Page 103

I hadn’t been able to quit all of mine. Which made me wonder: “Could he quit? How do you turn off foresight?” Matthew was probably sick and in pain. I ached for him.

Jack closed the distance between us and placed his hands on my shoulders. “Maybe we should figure out a situation for our youngest, and then”—his fingers gripped me—“then you and I both go out clean.”

My jaw slackened. “I kind of understand your point about me, but why you?”

With a laugh, he said, “You think I’m goan to keep truckin’ after you’re gone?”

I raised my brows. “Like I did after Aric?”

“That’s different. We were raising a baby in uncertain times and then our family,” he said. “Woman, you got my heart. If you die, it goes with you. What good am I without it?”

“Oh, Jack.” I rubbed my cheek against his hand. “But the kids need us. And they will for years.”

From an upstairs window in the house, I heard Karena and Hélène giggling way past their bedtime. On the porch, Kent and Tee laughed at something Clo said. No way we could leave this.

Besides, even if I’d had no kids or a life with Jack . . . “You heard what I told Circe about Matthew.”

Nod.

“I’ve got to believe he has a plan. The last thing he asked me all those years ago was if I trusted him. Jack, I do.” When he still looked unconvinced, I said, “Do you remember when I first came clean to you about him, about hearing his voice in my head and how I didn’t think I’d survive without him?”

“Ouais.”

“You took it on blind faith and drove a van through a house to save him, a boy you’d never met. In turn, he saved us again and again. He’s earned our loyalty, mine especially.” I recalled galloping my horse through Fort Arcana’s minefield as Matthew directed me. I felt that same sense of vulnerability now, but that same determination to trust.

“I doan understand the connection you two have. Probably never will. But I also can’t forget when I saw him as a sosie. An evil double.”

Yes, but Jack had been out of his head with fever, down in the slavers’ mine. “I’ll never betray him.”

Jack pinned my gaze with his. “Then you’ll leave him to do it to you. Only one can win.”

52

The Empress

Three weeks later . . .

Circe lied.

Jack and I, along with our somber kids, stood at the shore of the Priestess’s majestic Port Edwin. I clutched an urn of her ashes and a dandelion crown in my shaking hands.

I’d felt the tingle of her trident icon just days after my birthday. Not half a year later, as she’d told me. Not a couple of months. Days.

When we arrived here after riding hard, her followers had admitted that she’d known during our last visit how little time she’d had left.

Using her powers that night had likely pushed her over the edge. That knowledge stabbed at me.

Just before the Priestess passed, with all her admirers around her, she’d murmured, “Sister almighty, we will meet again.”

We will, my sister. Aching, I spread Circe Rémire’s ashes over her mysterious queendom and tossed the dandelion crown into the depths. The sea took my tears in toll.

I swore the cresting waves waited an extra breath before crashing along the shore. . . .

53

The Empress

Year 36 N.D.

“How do I look?” Jack asked me as he straightened his tie. He’d finally learned to knot one out of necessity.

Tonight he was to receive another civic award at the town’s amphitheater. We’d had to do a lot of these ceremonies. People liked awards—made them remember bygone times—and they loved Jack.

“Like a million pre-Flash dollars,” I told him honestly. His rugged good looks just improved with each year.

“Heh. Didn’t take you for a flatterer.” Jack grinned that heart-stopping grin; it still made my cheeks flush.

Though we both had some age on us, I was wildly attracted to him. Judging by what had happened in our bed all afternoon, he felt the same.

“It’s not flattery if it’s the truth.”

“And you”—he looked me up and down—“jolie as a damned picture.”

I wore jeans, boots, and a dressy blouse and scarf, which was semiformal in this N.D. time. “I just wish the kids could be here tonight to see you up onstage.” Jack and I were empty nesters. I had invited them to this ceremony, but the post hadn’t reached them in time. They’d start filing in tomorrow.

“Me too. Miss ’em.”

Tee and his wife lived at Castle Lethe with their growing family. Clo had married as well and made her home at the old site of Aric’s satellite dish. We met their families halfway as much as possible, and they traveled to Haven a couple of times a year.

Kent, Hélène, and Karena and her fiancé were all traveling together, learning about life on the road. That fearless pack had already journeyed to the ruins of Fort Arcana and Sol’s Olympus, also pilgrimage sites, and for their next trip, they planned to find the Swords’ lair. We’d kept its location secret, our family’s bolt-hole.