Passion (22 page)

It was absolutely glorious.

It was time for her to go.

Get out while the get ing’s good, Bil had warned her. While she was stil alive.

But she couldn’t leave yet. Not while everything was so warm and lovely. Not with Daniel stil kissing her, wild with passion. She opened her eyes and the colors of his hair and his face and the night itself burned brighter and more beautiful, lit up by an intense radiance.

That radiance was coming from deep inside Luce herself.

With every kiss, her whole body edged closer to the light. This was the only true way back to Daniel. Out of one mundane life and into another. Luce would happily die a thousand times just as long as she could be with him again on the other side.

“Stay with me,” Daniel pleaded even as she felt herself incandesce.

She moaned. Tears streamed down her face. The softest smile parted her lips.

“What is it?” Daniel asked. He would not stop kissing her. “Lys?”

“It’s … so much love,” she said, opening her eyes just as the re bloomed through her chest. A great column of light exploded in the night, rocketing heat and ames high in the sky, knocking Daniel o his feet, knocking Luce clear out of Lys’s death and into darkness, where she was ice-cold and could see nothing. A shuddering wave of vertigo overtook her.

Then: the smal est flash of light.

Bil ’s face came into view, hovering over Luce with a worried look. She was lying prone on a at surface. She touched the smooth stone Bil ’s face came into view, hovering over Luce with a worried look. She was lying prone on a at surface. She touched the smooth stone beneath her, heard the water trickling nearby, snif ed at the cool musty air. She’d come out inside an Announcer.

“You scared me,” Bil said. “I didn’t know … I mean, when she died, I didn’t know how … didn’t know whether maybe you might get stuck somehow.… But I wasn’t sure.” He shook his head as if to banish the thought.

She tried to stand, but her legs were wobbly and everything about her felt incredibly cold. She sat cross-legged against the stone wal . She was back in the black gown with the emerald-green trim. The emerald-green slippers stood side by side in the corner. Bil must have slipped them of her feet and laid her down after she’d … after Lys … Luce stil could not believe it.

“I could see things, Bil . Things I never knew before.”

“Like?”

“Like she was happy when she died. I was happy. Ecstatic. The whole thing was just so beautiful.” Her mind raced. “Knowing he’d be there for me on the other side, knowing that al I was doing was escaping something wrong and oppressive. That the beauty of our love endures death, endures everything. It was incredible.”

“Incredibly dangerous,” Bil said shortly. “Let’s not do that again, okay?”

“Don’t you get it? Ever since I left Daniel in the present, this is the best thing that’s happened to me. And—” But Bil had disappeared into the darkness again. She heard the trickle of the waterfal . A moment later, the sound of water boiling. When Bil reappeared, he’d made tea. He carried the pot on a thin metal tray and handed Luce a steaming mug.

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

“I said, let’s not do that again, okay?”

But Luce was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to real y hear him. This was the closest she’d come to any kind of clarity. She would go 3-D—what had he cal ed it? cleaving?—again. She would see her lives through to their ends, one after another until in one of those lives, she found out exactly why it happened.

And then she’d break this curse.

TWELVE

TWELVE

THE PRISONER

PARIS, FRANCE • DECEMBER 1, 1723

Daniel cursed.

The Announcer had dumped him out onto a bed of damp, dirty straw. He rol ed and sat up, his back against a frozen stone wal .

Something from the ceiling was dripping cold, oily drops onto his forehead, but there wasn’t enough light to see what it was.

Opposite him was an open slot of a window, crudely cut into the stone and hardly wide enough to stick a fist through. It let in only a sliver of moonlight, but enough blustery night air to bring the temperature near freezing.

He couldn’t see the rats scampering in the cel , but he could feel their slimy bodies writhing through the moldy straw beneath his legs. He could feel their ragged teeth sawing into the leather of his shoes. He could hardly breathe for the stink of their waste. He kicked out and there was a squeal. Then he gathered his feet beneath him and rose onto his haunches.

“You’re late.”

The voice next to Daniel made him jump. He had carelessly assumed he was alone. The voice was a parched and raspy whisper, but somehow stil familiar.

Then came a scraping sound, like metal being dragged across stone. Daniel sti ened as a blacker piece of shadow detached itself from the darkness and leaned forward. The gure moved into the pale-gray light under the window, where at last the silhouet e of a face grew dimly visible.

His own face.

He’d forgot en this cel , forgot en this punishment. So this was where he’d ended up.

In some ways, Daniel’s earlier self looked just as he did now: the same nose and mouth, the same distance between the same gray eyes. His hair was scru er and sti with grease, but it was the same pale gold it was now. And yet, prisoner Daniel looked so di erent. His face was horribly gaunt and pale, his forehead creased with filth. His body looked emaciated, and his skin was beaded with sweat.

This was what her absence did to him. Yes, he wore the bal and chain of a prisoner—but the real jailer here was his own guilt.

He remembered it al now. And he remembered the visitation of his future self, and a frustrating, bit er interview. Paris. The Bastil e.

Where he’d been locked up by the Duc de Bourbon’s guards after Lys disappeared from the palace. There had been other jails, crueler living conditions, and worse food in Daniel’s existence, but the mercilessness of his own regret that year in the Bastil e was one of the hardest trials he’d ever overcome.

Some, but not al of it, had to do with the injustice of being charged with her murder.

But—

If Daniel was already here, locked up in the Bastil e, it meant that Lys was already dead. So Luce had already come … and gone.

His past self was right. He was too late.

“Wait,” he said to the prisoner in the darkness, drawing closer, but not so close that they risked touching. “How did you know what I’ve come back for?”

The scrape of the bal being dragged across the stone meant his past self had leaned back against the wal . “You’re not the only one who’s come through here looking for her.”

Daniel’s wings burned, sending heat licking down his shoulder blades. “Cam.”

“No, not Cam,” his past self responded. “Two kids.”

“Shelby?” Now Daniel pounded his st into the stone oor. “And the other one … Miles. You’re not serious? Those Nephilim? They were here?”

“About a month ago, I think.” He pointed at the wal behind him, where some crooked tal y marks were etched into the wal . “I tried to keep track of the day, but you know how it is. Time passes in funny ways. It gets away from you.”

“I remember.” Daniel shuddered. “But the Nephilim. You talked to them?” He racked his memory, and faint images came to mind from his imprisonment, images of a girl and boy. He’d always taken them for the phantoms of grief, just two more of the delusions that beset him when she’d gone and he was alone again.

“For a moment.” The prisoner’s voice sounded tired and far away. “They weren’t al that interested in me.”

“Good.”

“Once they found out she was dead, they were in a great hurry to move on.” His gray eyes were eerily penetrating. “Something you and I can understand.”

“Where did they go?”

“Don’t know.” The prisoner cracked a smile too big for his thin face. “I don’t think they did, either. You should have seen how long it took them to open an Announcer. Looked like couple of bumbling fools.”

Daniel felt himself almost begin to laugh.

“It isn’t funny,” his past self said. “They care for her.”

But Daniel felt no tenderness for the Nephilim. “They’re a threat to al of us. The destruction they could cause …” He closed his eyes. “They have no idea what they’re doing.”

“Why can’t you catch her, Daniel?” His past self laughed dryly. “We’ve seen each other before over the mil ennia—I remember you chasing her. And never catching her.”

“I—I don’t know.” The words stuck in Daniel’s throat, a long sob building behind them. Quivering, he sti ed it. “I can’t reach her.

Somehow I am eternal y arriving a heartbeat too late, as though someone or something is working behind the scenes to keep her from me.”

“Your Announcers wil always take you where you need to be.”

“I need to be with her.”

“Perhaps they know what you need bet er than you know yourself.”

“What?”

“What?”

“Maybe she shouldn’t be stopped.” The prisoner rat led his chain listlessly. “That she is able to travel at al means something fundamental was changed. Maybe you can’t catch her until she works that change into the original curse.”

“But—” He didn’t know what to say. The sob rose in Daniel’s chest, drowning his heart in a torrent of shame and sadness. “She needs me.

Every second is a lost eternity. And if she makes a misstep, everything could be lost. She could change the past and … cease to exist.”

“But that’s the nature of risk, isn’t it? You gamble everything on the slenderest of hopes.” His past self began to reach out, almost touching Daniel’s arm. Both of them wanted to feel a connection. At the last instant, Daniel jerked away.

His past self sighed. “What if it’s you, Daniel? What if you’re the one who has to alter the past? What if you can’t catch her until you’ve rewrit en the curse to include a loophole?”

“Impossible.” Daniel snorted. “Look at me. Look at you. We’re wretched without her. We’re nothing when we’re not with Lucinda. There is no reason why my soul wouldn’t want to find her as quickly as possible.”

Daniel wanted to fly away from here. But something was nagging at him.

“Why haven’t you o ered to accompany me?” he asked nal y. “I would refuse you, of course, but some of the others—when I encountered myself in another life, he wanted to join in. Why don’t you?”

A rat crawled along the prisoner’s leg, stopping to snif at the bloody chains around his ankles.

“I escaped once,” he said slowly. “You remember?”

“Yes,” Daniel said, “when you—when we—escaped, early on. We went straight back to Savoy.” He looked up at the false hope o ered by the light outside the window. “Why did we go there? We should have known we were walking right into a trap.” The prisoner leaned back and rat led his chains. “We had no other choice. It was the closest place to her.” He drew in a ragged breath. “It’s so hard when she’s in between. I never feel I can go on. I was glad when the duke anticipated my escape, gured out where I’d go. He was waiting in Savoy, waiting at my patron’s dinner table with his men. Waiting to drag me back here.” Daniel remembered. “The punishment felt like something I’d earned.”

“Daniel.” The prisoner’s forlorn face looked like it had been given a jolt of electricity. He looked alive again, or at least, his eyes did. They glowed violet. “I think I’ve got it.” The words rushed carelessly out. “Take a lesson from the duke.” Daniel licked his lips. “Excuse me?”

“Al these lives you say that you’ve been trailing after her. Do as the duke did with us. Anticipate her. Don’t just catch up. Get there rst.

Wait her out.”

“But I don’t know where her Announcers wil take her.”

“Of course you do,” his past self insisted. “You must have faint memories of where she’l end up. Maybe not every step along the way, but eventual y, it al has to end where it started.”

A silent understanding passed between them. Running his hands along the wal near the window, Daniel summoned a shadow. It was invisible to him in the darkness, but he could feel it moving toward him, and he deftly worked it into shape. This Announcer seemed as despondent as he felt. “You’re right,” he said, jerking open the portal. “There is one place she’s sure to go.”

“Yes.”

“And you. You should take your own advice and leave this place,” Daniel said grimly. “You’re rot ing in here.”

“At least this body’s pain distracts me from the pain in my soul,” his past self said. “No. I wish you luck, but I won’t leave these wal s now.

Not until she’s set led in her next incarnation.”

Daniel’s wings bristled at his neck. He tried to sort out time and lives and memories in his head, but he kept circling around the same irksome thought. “She—she should be set led now. In conception. Can’t you feel it?”

“Oh,” his imprisoned past self said softly. He closed his eyes. “I don’t know that I can feel anything anymore.” The prisoner sighed heavily.

“Life’s a nightmare.”

“No, it’s not. Not anymore. I’l nd her. I’l redeem us both,” Daniel shouted, desperate to get out of there, desperately taking another leap of faith through time.

THIRTEEN