Page 25 of The Gods Time Forgot

Twenty-Five

Sunlight crept in through the curtains as Rua sat up, unnerved and out of breath.

They were her curtains, but she didn’t remember getting home. Her hand grazed over her nightgown. She didn’t remember changing herself either.

She drew the covers up to her chin. Her mind felt like it was being yanked apart from the inside.

She rolled off the bed and rushed to the water basin. Her body trembled and her legs gave out.

“I’m coming in there!” she heard Mara shout.

She wiped her face with a towel and ran back to her bed.

The door swung open, revealing Mara with Finn on her heels. They both looked at her disheveled state with vastly different expressions.

Mara was chagrined, but Finn was red with appreciation, his eyes lingering a moment too long at her ankles.

“You are not decent, miss!” Mara pounced on her with a robe. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but I demand you leave this instant.”

He ignored her.

“Rua—Miss Harrington,” he corrected, “are you well?”

She tightened the robe around her waist, trying not to sway.

Mara’s eyes darted back and forth between them before landing on Rua. “You will tell me what is going on this instant, or so help me, I will send for your mother.”

Rua rubbed at her temples and let out a heavy breath, trying to understand why the two of them were standing in her room. She barely remembered leaving the party.

And then it hit her all at once. The party. The scene afterward. Fainting in Finn’s arms.

“What time is it?” Rua asked. “Is Flossie in bed? Has she said anything to you?”

Rua remembered wanting to leave the Fitzgeralds’ so she could get home, pack a bag, and run. Her conversation with Finn didn’t matter. His accusation that she was a Morr í gan had no bearing on the situation at hand. She knew that after what happened in that ballroom, Flossie would be livid, and she no longer had a place to stay.

If only her being a Morr í gan actually meant something. For now, it was just a theory. A possible explanation for the lack of memories, but until she had all the pieces, it did nothing to help her current situation. Flossie was still the one with all the control.

“What time is it?” Rua asked again. She would have to figure out where to go. The park perhaps? The northern most part, far away from the clutches of high society. And then she could enter the hellmouth on Samhain, the same way she’d come out of it, and return home. Wherever home was.

“It’s a quarter past eight in the morning,” Finn responded. “Perhaps you should sit down. You’ve been through quite an ordeal.”

“I don’t have time.” She closed her eyes, clutching her head, trying to plan her next move. “Please, leave. The both of you.”

“Are you certain?” Mara said.

“Mara, I’m fine.” Her words were final. Mara left with a solemn nod. Finn said nothing. Rua turned her back, waiting for the sound of the door to shut behind her.

When it did, she shoved the plainest gown she could find into her valise. She grabbed a shawl and a cape. They were lighter garments, meant for only the mildest fall breeze. Her heavier winter outfits were arriving later this week. Her throat tightened at the thought of not having somewhere to go as the cold weather moved in. The October days were perfectly comfortable, but the nights were noticeably nippier. She shook the thoughts aside. It would only be three days; she could handle the cold.

She bent down on the floor, pulled back the rug, and lifted the floorboard. She took out Mara’s diary, preparing to pack it in her case. She needed the other little journal from the library, the one with all the dates, in case there were any details she’d missed.

“Are you packing?” Finn asked.

Startled, Rua spun around, dropping the book. “I thought I asked you to leave.”

He lifted the diary off the floor and handed it to her, then looked at the valise haphazardly stuffed with clothes, worry in his eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Please, go.” This time she opened the door for him. Leaving before Flossie knew to send anyone after her was crucial to her escape.

He didn’t move.

“I went back to the Fitzgeralds’ after you were safely in bed. Your parents hadn’t left. They were talking to the Fitzgeralds. I let them know I brought you home.”

“And what did Flossie say?” Rua braced for the inevitable. “Was she furious?”

“No.” He shook his head with a crinkle in his brow. “The opposite, in fact. She thanked me and insisted we all have dinner this evening.”

“We? As in all of us?” Rua asked, pointing to herself. Was Flossie so absurd that having Finn take her home was enough to make up for Annette’s disastrous ball? Even Rua wouldn’t have blamed Flossie if this was the event that tipped the scales. It was a calamity through and through.

“Well, I don’t think she was extending the invite to the Fitzgeralds, but, yes, the four of us.”

Rua let out a breath and set her valise down.

“Where were you going to go?” Finn asked her, concerned.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“I suppose not,” he said, though she could tell he would have liked her to elaborate. He walked through the door, then stopped.

“Thank you again for getting me home,” Rua said.

She was overwhelmed and full of mysteries. Last night was the first time she’d felt truly close to unhinged. First with Annette, and then with Finn in the garden. She thought of the marble statue and its severed head. Severed by her hand.

She glanced down at her hands, her weapons. A solid block of marble. Then at Finn, her intended target. He was the one she was mad at. What would she have done if the statue weren’t there? Though she had the feeling Finn wouldn’t have gone down so easily.

She’d seen the way he’d crushed that man’s hand, pulverizing his bones as though they were no more than powder. She had never put a name to it and she’d been dancing around it for weeks, but could it really be true what Finn had said, that she was a Morr í gan? What did that make him? The mysterious man from her dreams?

“Don’t thank me. I set this in motion. I bungled the dance. Getting you home was the very least I could do.”

To think that all of this chaos was the result of Finn not returning her to her dance partner. How stupid.

“Well,” Rua said, “I’d better get myself sorted. I’m sure I have some explaining to do before dinner this evening.” Though if it was true that she was an ancient Irish goddess, she wasn’t sure what she was still doing pandering to Flossie.

Finn’s face was serious. “Rua, if anything like this ever happens again, please, come to me. Or, if you ever find yourself in need of a safe place, you can go to St. Brigid’s. Tell them I sent you. Sister Mary will take good care of you,” he said, and then he left.

Rua lay back on the bed, drained. She hoped Finn was right, that dinner tonight meant that Flossie wasn’t too mad. But the more she thought about the angry mass of people, the more she realized someone would need to be blamed. That someone would most certainly be her.

She didn’t think Finn’s interest would be enough for her to withstand that level of public villainy. Especially not if he were to eventually marry Annette. Rua sat up, plotting her next move. Flossie might have stayed her execution, but the people would want someone’s head, and it was only a matter of time before Flossie gave them hers.

She couldn’t live like this anymore. She was getting out while she still could.

She racked her brain for the pieces to the puzzle, but she was still missing a few. Who was Finn, with all his strength and this magnetic pull? Someone of great importance, the key to her past. The one she yearned and felt sorrow for. It was him; she knew it. But she didn’t know what to do with that information.

Mara returned a short while later. “I’ve been informed that your mother is up and about. I imagine she’ll want you downstairs shortly.”

Rua grumbled and nodded.

“What happened?” Mara asked. “All the servants are talking about it. Did you really attack Annette?”

“Mara, of course I didn’t. This is all so silly. Finn didn’t return me to my original partner during the dance, and Annette got jealous. She turned the entire ballroom against me, telling everyone I was a witch and had the Lord of Donore under some sort of spell. Oh, I was so mad.” Rua shook her head, remembering.

All of this felt so trivial in the face of her returning memories, but that was all they were. Memories of a life long gone. She couldn’t understand how they connected to her future. For now, placating Flossie would remain her priority until she could sneak out of the house.

Mara winced.

“Yes, and then when I left the ballroom, I was on the balcony and there was a gust of wind, and it must have blown out all the candles. That’s it. That’s what happened. You can ask Finn.” Though she realized then that Finn might tell another story. One in where she was responsible because she was a Morr í gan.

“Well, I tell you right now, that’s not the story that’s in the papers.”

“The papers?” Rua groaned, rubbing her temples. It had been less than twelve hours.

“Did you do it, though?” Mara asked.

“Do what?” Rua looked up.

“Darken the ballroom?” Mara said, lowering her voice as though someone might hear her. “Is that what caused you to faint after?”

Rua shook her head, not knowing what made her faint. Everything had happened so quickly. She was flooded with emotions. Rage, confusion, hatred, even love—thanks to Finn and his heavy conversation in the garden. Love. She sighed. “How could I have?”

“You said you were angry. Perhaps you were channeling the gifts the Morr í gan bestowed upon you.”

“What gifts?” she scoffed.

“You went into the hellmouth and returned. It’s not something to take lightly. Over the summer, with such proximity to the Morr í gan’s power, you fainted. And it happened again now. Perhaps you’re unlocking your blessings.”

Ridiculous as it sounded, she thought this was a more plausible explanation than the one Finn had come up with. The Morr í gan were mixed up in all of this, but to suggest that she was a war goddess was outrageous, comical even.

But as she recalled certain memories, snippets of moments from a different life, she found it harder to dismiss the notion.

“I need to go to the hellmouth.” Her answers were there; she could feel it. The buzz in the air, calling to her, pulling her forward through the woods. She could find it again, and she could switch back places with Emma.

“That’s not at all what I was suggesting,” Mara said, her eyes worried.

“I’m out of sorts. I need some answers, and I think the hellmouth is exactly where I’ll find them. Will you bring me?” Rua asked, thinking it’d be easier to have Mara show her the way.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Mara shook her head.

“I’m going tonight, whether or not you show me,” Rua said.

“No,” Mara said quickly, “not tonight. If you can wait until tomorrow, I will bring you myself.”

“Why not tonight?” Rua asked, suspicious.

“You have dinner with the Lord of Donore, and your parents will be out and about tonight. It’s too risky that we might bump into them,” Mara said.

“Fine,” Rua agreed. If it was true what Mara said, that the hellmouth only worked on a feast day, going tonight would only put her at risk of being caught by the Harringtons.

Flossie wanted rid of Emma, but on her terms. A runaway daughter wouldn’t be enough to satisfy her. She’d need to know her problem was never coming back. They’d likely send out another search party, find her, and lock her up.

One more day of discomfort in the Harrington household wouldn’t kill her and then she would leave for good.

As Mara dressed her, Rua thought back to Annette’s ball and how she’d brought it to a screeching halt. The look on Flossie’s face; the way the room sneered and screamed. Their attempts to humiliate and shame her were ill advised. All they’d done was incite her rage. As if that meant anything.

But maybe it did.

They had all thought she was behind the darkness in the ballroom. Was it possible? She supposed so; she was living another woman’s life. Anything was possible.

Rua sighed and looked to the dwindling sconce beside her bed frame. She thought about the flame going out. Willed it to quench.

She focused, waiting.

Nothing happened, and she was embarrassed for trying.

“There we are,” Mara said as she fastened Rua’s last silk button. “You should really let me pin up your hair.”

“No, it’s fine.” She didn’t think her head could support the weight of her hair right now.

They made their way downstairs to breakfast, one marble step at a time. The magic of the morning lost now that Annette had strong-armed Finn into marriage.

“Get in there now.” A fuming Flossie was waiting, arms crossed, at the bottom of the next set of stairs.

Rua held tight to the railing as her stomach did backflips. Finn was wrong. Dinner was an event she would not be attending tonight, because this was it: the moment she’d be tossed out of the house and sent to the asylum. She should have left earlier when she had the chance.

“You caused quite the stir last night,” Flossie said, her eyes raking over Rua. “And how many times must I tell you that only children and harlots wear their hair below their shoulders?”

Rua took a deep breath and continued on to the breakfast room.

“Fortunately for you, everyone that matters saw the Lord of Donore carrying you safely through that ghastly crowd. Not only that, but he also came back inside and apologized to your father and Richard. Everyone’s talking about it. Heavens me, I think he fancies you. I can’t understand why. There might not be an engagement after all.” She smiled, but Rua knew otherwise. There would be an engagement, or else the papers would read something different very soon, and then there would be police at their doorstep.

“Richard is truly miffed. He was hoping to win favor with the Tammany Hall crowd by bringing an immigrant into the family. I’ll sort that out; don’t you worry. We will assess the damage this evening and act accordingly.”

“What’s this evening?” she asked, not understanding half of what Flossie was talking about or how things had turned around again. She didn’t trust it.

“The Houlihans’ ball.”

“No.” Rua smoothed the folds of her dress. “I can’t go to another party.”

“I should think not,” Flossie laughed. “A missive arrived promptly at nine informing me that you were disinvited. Can’t say I blame them. On all that is holy, if I am disinvited to any forthcoming events because of you, heads will roll. It is thanks to Richard that you haven’t tarnished my name.”

Part of her was delighted to be allowed to stay home for the evening; the other part was terrified that she had to stay home for the evening.

Her exile had commenced.