Could she stay? She looked up at Wallace. Did he want her to stay?
When he’d pulled her through the doorway, she’d been so shocked she couldn’t say a word. Which was great because it meant no one noticed until it was too late.
She was floored. One minute she was captive, the next she was on the mountaintop, looking at a closed door in a rock.
“What happened?” she said, pressing her hand to the door.
“The key,” Wallace replied. “Scarlett was right. The door in the rock.”
“She said you’d get the thing you most needed, didn’t she?”
“Well, maybe she was wrong about that part.” He refused to be drawn in any further despite her efforts to get him to talk.
In the end, she left him watching out from behind the boulder as she looked at him properly for what felt like the first time.
He was an unusual person to understand. Sometimes he seemed so angry with the world.Other times he seemed on the verge of smiling or laughing but then seemed to clamp down on it like he wasn’t allowed to enjoy himself.
Did he even like her? There was the time on the ship when he’d seemed on the verge of kissing her. Did that mean something or was she reading too much into it?
“I think we’re safe,” he said, looking down at her.
She looked away, embarrassed at being caught staring at him. “What now?” she asked.
“Now we get you home.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll work that out once you’re safe.”
“What if you end up back in those chains? You might never get released again.”
“I would rather spend an eternity in the torment of those accursed chains than have you spend another second in danger. Come on. If we move fast, we may get there before the barefoot man.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then I’ll make sure you get home. You have my word.”
Wallace led the way down the mountainside.Once they were in the valley, Natalie stopped by the body of the man who’d been killed, his face still fixed in agony, his eyes glazed.
“We should bury him,” she said.
“We have no time. We must move.”
“It’s not right to leave him here like this.”
He nodded, kneeling down and closing the man’s eyes with the palm of his hand. He muttered something under his breath before standing up again.
“What did you say?” Natalie asked.
“A prayer of protection for his soul. If we survive this, I promise you I will give him a good Christian burial but for now we must get going. Time is against us.”
Natalie thought about those words during the long slog north. Time is against us. Time certainly seemed to be against her. It had been biting at her ever since she’d made the journey back in time.
It was as if there was someone or something out there that didn’t want her messing with time, that the butterfly effect would have awful repercussions for the present.
The thought depressed her but there wasn’t much she could do about it other than go home and vow never to use the key again.
First, she had to get home. That wasn’t exactly easy with her limbs aching and her heart racing.
