“Yeah …” Milo said, a soft smile curving his lips and a gleam of apprehension in his sky-blue eyes. “I do.”
A fireball slammed into the outer wall of the camp about thirty yards away—and Clare didn’t even flinch at the roar and the shower of sparks that climbed into the night sky. Scathach apocalypse or no scathach apocalypse, she wasn’t going to let that moment go by. She reached up, pulled Milo’s head down to hers, and pressed a kiss onto his lips until she felt her own start to tingle. His eyes were closed when she looked back up at him again. She waited until he opened them before she said, “I do, too.”
The look on his face melted her heart.
“Promise me, though,” she whispered. “No more saving me.”
“I promise. I’ll leave the saving to the professional. You.”
Clare was going to kiss him again, but just then a discreet throat-clearing sound came from over her shoulder. She glanced back and saw Llassar standing there.
“It is done. What you have asked of me.” He held out the tin box containing the diary.
Clare breathed a sigh of relief. Now all they had to do was get back up to the top of the Tor—and hope that Allie had somehow managed to convince Postumus to convince Marcus to lop off his Legion boss’s melon. Then, with Piper’s help and Clare’s ability and Morholt’s now-magic-soaked diary, the whole lot of them could simply shimmer away and Bob’s your uncle. No problemo.
“Speaking of problemos,” Clare murmured to herself, “where is Stu?”
“The last I saw of him, he was heading over the embankment with the rest of the freed captives.” The smith shrugged. “I do not think he is … right in the head.”
“Oh boy.” Clare snorted. “You don’t know the half of it. Well, fine. If he’s decided he digs it here, then here he can stay.”
She almost felt callous saying that. Cruel. But honestly, the dude was just insufferable. And old enough to be able to decide his own damn destiny. She should just leave well enough alone and let him go his own way. Right …? Before Clare could decide whether to have another crisis of conscience, the Druid smith gestured to the markings on Milo’s torso and arms, where the paint had smudged and some of the swirling lines had broken.
“He should repaint the lines before the travelling,” Llassar suggested. “They will protect the Druiddyn magic he carries within him.”
Clare didn’t know if that was such a good idea—after all, the Druiddyn magic Milo carried around seemed to be part of the problem. But if it was a part of him now, then damn straight, he was going to protect it. She was going to protect him. She thanked the smith for his advice and he nodded, striding back in the direction of the tent to wait for them.
Clare turned and put a fingertip on one of the painted lines. “What … what is this stuff?” she asked. “I didn’t think woad had sparkles.”
“I had to use this …” Milo grimaced sheepishly as he dug in the pocket of his jeans, pulled out a little pot of blue cream eye shadow, and handed it to Clare. “I found it at the drugstore in Glastonbury. It’s not the paint so much as the symbols, but you’re right. I do feel a little like one of Katy Perry’s backup dancers …”
“Yeah … one of the ones she fell onto with her face,” Clare snorted.
Speaking of faces, she figured she should probably direct her eyes at Milo’s. Her gaze skimmed over his shirtless chest on the way up. Sort of skimmed. Her gaze wanted to linger on the contours of his torso, but her brain told her eyes firmly to mind their manners.
This is business shirtless, not pleasure shirtless.
Nevertheless, Clare was still breathing a little quicker by the time she locked eyes with him again. She unscrewed the lid of the pot and dipped her fingertip into the blue cream.
“I wasn’t even sure this part was really necessary.” Milo shrugged. “I mean … the markings are supposed to be protective, but Connal didn’t need them.”
Clare nodded. “Sure. Connal also wasn’t sending his body along for the ride when he shimmered with me into the present to help us. Just his spirit. And, for the record, I’d like to do everything I possibly can to keep your body intact. I mean … um.”
Clare, feeling her cheeks blaze crimson, forced her eyes back down to Milo’s chest as she started to retrace the designs there. “Forced” being a wholly inaccurate description of just how much (very little) effort that took. She started with a spiral that began just under his left collarbone.
“You know what I mean …”
“Yeah …” Milo agreed, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “Let’s not take any chances.”
“Exactly.”
He flinched a little. “Sorry. Tickles.”
Clare bit her lip. If they weren’t on a mission at the moment, she could have a lot of fun with this.
“Let’s face it,” Milo continued. “Connal was an actual Druid. I’m just a mapmaking nerd with a head full of hazy details that somehow managed to get me this far.”
Clare stopped drawing and blinked up at him. “And when does a mapmaking nerd find this much time to go to the gym?” She poked one of his pectoral muscles.
That made it Milo’s turn to blush. “Just … draw.”
Clare grinned, feeling better now that they were both slightly pinkish shades, and dipped her finger in the pot of makeup again. Then, as she looked back at his chest, she couldn’t help thinking she might have to appropriate part of Dr. Ashbourne’s vocabulary.
Marvellous.
23
The moon shone like a curved silver blade, its white light in stark contrast to the fires of Mallora’s scathach that painted the darkness with a sullen orange sheen far below. The northern rim of the Tor’s plateau was fringed with a stand of silver birch trees that were long gone by the time Allie and Clare had first set foot on Glastonbury Tor, way in the future. Now Allie stood in the shadow of those trees, counting down the moments before the horrible instant when Quintus Postumus, praefect of the Second Augusta Legion, would finally manage to goad his young protégé into lopping off his head. Because it was a “necessary thing to do.”
Because that’s what she’d told him it was. She felt pretty shitty about that.
Still. Clare had explained it to her—because Ashbourne had explained it to Clare, because Allie had explained it to Ashbourne— that this was the way it went down. And the evidence that Allie herself had unearthed in a farmer’s field (what seemed like a billion years ago) was pretty compelling. One big unending timeparadox circle. It made her head hurt. And her heart. Quintus Phoenius Postumus must die. So that, just like the Phoenix—the mythical, reincarnating bird his Roman name derived from—he could live.
Huh, Allie thought. “Ashbourne” …
Ash-born. Well, at least he’d demonstrated a sense of humour in choosing his modern name. Posthumously. Er …
That was probably just a coincidence …
Allie shook her head before she completely disappeared into a word-game morass. Mentally shying away from grim realities was all well and good, but she needed to concentrate. Imagine what Clare had to go through with that stupid blood-cursed torc, she thought. She turned her attention back to where Postumus stood—tall, proud, and doing his damnedest to sacrifice himself and thus give his men a chance to make it off that cursed moor and away from that godforsaken hill.
Boudicca’s torc fuelled the curse.
Postumus’s spirit fuelled the torc.
The one had to be separated from the other.
And Allie’s erstwhile dance partner, Marcus Donatus, was the only one available to perform that deed. Allie had briefly thought about tracking down the foul-tempered centurion Junius—the one who’d expressed such contempt for his commander—and asking him to do it instead. He’d have likely been more than happy to perform a little noggin-lopping where Postumus was concerned. But in the chaos of the camp, Allie and Marcus had only just managed to find the commander—who’d been on his way to the gate to rally the men—and convince him of the need to head in the
other direction.
“Why?” he’d asked Marcus, glancing suspiciously at Allie where she stood in the Roman finery he’d provided for her. “What kind of sorcery is this?”
Of course, Allie’s messy, cheese-grater-accented Latin (as Marcus had so delicately put it) was in no way sufficient to communicate with the praefect. So, sorcery to the rescue, she’d just lunged forward and grabbed Postumus’s arm. The physical contact activated the blood-magic linguistic bond and, after an electrifying jolt that sent them both staggering, she could speak directly to the Roman commander in English and have him understand her. It was an impressive enough display that Allie had his full attention from that moment on. Which led, in fairly short order, to the three of them standing together on top of the hill.
Waiting for Marcus to execute his duties. In the gravest sense of the word.
Only, it seemed he couldn’t bring himself to follow the order. The sensitive nerdo-linguist really did still hide beneath the hardened Roman exterior. Even though Allie had explained to him that somehow, through a kind of temporal sleight-of-hand that had yet to reveal itself, Postumus still wound up in the twenty-first century, rolling merrily along with a pith helmet perched at a jaunty angle on his still-attached head.
Her assurances hadn’t made it any easier for him.
So Postumus decided to make it hard on him, in the hope that Marcus’s Legion training would kick in and take over. Allie winced at the excruciating exchange.
“What kind of a soldier are you?” Postumus snarled through clenched teeth, his helmet lying on the ground and his neck bared for the blow from Marcus’s sword.
Marcus blanched. “Don’t make me do this, Quintus …”
“Is this what I taught you?” the praefect snapped, the words spitting like bullets from a gun out of his mouth. “Cowardice? Weakness? Compassion instead of necessity?”
He does the whole hard-ass act really well, Allie thought.
“You shame me!” he goaded Marcus mercilessly. “Do what must be done.”
Marcus shook his head in desperation. “No! There has to be another way …”
There wasn’t. They were running—quite literally—out of time. And options.
Allie knew it the second she saw Clare and Milo, with Llassar close behind, running for all they were worth as they crested the edge of the hill plateau off to her right. She knew it because Clare was wildly waving her arms. And screaming.
In another second, Allie saw just why Clare was running and waving and screaming. To her left, Stuart Morholt was stumbling and gasping his way across the plateau from the opposite direction. At his side, eyes blazing, face bone-white within the cowl of her raven-feathered cloak, stalked the Druid high priestess, Mallora. And she was chanting.
Oh, like things aren’t bad enough! Allie thought as she spun around to see Postumus and Marcus still arguing, oblivious to the approaching Druid peril …
And then things got even worse.
Because, not only was the sky beginning to do that weird, shattery thing again, but also (whether due to Mallora’s Druiddyn imprecations, Clare’s now-magic-fuelled diary, the torc around the praefect’s neck, or some kind of overall mystical circuitry overload) the shattery bits were looking grim and angry. In one of them, Allie thought she could see a waiting horde of scathach.
She started to run for Marcus, shouting “Now or never!”
And it was. Because if he didn’t break the curse in the next few seconds, they’d all have every never after that—for who knows how long—to contemplate the repercussions.
“Quintus—for the love of the gods—at least turn your back on me so I don’t have to see your face!” Marcus hissed through clenched teeth.
Postumus nodded grimly and spun on his heel. Head high, spine arrow-straight, he closed his eyes and held his breath. Marcus drew back his sword. He glanced over at Allie, almost pleading for her to tell him there was something else to be done.
The thing was … there wasn’t.
Ribbons of temporal distortion were rippling across the hill now, whiplashing the air all around them. Postumus, in an act of supreme bravery that turned him almost blue in the face, screamed “DO IT! That is an ORDER!”
Allie turned away and covered her eyes. She heard the sword slice clean through the neck of the Roman commander—a sickening, meaty sound—and she heard the muted thump-thump-thump of Postumus’s head as it bounced down the hillside … where it would ultimately come to rest, buried in a field, waiting for her to find it in a couple of thousand years.
And then she heard an unfamiliar, ice-cold voice.
“Never defy the direct order of a superior officer, boy.”
CLARE HAD SHOUTED A WARNING no one could hear over the chaos of the temporal rifts. A handful of Roman soldiers—led by a tall, harsh-featured man in an ornate, red-plumed helmet— had suddenly emerged out of the trees behind Al and Marcus and Postumus. The moment seemed to stretch out, twisting and distorting before her eyes, as the helmeted man drew his sword, stepped forward, and struck Quintus Postumus’s head from his shoulders.
Clare flinched, throwing a hand up to hide her eyes. Then she heard what the man said to Marcus and knew instantly who it was.
Gaius Suetonius Paulinus.
Come from his bloody successes in the east to exact a vicious revenge on the man who’d dared to defy his horrible orders, refusing to follow him into battle against the Iceni rebel queen. When Clare was able to look again, her gaze fell on something … impossible.
The praefect’s headless body lay slumped at the feet of a horrified Marcus Donatus. And another Quintus Postumus stood frozen, suspended in a crackling, flickering temporal rift, head still firmly attached to neck, eyes wide in surprise.
Al’s mouth was open wide in astonishment or a silent scream— Clare couldn’t tell.
And further off in that same rift, Clare could see the paisleyskirted figure of Piper’s grandmother, looking just as surprised as Postumus.
In the current slice of time Clare occupied, the great golden torc slipped from the stump of Postumus’s neck and fell on its side in a widening pool of blood that looked black in the moonlight. A moment later, the time rifts wavered like mirages and disappeared, leaving behind only the fading screams of a pack of frustrated scathach. Screams echoed by the thwarted Druidess Mallora.
Okaaay …
At least now Clare knew how Postumus managed to survive his beheading long enough to become Nicholas Ashbourne. He’d quite literally been in two places at once when Paulinus had struck his blow. And the coincidence of Piper’s weirdo granny wandering around on the Tor at the exact same time struck Clare as not a coincidence at all. She too, after all, had been a descendant of the same Druidess who now stood screaming bloody murder, hurling all sorts of vile epithets in her ancient language.
Speaking of Piper, Clare thought, glancing up at the starspattered sky, now would be a good time, Goggles …
Clare and Milo jogged up beside Al. The two girls hugged briefly.
“That was weird,” Al said, gesturing at where the spatio-temporal rift had vanished. “Weirder. Than usual.”
“Yeah,” Clare panted.
“Who was that woman I saw?”
“Grandmother of our helper birdie back in Glastonbury. A girl named Goggles.” Clare scanned the sky again. “She’s gonna call us home any second now.”
Al blinked. “I’ve been replaced?”
“You can’t replace her!” Marcus said, stepping forward. “She’s amazing.”
Clare glanced at him, startled by the fierceness of his tone.
“Al’s not being replaced,” she said.
“I’m not?” Al looked at Clare. “Wait.” She looked at Marcus. “I’m what?”
“You’re amazing.” He stared down at her as if they stood alone on top of the Tor. No Romans, no Druids, no corpses. “You barely know me. You don’t have to do any of this for me. And yet? Here you are. Risking your own safety for the sake of a guy who was
too dumb not to get caught in a time portal years before you were even born.” He laughed, and it was a small, lost sound. “I never got the girl in school, Allie. I’d never have had a chance with someone like you.”
Al blushed furiously and said in a strangled voice, “I’m pretty sure you must be mistaking me for someone else. Someone cool.”
Clare suppressed a snort of amusement at Al’s utter discombobulation. Milo elbowed her, but it looked like he was biting his own lip to keep from laughing, too.
Marcus didn’t seem to notice. He just shook his head. “I already told you. You’re the coolest person I’ve ever met.” He raised her hand and kissed her knuckles. “You’re magic, Allie.”
Clare felt her heart swell at the expression on her best friend’s face.
It was a lousy moment for the Roman governor with a bad attitude and a sword-happy swinging hand to interrupt. But he didn’t seem big on manners. He’d made that pretty clear with the abruptness of Postumus’s beheading.
“Legionnaire!” he barked.
Marcus turned, glared murder at the man, and executed a precise if desultory salute in his direction. “Governor Paulinus,” he said in a low voice that was almost a growl. “Was that really necessary?” He gestured to the body of the praefect.
“He seemed to think it was.” Paulinus grinned coldly—the smile of a predator. “I heard what he said. The man longed for death. No doubt bitterly ashamed of his dereliction of duty. But I confess, I do not fully understand. What just happened here, soldier?”
“Magic just happened here,” Al said, stepping out from behind Marcus. “Magic and sacrifice and bravery. And it’s going to keep happening and you’re going to stand there and let it.”
The governor frowned at her in confusion. Clare was about to remind her pal that he didn’t speak English, not that Al seemed to care. But just then a wide-winged, snowy-white owl with huge ruby eyes swooped low out of the tumbled sky. A pale shadow on the wind, the owl drifted overhead, skreeling its haunting cry.
Clare, one fist clutching Morholt’s diary, threw her arms triumphantly in the air and shouted, “Way to be, Goggles! Yes!” She pulled the tin out of her bag, swiftly bundled up the diary, stuffed it inside, shut the lid, and tossed the whole package to Llassar, who stood waiting for it. Then Clare lunged at Al, latching onto her wrist with one hand and grabbing Milo with the other.