Page 23 of A Spark in Time (A Knights Through Time Romance #21)

Eight Years Later

The Silk Road, Near Samarkand

The caravanserai’s roof offered the best view of the stars Bebe had found in her eight years of wandering. They spread above the Central Asian steppe like diamonds scattered by a careless god—or a grieving woman who’d thrown the real thing into the sea.

Things that are the same whether you’re in Manhattan or Mesopotamia: stars don’t care about your broken heart, wine helps but doesn’t heal, and dead men visit you in dreams.

She pulled her silk robe tighter—local weave, worth its weight in the gold she’d earned cursing unfaithful lovers from Alexandria to Babylon to here, the edge of the known world.

Her hair caught the moonlight, completely silver now, though she was only twenty-six.

Or two thousand four hundred and twenty-six, depending on how you counted.

“Mama, look! The warrior constellation!”

Thalia bounded up the wooden steps with the energy only eight-year-olds possessed, pointing at the stars with one hand while clutching a honey cake with the other. She had Kassander’s eyes—blue as a Thessalian summer sky—and his grin, the one that promised trouble and delivered worse.

The one that made me fall in love with him. The one he wore while dying.

“I see it, little warrior,” Bebe said, pulling her daughter close. The child smelled of adventure and sticky fingers, the particular perfume of childhood anywhere in any century.

“Tell me again how he held his sword?”

“Like he was born with it in his hand.” Bebe traced the stars, remembering Kassander teaching her the constellations that night in the fishing village, before the Spartans, before the blood, before everything ended. “Your father believed every warrior was written in the stars.”

Thalia snuggled closer, and Bebe’s heart clenched. She’d discovered she was pregnant in Alexandria, three months after watching Kassander die. Had spent the entire pregnancy terrified she’d cursed the child, that her grief would poison the baby like wine turned to vinegar.

Instead, she’d gotten Thalia—fierce and bright and absolutely fearless. A daughter who’d inherited her father’s warrior spirit and her mother’s talent for trouble.

And who will inherit the curse. Silver hair young, broken hearts always, loving wrong like it’s the family business.

“Where are we going next?” Thalia asked, honey cake finished, sticky fingers now playing with Bebe’s silver hair.

“Where do you want to go?”

“China! The merchant said they have dragons!”

“They have pictures of dragons. Slight difference.”

“India then! They have elephants!”

Bebe smiled. They’d been to India last year—she’d set herself up as an oracle in a temple outside Taxila, cursing faithless husbands for wronged wives until the local priests got nervous about competition.

They’d had to leave quickly, in the middle of the night, Thalia laughing as they ran like it was the world’s best game.

Running. Always running. Athens to Egypt to Carthage to Damascus to Babylon to here.

She’d kept her promise to Kassander—to live.

She’d seen the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (overrated), the mountains of Persia (spectacular), traders from lands so far east they didn’t have names yet in Greek.

She’d learned to curse in twelve languages, to birth revenge in tongues that wouldn’t be written down for centuries.

And everywhere she went, women found her. They always knew—something about the silver hair, the grief that clung to her like expensive perfume, the way she understood their particular flavor of heartbreak.

“Mama, why do the women cry when they come to you?”

Because love is a knife and men are usually holding the handle.

“Because sometimes people hurt us, and tears are how we wash the wounds.”

“Do you cry?” her beautiful daughter asked.

“Not anymore.” Not since that night on the ship when she’d screamed her curse into the storm, creating a legacy of heartbreak that would follow every woman of her blood.

Thalia was quiet for a moment, then: “I won’t cry either. I’ll be strong like Papa was.”

No, my darling. You’ll cry. You’ll love some beautiful disaster of a man who’ll break your heart into pieces you’ll spend years finding. You’ll think you can fix him, save him, change him. You’ll be wrong. That’s what I’ve condemned you to.

“You can be strong and still cry,” Bebe said instead. “Your father cried. Once.”

And you will too, my darling. When you’re sixteen and fall for some impossible boy with kind eyes and a doomed fate. The curse won’t wait for you to be ready.

“When?”

“When he knew he had to leave me.”

Thalia considered this with the seriousness of a child processing important information. “Did you curse the men who killed him?”

“No.” She’d wanted to. Gods, how she’d wanted to. But by the time she had the power, the knowledge, the rage transformed into something useful, it was too late. They were already dead, killed in the same war that took Kassander. “I cursed something bigger instead.”

“What?”

“Love itself.”

A caravan guard called up—they’d be leaving at dawn, heading further east along the Silk Road. Always moving, always running, always searching for something she’d never find because it bled out on the deck of a ship eight years ago.

That night, after Thalia fell asleep with her hand wrapped in Bebe’s silver hair, now down to her waist, Bebe stood on the roof again, watching the stars wheel overhead. She thought of all the places she’d been.

Alexandria, where she’d learned to weaponize heartbreak.

Carthage, where she’d taught a queen’s daughter to curse her Roman lover.

Damascus, where she’d whispered revenge into perfumed air while merchants’ wives wept gold tears.

Babylon, where she’d walked the same streets Ishtar once blessed, spreading her own kind of divine justice.

The Hindu Kush, where mountain women understood that cold hearts needed colder curses.

And now here, the crossroads of the world, where silk and spices and sorrows all traveled the same routes.

I kept my promise, she told Kassander’s ghost. I lived. I saw the world. I had our daughter. I became something neither of us expected—successful, powerful, feared.

I also cursed our daughter and every daughter after her to love like drowning and lose like breathing.

The stars didn’t answer. They never did.

But tomorrow, they’d keep moving east. Because that’s what Merriweather women would always do—run toward something, run from something, never sure which but always running.

Thalia murmured in her sleep, something about swords and stars.

“We were meant for love,” Bebe whispered to the night, to the memory of a Thessalian warrior who’d chosen her over living, to the daughter who’d inherit his eyes and her curse, “but cursed to lose it.”

The caravan bells chimed in the wind, ready for another journey, another escape, another day of living with the weight of what she’d done.

At least this time, she wouldn’t be running alone.

At least this time, she had proof that something beautiful could come from that much pain.

Even if that something beautiful was doomed to repeat her mistakes, silver-haired and blue-eyed and absolutely destined to love wrong.

“Every Merriweather woman,” she murmured, kissing her daughter’s head. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

But maybe you’ll be the one who breaks it. Maybe love will finally be stronger than my rage.

But looking at Thalia—fierce and free and alive—she couldn’t be entirely sorry.

Some curses were worth it.

* * *

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this heartbreaking origin story of the Merriweather women. Next up is, Silent Knight, where you’ll meet Gareth de Clare. His silence was his shield…until one word broke it. I hope you love it.