“You raised her well,” Alric offered.
“I raised her wild,” he muttered, folding his arms. “I let her run too free. Indulged her every whim while I kept Glenhaven from crumbling. And now—” He broke off, shaking his head. “’Tis a score and two years she counted this past May. She should be wed by now.”
Alric tilted his head. “She’s refused all offers.”
“She has,” Baldwin said grimly. “And I’ve let her. But if I do not make a match for her soon, the king shall do so in my stead. His Grace grows impatient.”
He fell silent, the weight of duty settling like armor on his shoulders. “I cannot shield her forever.”
Beth was goingto die in a forest. Not from dehydration or exposure, no, but possibly from shock or a neurological event brought on by temporal dislocation, massive trauma, or whatever hellish science experiment she’d just accidentally conducted.
She clutched a fistful of moss and forced herself to breathe.
This was England. The Lake District, if she had to guess. The geography matched, the air crisp and unpolluted. But how? She’d been in her lab. One moment she was muttering about TikTok and vinegar reactions, the next. Boom. Light, sound, pressure. A vision? A seizure?
Somehow, she’d blacked out and woken up here. “But that’s impossible,” she whispered, pressing the heel of her hand to her temple. “There were no flights. No one drugged me. No time for a coma, no head trauma…”
She spun slowly in place, scanning for a trail, a road, a cell tower, anything. Her brain raced through possibilities like a spreadsheet of hypotheses. Hallucination from chemical exposure? Maybe. But she’d been careful. No gas leaks, no burns. And this didn’t feel like a hallucination. The breeze was cool against her damp skin. Her scraped palms throbbed. A bug landed on her arm and bit her with rude enthusiasm.
“Nope. Not a dream.” She slapped it away.
The trees were too real, the dirt too gritty beneath her nails. And the castle, God, the castle, still loomed across the lake like something from a fever dream. Massive, ancient, utterly out of place.
Beth dragged her fingers through her hair, dislodging a twig. “I didn’t teleport. That’s not a thing. There’s no quantum tunnel in my chem lab.”
But she had seen something. A flash of images. Haunting grey eyes, a sword, stone walls braced against the wind. Like a memory that wasn’t hers.
She shook her head, trying to make sense of the impossible. “Okay. You’re a scientist. Think. What do you know?”
Chemical reaction. Electrical storm. Exposure to copper sulfate, maybe a catalyst she hadn’t accounted for. Blood in the mix. And lightning.
Energy. A lot of it. Enough to … what? Blow a fuse? Short-circuit her brain?
Or punch a hole in space-time?
Beth laughed, sharp, breathless, slightly unhinged. “I did not invent time travel with vinegar, blood, and copper sulfate.”
And yet. The forest pressed in around her, silent and watchful. No phone towers. No wrappers or soda cans. No sign of human life as she knew it. She peered again at the castle across the lake. No modern scaffolding. No warning signs. Just stone. Banners. Smoke curling from chimneys.
Oh no.
Her stomach dropped.
Not just England.
Not just somewhere remote.
But somehow, impossibly… the past. But when?
Beth swayed, her sneakers sinking into the damp earth. “Okay,” she breathed. “Either you’ve lost your mind, or you’ve broken every known law of physics.”
She swallowed. “Let’s hope it’s the second one.”
While she was thinking about time travel, a young woman appeared out of nowhere, blond, beautiful, and full of fury, a bow drawn with unshaking precision. She’d frozen mid-step, armsraised like a cartoon villain caught stealing pies. Now, she stood ankle-deep in brambles, facing the business end of an arrow that looked entirely too sharp.
“State your name and intent,” the girl demanded.
Beth raised her hands slowly. “Normally I’d say carbon because it’s the building block of life, but I’m guessing that won’t mean anything to you.”
