Her gaze was hard but not surprised. “Who are you?” she asked, stepploser to him.
The words cut him, but he sketched a bow, as deep as he would have given to the Emperor himself. “Deacon Merrick Chambers—the man you will one day love.”
If he had said those words to any other woman, she might have laughed and then walked away. However, this was Nynnia. Whatever she was, she was open to new possibilities.
The corner of her mouth twitched, as if it might break out into a smile. “Well then . . . that makes quite a bit of difference—but your title”—she cocked her head—“what does that mean?”
Those were words indeed to chill the heart of a man who had spent all his adult life in the care of the Order. Yet, as a student of history, he knew that the Ancients had vanished from the world before the Break and the Order’s establishment.
The sheer magnitude of everything he knew—everything that had happened before being snatched away from Orinthal spun in Merrick’s head. In the young Deacon’s Sight Nynnia blazed. It was not the same as Raed’s signature—in fact it was like nothing he had ever seen before. When he had first laid eyes on Nynnia, she had dazzled him with her beauty and her sweetness—but she had appeared nothing more than a normal human. Later events had proven that very wrong.
The second incarnation of Nynnia he had met on the Otherside had been beyond anything mortal. Now this one standing before him was human, but scintillating with a strange energy.
“So, you’ve traveled from some future, then,” she said, folding her arms in front of her. “Our scholars have postulated such travel is possible, since the essential nature of the Otherside is beyond time.” She gestured upward. “In fact, the router is just erasing that portion of the Grand Knowledge.”
Merrick flinched, and his mind darted to the horror the librarians of the Mother Abbey would feel to see this scene. “Where . . . where am I, exactly? Or when?”
“Where—the Temple of the Ehtia. The when is harder to say—by our reckoning fourteen sixty-seven after the Fire was Lit.”
Her dating convention made absolutely no sense to him; no calendar he had ever heard of or studied used anything like that. He put it aside for the moment. So many questions crowded the front of his mind that for a second they all jammed there.
“Tell me.” Nynnia circled him, the nearness of her banishing all other concerns. “How do we meet, Deacon Chambers, in this future of yours?”
“I could have already given away too much.”
“But you said I will love you?” Nynnia thankfully kept his pride intact by not dismissing the idea out of hand. Up close, he judged her age to be nearer fifty than forty, and he couldn’t help but stare. This was how the woman he knew would have aged if she had ever had the chance.
“You do,” he replied and clenched his fingers tight before they reached out for her. “Or rather you will . . . ”
Nynnia stood scant inches from him, tilting her head up to look into his face. “I do not see how someone from a religious order can possibly help us . . . ”
Merrick was about to correct her when the ground began to shake, rattling every bone in his body like a tuning fork. The Temple above them creaked and groaned, the stone joints shattered against one another, peppering the two people below with dust and pebbles. Instinctively, Merrick threw himself over Nynnia, wrapping his cloak around them both as they crouched on the ground like frightened children.
When the rumbling finally subsided, Nynnia jerked, her face twisted in anger—not fear. “It can’t be much longer.”
The images of the toppled pillars flashed in Merrick’s mind, and he hoped he was not about to get a personal view to how they had ended up that way. The worst thing would be to perish and not to know the answer to the question that was tormenting him.
“What’s happening?” he threw caution to the wind and grasped Nynnia by the arms. “Who are the Ehtia, and why are you destroying this place?”
“You really don’t know?” Her smile was wide, with a hint of mad delight in it Merrick did not like.
The Deacon took a long, slow breath. “In my time this place lies buried, broken and destroyed.” He gave up wondering what effect his actions here might have for the future—it might never matter.
An aftershock rattled through their feet, sending the Temple once more to singing in complaint. Nynnia looked up. The infernal device she had called a router had finished its work. It ground to a halt, a gear shifted and then it slid from the top of the pillar to the bottom. “One last pillar to go. Help me with the router.” She grabbed his arm.
It was entirely mad. This world wasn’t his, and even so, it was falling apart. None of that mattered. The woman he’d fallen for was near him again. So Merrick leaned forward and kissed her.
Nynnia flinched, only a little, before returning the kiss with an ardor he recalled easily. Her lips were sweet, and with his eyes closed, Merrick could tell no difference between this Nynnia and his younger Nynnia.
When she pulled back, her hand cupped his face, stroking the line of his jaw in a sad, almost contemplative way. “We are the Ehtia—and this is all our fault.” She led him over to the machine, and he was fascinated by the complexities of gears and drives that were revealed when she pulled it from the pillar.
“Your fault?” he asked, taking one side of the machine and heaving. Together they crab-walked it over to the only pillar in the deserted hall still with its carvings.
Nynnia adjusted the clamlike device, until it wrapped around the stone with a sharp snap. “There is a good reason we are destroying this place. We went too far.”
The earth rumbled again, as if in counterpoint to her statement.
Merrick’s mouth was dry. “What . . . what do you mean?”
“The Otherside is coming,” Nynnia said, her fingers dancing over the complicated surface of controls embedded in the router. “We thought we knew better. We could go where we wished, harness all that power. We thought weirstones were harmless . . . ”
The young Deacon took a step back, his fingers tightening into tight fists. “You mean the Ehtia brought this all about?”
She didn’t notice—too busy with the machine. Her words were flung very casually over one shoulder. “To our shame—yes, but we will pay for it.” She straightened and fixed him with a gaze full of an odd mixture of fear and pride. “The Ehtia will pay for it soon enough. You’ve arrived in time to see that. I am so very, very sorry.”
“I have very little time.” The Prince of Chioma paced to the window. “And if we take too long, people will begin to wonder.”
Raed managed to hold in his sarcastic snort. The pressures of ruling were something he had been born to— yet never actually experienced. It was also something his sister had been meant for. That thought spurred him to action. Something was happening here in the Hive City, and Fraine could well be caught up in it. Finally, Raed had enough of this Prince’s ducking and dodging.
“Too busy to take care of your own people’s safety?” His voice echoed sharply in the bare chamber. It held not a hint of deference. It was the voice of a man meant to be Emperor who should have stood in Vermillion, moving Princes of this one’s standing like pieces on a castle board.
Onika’s head jerked around, the beads swaying dangerously until Raed could be fairly sure he had caught a good glimpse of the other’s eyes. Yet, he did not react with anger. He did not flare up. He did nothing that Raed might have expected. Instead, he coolly returned to his carved chair and rested one elegant hand on the back.
“Nothing is more important to me than the well-being of Chioma and her people—but you must understand not everything is as it seems. I may be Prince here, but I am constantly watched.”
“Watched?” Sorcha whipped about as if she had been shot.
The Prince’s hand tightened on his chair. “I can trust very few in my Court—not even my own Deacons.”
Raed shook his head. By the Blood, they were still in the same situation. Conspiracy and corruption. He wondered why Sorcha looked so shocked—she should have seen it coming.
She swallowed, her pencil hovering above the small notepad she’d pulled from her pocket. “What makes you
