Ansger through his eyes.”
“Ansger… thinks I’m his brother?”
Gods, I want to understand what he’s saying.
Jake stilled and opened himself up to the universe.
Look, whoever You are who gave me this gift… if You’re the same power that brings mates together, that is showing me truths long since hidden, please… let me hear their words? Give me wisdom enough to interpret what I’m hearing? Because I believe there’s a reason I’m meant to see this… vision.
He could do no more.
Ansger spoke again, and judging by his tormented expression, whatever he was saying gave him pain to utter it. Then the image rippled, almost as though Jake was seeing it through water, and when all became still again, it was as before.
“Can you ever forgive me?” It was a deep voice, rich and slow.
Holiest of Holy Fucks. That was English. Ansger was suddenly speaking in English, except it was like one of those dubbed kung-fu movies, when the lips didn’t match the words.
“There is nothing to forgive, my brother.”
That was Ansfrid. His voice was higher than his brother’s, with a sweetness to it that was almost musical.
This is…. Jake was beyond words. He couldn’t relay what he saw because he was too caught up in the magic of it.
Ansger clasped Ansfrid’s arm. “I was close to death, but I prayed to be spared. I had to see you, to tell you….”
Ansfrid cupped his brother’s cheek. “Hush. You are alive. And now you are not alone.” A pause. “I am right? He finds favor in your eyes?”
Ansger flushed. “You see much. You saw how there should be no divisions between us, and I did not. But you saw the truth.” He glanced to the right—at what, Jake couldn’t see, but Ansger’s smile lit up his handsome face. “And yes, Elric finds favor in my eyes.”
“Then he shall dwell with us.” Another pause. “Could he be your mate?”
Fuck . Jake’s heart went into overdrive.
Ansger shook his head. “I do not think that time is upon us yet. And if he were, I think I would know it. ”
Ansfrid sighed. “So when will it come to pass? Shall we live to see it?”
Then the image rippled again, and Jake cried out, desperate to hold on to the vision for a little while longer, but he knew it was fading.
He was standing beside Orsini, the Chronicles still beneath his fingertips, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“I was there. I was with them. I could smell roses, lilies, sage, rosemary…. Oh my God, the brothers…. They were so real, so solid. And I heard them. I understood them.” He wiped his eyes.
Orsini brought him a chair, and Jake sat, his legs weak as a newborn foal’s. Seth crouched next to him, his hand on Jake’s knee, and Brick handed him a tissue.
“What did they say?” Seth asked.
Jake took a moment to breathe, to calm his racing heart, before delivering word for word the conversation he’d been privy to.
Orsini gasped. “He spoke of mates? Truly?” He glanced at the Chronicles . “Then give me time to read this. I would know more.” He was bristling with excitement. He patted Jake on the shoulder. “I can have food brought for us. None of us have eaten for hours.”
“Food would be good,” Jake admitted. He was also in a hurry to know what the document contained.
Seth opened his mouth to add something, but the only sound escaping him was the loud grumble of his stomach. Then Brick’s got in on the act, only louder.
Orsini chuckled, then picked up the phone to give instructions. When he was done, he replaced the handset. “It will be here shortly. Now, back to the Chronicles .” And with that he took the slim sheaf of papers and sat in his armchair, a notepad at his side.
Jake’s head was still reeling.
“What you heard…. Let me know if I’ve got this straight.” Brick took a breath. “That was them making up after their disagreement, wasn’t it? Ansger admitting he was wrong that humans and shifters shouldn’t be together?”
Jake nodded. “And whenever that conversation took place, it sounds as if they already knew about the prophecy.” He gazed at Orsini, who was muttering under his breath as he scribbled notes. “I hope he discovers more about it. ”
“This is excruciating,” Seth whispered. “He’s holding what could be the equivalent of a shifter bible, you know that, right?”
He laughed. “I feel the same way, but patience, okay? Let the man work. Haven’t we made enough earth-shattering discoveries for one day?
For all we know, this could be Ansger’s diary.
You know the kind of thing…. Got up. Had coffee.
Brushed my teeth. Walked the dog. Ate lunch.
” Except his gut instinct told him what Orsini held in his hands was far more consequential than that.
Brick snickered. “Okay, that’s funny. And they didn’t have coffee back then.”
Jake peered up at him. “That’s all you know. Coffee beans have been around since about eight hundred AD. Okay, so we didn’t start roasting them and drinking it until the fifteenth century, but—”
“You need to hear this,” Orsini interjected.
The tremor in his voice was enough to bring about another carpet of goose bumps.
Jake brought his chair over to Orsini and sat facing him, Seth on the floor at Jake’s feet, Brick behind him.
Orsini leaned against the seat cushions, the sheaf in his gloved hands.
“This tells the story of how Ansger and Elric met, thus corroborating the Missal of Godwin . It seems to have been written at the end of Ansger’s life.
He and Elric—who became his husband—lived to a ripe old age, and he continued to be friends with both shifters and humans.
He and Ansfrid ruled together, lords of their land, and when Ansfrid died first, Ansger was devastated.
So were their subjects. It was a time of great mourning, for humans and shifters. ”
“Then what happened? How come we’ve become nothing more than a myth?” Jake figured something cataclysmic had to have taken place to have wiped the knowledge of shifters from the minds of men.
“I don’t have the answer to that question. But I did learn something I had not known until now.” Orsini looked Jake in the eye. “The brothers… they were both tigers.”
Seth’s breathing hitched. “That fits. If you saw through Ansfrid’s eyes….” He swallowed.
“What—that my family line descends from the brothers?” Jake still found that hard to swallow .
“Hey, if Aelryn can trace his line all the way back to Ansfrid, then I don’t see why you can’t do the same.” Brick cocked his head to one side. “Don’t you want to know?”
“Can we discuss this some other time?”
The urgency in Orsini’s voice grabbed Jake’s attention.
“You found something about the prophecy.” Jake’s chest tightened.
Orsini nodded. “Everyone knew about it, or that’s how this reads. In fact they were waiting for it to come to pass. They felt as if it would be soon. Much like in the human book of Revelations in the Bible, predicting the second coming. All the believers thought it was imminent.”
“But what were they waiting for ?” Brick asked.
“It seems the prophecy had something to do with the future of shifters. There was no indication of when it would happen, only that an event would occur that would herald the way to peace between shifters and humans. And as I’ve never seen any mention of this, I can only assume the event hadn’t come to pass.
From what you witnessed, it hadn’t happened by the time of their conversation.
They must have given up waiting.” Orsini’s eyes widened.
“Perhaps this is where man found the only references to shifters—in a prophecy long forgotten.”
“But does it say what the event would be?” Seth demanded.
Orsini paused. “That’s the interesting part.” He walked over to the casket and laid three sheets on the layer of fabric, then stared at the remaining sheet in his hand. “This speaks of mates, as Jake did. In fact it’s the first mention of mates that I can recall seeing in these artifacts.”
Jake drew in a deep breath. “We’ve always assumed there were mates in the past, but that somehow they all disappeared, becoming merely a myth.” A myth so lost in the past that all shifters assumed it might not even be true.
Orsini shook his head. “No. We got that all wrong. The Chronicles tell of a mystic who met with Ansger after his accident. He told him a time would come when all peoples of the world would find the ones fated to be with them. Note I said peoples—it doesn’t say just shifters.
And he was very specific about one thing—mates came in threes. ”
Jake gaped at Orsini. “Then whatever was in this prophecy, it must have happened. It seems like everywhere I look, there are triads of mates appearing. ”
“But that isn’t even the interesting part— this is.” Orsini held up the remaining sheet. “The emergence of mates would have a beginning, and that would be marked by the arrival of the first triad.” He held it out to Jake. “Tell me this is a coincidence.”
Jake stared at the painting on the thick paper. “Oh my fucking God.”
Seth moved in to take a closer look. He blinked. “But…. No. It can’t be. This has to be a mistake.” Brick peered over Seth’s shoulder and made a strangled noise.
“Jake said he saw Berengar staring at a painting in his vision.” Orsini met Jake’s gaze and shuddered out a breath.
“I believe this is what you saw. It’s an image of a triad.
As for why Berengar appeared so agitated, maybe he saw this and believed that somehow he was part of the prophecy.
An understandable conclusion to arrive at, given the evidence. ”
Jake’s world had been turned upside down for the second time.
The sketch was crude, the colors faded, but there could be no mistaking its subjects. He was looking at three animals standing together, their heads meeting, their eyes closed.
A lion, a tiger, and a bear.