Chapter 5
Rafe
“No.”
I don’t know why I say it, I was explicitly told not to say it, yet I said it.
Because what else can I say? A young woman with zero time traveling experience wants me to help her go back to the past. Not only is time travel outlawed, but the risk of altering our present and our future by changing even one simplest thing is far too great.
‘Why?’
“You know why.”
She does know why; the pretty woman who’s been watching my movements for a while now, least now I know her agenda.
She’s desperate for it, I see it in the way the muscles in her delicate neck flex when she tries to keep herself calm.
In the way her fingers have a death grip of the quill every time she writes.
I’m surprised she hasn’t snapped the damn thing.
The urge to throw it through a portal and force her to drink the linking serum so I can hear her words instead is strong. Too strong.
Why can’t she speak?
‘I won’t change a single thing, except one thing.’
“That’s the most contradicting sentence I’ve ever heard.”
The chuckle pours out of me before I can stop it. Her clenched jaw tells me she’s grinding her back teeth.
I sigh. “I’m sorry, I am. It’s too dangerous.
If I show you how I could be marching you to your death.
” I really could be. For starters, who knows what time she’ll go back to.
What may stand in her way. Whatever this one thing she wants to change, could ultimately mean a death for her, or worse—someone else.
Someone who you thought wasn’t supposed to die.
And you’re left carrying the survivor’s guilt.
It’s suffocating. Crippling.
And the last time I meddled with a tread; I almost unravelled a whole fucking tapestry.
My heart palpitates against my ribs, the thick hot lump in my throat threatens to tear through my flesh at the thought of my past.
Of my…
‘Then come with me?’
My laugh is a rumbustious bark. This just gets better, though I’m thankful she said something to drag my thoughts away from the darkness. Dragged me away from the fear I have of my own gods-cursed ability.
“You’ve lost your damn mind. Now did you hit your pretty little head?”
Felt good to throw that one back at her as I lean in close over my desk, hovering over her as grey eyes grow scornful, the bright colour of her irises blinding against her tanned skin tone and lighter brown hair with alluring notes of a sweet floral scent and a hint of bergamot choking the air between us. Each second near her holds me captive.
She writes without breaking my gaze, lifting the book at the same time she lifts her chin and tilts her head to the side. Her dark, long lashes fluttering.
‘You think I’m pretty?’
Damn.
“Maybe even delicious,” I whisper, leaning in close to pluck out a few small pieces of cream covered fruit from the unruly strands of hair that’s unravelled from the loose bun at the nape of her neck. Looks like I wasn’t the only victim of that strawberry tart.
Her eyes follow the fingers I place in my mouth, pupils dilating as I suck them clean. Her attempt to clear her throat is poor, as poor as her ability to not watch me, the scratching of the quill and paper along with fast hand movements in my peripheral isn’t enough to tear my eyes away from her.
Fuck, she’s pretty. He wasn’t lying.
But she isn’t pretty enough to risk her death, nor mine. Or anyone else’s for that matter. The prettiest, sexiest, most beautiful woman could come begging on her knees, naked, promising me the world, and I’d still say no.
‘I taste bitter. Back to the matter at hand… what’s the worst that can happen?’
Well, it didn’t take long for her to turn back into what seems to be her usual spikey stubborn self.
I groan, running a hand through my damp strands—still stinking of coffee—and lean against the window frame, observing the town folk go about their morning, wishing it was this time yesterday, when I had no worries other than not letting ‘mouth’ here catch me watching her as she was watching out for me.
Felt good to have a little stalker. A pretty one at that.
My chest shakes remembering how unstealthily she was in her stalking.
How to keep her seat at the café she had to eat and drink an abundance of food and beverages.
By the time she’d leave, there would be about seven half eaten strawberry tarts and at least four cups of milky coffee, all half full.
She stayed in the alleyway beside the café one night.
All night. Which meant I had to stay in my office, all night, just to watch over her.
I assume she wanted to find out where I lived.
Almost stalked out there to drag her arse into my office and tell her if she really wanted to know she just needed to ask.
And just as I was about to rip my office door off its hinges, he—future me—decided to make a visit.
‘You let her come to you, when she’s ready,’ he said.
What the fuck is he getting me into? And where the fuck is he now, when I need him most.
“Let me tell you a little story. Listen up and listen very carefully.” I narrow my eyes at her.
She nods, but when I take a moment too long for her liking, she nudges me to continue, swiping her hand out in front of her.
I know nothing of this woman, yet if her eyes could speak, they would say something snarky, no doubt something like, ‘I’ll be a fossil by the time you get to it. ’
“Someone died. It was tragic. The grieving spouse came to me to help undo it. I did. Well, I tried to. She still ended up dying, and he ended up killing himself because of it. Shit hit the fan and tens of thousands more souls died.”
The fear I felt that day still grips me in a choking vice. My actions cost many innocent lives, and had I not been able to make it back to rewrite the timeline, who knows what today would look like.
It’s a very true, very raw story, but judging by her raised brows and quirk of her full lips, she thinks I’m talking shit. I wish I was.
“Don’t believe me, I don’t care,” — I do care. — “But the answer is still no. Besides, we don’t even have access to any Taka.”
The chair topples over in her haste to stand and rush to my side. She’s close, too close. My body instinctively leans forward and gets lost in her orbit while she stares at the wooden chair lying on the floor before that fucking quill scratches the parchment again.
A noise I’ll be glad to get rid of. And soon.
‘I can get it!’
She shows me her pad, and tugs her shawl to the side, showing me her monarchy patch sown into the left breast of her beautiful yellow dress.
Fuck. She’s a monarchy maid.
“You’ve lost your damn mind!”
‘Desperate people do desperate things.’
“What could be so damn important you wish to risk everything?”
Seriously, what is he—me—thinking!?
‘If I get the Taka, will you help me?’
‘No,’ is what I want to say. But I can’t bring myself to say it. Not only because he told me not to say it, but because her pleading greys strip my soul piece by pitiful piece. I’m helpless to stop it.
“You’re making my eye twitch again.”
She rolls hers at my theatrics. I huff. A dramatic one at that.
“If you get the Taka and don’t find yourself being executed, maybe the Fates are looking down upon you favourably.” Her aura alights, her posture lifting as though my one comment just took the weight of a hefty burden she’d been carrying.
It makes me want to fix the whole godsdamned world for her.
I am fucked.
“You get it, we talk some more. That is all I can agree to right now.” She doesn’t bat an eye at the finger I point in her face, instead she nods, so enthusiastically I’m worried she’ll shake her brain and pass out. She stops and heads for the door.
“Wait,” I call, and with her hand encasing the doorknob, she peers over her shoulder. “What’s your name.”
She narrows her brows, before more quill scratching on that damn book.
‘Why?’
Because I want to know the name of my future wife.
I shrug. “Need to know your name for the gravestone.”
This time, I don’t mind the scratching quill.
‘Thealina. Everyone calls me Thea.’
Thealina.
Thea.
‘If I am executed, tell my husband I am now free.’
What. The. Fuck.
She’s fucking married!? My eye twitches for real this time. Aneurysm incoming.
I register a small golden band on her ring finger, thankful she darts out the door before she witnesses my stomach plummeting to the deep depths of hell.
She’s married.
How could he have got it so wrong.
She was supposed to have been mine.