Page 10 of The Faebound Trials (Mates and Madness: The Phantom Prince and The Bloodweaver #1)

How we looked while we thread through time remained in my mind. And how it felt when you travel felt like how it did the first time.

Except this time, I was fully aware of what was happening. I was aware of my powers. I could feel the threads pulling each timeline, the threads that bind the universe whole.

I could feel myself burning while white hot searing pain stabbed the back of my eyes through my brain.

It took more than a minute or so, but it felt like an eternity of burning in blue fire.

I gasped when my back hit the ground, the impact punctured my lungs.

I felt like dying. I felt nauseous. I panicked. I couldn’t breathe. My skin was painfully hot.

I looked down at my hands and saw how pale I got, how blood was paid to travel through time. The world was spinning. I sounded like an animal gasping for air.

“Miss? Are you alright?”

It wasn’t Kell or Ellis.

The boy saw how I struggled. He grabbed me by the back of my head and placed me on his lap.

He gently put my hair away from my face. I was seeing stars.

“Breathe. Miss.”

The way his syllables and tone sounded rich and beautiful. He was speaking a dead language used maybe five hundred years ago.

Cold water crashed into my body like a savage wave.

How could I understand a dead language?

He lifted my head up and there finally I could breathe. He was patient as he calmed me down. He told me to breathe slowly. He held me gently in his arms.

All I could do was focus on his dark demanding eyes. Almost too dark in contrast to his angelic features.

I traveled too far. The boy’s clothes were from ancient times. Maybe back when Enara had a different name. Or back when Enara was still under the sea.

It was a boy who belonged in the past.

His face became clear to me. He had dark eyes, vantablack staring at me as if he needed my soul. Raven hair against pale soft features, his lips might curve in a manipulative distinct smile, the kind to make you believe he was weak and fragile, only then when it was too late you’d know his real side.

His stare was the kind to beg you not to leave him, the kind who would possess the object of his desire. And commit murder if you run away from him and choose another man.

He had a light and gentle aura around him, though he had that intensity that would make you remember a warning, of an awaiting danger, luring you in, keeping you compelled to him.

He blushed when he realized I was staring.

When I closed my eyes, all I could see was his face.

Strange how fast I memorized his face when everyone else almost looked the same.

I laid on his lap for a couple minutes, he didn’t mind. I rose slowly when the world finally stopped spinning.

“You’re my future wife.”

The sound of my laughter echoed through the empty street.

“Where did you get that?”

I noticed how my tongue immediately knew their language before my mind could process it. I let the mysteries of time threading drift off my mind. Save it for later.

“I just know.”

This boy was out of his mind.

I laughed so hard I could feel it in my lungs.

“Is this how people flirted in the past?”

“No. You’re my future wife. I just know.”

I couldn’t stop laughing at him. He was confused but he couldn’t stop himself from breaking a smile.

His smiling face was now etched in my mind. One, I was sure would last a lifetime.

“I was made for you.”

He looked me in the eye. And the way he stared, lingered at the back of my mind.

And I laughed.

“You are crazy.”

I pushed his chest.

“Maybe I am. Who knows? Only time will tell.”

There was intensity in the way he held my eyes.

No way in hell I’m gonna believe in love at first sight.

Until I was snatched by knights clad in silver armor putting me out of daze, jolting me back to my new reality.

And when I craned my neck to look up at them. I recognized the features humans would never have.

Pointed ears protruded out of their silver armor, the clanging of metal rang in my ears as they stopped right where we were.

I reached out to the boy. He looked around as if he was lost, hands trembling at the sight of the beings that haunted my dreams.

The knights wore metal armor with dark blue colors blending in silver. Until I noticed a familiar emblem on their chest. But this time it was a white bird with purple eyes, and it was three spherical rings dipped in copper. Enoranthas?

“We have sensed human entry at the commoner’s village. It could be a Corrupt.”

I kept hearing that word. Corrupt.

I waited for Kell and Ellis to appear but it doomed me when I realized I fell into the wrong timeline.

Whatever timeline I was supposed to go to, to look for Sara and find out how the fae could hurt us using that mystery item the bloodweavers had retrieved for them, I was sure it wasn’t here.

I threaded the wrong place. I bloodweaved way too far from home.

The sickening fear of being alone in a place I didn’t know coiled in my stomach.

I flinched when the knight guard looked down at me. His ears were tipped at the ends, he was stocky built and pale but his hair was long and white.

He was talking to someone using magic. I couldn’t see who it was.

I felt the cold biting my skin off. Strange, it wasn’t cold when I got here. Now, it was everything I could think of.

My teeth chattered and it was the only sound I could hear. I still felt restless and slightly nauseous from bloodweaving.

I looked around looking for a place to run off to and hide but it was too dark to see. The village was more hollow than empty.

Then I heard a voice speak.

“Keep her close. Bring it to the Forge.”

And now, I am an it. What am I, a fucking animal?

Before the conversation ended the stocky man looked at the boy.

“She was with a boy.”

“A Corrupt too?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then bring them both.”

They grabbed us both and before I could protest, fear clouded my thoughts. And before I could scream, there was this smoke that lulled me to sleep.