Thief of Hearts (Elders and Welders Chronicles Book 3) (28 page)

“Neither am I,” he said softly.

Gabriel cleared his throat, as if to put an end to that particular line of thought, and Rowan was happy to let him. Gabriel nodded toward the light. “She’s waiting for you,” he said gruffly.

Knowing he would see Hex on the other side was his only consolation. He just hoped she’d forgive him for all of the years lost between them. Rowan took a deep breath in preparation for the inevitable agony, and he stepped into the light.

It was as if the fires of hell consumed him.

THE JOURNEY THROUGH
time didn’t take long, just a few seconds, but the pain…the pain made it feel like centuries. Just a step, however, and Rowan went from the dry, hot chamber beneath the Sahara, to the damp, abandoned tube station beneath London.

The light had stripped him bare, and only the alchemy of his Da Vinci heart had saved his mind and body from being incinerated alongside his clothing. He just wished it were enough to save him from the pain. He felt sure he was dying.

As the duke emerged from the portal behind Rowan, stumbling to his knees and gasping for air, the blinding light faded into nothing. The device ground to a permanent halt, though the death of the hearts did not take away his agony.

It was nearly impossible to think, to move his limbs and focus eyes that felt as if they’d been turned inside out and back again. But he tried, because beyond the pain there was hope, just a small seedling amid a fallow field. He wanted to see, to confirm for himself that he’d made it home. To Hex.

Gabriel had been right. She was waiting for him just steps away, arms outstretched. She was just as he’d left her on the other side, with her trousers and freckles and untidy red hair. But those sky blue eyes looked so tired, and her smile somehow looked so dim, as if all the vibrancy had been leeched out of her over the years. And he knew without a doubt that he had caused it.

He wanted to wrap her in his arms, burrow into her skin so deep they could never be separated again. But even the soles of his feet against the cool stone pavement felt as if a million fiery needles were poking into his skin, straight into the bone.

He made it only a few steps before he fell to one knee, then the other. Molten pain shot through him, so powerful that his vision whited out. Then she was there, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her head tilted down to meet his as her fragrant curls fell like a curtain around them both.

Even this tender touch—one he craved above all else, one he’d feared he’d never know again—was an agony. Yet he could never push her away. So he endured the pain, his cheeks wet with tears and his jaw clenched so hard it felt near to shattering. Eventually, his body succumbed to the shock, and he was once more falling into oblivion.

SHE’D WAITED FOR
a week in the desert. The
Amun Ra
needed that long to repair anyway. The sandstorm had stopped only a few hours after Rowan had left them, the winds ceasing with violent abruptness, revealing robin’s egg blue skies and miles of tranquil, monochrome desert. It was as if the storm had never raged at all. So they’d dropped anchor and started mending the ballonets, repairing the sun panels, and replacing the blasted fuses.

Two days in, when she couldn’t stand it any longer, she and Simon had set off on foot for the tomb.

It was empty. Dead.

Simon had spent many hours inside the burial chamber with a steam torch and notebook, fascinated by its strange design, but she’d not been able to stomach even the antechamber for more than a few minutes. The place had too many memories. She’d stayed just long enough to find the water flask and goggles Rowan had worn into the storm, discarded in a dark corner. Then she’d fled to the surface and lost the contents of her stomach, all of her hope lost.

Still she’d waited, stubborn to the end, watching the tomb from the
Amun Ra’s
deck, a silent sentinel. She’d waited long after the ship was repaired, until their depleted water stores made it impossible to remain.

Even after Simon had insisted they leave, she’d fought against the inevitable.

“Just one more hour,” she kept pleading, until she was so hoarse no real sound passed her chapped lips and she was too tired to stand. “He said to wait for him.”

Simon had to carry her to her cabin. He sat by her bedside, holding her hand, while she stared dry-eyed at the ceiling, unable to cry.

The sheets had still smelled like
him
.

And though she left the desert eventually, found Helen, and kept on living despite her broken heart, she never stopped waiting.

London, 1897

WHEN ROWAN AWOKE
, Gabriel was sitting in an armchair by his bed at Llewellyn House, dark circles under his eyes and cheeks parchment pale. He looked about as wrecked as Rowan himself felt: flayed alive, down to his sinew and bones, just as he’d been when he’d awoken in the desert. But this time, at least, he still had his memories.

Though he wasn’t sure he wanted them.

It was as if Gabriel read his mind, for his already bloodless lips tightened to a thin line, and his eyes fixed on a point somewhere over Rowan’s shoulder, never looking directly at his face. Rowan knew this behavior well. Four hundred years together, and Gabriel still had trouble meeting his eyes when he was up to something he knew Rowan would not condone.

That Gabriel still thought he had things to hide after everything that had happened was a bit worrisome. Rowan didn’t think he could stomach any more dire space-time emergencies. He’d lost so much already.

“How long have I been asleep?” he rasped out. He had a vague memory of passing out rather inelegantly in Hex’s arms, and his cheeks warmed. He was as mortified by the memory as he was pleased, for he was fairly sure he’d been naked. And crying like a baby.

Well, mostly mortified, then. Not exactly the romantic reunion he’d been aiming for.

“Two days,” the duke answered.

He groaned, throwing his hand over his eyes to block out the vile morning light leaking in through the draperies. He felt as if he needed two more days to even manage to sit up properly, but at the same time, he wanted out of bed immediately. He had a family to claim. He’d already waited too long.

“Please tell me it’s over,” Rowan whispered.

“It’s over,” Gabriel confirmed. “And I’m sorry…”

Rowan waved his hand at his cousin to shut him up. Gabriel had done the best he could in the worst situation imaginable. And though Rowan knew he should be furious with his cousin for inadvertently creating the situation in the first place, now he just felt…drained. Resigned.

Gabriel was a bit insane, always had been, but to try and suppress what came out of his brilliant mind was as impossible as it was unfair. He’d never created anything with evil intent. Even designing the Da Vinci hearts had been an essentially noble act on his part…if hubristic and, in retrospect, a bit misguided. Gabriel, in his own way, wanted to better humanity…

He’d just been too shortsighted to see that men like Ehrengard would take his work and use it for the exact opposite purpose. But Gabriel had never understood human nature the way he understood numbers and figures. He never would.

And having a foe like Ehrengard who just wouldn’t give up, who seemed bent on destroying Gabriel even after centuries…well, how could Rowan blame Gabriel for things that were ultimately Ehrengard’s fault?

“How can I hate you, Gabriel? You didn’t ask for Ehrengard to steal your prototype and attempt to destroy the universe,” he said, and he nearly laughed at how absurd his words sounded, despite how true they were.

The bloody
universe
. He was starting to miss the old days, when just a few continents were the worst things at stake.

A long silence stretched between them until finally Rowan hazarded a look at his cousin from beneath his hand, just to make sure he was still there. Gabriel was staring at him with such a raw, grief-stricken expression that he sat up despite the protestations of his body, immediately alert. The last time Gabriel had looked like that had been over forty years ago in the Crimea.

“What? What is it?” he cried.

Gabriel shook his head and gave a wry, humorless smile. “Your
heart
, Rowan,” he said, sounding anguished. “It always surprises me, your capacity for forgiveness. Even after Sevastopol…”

“You pushed me away then. I’m not sure what you’re doing now,” Rowan said warily. “Back in the tomb, you said I would hate you for sending me back here, but there’s something else you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

Gabriel closed his eyes, pained. “One million, nine hundred and twenty six thousand,” he murmured.

Rowan pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. His head pounded even worse than it had just a few minutes ago. He had a feeling he knew where this conversation was heading, and he was not going to enjoy it, just like he hadn’t enjoyed the hundred previous iterations of it.

“The approximate number of casualties on both sides during the Crimean War,” Gabriel continued. “One million, one hundred forty three thousand. The number of casualties directly attributable to the Great Fog in Europe and Asia since 1854.”

“It was the only way to stop Ehrengard and the Abominables,” Rowan said, as he always did. He’d lost count of how many times he’d had to remind Gabriel of this, how many times Gabriel had refused to accept it.

“Was it?” Gabriel bit out.

Rowan sighed. “Why are we arguing about this right now?” he demanded. “You can’t change the past.”

Gabriel fixed him with an impatient look, the same one he always gave him when he was waiting for Rowan’s puny mind to finally catch up with his own.

Rowan’s breath punched out of him when he finally realized what he was missing, why Gabriel was quoting numbers at him and refusing to meet his eyes. Why his last statement had been so stupid.

Changing the past. The reason Gabriel had designed a bloody time machine in the first place.

“You can’t be serious,” Rowan cried, his heart torn between absolute outrage at Gabriel’s audacity and sorrow at his cousin’s unrelieved remorse.

Sevastopol. Of course. Gabriel had never been the same since the war, turning away from the world even more than he had before and wallowing in his guilt. It was hardly surprising that Gabriel would defy the laws of nature—the laws of the
universe
—to try and fix things. It seemed to be a recurring theme with him: always wanting to “fix” things, even those things that should never be fixed.

“After all that we’ve just been through, have you learned nothing?” Rowan demanded.

Gabriel clutched the clockwork pendant around his neck so tightly his knuckles turned white, and his expression hardened.

“I learned the damper
can
work—” Rowan let out a frustrated, disbelieving exclamation, “—and I need just one jump, Rowan. One clean, precise jump back, and I could stop Sevastopol completely. With the new data I have gathered from this incident…”

“Incident?” Rowan exclaimed, clutching at the sheets so hard he ripped them, trying to regulate his anger before he strangled his cousin. “Is that what we are going to call it?”

Gabriel glowered at him and barreled onward with his lunacy. “With the new data
and
the calculations Hector has made…”

Rowan froze at the mention of his son. His
son
. “What has Hector to do with it?”

Gabriel gave him that hard, determined look he got when he was angling for something he knew was going to piss Rowan off to no end. “Why do you think Ehrengard wanted him in the first place? He was able to make the device work, despite its flaws. His mind is…unique. He thought of things even
I
would have never dreamed of, and if I can just…”

“No,” he said flatly, not wanting to hear another word on the subject. “
Never
involve him in this business again, Gabriel. I’ll have your oath on that, or we’re through.”

Gabriel sighed, his shoulders drooping resignedly, as if he’d expected this reaction. “You have my oath,” he confirmed grudgingly. “But I had to try.”

“No, you really didn’t,” Rowan shot back. Rowan knew that, if nothing else, Gabriel would never break an oath to him. He was vaguely horrified, however, at Hector’s role in all of this, as well as Gabriel’s desire to exploit his son for his own reckless purposes. He was relieved the hearts had failed. “Besides, the device is dead anyway.”

“That was always just a prototype,” Gabriel muttered dismissively, looking everywhere but at him. “The one I am working on now has merit, though. Harnessing enough energy has always been the sticking point. It was clever of Leo to think to use the hearts.”

And just when Rowan had started to believe the worst was over. He gaped at his cousin. “You are cracked in the head, Gabriel.
Clever
? Four men were murdered for those hearts.”

“Corrupt, vile men,” Gabriel retorted, jumping up from his chair and pacing the floor with barely concealed exasperation, “who have been in league with Ehrengard for centuries against us.”

For a moment, Rowan was too stunned to speak. Gabriel had always been reluctant in his role as leader of the Elder Council for this very same reason: he’d hated passing judgment, had been reluctant to do so even on Ehrengard himself. Times had indeed changed—his cousin had changed—and Rowan wasn’t sure that he cared for it.

“I wish you could hear yourself. What have we become, Gabriel? What have
you
become? You of all people justifying murder.”

Gabriel growled in frustration and rounded on him, his eyes blazing with righteous fury. “I’m trying to prevent over
two million
murders, Rowan!”

Rowan scoffed. “Hypocrite.”

“What?” Gabriel asked in a dangerously low tone, his body stiff with rage.

“You hadn’t the needs of the many in mind back in Egypt. You said some things
have
to happen, Gabriel. Or was that just a lie too? To make me feel less guilty that my presence in Cairo caused an earthquake that killed…God, who knows how many?”

“It wasn’t a lie,” Gabriel growled, stalking over to a window. He threw back the draperies and glared out at the view of the Mayfair streets. “The prototype was flawed. Events couldn’t have happened any other way without creating a catastrophic paradox. Just as I told you.”

Rowan was no longer sure he believed him. Just thinking about the whole thing made his head ache. But the one thing he knew for certain was that Gabriel had finally lost his bloody mind. “I suppose your new device has sorted this all out,” he scoffed.

“One day,” Gabriel said in a hard voice.

“And if you do change what happens at Sevastopol?” Rowan pressed. “How do you know the present would be any better? Ehrengard was
winning,
Gabriel. Europe was one battle away from falling to him completely. If you had not done what you did, we would be living in a world ruled by Ehrengard and his Abominable Army. How would an entire world enslaved to his whims be
better
?”

Gabriel’s fingers were clenched so hard against the sill that the wood was buckling beneath them. He wouldn’t turn to face him. Pain was writ in every tortured line of his body.

“The price was too high. I can’t believe there wasn’t…
isn’t
a better way. If I let myself believe that, how can I live?” he rasped out, his head bowed.

“You’re not living now, Gabriel,” Rowan said, his heart breaking for his cousin despite his anger and frustration.

Gabriel just laughed miserably. There was no light left in his eyes. “I know. But I have to try.”

Somehow, Gabriel’s obsession with Sevastopol had festered out of all proportion while Rowan wasn’t looking. He never should have allowed his cousin to sequester himself away in Wales. He wondered how many years Gabriel had been working on this infernal machine, how many secrets he truly had. All Rowan could foresee was disaster if Gabriel insisted on continuing down this ludicrous path, but he was too weary to fight him any longer.

“I cannot stop you,” Rowan finally said resignedly, sinking back against his pillows. He needed a few hours yet before he could even think about standing up. He needed a few
years
before he could even think about dealing with his cousin again.

He turned away from Gabriel and closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of him any longer.

“When have I ever been able to do that?” he whispered bitterly.

HECTOR WAS A
thief. It was not a skill Hex had taught him—she was
not
her father. So she wondered if it were in his blood, or whether he just simply could not resist shiny things…or, in this case, rare Sir Isaac Newton treatises. She knew a first edition when she saw one and wondered how in the hell he’d chosen it, out of all the books in Llewellyn House’s vast library. He’d never shown much interest in books with actual words in them—he liked numbers, and the more, the better—but she couldn’t actually say she was surprised by his selection.

And while she didn’t think Rowan would actually mind that Hector was…well, to be perfectly honest, desecrating the book by scrawling formulas in its margins and tearing out the bits and pieces he didn’t particularly care for, it was hard to watch. The book had to be extremely rare.

“And just where did you get that?” she asked of him, hands on her hips. She was trying and failing to look appropriately stern, but after a long night sitting vigil by Rowan’s bedside, then an equally long morning doing the same for poor Fyodor, who was still too ill to move back to Romanovs’, she was happy to be in the company of her children. Her healthy, whole, and entirely content children.