“It was charred and blackened,” Kes told him on the barest of breaths, realizing how many people had been burned as witches.
“The nine sisters decided something must be done, but the brooch could not be destroyed. They cast further spells around it so that the instant it was used it would return to the hands of the Round Table knights.”
“This is getting crazier as we go,” Kes mumbled. “Those people aren’t even real.”
Walter shrugged his shoulders. “The saying goes that sometimes there is truth in legend.”
“I haven’t heard that saying,” she told him. This didn’t sound right. She wasn’t into magic and sorcery. Sure, it took some kind of magic to bring her back, but all this Lady of the Lake nonsense was too wild—even for her.
There was another answer. What if whatever she was experiencing now wasn’t real? What if she hadn’t traveled back in time but was lying on a hospital bed somewhere in a coma, fantasizing about this dark knight?
She settled her gaze on Nicholas. What if he wasn’t real?
Panic seized her. She wanted him to be real. How would she ever know? What if she recovered from whatever had put her in that hospital bed, and opened her eyes and that was it? He was gone forever? No! Her knees felt weak. She reached her arm out to him.
Nicholas.
He came quickly to her side. “What is it?”
“Are you real?”
Why did it feel like it mattered more than life or death? “If he isn’t real, let me wake up now,” she prayed out loud.
“Kestrel.” Nicholas closed his fingers around her arms. “Look at me! I am real.”
“How do you know?”
“Miss Locksley, he is real,” said Old Walter. “As real as everyone in your day, say… a month ago.”
He’s real. How could this be happening? How could she be falling for a man who could be dead soon when he returns to the battlefield?
She felt like a fool for reaching for him like some needy child. She realized she liked him close because it was the only time she felt safe.
“Forgive my outburst,” she asked them. “I don’t know what came over me. I think this has really been too much.”
“Of course,” Walter assured.
Nicholas stared into her eyes. He wasn’t buying it. He knew there was more. How could she tell him she didn’t want to begin something with him that would end if she could get home—or woke up.
She eyed Walter. “How well do you know this traveler? Or about traveling?”
“Well enough.”
“What are the chances of going back to my time and not three hundred years too far? I don’t think the twenty-fourth century would be to my liking if what’s happened so far is any indication.”
“Ah, but you were looking for a brooch, my dear. Not a way home.”
“Are you saying there are other ways home?” she asked.
“There could be, but we haven’t been looking!” Walter threw up his hands. “All right. Well, I will let him know to stay away from the other realm, for now.”
“Why did I even get the brooch in the first place?” Kes asked. “What do I have to do with Arthur Pendragon?”
“Well,” Walter looker her over. “You are obviously not King Arthur, but you must have Pendragon blood in you.”
“My great-great-great-aunt was a Pendridge.”
“Ah!” Walter smiled. “Pendridge/Pendragon. Same thing.”
Kes’ mouth fell open. “Are you telling me that my distant aunt was a Pendragon?”
“If there is an aunt,” Walter said.
“But why did she send the brooch to me?”
“We do not know who wanted you to have the brooch. Unfortunately, as I understand it, the brooch is not functioning properly, hence your landing in the middle of a battlefield.”
“So she may not return to the day she left. Or to the same century,” Nicholas pointed out. “There is no guarantee.”
“If our friend can even procure it, but aye, that is correct,” Walter admitted.
“That is not good enough,” Nicholas told her. “If you are going back for your father and your friends, I will not have you lost and never returned.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t like that either,” she agreed. “There’s a lot to think about.”
“Aye,” he nodded, looking a little…relieved? “We should go.”
She nodded and then called back to Walter when he asked her what he should tell his contact.
“Tell him to look for other more foolproof ways to get me home.”
Nicholas stopped and turned to her. “Kestrel.” Her name came on a deep, throaty groan.
“Yes?” She closed her eyes, unable to stop her heart from banging and her entire body from going stiff. She knew he was going to say something that he didn’t want to say. She could see it written clearly in his storm-filled gaze, shaping his lips, shortening his breath.
“I think Walter’s friend might just find a way to take you home and…” He shifted his body and held his hands, as if in prayer, to his nose and mouth. “…I return to duty in a little more than a sennight. I do not want to be pining over you then, so I will say farewell to you now. Walter!” He turned to the old merchant. “May she stay here?”
Walter nodded.
“What?” Kestrel hadn’t anticipated this. She thought he was going to tell her he was hurt that she was so desperate to go home. She would have told him she was a little less desperate than she had been the day before. But this? “That’s it, then? I don’t even get to say goodbye to Elia or any of my friends?”
“Friends?”
“Yes, Cook, Claire the laundress, Hilde and Caitlyn, the girls from the kitchen.” She tightened her lips. “You’re just like the others.”
“No. I am not,” he said with an angry
