Uncomfortable, I wanted to escape and gave Anamika a series of meaningful sighs and glances, but she ignored me and studied Ren below.
When Ren begged softly, “Don’t go, iadala. Stay with me,” Anamika wiped a tear from her eye and finally turned to me with an irritated expression. She clamped her hand down on my wrist, and though I could have shrugged off her grip easily, I followed along behind her as she made her way to a distant and quiet part of the ship.
When she realized the back of the ship was not attached to land, she panicked briefly but then locked her long legs and took hold of the railing. Without a word, she grasped the twisted leather belt at her waist, and with a flick of the wrist and a soft crack, the Rope of Fire soared into the night sky. Soon a passageway opened and her expression indicated that she wanted me to jump through. Resigning myself to being Durga’s obedient little pet tiger, at least for the moment, I leapt off the upper level of the yacht and entered the time stream.
Remaining conscious through the leap, a perk of being Durga’s immortal lackey, I landed lightly on my feet in the grass patch of Durga’s mountain home garden and turned to watch the fire gate for Anamika’s arrival.
It worried me when it seemed she was more than just a few steps behind me, and I was just about to leap back through and find her when the ring of fire suddenly closed with a pop. I paced back and forth, wondering where she could have gone and what happened to her. Then, a few seconds later, another ring opened. Just as I turned toward it, her body fell through the encircling flames. I caught her, but the force with which she exited the ring of fire was enough to send me tumbling.
We rolled a few times, and I clutched her body close to mine in an attempt to protect her from getting hurt. Taking the worst of the fall on my back, we came to a stop with her back pressed into the grass, her beautiful hair spread out all around her, and me on top of her. Before I got a chance to move or even really appreciate the position we’d landed in, she began to squirm and buck. My saving gesture was met with anger rather than gratitude.
“Get off me, you brute!” she hollered and pushed at my shoulders. “You weigh more than a battle elephant!”
Her ingratitude annoyed me, especially since I could still feel the gravel from the nearby path imbedded in my back along with the trickles of blood that accompanied it. “Calm down, Goddess. If you will be still, I will remove my ungainly elephantine form from your immediate vicinity.”
Anamika quieted but glared at me hostilely, and when I moved, slower than I would have normally because her reaction set me off, she immediately scrambled away from me, scooted back against the fountain, and began trembling.
Her fear was so strong I could taste its heaviness on the wind. “Ana,” I began, gentling my voice, “what just happened? What is it that frightens you so?”
Wide green eyes met mine and darted away in shame. “I cannot speak of it, Kishan. I…I apologize for my reaction. I just had to go back. I had to see it again.”
Taking a few steps closer, I crouched at a distance close enough for an intimate conversation yet far enough away to give her some space. “Go back where? When? What did you see?”
She shook her head and let her hair fall around her body like a curtain, but not before I saw the fresh bruise on her cheek. It looked identical to the bruise I’d seen in the cave in Kishkindha. I knew our fall couldn’t cause a bruise like that. Only one thing could—a man’s fist. Hesitantly, I asked, “Did someone… Did a man hurt you?”
Swallowing, she wrapped her hands around her knees and buried her face. She rocked back and forth and whispered as tears leaked down her cheeks, “It was a long time ago. I thought if I could help, things would be different.”
“So, you tried to offer someone assistance?” I asked, trying to get her to talk, but again she shook her head.
Then, with a tremulous voice, she admitted, “I tried to help a young girl escape from the clutches of a monster. But I froze. Instead of coming to her aid, I made it worse.”
“Anamika, please tell me what happened. Were you serving a king? An acolyte?” The word monster conjured the image of just one person in my mind—Lokesh. “Did you go back to the fight with Lokesh? Is Kelsey the one you were helping?”
Her shoulders stiffened and her head shot up. “Kelsey? Is that all you ever think about? Saving Kelsey? Finding Kelsey? Mourning Kelsey? Loving Kelsey? There are more people in the world who need saving than just Kelsey!”
She turned her back to me and brushed tears angrily from her eyes. I didn’t know what to do, what to say. I opened my thoughts to her and gently spoke to her mind. Ana, I am sorry. Please tell me what happened.
Red, pounding pain filled her mind, and before she shut her thoughts to me, I caught glimpses of a shadowed man towering over her, his grin full of wicked delight. She screamed and kicked against him as he brutally shoved her against a wall. There was a wide-eyed little girl on the bed behind him, her hands pressed against her face as she cried. Then her vision went white.
A burning fire rose in me, deeper than anything I’d ever felt. My hands involuntarily tightened into fists, and I tried to control the rage enough to speak in a normal, calm voice, but still, my anger managed to seep through.
“Who?” I managed to get out. “Who hit you?”
This only made her cry anew. I inched closer and said, “Ana, I’m going to pick you up and take you inside. Is that okay?”
She didn’t nod but didn’t protest either, so, slowly, as if I were carrying a newborn, I slipped my arms under her knees and behind her back. Carefully, I lifted her, and the heaviness and guilt I felt eased somewhat when she buried her head against my chest.
Opening our connection and letting her have full access to everything I was and everything I felt without asking for the same from her, I spoke in her mind and assured her that I would never hurt her in that way. The anger that raged through me over whomever had done this to her consumed me to the point where I forgot all my own worries and concerns.
Pressing a kiss in her hair, I strode down the hall and felt her relax against me. I sensed my open connection helped her to trust me or, if not me, then my intentions. Cursing myself for closing myself off from her and knowing that I had not kept my promise to her brother to take care of her, I berated myself as I gingerly placed her on her bed and turned to the wash basin to fetch a wet cloth.
As I wiped the tears from her face, she said, “He didn’t know.”
I paused. “Who didn’t know?”
“My brother. I never told him what happened…to the girl.”
A thousand questions rose in my mind. I had assumed that this man who hurt her had done it on her recent trip, which would explain the bruise, but if her brother had been near, then it must have occurred in her past. I pondered the images I’d seen, but couldn’t make sense of them.
“Kadam was right,” she said. “I could not save her from the monster.”
“What you did was dangerous, Ana. You could have crossed paths with your former self in the past.”
“I thought I could change it,” Anamika whispered.
Instinctively knowing that she didn’t want to be alone and also that she wasn’t ready to talk about it, I tucked the blankets around her and picked up her hand.
“I’m going to massage your hand. If, at any point, it makes you feel uncomfortable, let me know and I will stop.”
Anamika didn’t say anything but didn’t pull her hand from my grasp either. I began with her knuckles and moved to her palm.
“You did this…this rubbing of the fingers for Kelsey?” she asked.
“I did.”
“It feels…nice.”
“Good.”
“I am embarrassed for my behavior when you caught me in the garden. I ask for your forgiveness.”