My confidence waned, his anxiety seeping into my skin. I closed my eyes, burying my face into his neck, inhaling his scent, memorizing everything about the man who’d become my rock in a turbulent sea.
I inhaled a shaky breath. “Velloc . . . I can’t imagine my life without you.”
As if an unseen force watched from afar, the pressure to move forward increased. The microscopic grains in the hourglass had collected to such a mass, the weight of time itself fell heavy on my shoulders, bearing down on my heart and soul. The urgent need to flip the timekeeper—to restart the clock—had become undeniable, even as I failed to understand why.
The purpose of my journey back to the box had become about more than merely my strong tether to Iain. Renewing my connection with the artifact seemed essential to my very survival. Regardless of my wishes, I had to make at least a perfunctory appearance—have my hearing before the unseen judge and jury—no matter the results, even if the consequences tore me away from the second love of my life. That potential outcome and a sinking gut feeling clenched my stomach.
Velloc pulled away, interrupting my inner lecture about obligations put upon me by others. His strong hands clasped my shoulders, and I looked up. Lines of strain etched into his forehead as his tear-filled gaze held mine. My breath caught in my throat.
His deep voice broke when he softly uttered, “The box isn’t from here. We stole it from another tribe when we heard it brought a woman—a mate—to their leader.” He cast his eyes downward. “I’d . . . lost . . . mine.”
Whoa. We had much more to discuss than my issues. “Velloc, I—”
His lips captured mine, silencing the instinct to comfort my man. I tightened my grip on him, providing everything I could to ease his pain without words.
Velloc’s answer to my unasked question loaded several rounds of ammunition into an already-jammed cartridge. Had the other leader’s mate been snatched from another time too? Had she unlocked its secrets? Were there others? Had they time jumped more than once?
I needed to think about the bigger picture before haphazardly firing into an interrogation. Every domino in the line affected all the others, but the more I tried to focus, the more my mind clouded. The pull of the box tugged at an inner string that connected me to the inanimate object, as if some unseen game officiator sought to eradicate any distraction from its goal.
Velloc inhaled deeply, dropping his forehead down, resting it on mine. “Today isn’t about me, Isobel. I . . . needed you to know.”
A deep ache burned in my heart. My head spun. Panic had set in, and I didn’t want to leave. Conflicting emotions threatened to overrule any sense of purpose I’d had since my entire odyssey began. To a wanderer of worlds, knowledge might’ve been power, but human connections had become everything. “Velloc, please . . . I—”
“No.” His stern tone surprised me. As the two of us struggled, he became the strong one. “You need to do this. For us to be anything, you have to finish what you started.”
A broken record replayed in my mind: there hadn’t been time . . .
Velloc clamped his arms around me, squeezing the air out of my lungs. Before I had a chance to inhale a full breath, he tugged me toward the cave, keeping our arms locked together as we walked.
The inevitable had come. Prolonging the agony would only kill us slowly. Blessedly, my mind went numb as we rounded a corner of solid rock, approaching the entrance.
Daylight spilled into the shallow cave. My gaze tracked to the cause of all my turmoil. There she stood, gleaming and proud on her pedestal of rock, waiting for her continuing role.
Fear of the worst-case scenario gripped me as disappointment settled into my chest. I’d gained nothing; I didn’t have any answers to unlock the secrets of my artifact, and I wouldn’t have Velloc.
Like a dowsing rod, every cell in my body vibrated to a frequency from the box as fate conspired to play cruel tricks with my life again. Dread seeped into every pore. My legs grew leaden, and an elephant sat on my chest, every breath an insurmountable struggle.
Velloc urged me forward, crutching my paralyzed body. The closer I came to the master of my destiny, the more its power took hold of me. Ironically, a soothing feeling washed over me.
“Isobel, my fierce warrior. You can do this. You can do anything.”
I looked up into Velloc’s dark brown eyes, kindness and wisdom shining in their depths, realizing the supportive energy had come from him. He radiated strength and calmness, and it briefly overrode the object’s irrefutable command over me.
I exhaled the breath I hadn’t realized I’d held, glancing at the deceptively innocuous metal box. “Do you feel the energy it emanates?”
He followed my gaze. “I do. I did the night you came to me. Open yourself to it, Isobel. Make a connection with the vibrations.”
I turned in his hold, facing forward. Velloc kept his arms loosely wrapped around me from behind. I did as he asked and closed my eyes, relaxing as I accepted the pulsing frequency.
A warm tremor danced goose bumps across my skin before the heat spread deeper. The earlier calmness I’d felt settled further. Tiny vibrations hummed through my body, accelerating in intensity the more I opened the conduit. Chain reactions fired on a cellular level, energizing me from the inside out. Every positive emotion ignited, triggering a sense of euphoria. Like a highly faceted diamond held in a beam of light, the connection refracted optimistic possibilities into an explosion of vivid rainbows.
My eyes flashed open. For a split second, I glimpsed misty tendrils of iridescence reaching through the air toward me. But they vanished the instant I focused on them.
I gaped. “Velloc, did you—” Feel that? See that?
He dropped his lips to my ear, brushing the shell before kissing it. “Yes, love. I did.”
Wow. Too many unprocessed thoughts were usurped by the tremendous energy flowing around us, rendering me a mere observer to the events: I’d joined with an inanimate object, and yet, nothing about the relic was inert; Velloc had called me love—the endearment a first for us.
I turned back around in his embrace, gazing into eyes filled with myriad emotions. “Velloc, will you do this with me?”
He smiled, leaning down, nipping my lips softly before answering. “Isobel, I have been. Every step of the way, I’m with you. Always.”
I took a fortifying breath, lacing my fingers with his. We stepped forward, and I guided our hands down to the top of the box.
Our clasped hands trembled. From him or from me? A little of both, I decided.
Together, our fingertips touched the cool metal top, the surface warming at our touch.
Nothing happened.
I furrowed my brow. While the outcome had remained a complete mystery to me, I’d expected more than . . . nothing.
I pulled my hand up to my mouth, drumming my fingertips lightly over my lips as I tried to think my way through the enigma. Each event with the box had been different. Iain and I had both touched it in the twenty-first century, while he’d made contact in the thirteenth century. Then I alone had placed my hand on the surface as Velloc did on his end.
Energy practically sparked the air around us. Power from the relic held me in its grip like a tractor beam locked onto an incoming spacecraft. The artifact hadn’t shut down like the first time, when I insisted that Iain send me back. If anything, it appeared to be powering up.
The accelerating rhythm radiating from the object flowed into me, commanding my runaway heartbeat. I tensed as a strong pulse burst through my body.