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Shit.So I was right; Bard and I never meet. That’s why I marry Dave. “Bard, I need to find Alwar. Where is he?”
“Dead. Along with that fucking traitor, Gabrio.”
No, no, no.“What? When?”
“What do you care? Be gone. Let me die in peace.”
“But you don’t understand,” I plead. “You guys can’t lose. You have to stop the monsters from taking the wall.”
“It is inevitable.” He exhales with a pained sputter. “Now go close the fucking door, stupid woman!”
I step back. I’m not even sure what to say. This is a different Bard, and I’m not just talking about his size. “Just tell me when Alwar and Gabrio died, and I’ll leave.”
“Over two hundred years ago,” Bard mumbles. “When they sided with my fucking traitor of a mother.”
So Bard stayed here, and Alwar and Gabrio went to my world with their mother? That is not how things are supposed to play out.
A loud bark from behind makes me jump.
I turn, and it’s a Great Dane with big expressive brown eyes and black polka dots on his soft white fur.
“Master?”
He growls. Not even he knows me.
“Go!” Bard yells. “Seal that door and take that fucking scholar with you. Let me die in peace, you cunt.”
His words bite down on my heart. Even if he’s never met me, I always believed our relationship was something that defied, well, everything. Worlds, time, death… Was I wrong?
At least now I know part of the reason why I lost the baby. Gabrio and I never meet. Bard neither.
Shrieks and howls sound off in the distance, and high above us, winged black figures form into a circle. The Fliers are coming.
“Okay. I’m going.”
I slowly walk past the growling dog and glance over my shoulder, taking in Bard’s enormous body. I don’t want to leave him. I don’t want to let him die alone. He has no idea what he means to me. I hold back the sobs. “You coming, Master?”
The scholar gives me a distrusting look but follows me back inside. I pull the huge door shut and press my hands against the cool stone, silently saying a prayer for Bard. “Just know you were loved,” I whisper. “In this life and the last one. Goodbye.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Bard’s last word to me was cunt. I can take it, but it still hurts. Even more disturbing is that Alwar and Gabrio have been dead for centuries.
All this means that when I went home the last time, I did something to change the fate of these Wall Men.
I give it some thought. For me, everything changed the moment Dr. Francis accidentally disclosed I was having a girl.
Did that knowledge cause me to behave or act differently?
“Shit. I don’t know.” I toss a log on the waning fire in what used to be Alwar’s bedroom. I’m still wet, still cold, still with sticky bloody feet.
I know there are children, mothers, and elderly War People somewhere in this mile-high fortress, but I don’t think finding them is going to help me. They’re all probably hunkered down, hoping the Wall Men and other warriors have squashed this takeover.
I don’t want to be the one to tell them that the battle is over. We lost. Next, the monsters outside will find a way in and start picking everyone off. After that, this wall will come down, and the monsters will cross into my world.
I sit on the bed, which has probably been here for over a thousand years. A stone platform, covered in soft furs.
The fire crackles, and I begin to thaw. I think hard about what might’ve changed after finding out a month early that I would have a baby girl. I admit, it was a shock. I didn’t want her to go through what I did. So, did I do something to protect her? Did I send her away? Did I return with her to Monsterland because I thought she might be safer from a monster invasion?“I don’t fucking know. I don’t.” And I doubt I ever will. I just know that I miss her. I wish I could’ve seen and held her at least once.
