What’s happening here? I gave up. I’m letting go into the abyss. So why this pain?
Beads of blood seeping from the gash in my hand gave me the answer.
The mysterious green-eyed man had used my time-traveling dagger to slice my palm. He directed a clear-eyed gaze at me.
“You’re going to safety. We will meet again, Roman, I promise. Take this.” He retrieved what looked like a folded-up piece of paper and pressed it into my bleeding palm. “Guard this with your life.”
My fingers curled around the paper obediently.
“I’m going to safety,” I repeated, not really understanding what the words meant in my fuzzed-out brain.
“Ya hamiat alqamar fi allayl,”the man intoned in a loud, clear voice. He continued the ancient chant.
“Wait! I don’t want to leave,” I protested as comprehension dawned. I was being sent to another land, another time and place, without my consent.
I gazed at my dagger, which glowed brightly, illuminated from within. My cells scrambled, all thoughts dissipated, and the world darkened. Thinking this was the death I’d sought, I surrendered to unconsciousness.
When I woke again, fighting through the drowse, nausea gripped my bowels. I was going to throw up. Without opening my eyes, I let out a moan.
“Son,” a man said. “Son. Can you hear me? Stay with me. You’ve got to stay with me. Can you hear me?”
The voice sounded caring and kind, but I couldn’t open my eyes. I was too weak. And so I faded into unconsciousness, leaving this world, Olivia, my unborn child, and all I held dear.
Olivia
I slipped into some dissociative fugue as arms lifted me and moved me through the hellish landscape of dead bodies following the slaughter of the Sioux tribe. I drifted outside my body as I was gently laid on furs inside one of the remaining teepees. Vaguely, I became aware of two voices—I was pretty sure they were Leaping Deer and Emily.
“She’s miscarried,” Leaping Deer whispered. “The trauma of the fight was too much for her.”
“Oh, God, no!” Emily cried. “Olivia will be devastated.”
“Olivia might be dead herself if we don’t stop the bleeding. Quick, make me up a poultice of those herbs I showed you which stop bleeding,” Leaping Deer said.
“The one with Black Cohosh?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Move quickly, child. She’s losing blood fast!”
I slipped into a thundercloud of mental confusion, dark and violent. I came to, screaming.
Emily seized my hand and murmured in my ear. “Shh. We had to give you something to stop the bleeding. I’m so sorry, but you’ve had a miscarriage. Stay with it, Olivia. Don’t fight the process.”
But how could I help but fight? I fought against everything that had happened to me. Balthazar. The slaughter of innocent tribal members. So much loss.
A howling sob erupted from my throat. I’d lost my baby. I blamed Balthazar. I hoped death was claiming me—I wanted to die more than anything.
As days went on, my world transformed into a pitch-dark reality. Nothing mattered to me anymore. I sobbed, falling into apathy.
At night, I was tortured with dreams that turned into nightmares. I would see Roman and me in a room full of children, happy and content. Then, we would be engulfed by fire, and my family would be consumed by the flames.
I would wake up sweating and sobbing, sure that this would be my fate.
Emily sat with me constantly. At times she joined me in weeping.
At other times I yelled and screamed at her. She would stare at me, her face a mask of torment and sorrow, wondering how to bring me back. Then she would scurry away.
She needn’t have taxed her mind with such wonderings. I didn’t want to return. The one thing I knew was this—Balthazar had accomplished his goal. He had broken me, heart, mind, and soul, and I’d lost my will to live.
Several days after I’d lost my child, Marcellious returned with a handful of Sioux warriors as I headed back to my teepee after relieving my bladder.
