Thief of Hearts (Elders and Welders Chronicles Book 3) Page 25

  How could he not be, especially when they’d discovered that their Heartsblood could heal and extend life? The gaudy allure of immortality, the seductive promise of never having to face death or bury another loved one—of living free of the crushing pain of loss forever: how could anyone human refuse such a temptation?

  He remembered returning to his wife and children with renewed hope. He’d thought the pain of his transformation would be worth it in the end. He’d never have to bury another tiny body in frozen Welsh earth or see his beloved wife wither and die.

  But when he’d revealed his secret to Anne, she’d turned away from him in fear and disgust. And when his children had come of age and learned the truth of what he was, they too had rejected him. To them all, he had become an abomination against God.

  He wasn’t sure they were wrong.

  After that, he remembered centuries of darkness and self-recrimination. He’d become increasingly disillusioned with the dangerous games the Elder Council had begun to play with human politics, and angry at himself and Gabriel for what they had wrought upon the world. Neither of them had fully appreciated the consequences.

  He remembered the Crimean War, the darkest days by far of his four hundred years—darker even than when he’d been informed of the deaths of his wife and children. Ehrengard, traitor to the Elder Council, had laid waste to half of Europe with his Abominable Army before Gabriel had stopped him.

  But the collateral damage had been far-reaching and as catastrophic as anything Ehrengard had intended, and even though he could have done no differently, the guilt had damned Gabriel’s soul ever since then, and Rowan’s right along with it.

  He remembered Christiana coming into his life a few years later—his own heir’s namesake and so much like his long-dead daughter, Mary, with her golden hair and angelic beauty. It had taken him years before he could look at her without aching all over with ancient grief. They’d managed a good life together as brother and sister, and he’d gained a measure of happiness that had eluded him ever since he’d buried his first dead child centuries ago.

  He remembered his most recent history: first Netherfield’s plot against Romanov, then O’Connor’s machinations with Ehrengard. But more than either of those things, he remembered his falling-out with Christiana. She was the one closest to him—sister, daughter, and granddaughter all in one—and she’d rejected him, just like his family had all of those years ago. And though he knew she hadn’t truly meant half of her angry words, her denial of his love had cut down to the bone.

  He remembered their brief reconciliation, giving his blessing to her involvement with Drexler despite his grave reservations, for what else could he do? Even as Drexler had fallen prey to his demons, Christiana’s love for him had only deepened, until it was strong enough to redeem even Drexler’s dark heart. It had surpassed Rowan’s understanding. The brief passion he’d experienced with Anne had been as ephemeral and fragile as Christiana’s love for Elijah was enduring and blood-deep.

  He remembered flashing, sky-blue eyes and a tumble of scarlet corkscrew hair. He remembered two auburn-haired children, solemn and a bit otherworldly but so very familiar. He remembered the sad, bewildered look in those sky-blue eyes whenever they glanced in his direction, and he remembered wondering why that woman, that stranger, had looked at him like that—as if she knew him, as if he’d broken her heart.

  Then he remembered that infernal machine beneath London, that scorching, soul-killing light, and weeks in another land, in another time, with no memory and nothing familiar except that same flame-haired woman with eyes that were the same sky-blue, only not yet filled with that soul-crushing sorrow.

  And finally, finally, he understood.

  He had broken her heart, nearly a decade before he’d actually met her.

  And now, it seemed, he’d broken his own.

  A decade. Two children.

  Gabriel had a lot to answer for.

  WHEN ROWAN OPENED his eyes, Gabriel’s face hovered over his, brow creased with concern. Rowan sat up and swayed, the room spinning around him. Gabriel reached out as if to steady him, but Rowan waved him away. He didn’t know what he’d do if Gabriel touched him right now. Probably punch him in the face.

  Instead he lay back on the sandy floor with a groan and shut his eyes. His head felt as if it had been squeezed in a vise and then hurled down a very steep hill.

  “Simon was right, then,” Rowan murmured. “I traveled back in time.”

  “Yes,” Gabriel said.

  “You knew he would be here with Hex. You wrote that cipher for him to find.”

  “I needed to make sure you returned here. I know von Hellenburg from our future. He would never be able to ignore the science.”

  Gabriel’s acquaintance with Simon was news to him, but it was not all that surprising. Simon’s genius would not have remained hidden from Gabriel’s attention for long.

  “My gentlemanly honor wasn’t enough assurance of my return after all?” Rowan asked wryly.

  Gabriel shrugged. “You were compromised. I couldn’t risk it. As you said, I have manipulated you this entire time. Yet I saw no other way.”

  Oh, yes, Gabriel had a lot to answer for.

  On the other hand, Gabriel had said in the Bedouin tent what seemed like a lifetime ago, I risk…no, I ensure the death of my brother’s two children. But how do I choose? How can I choose, the many over the few?

  Or perhaps not. Perhaps Gabriel knew precisely what he had done and was prepared to suffer the consequences. An impossible choice indeed—and he had chosen Rowan, as best as he could, while risking the world.

  He felt a tear trickle down the side of his face. He didn’t even try to wipe it away, too sick with regret.

  “This is what you meant by choosing the few over the many. You let that earthquake…”

  “No,” Gabriel interrupted firmly, reaching out as if to offer comfort, but again stopping just short of touching him. “That earthquake was a recorded, historical event in 1897. Your children exist in 1897. To have taken you back a month ago was never a viable option, tempting as it was. It would have created too many paradoxes in our future. All of this was always meant to happen. I believe it had to happen.”

  “Yet still it happened because of me,” he insisted, clutching his throbbing head and fighting back his grief. It was all just too much.

  Gabriel didn’t hesitate this time. He grabbed Rowan by the shoulders and jerked him upright. His eyes blazed with anger and a staggering regret. “No. Not because of you. Because of me. It was my invention that sent you back here, and any losses that occurred because of that are on my head, not yours.”

  Rowan would have disagreed with him had he not been so exhausted—and had he not half-wanted Gabriel to be right. It was hard to see past his anger and resentment toward his cousin, and he hated himself for that.

  He’d hated himself for that very same reason for centuries, in fact, for he’d never truly forgiven Gabriel for burdening him with a Da Vinci heart, even knowing how unfair that was. Gabriel hadn’t held a gun to his head. He’d chosen the heart and had only himself and his own human weakness to blame.

  In this case, however, well…

  It was very easy to blame Gabriel.

  “This is why you said I would hate you,” he breathed.

  Gabriel released his shoulders, and his expression twisted with sorrow. “No, you’ll hate me because I’m going to make you leave here.”

  Rowan squeezed his eyes shut, and more damning tears rolled down his cheeks. He’d not let Gabriel see him cry since they were lads, yet he couldn’t seem to control himself any more.

  “I cannot leave her,” he whispered, gazing at Gabriel imploringly.

  “You cannot stay,” Gabriel said, his voice weary, his eyes desolate. Guilty. They sat for a long while with no words between them as Rowan cried silently.

  Gabriel finally began to speak. “Remember that stained glass window during the Thirty Years’ War?”


  Rowan gave a wet, incredulous bark of laughter. He’d not thought of that period of his life in years and wondered why the hell Gabriel would bring it up now. He’d never understand how Gabriel’s mind worked. He didn’t think he wanted to.

  “I vaguely remember your two-century-long obsession with medieval religious art,” he said dryly, wiping away his tears. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Gabriel shot him an exasperated look. “It was a hobby,” he huffed. “And that particular window was exemplary of its kind. Romanesque, early twelfth century. Even then, two hundred fifty years ago, it was a rare sight to see one intact. And it was…wondrous. Breathtaking and entirely irreplaceable.”

  He took a breath and released it as if pained, and suddenly Rowan remembered that long-ago day with startling clarity.

  Gabriel had stared at that window for hours and had been livid when it had been destroyed shortly afterward. Neither of them had wanted to be involved in that confusing quagmire of a war in the first place, but even Gabriel had been unable to change the Elder Council’s majority vote. Every loss that they’d endured during that time, including that stained glass window, had been especially bitter. Gabriel had pouted about it for months afterward.

  Gabriel continued. “There was that skirmish near Saint-Remi, and a damned stray round from a musket nicked the window. It was a simple hole at first, with small hairline cracks radiating out from it. And it held, for a time. But the cracks grew longer and multiplied, slowly at first, but then faster and faster, until, in a blink of an eye, the window shattered completely.”

  He glowered darkly. “Five hundred years it had stood, and one insignificant, stray shot from some damned blundering incompetent obliterated it in seconds. And it could never be reconstructed.”

  Rowan sighed wearily. He was wrong. Gabriel was still pouting over it. “Why are you telling me this now?”

  Gabriel looked as earnest as Rowan had ever seen him. “Think of this world…this time you’re existing in right here, right now, as that stained glass window. Beautifully complex, but also fragile and utterly irreplaceable. And you’re the bullet. The anomaly that threatens to shatter it completely. Already, there are fissures forming all around you, like those hairline cracks in the glass. And they’ll grow bigger and bigger, until the world fractures completely, never to be put back together again. Time and space will cease to exist. Because you don’t belong here. You are a paradox, and the universe cannot cope with it for much longer.”

  Simon had been right about that as well, then: the utter impossibility of him remaining here. Hex had known it too. He’d seen the farewell in her eyes, even though he’d tried to ignore it.

  “Yet this always had to happen,” he murmured.

  Gabriel nodded in agreement. “It would seem so. The existence of your children in 1897 suggests as much. All the events related to me by Miss Bartholomew, down to the contents of the cipher I wrote for Simon, have happened just as she said they would. It makes even my brain hurt thinking about it,” Gabriel finished wryly.

  Children. His children. He shuddered.

  “And this? Did she tell you about this too?” he demanded.

  Silence, long and painful, stretched between them. “She said she watched you walk into the desert. Into the storm,” Rowan said softly, reluctantly.

  Rowan heard loud and clear all that Gabriel left unsaid. He’d never walked out of that storm as he’d promised Hex he would. Something inside of him shattered.

  “Ten years, Gabriel! She’ll be alone ten years!” Rowan cried.

  Gabriel gave him an unyielding look. “And yet, if you do not go back, she will cease to exist. All of us will.” He stood and held out his hand to help Rowan up.

  Rowan glared at him but finally accepted his cousin’s help, unable to stand on his own at the moment. He reeled against Gabriel as the world tilted wildly around him. He gave the white light of the burial chamber a skeptical look. “It’s going to hurt like hell, isn’t it?”

  Gabriel’s smile was humorless. “Oh, yes. And you’ll remember it all this time around.”

  Rowan sighed and cast a longing glance toward the passageway leading back up to the desert.

  “You cannot go back,” Gabriel said firmly, as if reading his mind. “We don’t have much time left. Once the hearts fail in the machine’s engine, the portal will close permanently. We’ll never be able to cross back.”

  “Hearts?” Rowan queried, a tight ball of dread forming in his gut.

  “Four Da Vinci hearts. Ehrengard has put his allies on the Council to work,” Gabriel said darkly.

  “Jesus, Gabriel!” he cried, horrified.

  “They were our enemies, Rowan. Let’s not mourn their loss overmuch.” Gabriel gave him a light shove toward the chamber. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Rowan sighed and approached the light. As he drew closer, he could feel it begin to pull him forward like a magnet, little tendrils of energy reaching out to ensnare him. He hesitated at the threshold as a horrifying thought hit him.

  “What if your gamble hadn’t paid off?” he asked. “What if the hearts had failed before I came back here?”

  Gabriel was silent for a long time, and a muscle kicked in his jaw, betraying his agitation. “There would have been only one recourse left to us,” Gabriel finally said, grudgingly, reluctantly. Whatever that recourse had been, he did not want to say.

  “Tell me,” Rowan snapped.

  Gabriel’s expression was a confusing mix of irritation and wretchedness. “Well, we would have had to kill ourselves then, wouldn’t we?” he said.

  Rowan went cold all over, despite the incredible heat pouring through the chamber door. He clutched at the wall next to him. “God, Gabriel,” he whispered hoarsely. “I don’t know if I could have done it.”

  “Nor I,” Gabriel said with a wry twist of his lips. “The both of us have regretted our immortality for so long, yet now…I find that I’m not quite ready to die.”

  “Neither am I,” he said softly.

  Gabriel cleared his throat, as if to put an end to that particular line of thought, and Rowan was happy to let him. Gabriel nodded toward the light. “She’s waiting for you,” he said gruffly.

  Knowing he would see Hex on the other side was his only consolation. He just hoped she’d forgive him for all of the years lost between them. Rowan took a deep breath in preparation for the inevitable agony, and he stepped into the light.

  It was as if the fires of hell consumed him.

  THE JOURNEY THROUGH time didn’t take long, just a few seconds, but the pain…the pain made it feel like centuries. Just a step, however, and Rowan went from the dry, hot chamber beneath the Sahara, to the damp, abandoned tube station beneath London.

  The light had stripped him bare, and only the alchemy of his Da Vinci heart had saved his mind and body from being incinerated alongside his clothing. He just wished it were enough to save him from the pain. He felt sure he was dying.

  As the duke emerged from the portal behind Rowan, stumbling to his knees and gasping for air, the blinding light faded into nothing. The device ground to a permanent halt, though the death of the hearts did not take away his agony.

  It was nearly impossible to think, to move his limbs and focus eyes that felt as if they’d been turned inside out and back again. But he tried, because beyond the pain there was hope, just a small seedling amid a fallow field. He wanted to see, to confirm for himself that he’d made it home. To Hex.

  Gabriel had been right. She was waiting for him just steps away, arms outstretched. She was just as he’d left her on the other side, with her trousers and freckles and untidy red hair. But those sky blue eyes looked so tired, and her smile somehow looked so dim, as if all the vibrancy had been leeched out of her over the years. And he knew without a doubt that he had caused it.

  He wanted to wrap her in his arms, burrow into her skin so deep they could never be separated again. But even the soles of his feet against the cool stone pave
ment felt as if a million fiery needles were poking into his skin, straight into the bone.

  He made it only a few steps before he fell to one knee, then the other. Molten pain shot through him, so powerful that his vision whited out. Then she was there, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her head tilted down to meet his as her fragrant curls fell like a curtain around them both.

  Even this tender touch—one he craved above all else, one he’d feared he’d never know again—was an agony. Yet he could never push her away. So he endured the pain, his cheeks wet with tears and his jaw clenched so hard it felt near to shattering. Eventually, his body succumbed to the shock, and he was once more falling into oblivion.

  SHE’D WAITED FOR a week in the desert. The Amun Ra needed that long to repair anyway. The sandstorm had stopped only a few hours after Rowan had left them, the winds ceasing with violent abruptness, revealing robin’s egg blue skies and miles of tranquil, monochrome desert. It was as if the storm had never raged at all. So they’d dropped anchor and started mending the ballonets, repairing the sun panels, and replacing the blasted fuses.

  Two days in, when she couldn’t stand it any longer, she and Simon had set off on foot for the tomb.

  It was empty. Dead.

  Simon had spent many hours inside the burial chamber with a steam torch and notebook, fascinated by its strange design, but she’d not been able to stomach even the antechamber for more than a few minutes. The place had too many memories. She’d stayed just long enough to find the water flask and goggles Rowan had worn into the storm, discarded in a dark corner. Then she’d fled to the surface and lost the contents of her stomach, all of her hope lost.

  Still she’d waited, stubborn to the end, watching the tomb from the Amun Ra’s deck, a silent sentinel. She’d waited long after the ship was repaired, until their depleted water stores made it impossible to remain.

  Even after Simon had insisted they leave, she’d fought against the inevitable.

  “Just one more hour,” she kept pleading, until she was so hoarse no real sound passed her chapped lips and she was too tired to stand. “He said to wait for him.”