Olivia
Two months into the journey, and I had become a liability.
I didn’t know where we were. Didn’t care. France, maybe?
Progress had been agonizingly slow—between Emily’s growing belly and my relentless exhaustion, every day felt like a battle.
I was constantly tired, constantly sick. I couldn’t keep anything down, and my mood was bleak.
One morning, I lay curled in the back of our wagon, unable to move.
The thick summer heat beat down on the leather canopy, turning the small, enclosed space into a sauna. Sweat slicked my skin, my body ached, and my stomach twisted into knots.
I felt like I was dying.
Some inexplicable sixteenth-century illness was devouring me from the inside out. With no access to Google or WebMD, I was left to diagnose myself with a very unhelpful mental list of historical plagues.
Diphtheria. Pertussis. Typhoid fever.
Or maybe something stranger—like English Sweat, a viral disease that swept through Britain, or the Scherbock, a type of land scurvy found in Scandinavia and the Netherlands.
Had I been eating enough fruit?
It’s not like we’d passed an abundant orange grove.
A cool cloth pressed to my forehead.
Roman.
He sat beside me, his expression tight with worry as he dragged the damp cloth across myburning skin.
“Count Montego says there’s a town up ahead,” he said gently. “I want to have a doctor examine you.”
I groaned. “Don’t be stupid.”
My hands pressed against my stomach as another wave of nausea rolled through me.
“I’m fine.”
I forced myself upright, the motion making my head spin. “I just need to get out and ride a horse. It’s this lying about—the surge and roll of the wagon is doing me in. I got carsick all the time as a child. I’m sure that’s what it is.”
Roman didn’t respond.
His jaw was tight, his eyes unreadable.
A terrible thought hit me.
I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry I’m being such a bitch,” I murmured, burrowing beneath the covers again.
“I just feel like death warmed over. What if I’ve caught something serious?”
My throat tightened.
“What if this is one of those untreatable sixteenth-century diseases?” My voice hitched. “I can’t even time travel back to twenty-first-century Seattle for proper medical care.”
Tears burned the backs of my eyes.
For the first time in a long time, I felt utterly helpless.
