47
CECILY
The world snapped back with a jolt that drove Cecily to her knees. Cold cobblestones raked at her skin through her skirts. The muffled ringing in her ears pressed inward from all sides, as though her skull had been packed with wool.
Finn’s arms were still locked around her as they knelt on the ground. His heart was pounding so hard she could feel it against her own chest. His lips were parted, still close to hers from the kiss that had carried them through the decades.
Cecily blinked hard, trying to focus her eyes. Slowly, shapes emerged from the glare. She was on the ground. Stones beneath her hands. A courtyard wall.
“Finn?” Her voice came out hoarse, scraped raw. Her stomach was churning.
His hands came up to frame her face, his eyes moving over her in that rapid, searching way—her forehead, her eyes, her mouth—as though he needed to account for every part of her.
“We’re alive,” he breathed. “You’re—”
Then his gaze snapped past her shoulder. His whole body went still.
“What?” Cecily twisted to follow his stare. “What is it?”
“It’s Veyron,” Finn said. “My home. From before.”
They were in a courtyard, the same one, yet not.
The towers seemed shorter, the ivy on the east wall thicker than she remembered from 1301.
The whole space felt smaller. It took her a moment to place the memory: Julian, boasting of his grand renovations, paid for with coin stolen from other times.
This was Veyron before his greed reshaped it.
Smoke rose from the manor chimneys in spirals. The smell of wood fire filled the air, mixed with the scent of horses. Somewhere nearby, chickens clucked. A dog barked once, then fell silent.
It was quiet. Peaceful. No guards shouting. No Benedict raging. Just afternoon sunlight slanting golden rays across the cobblestones.
They’d made it. They were back in 1239.
Then Lady Veyron’s plea echoed in Cecily’s mind:
Live. For both of us. Please.
“We did it,” Cecily whispered. “We actually did it.”
Finn’s attention shifted back to the machine. “I need to check the dials. Make sure nothing was damaged in the—”
His hand met solid metal casing.
Then nothing.
The air shimmered. They heard a faint sound like a candle being snuffed. The smell of hot metal stung Cecily’s nose.
The machine had vanished.
“What—” Cecily grabbed at the space where it had been. Her hands closed on air. “What happened? Where did it go?”
Finn was on his feet, turning in a circle, scanning the courtyard as if the machine might have simply rolled away.
“I don’t know. It’s never done this. It always stays.
” He raked a hand through his hair, his voice sharp with disbelief.
“I checked the… maybe they changed it… the settings. It should be right here.”
“Did it go back?” Cecily’s stomach tightened at the thought. “To where—when—we came from?”
“It must have,” Finn said. His jaw was tight. “But why? It’s always stayed with us.”
He stopped. Stared at the empty space where the machine had been.
“This is bad,” he said quietly.
“How bad?”
“If the machine went back to 1301, that means… that means Benedict and Julian might have it. He was right there when we jumped. He saw what I did. If the machine returned to that exact spot, the same time…”
The thought turned her cold. Benedict and Julian. With the machine.
“But if we’re here,” Cecily reasoned, grabbing his arm, “then Julian and Benedict can’t have the machine. They don’t exist anymore.”
“But the future we left,” Finn countered, his gaze haunted, “what if it still exists until we stop it?”
Cecily pushed to her feet, the thought making her sick. “Lady Veyron, my other self, could still be there. Alive. Suffering. We have to get to my grandfather. Anton understands the machine. He has to know what happened, how to stop them.”
Finn stopped pacing. “Yes. We need to go to Graston first to see Anton, before home. We need to—”
Voices drifted across the courtyard, distant, but getting closer. Servants called to each other about evening chores. Footsteps crunched on the gravel.
Finn grabbed Cecily’s arm and pulled her behind a large rain barrel tucked against the courtyard wall. They pressed themselves into the shadows, breathing as quietly as they could.
Two men walked past, deep in conversation about feed for the horses. They didn’t even glance toward the rain barrel. Their voices faded as they headed toward the stables.
Cecily’s heart was hammering so hard she was sure it could be heard across the courtyard. She waited until the men were completely gone before she dared to whisper.
“We need to leave. Now,” she said.
“Wait.” Finn’s hand found hers in the shadows, his fingers lacing through hers. The memory of his lips on hers, of his voice as the world fell apart around them.
Oh, that kiss.
And now they were here, in 1239, and everything was different, and terrifying, and she didn’t know what to do next.
But they were together. They were alive.
“I meant it,” he said quietly, his voice tight with emotion. “What I said before.”
“I know.”
He kissed her then, a slow, desperate affirmation in the shadows. A promise of a future, even as their own hung by a thread.
“I love you,” he breathed. A faint, weary smile touched his lips. “Even when you called me Sir Know-It-All.”
Cecily managed a smile in return. “I meant that, too.”
The light-hearted moment was a small anchor in a sea of fear. They held each other, the shared warmth a shield against the danger just beyond the barrel.
Finn’s smile faded. “We need to figure this out. Where we are. When we are, exactly. How much time has passed here since we left.”
Cecily peered around the edge of the barrel. The courtyard looked empty for the moment, but she could still hear voices from somewhere nearby. “How can we tell?”
“Look at the fields,” Finn said, gesturing toward the land beyond the stable yard. “The crops are just coming up. It’s still early summer. Just like when we left.”
“So we haven’t been gone long?” Cecily felt a rush of relief.
“A few days, maybe. A week at most,” he said. He squeezed her hand. “Anton will give us the answer.”
Finn looked around at the estate, his home. His jaw tightened.
“We can’t go to our parents. Not yet.” He met her gaze. “If we reveal ourselves without a plan, we could change nothing. Julian could still be born. My brother Geoffrey could still inherit. We could make everything worse.”
He was right. Cecily knew it.
“So my grandfather first.”
“Anton first,” Finn agreed. “If anyone can tell us why the machine disappeared, it’s him.”
“It’s a long walk,” Cecily said. “If we go now, we’ll be there before the sun goes down.”
She looked down at herself. Her dress was the same one she’d been wearing in 1301—travel-stained, worn thin in places. Finn’s clothes were no better. He looked like a man who’d been living coarse for weeks. Which, she supposed, he had been.
“We look like vagabonds,” she said.
“We are vagabonds,” Finn pointed out. “Vagabonds who just fell through time.”
Movement near the stable caught Cecily’s eye. More servants were heading toward the manor. The shadows were lengthening. They needed to leave.
“There’s a gate,” Finn said, pointing to a shadowed arch beyond the well. “It leads to a path through the woods. We can follow it to the main road without going near the manor.”
They waited until the courtyard was clear again, then broke from their hiding spot. Cecily’s heart pounded with every step. Any second, someone could look out a window and see them running across the courtyard.
Cecily reached for Finn’s hand as they walked. He took it without hesitation, his fingers warm and solid around hers.
They had each other, but they had lost the machine. It was somewhere in time, in someone else’s hands.
They just had no way of knowing whose.