AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She passed through the shield into the starry night. She couldn’t see very much, just open land for what seemed like miles, dark clumps, maybe cactus. In the distance there was the glitter of buildings, perhaps the center of this dimension’s Metro Phoenix.
Rith had kept the women informed over the decades: where they were, what was happening in each dimension, how many dimensions there were. He’d at least provided them with books to read. She had wanted to marvel at all that she learned, but because she’d been a prisoner and her blood drained from her body every month, she fell short of being able to work up enthusiasm for things she believed she would never see, never experience.
Now here she was looking at the Sonoran Desert and thousands of stars overhead. Rith had allowed television once a month for half an hour, selected at random. Last month, the slaves saw a really weird cartoon featuring a character called SpongeBob; the previous month, half an hour in the middle of a movie starring a very handsome young man—On the Waterfront. She would like to see more movies, complete movies and definitely more television.
She heard a soft scrape of marble underfoot just behind her. She turned and hunched, her hands outstretched, ready to fight … but it was the warrior, the one called Jean-Pierre, the one who seemed so angry, the one who had brought her to the palace. Yes, she remembered now. She’d been dizzy with drugs, but now she remembered.
He held up his hands as if in surrender. “I would not harm you,” he said.
He had a beautiful French accent.
She lowered her hands and straightened. “No, of course not. I’m not quite myself. I’m sorry.”
She wanted coffee suddenly, a very strong cup of coffee with milk, maybe even cream. She shifted to stand beside him so that she could see his face. The light from the rotunda revealed the most beautiful eyes, not gray, not green, but a blend. He had thick dark lashes as well that enhanced the color of his eyes. His lips were very unusual. The lower was full and sensual and the upper came to exotic points. She had the strangest urge to run a finger over his lips, and for some reason the thought lit her body in a way she had not experienced in a very, very long time.
Oh, God. She desired this man, this warrior. She began to ache very low and a blush warmed her cheeks.
His nostrils flared and his lips parted. “Mon Dieu,” he whispered.
She returned to stand by the balustrade, afraid of what she was feeling. More than anything, such a reaction seemed completely inappropriate. She shifted her gaze back to the desert, the dark sky, and the stars. The air was very dry, which was so different from both Burma and New Zealand.
“Fiona,” he said very softly, his voice a caress. He had moved closer. She could feel the heat of his body behind her. “I have something for you. At least, I am almost certain it belongs to you.”
She turned back to him. The light from the rotunda cast his face in shadow. His hand was outstretched, and as he turned so that the light would cross his arm, something small and gold glinted in his palm. She drew in a soft breath. He held the one thing, the only thing she’d been able to keep, all these years, from her life in Boston in the late 1800s. She couldn’t withhold a small cry.
Her gold locket.
She knew where she’d hidden it—behind the armoire, on the carpet. But she had been drugged when she left that house. When she awoke on the cot in the unfamiliar house, her first thought had been that she would never see her locket again. She had wept.
Now as if by some extraordinary miracle, the warrior called Jean-Pierre, who had a lovely French accent, held her only cherished possession.
She took it from him with trembling fingers. “Merci,” she murmured.
She opened the locket and there they were, portraits of her lost family, long since dead after so many decades: husband, daughter, son.
For a reason she could not explain, she drew close to Jean-Pierre, shifting to stand in the shadow of his shoulder. She flattened the locket on her palm and held it slanted toward the light so that he could see.
“My husband. He gave this to me the day before I was abducted. Our eleventh anniversary. These were my children. My son Peter—oh, that’s your name, Pierre, isn’t it? And this was my daughter, Carolyn.” Her heart felt as if a stone had formed at the very base. She hurt.
“I always regretted that I did not have a family,” he said. “I was married once, but it was not a good marriage. Then the revolution came.”
“The French Revolution?”
He nodded, smiling faintly. “Oui.”
“You’re very old then.”
He laughed and the gleam in his eyes, the humor, eased something in her chest, made the stone in her heart not quite so heavy. He turned back to look into the rotunda. “Do you see the warrior there, with hair just past his shoulders, dark brown hair, his eyebrows slashed over his eyes? Yes?”
Fiona saw him. “Oui,” she said.
He met her gaze and smiled. “Thank you for saying oui.”
She smiled as well. She nodded. “I’ve always loved the French language. My grandfather was French, but I’m not fluent, unfortunately.”
He held her gaze for a very long time, and for some reason a desire for coffee once more drifted through her. A very strange sensation. He seemed to give himself a little shake then said, “That man is Warrior Marcus. He is four thousand years old.”
“No,” she whispered. “How is that possible?”
Jean-Pierre shrugged. “Warrior Medichi, standing with his arms around Parisa, is out of Italy in the 700s. Warrior Thorne, who has his fist wrapped around a tumbler of vodka, is two thousand years old. I am the youngest of them all.”
She felt her palm folding around the locket and glanced at her fist, the gold chain dangling down. The stone felt heavy again. “What am I supposed to do now?” she asked. She looked at the marble and saw splashes of water, single drops one after the next. It couldn’t be raining. She hadn’t seen a cloud in the sky. Oh, the drops were her tears. When had she started to weep?
She felt his arm slide around her shoulders. He pulled her close to his chest and she let him, though she couldn’t say why. It just felt so right.
He smelled so wonderful, as though he had spilled some coffee on the leather of his weapons harness or on his skin. She was tall for a woman, and her nose nestled against his neck. How odd that she trusted him like this, without knowing him. But then he’d carried her away from that house of torture, away from Rith, and death, and slavery. Why wouldn’t she trust him?
