The wonder in her face was replaced by white shock. “It’s all gone?”
“Gone.” He got a grim sense of satisfaction from the sharp, sober attention she now gave him. He grabbed her head, his shaking hands cupping the graceful arc of her skull as his thumbs braced under her delicate, stubborn chin, holding her so tightly she could not deny him or turn away. He spoke from the back of his throat, words that were so raw they came from the place where the sword had thrust through him. They fell from his mouth, hissing through the air like dripping acid. “Doorways have been opening in time. I have been falling through them and traveling to your place. In the future, you and I are searching for a way to close them, because they are very dangerous. Other things, dark spirits or creatures that mean you harm, might come through those doorways. That’s why we decided I had to come back to warn you. You must take care and learn to guard yourself. There are times, like this night, when you are not safe.”
She trembled all over, that beautiful young tigerish woman, and her breath shook out of her, and he felt like such a rotten, stupid bastard to put the burden of all of this on her young shoulders. But then wonder came into her face. “You and I are working together in this future place?”
He tried to think of what would be the best thing to say, but he couldn’t because he was in a blind panic, the likes of which he had never before experienced. He said, “Yes. You hold my life in your hands just as surely as I am holding yours now in mine. There is a way for you to live to reach that distant future. You must find it. Do not turn away, or give up, or let anyone take that away from you. You must live. Do you understand me? You must live or I will die.”
Her mouth shook as she whispered, “You would be there waiting for me?”
He was doing everything wrong. He was only supposed to warn her to be careful. He should have kept his damn mouth shut. But he couldn’t stop himself. He whispered, “I will not remember you at first. You will live through your life and meet a younger me, one who has not yet come back to this place to meet you. Then I will see you at twilight, by a river in a place called Adriyel, and I will start my journey toward you.”
She studied his face, her forehead crinkled. “But you will remember me some time?”
This is crazy, he thought. It makes no sense. The time slippage is so far out of sync it is working in loops, like a serpent’s coils. She and I are drawing each other into existence. If we don’t find our way out of this, we may not survive.
He had no cunning for this, no grand plan or intelligent rationale, no established ethical protocol for time travel like out of a sci-fi movie. This was just raw, unvarnished truth, and deadly uncharted territory for how it might carve through history.
And because he had gone much too far to stop now, he gave her everything he had.
He put his lips to her forehead and said against her skin, “I will remember you, very soon after the Adriyel River. And when I do, you will come to mean everything to me. Who I am at this moment, this man who is standing in front of you—I would wait forever for you. But you must live to get there or none of this will happen.”
She reached to touch the place where his lips met her skin, murmuring, “It always happens by the river.”
He closed his eyes and pressed his lips to those gentle, questing fingers. “What does?”
“The beginning of a new life.” She pulled back to look at him, and the expression in hers was grave. “If there is a way for me to live to get there, I will find it.”
“There is,” he said, pushing all of his conviction into the two words. “You found it once. You got there already. But now I have come back and touched your life again, and every time I do that something else changes, and I am afraid—” His throat closed and for a moment he could not continue. “I am so goddamn afraid that by coming tonight I might have changed something else you do or decide, and you won’t be there in my life when I go back. And I have to go back, because I don’t belong here.”
Her trembling stopped. She stood steady and straight under his hands, her Power a slim, newly minted, adamant flame. She repeated, “If there is a way for me to live to get there, I will find it.”
He took a deep breath as he searched her gaze, and the tiger looked back at him, unafraid. Another realization jolted through him, and even as he spoke he knew that the words he said were true.