Chapter 41 Rhys
Rhys
The first thing Rhys saw when he opened his eyes was a bouquet of red roses.
A vase sat on the table beside him. For a moment he had no idea where he was.
He was lying on a bed. His whole body hurt.
A thick padded bandage wrapped around his entire chest—then it all came back to him, chasing the boy, the knife.
Magellan!
In a panic, he tried to sit up, but the pain stopped him.
Were they still in 1165? Where was she?
His eyes darted frantically around the room. It took him a moment to realize he recognized this place. He was in the infirmary at Hereford Manor. He was back home. But how?
Alarmed, he sat up, not caring about the pain, and tried to get out of bed. The room spun, and he fell back, unable to control the dizziness as black spots intruded on his vision. His whole body was shaking with weakness.
Where was everyone? Where was she?
As if he’d called her to him, Magellan walked into the room. At first he thought he was dreaming, because she didn’t look like herself. She was wearing a dress decades out of fashion. Her hair was styled differently too and swept up into intricate curls.
“Rhys!” She ran to his bedside and put her arms around him, tears in her eyes. “Rhys.”
“How . . .” He couldn’t get the words out, his throat too dry. He tried again to speak. “How did we get back home?”
She pulled away from him with an odd look. “We’re not exactly home.” She gave him a glass of water to drink and helped him sit up. He winced at the movement but was too thirsty and guzzled it down.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“A week.” She bit her lip, as if hesitating to say more.
He couldn’t fathom the lost time. “What happened in Frankfurt? We were at the church.” He’d begged her to leave him, and she had refused. Where you go, I go, she had said.
“We ended up in Florence in 1570.”
If he wasn’t lying down his legs would have given way. “Florence? In 1570?” How could that be? He had no memory of it. He felt untethered, as if his thoughts were floating about him and he couldn’t grab hold of them.
He tried to focus as Magellan told him how they’d ended up in another church.
A kind priest had taken them in. He’d brought a doctor to heal him, but the man had only made it worse.
While Rhys lay fighting for his life, she had found the Florentine woman who had the song, Maddalena Something—he didn’t recognize the name—and then the Ley Lines had brought them here.
He could see in her eyes she wasn’t telling him the full story. What she must have gone through alone or how she had gotten them here. He had so many questions, he didn’t know where to start.
“What do you mean we aren’t exactly home?
” His eyes went to the window. He could see the gardens from here.
Throughout his childhood he’d paid countless visits to the infirmary.
Usually, his father would bandage his cuts and scrapes.
Godwin had enjoyed playing nursemaid. He had a fascination for human anatomy to add to all his other fascinations and had always said he would have been a village doctor if not for his title.
The bed in this room was used only for the worst of injuries or most serious illnesses.
Rhys must have been in bad shape if he didn’t remember being brought here.
He frowned. Why had they returned home when Magellan only had four parts of the song and needed the fifth?
“We’re not in 1829.”
He almost missed her words, so deep in thought. His eyes flew back to hers and he saw her hesitate again.
“Rhys . . . your father is alive. We’re in 1799.”
He felt his breath rush away from him, as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. 1799? He hadn’t been born yet. His father hadn’t even met his mother.
His father was here.
“We arrived in the labyrinth?” Rhys asked her, though he already knew the answer. Of course they had. It wasn’t as if they could have knocked on the front door. “You met him?”
She nodded, a soft smile forming. “He’s the one who’s been tending you. He fancies himself a doctor.”
Rhys lay back on his pillow overwhelmed. He’d been unconscious for days, missed the Renaissance entirely, and his dead father who he had mourned was playing nursemaid to his knife wound. It was all too much.
“That’s not all.” Magellan leaned forward and took his hand. The light in her eyes took his breath away. “He has the diary.”
“What?” That announcement cut through every other thought whirling in his head.
“He bought it from a collector. It arrived the same day we did. He’s been in the library translating it. We’ll be able to read the final pages.”
Her shocking news caused a strange sludge of emotions to churn within him.
The first one being shame he was the one to have lost the diary.
Embarrassment his father was cleaning up his mess.
And jealousy Godwin was translating the last of it and not him.
Rhys was the diary’s translator and faithful scribe, and he had failed.
He had failed in his one duty for Magellan.
He closed his eyes, suddenly tired, even though he’d been asleep for days.
Magellan was oblivious to the self-pity and criticism currently consuming him. She offered him some broth, which he sipped gratefully. He felt as weak as a newborn lamb.
“I should go tell him you’re awake.” She made a move to rise, and he grabbed her hand.
“Not yet. Please. I’m not ready.”
She sat down again and squeezed his hand in understanding. “Of course.”
“Tell me, what happened in Florence?” He tried to change the subject. Anything to keep him from thinking about the meeting he would soon be having with his father.
While Magellan told him about Father Giuseppe and her time with Maddalena, Rhys tried to listen, but his thoughts kept wandering. What would he say to him? Magellan was still holding his hand, and he wasn’t sure he could ever let it go.
“Thank you, for saving me.” He kissed her hand. “I’m sorry for Frankfurt. I should have taken your concerns more seriously about . . . the darkness that would come after.”
Gwynedd had warned them about the lower dimensions. What had happened was something he still couldn’t fathom. All he knew was after Magellan had played the song, a dark force had entered the labyrinth, hunting for the light.
“No, I’m sorry. I should have insisted we buy a horse first so we could leave right away or none of this would have happened.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said firmly. “I was the idiot.”
“We were both not thinking clearly,” she amended. “But that is all in the past now. Literally seven hundred years ago.”
He gave her a weak smile, exhausted. “Does he know who I am?”
“Yes.”
What a quagmire. He took in her outfit again. “Is that my grandmother’s dress?” She cut a dashing figure in a 1799 dress.
She grinned at her attire. “I believe it is. Godwin lent it to me. He said she’s in London.”
Godwin. She was on first-name basis with him. “How long have we been here?”
“Four days.”
Four days. What had she and his father talked about for four days?
“Godwin is almost finished with the translation.” She had a smile on her face again when she said his father’s name. As if they shared some private amusement.
She had met Godwin without him. Talked with him. Probably taken meals with him. Had sat in the library with him and watched him translate the diary—the diary he had lost! All while he was unconscious in the infirmary.
His eyes strayed to the roses. They were wilted. Four days. Magellan saw where he was looking and went to the vase.
“I should go pick some more. They’re from the labyrinth. Godwin said he didn’t mind.” She gathered the rose bouquet in her hand and turned away.
The image of her holding the flowers struck him like a lightning bolt. It was the painting. His father’s painting.
Of course. He painted her in 1799.
The Lady of the Labyrinth had always been Magellan. That smile, her hands. No one had hands like hers. The painting had been of her. Rhys could just never justify how until now.
A feeling of panic rose up inside of him, this time powerful and unstoppable. Were she and Godwin in love with each other? Had his father tried to kiss her?
“Has he painted you yet?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
“Painted me? Your father paints?” She looked impressed. “He truly is like Leonardo da Vinci, a real Renaissance man.”
Rhys couldn’t stop the fierce scowl on his face. “I’m sure he’s enjoyed spending time with you.” His father had always been a flirt with the ladies, and his mother wasn’t here yet. A young Godwin must be an even bigger flirt. Botheration!
“You’re not jealous, are you?” Magellan stared at him in wonder. “He’s your father!”
“So? He’s young and dapper and a real Renaissance man.”
“Rhys,” she admonished him gently. “You’re being ridiculous.”
He fell back on the pillow with a sigh, admitting to her, “He’s going to paint you.”
“Me? Are you sure?”
His gaze trailed over her face. “I found the painting after he died, and I always wondered who you were. You’re standing in the labyrinth holding roses. When I first met you, I thought you resembled her, but there was no way you could have been from 1799. But you are.”
Astonishment filled her face. “Which means this has already happened. Your father met you.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you were growing up, he knew his whole life he would meet you in 1799 before you were born. What’s unfolding now has already unfolded in your time.”
The thought gave him a headache. He hadn’t considered that aspect yet, but Magellan was right.
His father had lived for years having already met him.
Even before meeting his wife, Godwin had met his son and known Rhys would travel in time in the labyrinth.
And here Godwin was reading the diary. Soon he would know everything.
He would in fact know Gwynedd’s whole story before they did because he was the one translating it.
Why had Godwin never shown him the painting of Magellan before he died?
Why had he kept her arrival such a secret?
Even as he asked the question, Rhys already knew the answer.
Godwin had said nothing and let life unfold as it should.
He’d prepared Rhys for the future only by encouraging his love of languages and history.
He’d encouraged him to be a seeker, and he’d always told Rhys that one day he would travel far and help change the world, perhaps even save it.
Rhys had believed him for years, until he had consigned those ideas to the realm of fantasy. Yet here he was.
“What do I tell him?” he whispered.
Suddenly he felt a presence at the door and turned to see his father standing there.
It was time to meet a ghost.