Passion

TWELVE THE PRISONER

Daniel cursed.

The Announcer had dumped him out onto a bed of damp, dirty straw. He rolled and sat up, his back against a frozen stone wall. 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 cell, 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 still familiar.

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

His own face.

He’d forgotten this cell, forgotten 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 scruffier and stiff with grease, but it was the same pale gold it was now. And yet, prisoner Daniel looked so different. 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 ball and chain of a prisoner—but the real jailer here was his own guilt.

He remembered it all now. And he remembered the visitation of his future self, and a frustrating, bitter interview. Paris. The Bastille. 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 Bastille was one of the hardest trials he’d ever overcome.

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

But—

If Daniel was already here, locked up in the Bastille, 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 ball being dragged across the stone meant his past self had leaned back against the wall. “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 fist into the stone floor. “And the other one … Miles. You’re not serious? Those Nephilim? They were here?”

“About a month ago, I think.” He pointed at the wall behind him, where some crooked tally marks were etched into the wall. “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 all 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 all 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 millennia—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 stifled it. “I can’t reach her. Somehow I am eternally arriving a heartbeat too late, as though someone or something is working behind the scenes to keep her from me.”

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

“I need to be with her.”

“Perhaps they know what you need better than you know yourself.”

“What?”

“Maybe she shouldn’t be stopped.” The prisoner rattled his chain listlessly. “That she is able to travel at all 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 rewritten 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 offered to accompany me?” he asked finally. “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 sniff 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 offered 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 rattled 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, figured 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?”

“All 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 first. Wait her out.”

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

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

A silent understanding passed between them. Running his hands along the wall 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 rotting 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 walls now. Not until she’s settled 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 settled 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’ll find her. I’ll redeem us both,” Daniel shouted, desperate to get out of there, desperately taking another leap of faith through time.