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That sounded like help to me.
But, on the other hand, if my power was trying to help me, it had seriously bad timing! It had taken me to a Pritkin in the middle of a crisis. He must have thought he’d lost his pursuers—he wouldn’t have been stopping for a swim otherwise—but he hadn’t. And I hadn’t been with him for more than a few minutes when they showed up. So why take me back then?
I mean, honestly, wouldn’t a week earlier or later have been a whole lot better? Some day when his biggest problem was deciding what to have for dinner? Or that he spent washing his socks? Or was sick in bed with a head cold and didn’t do anything? Basically any day when I wouldn’t be at risk of changing time, because absolutely nothing dangerous was happening?
I’d thought my biggest challenge would be getting to Wales. Once I had that potion, and we actually got all the way back to the sixth freaking century, I’d thought my job was done. And the damned thing is, it should have been. Pritkin should be back, this should be over, and I should be able to concentrate on other things.
So why wasn’t I?
“Maybe,” I said slowly. “But . . . I wouldn’t give any odds. You said Agnes asked it questions?”
She nodded again. “I’ve heard her say so many times.”
Hello, I thought, feeling slightly ridiculous.
Nothing.
“Hello?” I said, out loud, because what the hell.
More nothing.
I sighed again.
“I should know this. I should be able to help you!” Rhea said, looking about as frustrated and upset as I felt. Which wasn’t fair.
“You have helped me,” I told her. “You got the power’s warning to me when I was too tired to see it for myself. And you told me something tonight that I didn’t know, something important.” I smiled. “And it’s kind of hard to get answers when you don’t even know the questions. So thank you.”
She nodded, biting her lip. But she still looked miserable. “Here. Have a cookie,” I told her, passing over the plate. There was exactly one left. She looked at it and then at me. And then she ate it.
And finally smiled back, because there was nothing Tami’s cooking couldn’t fix.
Chapter Twenty-five
The riverbank was fuzzy, indistinct, like daylight seen through fog. It matched the sky above me and the river beneath me, but not the man in front of me. He was all too real as he squatted down or went to his knees or did something that caused most of his body to disappear underwater.
Except for the golden head, which ended up on a level with my gently floating body.
And the warm hands that slid, water slick, between my thighs.
I could feel his twin at my back, slipping an identical pair of hands beneath my hips, lifting and supporting them at the same time. Although the river was already doing that, so I didn’t see why he needed—
A pink tongue flickered out, tasting the beads of water on my inner thigh.
Oh.
That was why.
A question I didn’t need a translation for appeared in a pair of green eyes. And stayed there as more water was slowly licked away with each drag of his tongue. Lower calf became upper, became knee, became behind the knee, and I should stop him, I thought; I should stop him now.
But I didn’t want to stop him now. He’d started to feel like a mirage, there one minute and gone the next, or like a ghost, only less real because ghosts came back. But he was here now, warm and alive and catching my gaze again, his own burning hot even with his lips curved in a grin, like he was laughing and asking and daring me, all at the same time.
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This was what Rosier took away from him, I thought. The chance to be this carefree—he never would be again. The chance to explore who he was, what he was, instead of being told. The chance to develop free of the creature who was never around when he was younger and needed him, but was the first to show up when he started giving evidence that he might be useful.
Twenty-four years. He’d had twenty-four years. And then fighting and running and . . . God, I knew exactly what that felt like!
Only no, I didn’t. Because I’d never even had that. I’d been brought up in a place where walking on eggshells was everyday life; where a madman ruled over a personal fiefdom and could have people killed at any moment; where there was no choice about anything, from what I wore to what I ate to how I used my gift, and no freedom, no freedom at all.
