Tom’s gaze drifted from the letter in his hand to where Moira rested on the other hospital bed in his room. As soon as she’d dropped off the side of his bed nearly six hours earlier, he’d fumbled for the call button and gotten a nurse in. She’d helped a groggy Moira into the other bed. Her offer to fetch Doc Phillips had been flatly rebuffed by Moira’s insistence that a good rest was all she needed to cure what ailed her.
What kind of ailment sent a healthy woman into what had looked like seizures? How could rest be the best remedy for that?
Ruanna flipped a finger against the copy of Begni’s letter he held. “Come on, Tom, don’t keep us in suspense. What’s so important it couldn’t wait until you got out of the hospital?”
He rubbed stiff fingers over his forehead and adjusted his reading glasses. The cut in his leg throbbed and pinged every time he moved. No more meds, though, not for a while. They clouded his head too much. He had a funny feeling he’d need his wits about him long before his leg healed. “I think I know why you couldn’t translate this one phrase.”
James’ eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “Do tell.”
“Remember how Naomi said that maybe the letter was in code and how we might find the key in those boxes she retrieved?” Tom shot a curious look at Rebecca. “Where is she, anyway? I thought she’d be here by now.”
Rebecca reclined in the chair placed at the end of his bed and crossed her legs. “She isn’t answering her phone. I’ve sent someone to see why.”
“That’s not like Naomi.”
“I’m sure she’s fine.” She nodded at the letter in his hand. “If you please?”
“Sure. Sorry.” He shook off his worry over Naomi and concentrated on the indecipherable text Ruanna had helpfully highlighted in yellow. “I’m pretty sure Naomi was both right and wrong. The letter is in code, part of it is anyway, but the key is in the letter itself, in this very phrase right here.”
Rebecca tilted her head and regarded him with cool blue eyes. “You figured this out while being stabbed and sewn back together?”
Tom pressed his lips together. He could give Hadria away, share what she’d told him, and possibly risk exposing her to whatever she’d been trying to cover up when she’d shanghaied him and dragged him into the Archives. He could do that or he could let it go. Sure, she’d put him in danger, but she’d also given him a huge clue on how to solve the puzzle that had been nagging at him for so long.
And she’d saved his life.
He fixed his gaze on the letter, avoiding the knowing look Rebecca directed his way. “Something like that. Now, this first letter. What’s its place in the Hebrew alphabet?”
Ruanna squinted at the letter. “Tet. It’s the ninth letter.”
“Ok. Count from the end of the phrase to the ninth letter away from it. James, could you write this down?”
The three of them worked through the phrase, Ruanna counting the numerical values of each of the letters in the indecipherable phrase, James writing the corresponding letters in the text down on a blank page in a spiral notebook, and Tom keeping their place within Begni’s letter. When they’d gone completely through the phrase and matched every letter in the key to its corresponding letter, they went through it one more time, checking their work.
Tom laid Begni’s letter on his lap and ran a shaky hand over his face. Thank God they’d gotten through it so quickly. His strength was fading fast. All he really wanted to do was crawl into bed with Moira and sleep for a hundred years. “Can you decipher it, Rue?”
She took the notebook from Tom and frowned at the letters James had recorded. “This makes no sense. It’s not anything I recognize as Hebrew.”
“Shit.” He closed his eyes, struggling to focus his thoughts around the bone deep weariness and the ache in his leg. “Ok, let’s think this through. You said you thought this copy of Begni’s letter had been translated from something else.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “No idea what, though.”
“What if we don’t need to know?” James asked.
Rue glanced at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, presumably, the idea was for someone to actually be able to read it, but the Daughters are a paranoid bunch. What if the unencoded code was still in code?”
“Was that supposed to make sense?” Rue asked.
Tom took his reading glasses off and rubbed wearily at his eyes. His thigh was beginning to hurt. Meds were probably wearing off. “No, I see where he’s going with this. Daughters are paranoid. I bet Begni was worried this letter would fall into the wrong hands, so she translated it into Hebrew, right? What if she kept the answer, the message hidden inside the letter, in the original language as an extra layer of protection? What if it’s not supposed to make sense in Hebrew because it’s still in another language, maybe one her enemies wouldn’t understand so easily?”
“The language of the People,” Rebecca murmured. “Could it be?”
James handed Ruanna the pen. “Write down the sounds each letter stands for.”
Ruanna inhaled sharply as she grasped the pen. “I guess it’s worth a shot.”
The pen scratched across the paper as she converted each letter symbol into its corresponding sound. After a moment, her hand grew still and her face paled. She scribbled something else, stared intently at the notebook, then staggered to the room’s only other chair and dropped into it.
“What?” Tom asked.
Ruanna shook her head and passed the notebook to Rebecca, who looked it carefully over, her expression closed. After a long moment, Rebecca glanced at Tom and James, and said softly, “Kaetyren Ladognen. The City of the Sisters.”
James crossed his arms over his chest as a slow grin spread over his face. “Tom, you son of a gun. You did it.”
“I had a little help,” Tom said faintly. “Tell me you know where that is.”
Rebecca shook her head. “It’s a near mythical place, an underground city supposedly used as a refuge some four or five millennia ago. It was eventually abandoned, though Daughters made pilgrimages for centuries after.” Her eyes went wide. “The Oracle was found asleep there in a grotto, lying among the remains of the dead.”
“ ‘Five shall there be in the City of the Sisters, and there the Bones of the Just shall forever lie in sacred slumber,’” Ruanna quoted. She scraped a hand over her braid. “What happened to the skeletons found with the Oracle?”
“I don’t know.” Rebecca slumped into the chair. “They can’t all still be there, though. Councilmember Lydia identified one Sister’s remains at a local nightclub a couple of months ago. Sigrid and George are testing those now.”
“But the letter only mentions five sisters,” Tom said. “What happened to the other two?”
“Lost in history, most likely,” James said. “Where’s the City of the Sisters supposed to be?”
“Turkey.” Moira pushed herself off the bed, one hand held to her forehead. She swayed, then plopped back onto the bed, sitting gingerly on its edge. “It’s in bloody, feckin’ Turkey.”
“Naomi said Begni’s letter was found in Turkey,” Tom said.
Moira nodded, then winced. “We’ll have to go, Tom.”
“No, darling, you’ve done enough.” Rebecca rose gracefully and moved across the room, settling onto the bed beside Moira. “I’ll send Jerusha. She’s familiar with the area and knows the languages and customs. In the meantime, you and Tom can continue searching for anything you can find on Sanctuary in the Archives’ holdings.”
“You mean this isn’t it?” When she shook her head slightly, Tom dropped his head back against the bed’s headboard. “Great. One puzzle solved and now you hand me another one.”
A shaky laugh sputtered out of Moira. “Oy, Tom, yer life’s full of problems of a sudden.”
Not as many as he’d like it to be. He hadn’t exactly convinced Moira to marry him yet, had he? And the throb in his leg was quickly morphing into a burning agony. “Not to be rude, but can we finish this up after I get out of the hospital?”
“First it’s get here as quickly as we can, then it’s go away, I’m done with you.” Ruanna stood and tapped a soft hand against the end of the bed. “I’ll bring Phil by for a good visit before supper.”
“Thanks, Rue.”
James held his hand out to Tom. “I’ll come by tomorrow. Get some rest.”
Tom shook James’ hand. “I will, thanks.”
James trailed Ruanna out of the room.
Rebecca hugged Moira with one arm. “I’ll leave the two of you in peace for a while, though I’m only a phone call away if you need me.”
“We’ll be fine,” Moira said. “Tend to the People’s business. I’ve a keen yearning to know what awaits us in the lost city.”
“We have to find it first, though I have a few ideas there.” Rebecca stood and pressed a kiss to Moira’s forehead, then touched light fingers to Tom’s. “Rest. Heal. Take care of one another.”
“We will,” Tom said. He watched Rebecca leave, measuring her progress with impatient eyes. As soon as the door closed behind her, he turned to Moira, determined to ferret out of her exactly what had happened to knock her out for most of the morning.
* * *
After Rebecca left, the room fell into a silence broken only by the whoosh of heat rushing out of the vents and the hum of the overhead light. Moira met the hard gaze Tom shot her way.
“So,” he said. “About this fainting thing.”
Moira crossed her arms over her stomach. Her head was still spinning, though not as fiercely as it had when she’d woken flat on the floor with an unfamiliar nurse bending over her. “Wasn’t fainting, exactly. More like losing me immortality.”
His expression remained perfectly neutral, neither skeptical nor accepting, crossing into none of the expressions she’d expected to observe. Love, maybe, or joy. Even gratitude would’ve been welcome, but he just sat there, watching her fidget and squirm.
She forced her hands into fists, stilling their restless twitches. “I was praying to the Lady Ki, promising to follow where ye lead, it being the only thing I could give ye.”
“And then you fell off the bed, knocked your noggin on the floor, had a few seizures...” He grimaced and ran a hand over the bandage covering his thigh. “I didn’t know what to do for you.”
“Nothing, Tom,” she said gently. “We Daughters are a hardy lot, inside and out. When the Lady Ki blesses us by lifting the curse, some take it hard, others easy, but we’re all grateful to no longer carry that burden.”
“Are you?”
“Course, I am. Why would ye ask as if ye didn’t know?”
He leaned his head against the headboard and closed his eyes. “I’m afraid to believe it’s really true. I never thought you would, you know, never thought you could trust a man enough to love him.”
She stepped carefully across the floor between the two hospital beds, pushing down the dizziness assailing her with an impatient thrust of her mind. A woman only had one shot at real love, she figured. She’d given it a stab a time or two and never had it stick, but this time she knew. This time was different. Her love was strong and true, else the curse could never have been broken.
His eyes popped open at the first scuff of her boot along the tiled floor. He held a hand out to her and welcomed her when she perched on the edge of his bed.
“Thomas, me love, ye must understand the hardness a Daughter’s heart accumulates over the years.” She ran a had down his forearm, so pleased to be near him her heart swelled to ten times its normal size and near burst in her chest. “We endure many hardships, many losses, some accidental, others deliberate, and it turns us from the sweet children we were into the scarred mess of battle-ready warriors.”
A corner of his mouth curled upward. “I thought you were born a hellion.”
“Hushit.” She smiled and brushed her fingertips over his sweet mouth. “I thought ye might be the one who could break the curse the night we first danced.”
His hand sought hers and held it in a tight grip. “And stupid me, I kept trying to deny the attraction. I was scared, Moira, so scared I’d give you my heart and you’d hand it back torn to shreds.”
“Ye had a right to believe such. I’ve never loved a man before outside me family, and I’ve never loved a man as well as I love ye.” She twined her fingers with his and stared down at the union she hoped to duplicate for the remainder of the lives Ki gave them. “Did ye mean all those things ye said, about living with me and raising the babe together and all?”
“I meant every single word.”
“I’ll never yield completely to ye. It’s not in me nature.”
“I’m not asking you to, exactly.” He scooted himself higher in the bed, then tugged her against his chest. “I want to make a life with you, Moira. I don’t think we can do that if you’re running all over the world being a Daughter while I’m taking care of our family.”
She smoothed her cheek over his chest through the thin hospital gown he wore. “And when duty calls me away?”
“I’ll miss you so much and pray every day that you return safe and sound, but I won’t begrudge your going, not if you have to go. Oh, sweetheart.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and sighed. “We’ve both gone about this all wrong, each of us trying to be the one controlling our relationship, when all along we should’ve been working together. How about we try that now? How about we let go of all that fear and work on loving each other for a while?”
“As ye wish, sweet Thomas.” She fiddled with his gown, ruching the paper thin fabric between her fingers. “Siobhan and Hannah would’ve adored ye. I wish they’d lived to meet ye.”
“Me, too, sweetheart.” He sighed into her hair. “I wish the past hadn’t been so hard on you or that we’d met sooner so I could’ve helped you deal with it or carried some of the load for you. I love you so much.”
Emotion clogged her throat, thickening her voice. “I love ye, too, Thomas. Ye must believe me.”
“How could I ever deny it, when you’re here next to me, showing me how much?” He hugged her tight. His gentle strength surrounded her, shoring up her own. “I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being cooped up in an apartment. Let’s go house hunting next week.”
She smiled and held him close, and they spoke softly of the future, of the home they would make and the children they would rear, of the love they would share through the long years ahead of them. The nurse came in and fiddled with Tom’s IV. He drifted into sleep, and Moira not long after, both dreaming of the life they would build, together.