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He held her through it all, not letting her go even when she fought him, kicking and scratching. She raged silently against the two senseless deaths that had devastated her, against the terror and fury of the past year. She pounded Niall’s chest with her fists until he caught them and held them, rolling over on top of her and using his weight to control her.
She began gagging, and he swiftly dragged her to the chamber pot and held her while she vomited. Then he gave her more wine and carried her back to bed, and held her until she could cry no more.
Dawn’s faint gray light was creeping through the narrow window. “You loved him,” Niall said quietly, smoothing her tangled hair away from her hot, grief-ravaged face. “You have not wept for him before, have you?”
“No.” Her voice was a croak. The sound shocked her. “I couldn’t.”
The wine was warm in her belly, and her mind was fuzzy from both alcohol and fatigue. His hands were on her body, her breasts and thighs and loins, ensuring she acknowledged his claim on her even as he comforted her. She was so sore from the night’s excesses that she flinched when he entered her again, but she didn’t resist. He pressed deep, nudging her womb, and held himself deep and still until all the tension eased from her muscles and she lay limply beneath him, breathing deeply.
He didn’t climax, didn’t even thrust, just maintained the link. After a time he maneuvered them onto their sides, and put his hand on her bottom to keep her anchored to him.
Grace put her hand on his face, her fingers tracing the slope of his brow, the high curve of his cheekbone. “I know who you are,” she said numbly, all emotion exhausted except for the uneroded joy of touching him. “I know what you are, Guardian. I came from the year nineteen ninety-seven to find the Treasure, and use it to destroy the man who killed my husband and my brother.”
Chapter 26
NIALL SAT AT THE TABLE, QUIETLY LOOKING AT THE BOOKS Grace had brought. Thinking to convince him she was telling the truth, she had told him where her sack was hidden and he had fetched it, but she realized now he hadn’t required proof. He looked at the books out of curiosity, and for knowledge, not for confirmation.
He rapidly absorbed the changes in the language, saying once, “I knew the rhythm of your speech was odd, even though you spoke English.” Another time: “So there are other lands across the ocean. I have always wondered.”
He wasn’t shocked, he wasn’t disbelieving. He was highly educated; he spoke seven languages, and he dealt daily with the fantastic. But he was unnervingly calm, and it was destroying what little of her nerves were left.
“These papers you translated,” he finally said, turning to face her. “You say I wrote part of them?”
“Yes. You signed your name, and dated them. Thirteen twenty-two.”
“I have not written any papers,” he said.
“But I saw them—”
“Perhaps you are the cause of their existence.”
She digested that, and bit her lip. “You mean they wouldn’t have been written if I hadn’t come back? But I came back because of what you wrote!”
A bitter smile touched his lips. “I have hated God for what He allowed to happen to my brethren,” he said calmly, “but I cannot doubt His existence. How could I, when I guard His power on earth? Who knows what the hand of God does?” He shrugged. “I have ceased trying to understand Him, I only do my duty.”
“You hate God?” Stunned, she could only stare at him.
“How could I not? I did not want to be a Knight; I was forced into the Order. I have a talent for killing,” he said in unflinching acceptance of his skill. “I became the Knights’ best warrior. I learned the secrets we protected—in service of God!—and He allowed his servants to be butchered in defense of those secrets. No Knight betrayed his greater oath, not one talked even with the flames of the stake licking up his legs, devouring his entrails. They suffered and died, and He let it happen. Perhaps He directed it, to destroy those who knew. Only I am left, and fool that I am, I have kept my oath all these years, because my last oath was not to God but to my friends who died for Him.”
His tone was unemotional, his eyes remote. Grace wanted to go to him but somehow she couldn’t, he was too distant.
“Look at me,” he said. “I have thirty-nine years. I should be growing old, but my hair remains black and my teeth stay in my head. I never sicken, and if I am wounded I quickly heal. He has cursed me to guard His damned Treasure even after I should be dead.”
“No,” she said softly. “You’re just a healthy man.” She could reassure him on this, for she was all too piercingly aware of his humanity, his mortality. “In my time, people easily live into their seventies and eighties, sometimes even over a hundred. I’m thirty-one.”
His brows lifted and he looked a little surprised. He surveyed her, noting her smooth, clear skin and lack of wrinkles, her shiny hair. “You look a mere girl.”
She didn’t want to think of her looks, with her eyes red and swollen from her emotional storm, her face drawn with fatigue from the long night of nothing less than debauchery. She sat down on the bench, wanting to be close to him even if she didn’t dare touch him.
“Tell me of this Foundation,” he ordered.
She told him what she knew. She had already choked out the details of what had happened to her, how Ford and Bryant had died, and why. He listened, his long fingers drumming on the table.
“I wonder how they discovered the Treasure’s existence,” he murmured at one point.
“An archaeological discovery, probably,” Grace said. She hesitated. “This Power—what exactly is it?”
“It is God’s power,” he said. “With it, all things are possible.”
