When they left me alone in my room I sat for a moment on the bed and contemplated my options.
Was this an opportunity to escape? My goal had been to learn my magic and understand who I was but now Tristram was dead I no longer knew what was happening. I’d been on the march to Rome for weeks; who knew how long had passed back at Fire Stone? My own Tristan, if he even still existed, could be years older. The link of time between both zones didn’t run in a linear fashion, I’d learnt that already.
“You worry too much about the bigger picture and less of the problems directly at hand.” I turned as the Mage swept in. Her dress was now the shimmer of fire, orange and red and every shade in between. I gasped in awe. She was ageless, her skin smooth and blemish free, but her eyes held a worn weariness that belied an age I wouldn’t want to guess at.
“I don’t know what to worry about anymore,” I admitted.
“How about who you are? How to remember who you truly are?”
“I’m just Mae, a trainee Druid priestess.”
She raised an arched eyebrow. “Maybe, maybe not.”
“So you are taking me to the Emperor?”
“I’m taking you to where you belong. Where your true gifts will benefit us all.”
I held in a shiver. “And how will they benefit everyone?”
Now I could find out why she’d killed Phil. Why she’d tracked me through thousands of years.
Her pupils covered in a white film and rolled back slightly in her head. “You are the bounty that all men want.”
This was highly improbable considering my lack of dates in my present time life. I kept quiet though. She was in some form of trance.
“Your power will split armies, turn the fortunes of war.”
I bristled at the word war. The men of the red blood; it was as my father had warned.
But then didn’t he want my gifts—whatever they may be—for his own?
Her eyes snapped back into the present.
“What are you?” I asked. I wanted her to be a witch. To teach me what I needed to know. Now I was here I no longer thought that might be the case. Maybe I wasn’t even a witch.
Maybe I was something else.
Something they all wanted.
A commodity. A bounty… what the hell did that mean? A bounty?
One thing was damn sure. There wasn’t a chance that any of them were getting anything from me I didn’t want to give.
“I’ll leave you to rest and heal.” She stood, this time her dress the colour of peacock feathers. “I believe you will find the garden particularly restorative.” She nodded to where a gauze curtain fluttered in a soft breeze.
She swept out and I watched the curtain for a few moments, almost expecting some new threat to jump through and grab me. When nothing happened, I stepped up and held the sheer panel to the side. The air that greeted me was fresh and delicate and I swept out into a beautiful walled garden. The walls were high enough that I knew there was no chance of escape.
The swell of fresh blooms and new leaves was delicious, and I breathed in deeply, filling my lungs. The garden was planted with a variety of flowers and almost on instinct I knelt down and felt the rich soil. So different from that of the settlement, or the earth I crawled through in Scotland when I found the standing stones at Fire Stone.
Fresh green shoots travelled across the surface of the ground and wound up my arms like vivid emerald jewellery. “Where the hell were you when I was being marched here at my peril?” I murmured. Green shoots wound around my neck, gentle and delicate. I could sense them weave themselves into an elaborate necklace.
“We made sure to take a path as far from trees as we could get, through the most barren planes the Empire controls.”
I spun at the sound of a male voice, finding Augustus watching me with bright eyes. His vivid-blue gaze sunk to the green around my neck, across the swell of my body under the white dress which has been clipped at the shoulders by Aurelia, to the shoots at my wrist.
“You look far better.” His lips curved a little. “It’s pleasant to see your skin instead of grime.”
I scowled hard, although it just made him smirk. “If you had treated me better, I would not have become such a state.”
Augustus inclined his head. “True, My Lady, but I was under orders to deliver you as swiftly as humanely possible. I believe I fulfilled my requirements.”
“If you were human you would have taken some mercy.”
His eyes flashed at my retort and he stepped closer, a fresh scent of lemons tickling my senses. “I took mercy, believe me.”
There was no denying his unspoken words. He took mercy on me. Other girls may not have made it this far.
“Why? Why take mercy on me?”
He licked his lips, his head lowering to my ear. “Maybe I take pleasure in your company. Even when I know you are dreaming of other men. Your poor wild woodsman; how you are grieving his loss.”
My hand lifted to strike his face, but he caught my wrist quicker than I could move. His tight grip crushed the fresh shoots adorning my skin; they tingled under his touch. “He honoured me by dying trying to protect me.” Tears sprung at my eyes and I cursed, wishing them away. The last thing I wanted to show was weakness.
“He didn’t want to protect you. He was drawn to you as we all are. We sense your power; your innate strength, and we want to own it.”
“Men of the red blood,” I murmured, frozen into place.
His lips lowered slowly to mine, inch by inch, the lemon zest of his scent intoxicating, forcing out the pain of my wild woodsman hidden
