The Isis Knot (43 page)

Elizabeth was coming around and blinking blearily up at the sky. Sera crouched next to her but did not touch her. To touch her meant to heal, and it seemed as though Elizabeth would live.

“You should know,” Sera told the guard, “that this woman is named Elizabeth and she killed her husband, Thomas. I’m sorry, but I don’t know his last name. Proof will be near Parramatta. She struck him on the head with an iron.”

“Is that the truth?” the guard asked, his hands tightening on Elizabeth’s shoulders.

“It is,” Sera replied. Justice was now in the Crown’s hands.

Some sort of guttural moan came up from Elizabeth’s throat. Sera stood up, looked down once more on the woman who’d never leave this island alive, then pivoted and hurried back to William.

He’d moved farther along the wall, away from the mob, and had wedged himself into the shadows between two long, low buildings that flanked the barracks. Another, undisturbed gate cut a barred hole in the wall, and William was standing, arms crossed, staring at it.

“I’m ready. Let’s go.” She pressed herself against his side, pushing him out of Sydney.

“Okay,” he said a delayed moment later, and at first she thought he was trying to be funny by using that word. But then she realized that all sense of rush had left his body, he hadn’t budged an inch, and that his voice sounded hollow and distracted.

She followed his line of sight and her breath caught. There, on the other side of the gate, huddled away from the other convicts, his back set against the gate bars and his shoulders hunched over, stood Jem.

CHAPTER 27

Seeing Jem like that, alone again and contained within the Crown’s walls, made a mess of William’s head. He should be running now, taking Sera’s hand and guiding her far, far away from the mob, but the sight of the lad turned his boots to iron.

“Do you want to talk with him?” she asked, coming to his side. Though she’d turned Sydney inside out with Seth’s magic, and threats to her safety loomed around every corner, there was no fear in her voice. Only concern for what was right in front of her.

Beautiful, fascinating creature.

“No.” He extricated himself from her touch and started toward the gate. “I have something I want to tell him.”

He didn’t bother to soften his footsteps. Ten feet away from the wall he called out, “Jem.”

The lad stiffened then whipped around. Even though there were bars and bricks between them, when he saw William coming down on him fast, his eyes bulged and he took a fearful step back. His eyes darted to each side as though looking for cover—or looking for William, who no longer stood beside him.

Jem could’ve run back into the barracks, but he didn’t. And the heartbroken look in his watery eyes told William exactly why. Sera’s assertion rang true. On another day he might have shifted uncomfortably beneath it, not knowing how to accept being the recipient of unrequited feelings. But today, right then, it no longer mattered. Jem’s heinous actions existed outside of that, and he would have to live with the consequences.

“Will,” Jem croaked. “I—”

“Things come and go in a man’s life, very little of which we can control.” He hadn’t known exactly what he wanted to say when he’d started over here, but now the words came frightfully easy. “But the one thing—
the one thing
—we have that is always ours, the one thing that no one can ever take away, is our honor.”

Jem slumped and his chin worked back and forth.

“I fought for you, I protected you, I guided you.” William gulped back the catch in his voice. “Someone once did that for me, and it made me a better person. It made me who I am. It gave me a life when I otherwise wouldn’t have had one. I looked up to that man, and yes, I might’ve loved him, but it was the strength he taught me to cultivate and hold on to that gave me a reason to live when so many times I would’ve given up. I never would’ve betrayed him. Not for a million pounds. Not in a million years.”

William watched those words penetrate, watched Jem deflate even further.

“’ow did you know?” The East End accent was markedly pronounced now, like it had been the first time they’d met all those months ago.

“I saw you. I saw you with my own eyes and heard you with my own ears.” He could no longer keep his anger under control. He no longer felt the need to protect this person.

Jem’s expression turned pleading. “But she was—”

“Your sister. I know. She told us after we captured her. And now she’ll likely suffer the same fate as you.”

Jem paled, licked his lips. “We?”

“Yes. We. Sera and I.” He wrapped his fingers around the bars to the gate. “And that is all you will ever know.”

Jem looked over his shoulder at the mass of convicts and soldiers at the other end of the yard. If he wanted to, he could elbow his way through the rioting convicts and walk right out the broken front gate, become a bolter again. He likely wouldn’t be the only convict to do so on this day.

William said, “I gave you a chance. I gave you many, in fact. But I can’t—I won’t—get you out of this one.”

The inevitability of the gallows haunted Jem’s eyes. “I’m not asking you to.” He released a shuddering sigh. “I’m so sorry.”

But William had already turned around and stalked away.

He reached Sera and took her hand so tightly he thought he might crush her bones. When he tried to loosen his grip, she wouldn’t let him.

He dashed through the Rocks, desperate to get her away from the town. Away from New South Wales. He steered her toward the water—not the busy cove teeming with boats and eyes and the madness of the unrest that had bled in that direction, but farther west, past Fort Philip, where the land pushed jaggedly into Port Jackson.

The urge to flee into the blue-hazed mountains, to run all the way until they found another ocean, another world, another life, tempted him beyond reason.

Past the fort the harbor narrowed until it would eventually become the river they’d followed out of Parramatta. They’d come full circle, he thought, fleeing in the very direction from which they’d arrived.

A single homestead sat back from the shoreline, the yard fenced, a garden growing, a water trough on one side, and sheep mingling about. He hated to be within sight of any civilization, but without food or water—or any kind of plan—they had little choice but to remain where a chance of survival lingered.

A break in the vegetation caught his eye. The narrow path was little more than a line of bent grass and scuffed dirt where colonists had likely gone down to the water to sit among the rocks and throw out a fishing line. He tugged Sera down that way.

At the height of day, the water in the harbor sparkled and slapped against the land. Large chunks of rock had broken away from the mainland and tilted into the lapping water. He guided her across and around and through them, dampening the bottom of her skirt and soaking his boots, at last finding a hidden outcropping covered in soft grass. Rocks on all sides, the blue sky overhead.

Releasing her hand, he spun around and faced her. The breeze whipped between them and he hated the space. Her hairline was damp with sweat, her chest heaved from exertion, and the heat in her eyes pierced him with the force of a metalsmith’s fiery blade.

So much had ended, and so much else was beginning.

“Come here.” The command burned like gravel in his throat.

Without pause Sera came to him. He grabbed her hard around the waist, sweeping her into his embrace as his mouth devoured her.

The sound that reverberated from his chest was filled with anguish and frustration and loss…but also searing hot desire and an emotion he’d only ever heard of before meeting this woman.

The way she curled one leg around his hip and ground herself into him told him she just might feel the same.

He took her down to the grass, her small, writhing, desperate body heavenly underneath him. Their first time together, she’d ridden him. Now she would be his, and he would show her in his own way how deep his passion ran.

They both reached for her skirt at the same time. They scrabbled through yards of cream-colored fabric, their motions messy and uncoordinated. When he had her skirt bunched up around her shoulders, his fists clenched and full, he felt her manic hands pulling hard at the knot on his trousers.

Their eyes locked together as she shoved the trousers down and he lowered himself, immediately feeling her wetness against the tip of his cock.

Her hips circled upward, silently begging. This no longer involved Amonteh. This was not influenced by Ramsesh. This was him and Sera, and a desperate need he wasn’t sure would ever be properly fulfilled.

Her lower lip quivered. He bent down, took her mouth, and finally thrust inside, finding her sleek and tight and welcoming. All the way, as hard and deep as possible.

Her eyelids fluttered. Closed. The way she said
yes
, the sound drawn out forever, her voice breathless, made him shiver under its beauty.

“Sera.”

She opened those brown eyes. Words perched on his lips—the most delicate and the most powerful he’d ever thought—but he couldn’t say them. He stayed there, unmoving. He wanted to remember exactly what she looked like underneath him. What she felt like around him at this very moment.

“Please,” she begged, and it undid him. It ignited him like flint taken to a gun. He moved. In and out. Slid and dragged. Up and back. Fucking and loving.

Her eyes turned glassy right before her body clutched around him. The feel of that, those gripping pulses along his cock, pulled him hard into a ripping, shuddering ecstasy.

When they’d both calmed, he slipped out of her and sat back on his heels, knotting the rope once again.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked through a dry throat.

She smoothed down her skirt and sat up. The smile she gave him was weary, but beautifully so. “Never.”

And then she touched him. A simple touch—fingertips to his scratchy face—but it caused light and sound and a warm feeling to surround his heart. At first he cursed the poeticism, a bit embarrassed, until he realized that it was not exaggeration. Those sensations were very much real.

Something about her seemed a little brighter. Something perfect had just happened.

Her mouth went slack as her eyes turned distant, as though she were listening to Ramsesh. “Do you hear that? Do you feel that?”

He reached out to touch her. Involuntarily, his hand slid across her belly. Warmth emanated from her and coiled around him. The hum and buzz she shared almost drove him deaf.

The realization came simply and easily.

“My God,” he whispered.

She covered his hand with hers and stared up at him with the biggest eyes he’d ever seen. “I’m pregnant.”

Yes
, sounded a woman’s voice inside his head. The word wasn’t spoken in English, the voice cracked with two thousand years of disuse, and yet he knew exactly what she said.

And who she was.

The first emotion that raced through his head was worry. What could he and Sera possibly do with a baby, here in a land where they owned nothing, were nobody? And him with a death sentence over his head?

But then—he couldn’t help it—all that was pushed aside as joy swept in. He, who never thought he’d marry or have a family—or hell, ever lay with a woman again—had created a baby. With
Sera
. With a woman he loved.

But then he watched as she turned ashen, her body crumpling in on itself. He went to her, taking her face in one hand and touching his forehead to hers.

“Look at me,” he said, and her gaze lazily found its way back to his. “This can be a good thing.”

She drew back. “How? How could this possibly be a good thing?”

Some of the joy dried up, and he frowned. “To begin with, it’s my child and that makes me want to be happy.”

“And what if it’s Amonteh’s, not yours?” she snapped.

The rest of the joy died, because that could very well be true. But was that necessarily bad?

She ran shaking hands through her hair and left them there, making fists in the black strands. “This doesn’t make sense. I can’t get pregnant. They cut the tubes to my ovaries so I purposely couldn’t have kids and then…” She pressed fingers to her lips, her eyes widening. “Isis.”

Isis, yes. That was the voice he’d heard in his head.

“When I helped Francine, Isis must’ve done something to me then. She must’ve fixed me.”

He thought back to that night, how scared and focused and brave Sera had been. “Did you feel any different then? Could you sense something happening? Because the pain of healing was almost as bad as getting shot, for me. You wouldn’t be able to ignore it.”

“No, but…I was distracted with Francine and so worried I’d get caught or that she’d realize what was going on. And it wasn’t like healing you, sewing up a gunshot wound. If the magic to heal Francine and save her baby had to go through me, it could’ve just fixed me on its way out.”

“Or,” he said, as the thought came to him, “it’s what Isis wanted all along.”

#

The moment William said that, everything clicked together inside Sera’s mind. The past and present and, yes, the future. All these messy, perplexing days—ever since the moment the cuff had sealed itself around her arm in the Egyptian museum basement—made sense.