Skye
You and I are time travelers. We don’t belong here.
Those words raced through my head as I blinked at Marek from across the library table, my mouth gaping in disbelief. He couldn’t have said what he just said, yet those were the words I heard in his deep voice, bouncing around in my mind.
After a long, dumfounded pause, I managed to ask, “Excuse me?”
“We’re time travelers,” he said slowly, enunciating the words for me so they’d sink in. “We don’t belong in this time.”
“Then where do we belong?”
“The future. About five hundred years from now…give or take.”
The future. I blinked again and sat back in the chair as the numbness melted into my bones, under my skin. I’d had a lot of horrible conversations, ones that had left me homeless numerous times or ended in me defending my honor. I’d always felt numb as the news hit me. The therapist had said that was a coping mechanism, one that protected me from the feelings until I could process them.
And I had no clue how I’d ever process this information. I’d always felt like I didn’t belong. I’d always wanted to wear skirts and had been traumatized when my foster mother had made me wear leggings. I remembered the fear, that it was improper.
The silence except for the grandfather clock ticking off the long, long seconds made me nervous. I wet my lips and asked, “What is that time like?”
He sat a little taller, hope lighting his handsome face. “So you believe me?”
I barked out an astonished laugh. “No, Marek, I don’t believe you. You just fed me a crock of shit that there’s no way I can believe, but I’m going to humor you. I’m going to be insightful and ask questions and see exactly how you craft these outrageous lies before I walk out.” I crossed my arms over my breasts and glared.
“You’re not going to storm out now?” His brows flew up in surprise.
“No.” I cocked my head. “Is that what you’re used to?”
“My wife wasn’t patient.”
“Well, neither am I, but you knew about the energy and the after, so I’m going to listen. For now.” I swallowed, my heart still racing. “So what is that time like?”
He closed his eyes again, rubbing his temples with his hands. Maybe his headache had grown worse. “It’s… The closest equivalent in time is the late Victorian era. There was a huge war that decimated a lot of the population, erased the power grids and fossil fuels. People had to go back to learning trades and raising crops to survive. They use solar and hydroelectric power. Wood. The small government systems now work together, and the language you knew was our base language after the war. It’s called Uptari. English is our second.”
“I didn’t know English when I came here.”
He shrugged. “You did at one point.”
“And how do we use the bond to time travel?” This would be interesting.
“Well.” He stood and went to the desk, getting out the same box that held the Rai necklace and setting it on the table. He opened it, withdrawing a watch with a wide, leather cuff and several dials. “My energy runs this watch, and the different dials tell me things, like where we are in time, and how much energy I have in the bank.”
Fascinated with the depth of his lies, I leaned in to look.
He pointed to a small dial, the hand pointing to the red. “This is where I am now for energy. Last night, I had just about run out until you bonded with me and the after replenished some of my supply. You saved my life.”
Through the numbness, growing horror raised its head. “Are you an incubus?”
“What? No!” He shrank back as if I’d slapped him. “I’m not a demon, and neither are you. So stop that line of thinking.”
“Well, incubus feed off a woman’s energy during sex, and it seems like that’s what the after does.” I remembered his comments now. “I’d asked if you could get an after if I blew you, and you’d said it didn’t work that way. I get the orgasm, and you get an after.”
“Yes, that’s right, but I’m not a demon.” His brows dipped with disapproval. “We’re a team. I steer the ship, so to speak, and you power everything.”
“I power everything.” My eyes ached from all the rapid blinking. “So I’m nothing but a…furnace. To fuel your noble ship steering.”
“Well, it’s more glamorous than that. I can only travel about two hundred years without you.” His gaze became earnest as he held out the watch for me to view, pointing to the large dial. “But with you, we can go five hundred at a time. We can skip the great war and get into the better decades, like the 1950s. The 60s. The Victorian era.”
“That’s…crazy.” I shifted my gaze to the box, giving myself something else to look at for a moment. The box held a little miniature frame face down and some jewelry. A masculine ring caught my eye, and I leaned forward. Delicate vines wound around the thick band, the silver tarnished. But I knew that ring.
I sat back and wiped my damp palms on my thighs, staring at that silver band from a distance. I’d dreamed about rings like those, had drawn them on a masculine hand that held a more feminine one in sort of like a wedding pose. Why did he have one, and where was the other?
I leaped to my feet and paced the library, unable to stand the numbness laced with nervous energy. With that ring and the tattoos and the weird flashes of dreams, a little voice inside my head asked if maybe, possibly…he could be right.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
“Skye. You okay?” Marek asked softly.
“No, I’m not okay.” I rounded the sofa at the far end of the library and stalked back. “You just told me I’m the equivalent of a time-traveling battery from the future Victorian era. Why would a group even come back this far? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Yes, it’s dangerous. There are a lot of issues that can go wrong. Even though we were taught about that…accidents happen.”
“Then why risk it?”
“It was our job.”
“I was two. How could I have a job?” I paused, my mind working through things he’d told me as I snapped my gaze to his. “Was your wife a time traveler, too?”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
He’d never mentioned how she’d died. And he’d just said that time travel was dangerous… “Let me guess. An accident happened.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re recruiting me? Because we have compatible energy and a connection with the same, weird group from five hundred years in the future?”
“This isn’t a recruitment.”
“Isn’t it, though?” I laughed bitterly and paced back down the rug to the far sofa. “Your wife is gone, you’re low on energy for some reason, so you recruit me to fulfill your needs?”
“Skye.” His brows furrowed as he frowned. “Think about the image you saw with your eyes closed, right before our bonding. You’d seen blue and yellow, and what?”
“Green. A small strip of it,” I muttered.
“What do you think that meant?”
I tossed my hands in the air, unable to process anything. “How the hell am I supposed to know?”
“It meant we were already fully bonded before. We had a partial strip left.”
I sighed and stopped at the end of the table, staring at his expectant face, his knuckles white as he gripped his hands together in front of him. This bonding meant something to him. Well, it meant nothing to me. “So?”
“We were bonded before.”
Those rings flashed in my mind, bright and brilliant, as if telling me something I really didn’t want to hear. If I was bonded before to him…what did that mean? I had all those memories of places I’d never been and things I’d never seen. Hell, I’d dreamed of someone like him in leather pants, making love to me just the way he had last night. Was this a connection…from another life? Another time?
I laughed wildly, sounding a bit crazy to my ears. I grabbed the back of the closest winged back chair to steady me as my mind flew to the most outrageous outcome. “So now you’re going to tell me…what? You only bond once for life? Let’s go out on the wacky limb and say…I don’t know. Maybe I was your wife in a different time?”
“Skye…” His gaze pleaded.
“What’s your middle name?” I blurted, crazed. Why that mattered, I didn’t know. But something inside said I had to know. “You lied before when you said you didn’t have one. What is it?”
“Skye.”
“What?”
“No. My middle name is Skye.” He sighed and rose, going to the desk again. “It was Lucas before I was marked as gifted, and then, they erased it. Your middle name becomes your bond partner’s name at the ceremony. That’s why I didn’t tell you, because it would sound crazy. But it’s true. It’s a way of enforcing the bond, the value of team.”
“No.” I blinked back tears.
“My name became your middle name as well. Didn’t you wonder why you didn’t have one on your paperwork?”
He was right. I didn’t have one. I gulped and dashed the tears that now fell to my cheeks. I felt nothing—no anger, no shock, no fear. The tears just flowed.
“Skye. You were my wife before we came here.”
I stared at him as I turned away and sank into the winged chair, my knees no longer able to support me. What the hell was I supposed to do with that? There was just no way…
Marek
Skye sank down to the chair in the library, dumbfounded, her back to me. Her feet disappeared, and I pictured her drawing them up to her chest as she often had. Her elbow flashed around the edge of the chair before disappearing in a tear-wiping motion.
My heart ached for her. I had expected her to be angry, full of disbelief, maybe a little mocking. For her to crumple and cry… That wasn’t my Skye.
I had no clue what to do, so I tossed my traveling watch into the box and went to my desk to grab the bourbon she liked and two glasses. I poured us both healthy servings and took one to her.
Wordlessly, she took it and belted it down, her eyes closed as the last fiery drops dripped into her mouth. Finished, she lifted the glass in my direction so I could take it, her gaze never wavering from the back bookshelf.
I went and poured her a second serving and carried it and my glass over to the little sitting area. I plopped down in the chair opposite her, leaning to hand her the fresh glass. She gave me a side-eyed glance and took it, but she set it on the little table at her side.
“What are you feeling?” I asked.
“I’m not feeling anything,” she whispered. “I’m numb.”
“Oh.” Stupidity washed over me, and I had no clue what to say next. “What do you want to feel?”
“This is unbelievable. I should be angry and outraged. I should feel used.”
“Okay. Those are valid emotions.” I took a healthy swig of the amber liquid, relishing the burn down the back of my throat. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” She wiped her eyes again with her sleeve. “Telling me a crock of shit?” She turned to me, a glare shimmering through her tears. “I was abandoned at age two, Marek. Left by some guy who wouldn’t keep me. I’ve always wanted a family. I’ve dreamed of finding these imaginary people and having them tell me why they left me behind. And to maybe take me back. But what I get from the first person who has answers is that I was his wife” —she laughed and wiped tears again— “in a different time, and there was an accident, and I ended up here? How is any of that rational?”
“Because it’s true.” I scooted to the edge of my seat, yearning to take her hand or pull her into my lap and hold her as she cried. If only I could feel her energy, I would get a better gauge on what she was feeling. I’d know what she needed. “There was an accident, and I jumped in time to save your life. And when we arrived…you were you.”
“But I was two.”
“Accidents— horrible accidents— happen. Fractions happen. Time travelers can splinter in time and become pieces of what they were. Some survive like you did as a regressed version of themselves.”
“So I’m…a fraction? I’m not even a whole former wife? I’m a piece of your wife?” Her laugh grated out, wild and uncontrolled, and I cringed. “I can’t even.”
“You weren’t a piece. We were bonded when we came to this time,” I reminded her. “You had all of your memories when we came here. I couldn’t keep you with me if I went forward in time, and you knew that. You helped me decide what to do.” I reached for her hand, and she allowed me to take it. “I didn’t want to leave you here.”
“And are you a fraction, too?”
“No.” I didn’t want to tell her she’d been injured when we jumped, and that’s what had caused pieces to splinter from her, making her regress. That would be a bit much.
“How can one fracture and not the other?”
“I don’t know. It has happened before, but it’s rare.” In our training, they had only taught us how to avoid this catastrophe, not what to do if it happened.
“And where is the rest of me?”
“Trapped in the past.”
The grandfather clocked ticked the long seconds as I waited for her to believe I wouldn’t want to hurt her, that I never wanted this life for her. Ironic that I could command time, yet I couldn’t get time to hurry up and give me what we both needed— her to believe me.
After an agonizing minute, she gasped. Eyes widening, she turned to gape at me. “So you are the man from my memory, the man in the long coat.”
Fates, what could I say but the truth? She might believe me, but she’d never forgive me now. Swallowing, I admitted, “Yes.”
Staring in horror, she snatched her hand away. “So if you’re right, then the one memory I have of you is…you leaving me? Leaving me here, with these strangers who wouldn’t understand me?”
“Yes.” My voice broke. “We made that decision together, though. I didn’t just dump you on some stranger’s porch. You made lists. Pros and cons. I have them. I’ll be right back. They’re in your office. Just…don’t leave until you see them.”
I ran down the hall and into her office, shuffling through the first pile of papers, then the second. I hadn’t touched anything on her desk, unable to bring myself to do more than just remember her head bent over these piles…
“Ah.” Relief flooded me as I located what I needed. Taking the pages with me, I raced back down the hall, my heart pounding as I entered to an empty chair. “Skye?”
“I’m getting more booze,” she said from my desk. “Something tells me I should get rip-roaring drunk for this.”
Relieved, I tossed the pages on the table and went to her side, taking the bottle from her hands. “You don’t need to be drunk.”
“Going to be a good husband and dictate what I need?” She glared and picked up another, reading the label. “Because you don’t know me.”
“I do.” I pointed to the sheets of loose-leaf paper. “Those are your lists. Pros and cons of what to do about sending her —you— to a family. It’s proof it wasn’t my decision.”
“And what was your decision?” She uncapped the bottle and shot me an arched brow in defiance as she took a long swig.
I wanted to grab the bottle, but instead, I let her have that victory. I needed her to look at what she’d written. “I thought if we went back, we could retrace our energy through time. There have been travelers who have fractured, and they were able to restructure the fractured pieces of their bond mate by doing that.”
Well, there had been one successful case. I had been willing to take the chance rather than leave her. I shoved the pages toward her. “Please look at these.”
Staring at the pages, she set the bottle down and wrapped her arms around her chest in a protective stance. As she stepped closer, she wobbled a little, and I reined myself in from grabbing her elbow. She wouldn’t want that. If she’d just drop the shield, I’d know what to do. I’d feel what to do to help her.
Taking a deep breath, she cautiously picked up the top page, her eyes widening in shock. She dropped the page as if it had caught fire. “This is my handwriting.”
“Yes.”
She stared at the page from a distance, her arms wrapped around her chest again. “And that’s…English.”
I nodded. “You could write it at that point. You couldn’t speak it for some reason. Memories fracture in weird ways sometimes.”
“I was two. It’s not possible.” She shook her head as she picked up the page again in trembling fingers. Taking a long, deep breath, her gaze scanned the page, her lips moving in silent words.
The pros list contained everything she’d said to convince me that going back wasn’t right. She’d get a new family, a new start to life. She’d wait for me. She’d get to go to a real school. She didn’t want me to go back to that time— at all.
“Cons— Marek dies.”
I shrugged. “That’s where her mind had gone. The thought of losing me forever was by far more daunting than the thought of losing me for a decade or two.” The other Skye had abandonment issues, too, but for different reasons. “And you were so angry at me to begin with… I was just shocked that didn’t want me to die anyway.”
“Why was she angry?”
Realizing my mistake, I gulped, unsure how to steer away from this topic. We didn’t need to discuss this. Not right now.
I had to be careful. I glanced at the list of pros. She’d written: More time to research the next procurement.
“I— I’d messed up the last procurement.” And while that was true, it wasn’t what had angered her the most.
Her light-blue eyes narrowed, and after a long moment that had my heart racing, she dropped her gaze to the table. “What does that mean….procurement?” She tapped the list. “It’s here. She’d written she would have more time to research the next one.”
“Our job was to procure items in time and take them home.”
Confused, she shook her head, unsure what that meant. I really didn’t want to tell her. “Procure what? What could you possibly need in the future?”
I drew in a deep breath, glad the conversation had turned away from my indiscretions. But I had no clue what she’d do with this new bit of information, because my Skye had some big issues with our occupation—hence all the rules.
“Our last job was to bring home the Rai necklace.”
Skye
“That makes no sense, that you’d bring home the Rai necklace.” I stared at Marek with morbid fascination as I sank into the chair opposite him at the library table. “Unless you’re a jewel thief?”
His dark brows furrowed as he winced, obviously not liking my choice of words. “Have a look at the notes. Maybe you’ll—”
“Remember? Yeah. Right.” He couldn’t be a thief. He had the whole sexy professor thing going on…except for the leather pants. I closed my eyes for a moment, breathing deep.
The liquor chose then to hit me with a haze of warmth that laced the cold numbness. I hated his gorgeous face as much as I wanted to kiss it, and I didn’t understand that. I didn’t know him. I shouldn’t feel anything except disgust at myself as I walked out that door on this nonsense.
Yet I stayed.
Opening my eyes, I shook my head to clear it and glanced down at the notes in my handwriting, notes I’d never written. With a finger, I pushed each page aside, revealing the next underneath. My notes on the Rai necklace, pages on other treasures our infamous pirate had owned. Well. Owned was a generous term since he was a pirate and had taken it all from someone else.
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” I muttered, repeating Marek’s words when he’d shown me the necklace.
It now lay nestled in the box on the table, the velvet bag concealing all that emerald beauty from me. I stroked the velvet, the emerald a warm bump under my fingertips. Marek had been so sure of the origin, that it was authentic, yet the necklace had been lost right around Lofton Burke’s death in the late 1700s. How could he be sure?
Unless he’d been to Burke’s time to take it.
“Oh, God. You are a jewel thief. You went back in time and stole this? I stole this? Please tell me that’s not true.” No, not me. Her.
He raised his hands in placation, his dark-blue eyes pleading with me to understand. “It’s not theft. We have rules.”
“Oh, sure. Robin Hood and Maid Marion strike again, but only the government benefits?” I barked out a sharp laugh that held no joy. “This just gets better and better.”
“You and I—”
“You and her,” I corrected. “Let’s get one thing straight. I am not your wife. Even if everything you said is true, I grew up here. This is my time, and I am not her, whoever she is.”
“Okay.” He took a deep breath, baffled as he raked his hand through his hair. “How do you want that aspect to be addressed?”
I sat back, confused. I hadn’t expected him to offer compliance. “I don’t want to be labeled in your misadventures. You can call her whatever. I don’t care. But I want it clear that I am not her, and anything that happened before the memory of you dumping me here is not mine.”
“That’s not—" He sighed and tossed up his hands. “Okay. Yes, we —she and I— went back in time to procure items as our job. But we had rules. We didn’t take things that were owned. So no museum pieces, private collections—anything like that. We did the research, and if we could trace an item to where it went underground and it was never found, then we went back and found it.”
“But why? Why would your government risk your life for a rare emerald? That’s a piss-poor use of an excellent gift.” I glanced at him with narrow eyes. “If it’s true.”
“Of course it’s true, but it’s not perfect, living in our time,” he said slowly. “There are different levels of gifted. There are gifted who can work independently, like healers or seekers. There are others who work in bonded pairs, but their bond is weak. They can have a life outside of the bond, marry outside of the bond. Then, there’s the elite gifted.” He swallowed and took another breath. “That’s us. A small group who only time travel, and they are trained for different aspects. Some get information, technology, medicine. And those who are the elite of the elite… They retrieve antiquities and other items that can be kept or bartered with other nations or even the rebel forces.”
“And she was… You are the elite of the elite.” Damn. I couldn’t help but feel awed. He’d said that I’d be a celebrity where he came from because of the power of my energy, and people would treat me differently… He’d meant it. It wasn’t just some cheap praise and admiration to get him laid.
“Yes, ranked first of our class. But we have paid over and over for that status. In so many ways, and it nearly destroyed us.” He rubbed his temple as if easing the ache behind his sad eyes. “If we’d been lesser gifted, we’d be at home in a factory or some other type of work, and we’d be safe,” he said, his voice defeated, the slump of his shoulders dejected. “And now, I’m stuck here.”
I had no clue what to say to that. I tried to be a bigger person and see it from his side. He’d been forced to do a job and lost everything. He couldn’t even go home if he wanted. That had to suck.
Uncomfortable as we sat in silence, I peered into the box of treasures. Under the velvet bag, the down-turned miniature frame peeked out, beckoning to me.
“May I?” I gestured to the frame.
He shrugged.
I picked the frame up, turned it…and gasped at the old-time photo of Marek and…me. Well, me with jet-black hair with natural curls instead of my current copper color and straightened. This couldn’t be real.
When I looked up at Marek for verification, he said, “We had it taken in 1891 for our anniversary. We weren’t allowed to do things like that…leave a piece of ourselves in the past. But we broke the rules.”
Shocked, I glanced back down. Marek looked dapper in a suit with a waistcoat and the chain of a pocket watch dangling in that fascinating loop as his hand held her elbow. She stood next to him in a stylish dress with a bustle and ruffles to her neck, her gloved hands folded in front of her. She gazed off in the direction she’d been told, but Marek stared down at her with love and devotion, so unusual for photos of that era since they took so long to take.
“You loved her.” I don’t know why it shocked me so much. Maybe because it was like he was looking at me…but he wasn’t.
“I love you,” he corrected. “You’re still her, deep inside.”
My gaze snapped from the picture to glare at him. No one had ever said they loved me except my best friend. Those three words seared through my chest and straight to my heart like a dagger. Sadly, he didn’t mean them for me.
“Again, I am not your Skye. I’m not this person.” I waved at the miniature with a strangled laugh. “I’m me. And you don’t know me.”
“I do know you. I know you like blueberry muffins, and how you take your coffee, and you become aroused during storms.”
A hot blush crept to my cheeks, and I shifted my shoulders in a defensive shrug. “Anyone could like those things.”
“You make pro/con lists. I knew that before you left one in my book.”
I shook my head, unable to take much more. The emotions that had been bottled up bubbled under the pressure, threatening to blow. Raising my hands in supplication, I asked, “What’s your endgame, Marek? Besides the energy, what do you want from me?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he contemplated what to say. “I want you.”
“You’ve had me. You seem like a guy with big plans, one who has everything worked out. So exactly where do I fit in your plan?” Because I was not inclined to comply.
He winced as if his headache had grown worse. Good. “Can we not discuss this now? We have plenty of time to work out the logistics—”
“So you have a plan.”
“Skye—”
“Don’t you even, Marek. Spit it out.” I crossed my hands over my chest, defensive.
“I don’t think—”
“You have a plan. It started with seducing me for a boost of energy. What exactly do you want to use that energy for? Because I don’t see you, a time traveling thief, just settling down and being happy as a…whatever you are, writing books.” With me.
Whatever he wanted, I was going to be a pathetic, lookalike choice.
He drew in a deep breath. “I was dying.”
“And you’re not anymore, so what’s the plan?”
“Okay.” He sighed as he rubbed his forehead again, leaning into his elbow as he worked up the courage, or maybe the lie, to tell me. “I want to go back in time. I want to take that damned, cursed necklace back to 1892 and put it back so I can heal you.” He stood and took a few anxious steps around the table, pacing in a flash of black leather and white linen. “That necklace is the reason why all this happened. I…I just want you back.”
He didn’t want me back. He wanted her.
I shook my head as he paced the length of the table. “I don’t believe in curses, but don’t let me stop you. There’s the door. You can jump two hundred years alone, right? You don’t need me.”
His brows furrowed. “We’re a team. We work together. Taking the necklace back together could mend the fracture. You’d get your memories back. You’d remember me.”
I blinked as I took that in. Did he think taking me back would merge her and I into one person? What would happen to me? My mouth went dry as I managed to ask, “You want to erase me?”
“No, no, no.” He knelt at my side, his eyes pleading as he fumbled for my hand. “It wouldn’t erase you. You’d still be you, but you’d…remember.”
I snatched my hand away in disgust. He would never want plain me as I was— simple, boring. He wanted her more. And fair enough, since he’d been married to her, and he didn’t know me. But I wasn’t giving up who I was to become someone else.
“Those are all Marek-oriented goals. What do I get out of going back in time?” I asked it as if we could actually do that, like he wasn’t crazy and delusional.
“You’ll be whole again.” It came out as a strangled croak, his face crinkling with desperation.
Sadness gurgled up, clogging my throat, tears stinging at my eyes. All the emotions I’d bottled up my whole life seemed to surge forward—the anger, the hatred, the shame. I’d never felt whole. And I’d always thought finding my people would complete me, show me who I was.
But I didn’t want to be erased or changed in exchange for being whole. I liked my life. My job. For once, I wanted someone to join me, to see what I had to offer and to rejoice in that.
I’d thought I’d seen a glimmer of that with Marek, that he’d seen the real me and had liked what he saw. I didn’t believe in fairytale endings, but I’d thought maybe this thing with Marek could go somewhere good, and I’d be happy for a change.
I’d been wrong.
Without looking at him, I turned and headed to the kitchen to find my laptop bag, shoes, and coat.
Marek jumped from his knees to follow. As he touched my elbow, his energy swirled against mine in a mess of anxiety and sadness. “Skye, wait. I’m sorry. We can talk—”
Shrugging out of his grasp, I held up a hand to stop him. “I’m done. Give me my coat.”
“Skye.”
“There’s nothing to discuss. You want to change me. And that’s the last thing I want.”
“I don’t—”
I put my finger to his lips, silencing him. “When you can see me as my own entity, separate from your dead wife, you give me a call. But I am not” —I tapped his mouth with my finger— “her. I will never be her.”
I turned, shrugged on my coat, and walked out, hurrying so I could burst into tears in the privacy of my car.
I’d gotten what I had wanted— to know about my origin, to experience an after effect…to find someone compatible with my energy.
I wiped a tear from my eyes as I got into my car, letting my head fall to the steering wheel. People like me never got what they wished for. Next time, I’d be more careful.