The Forgotten Story Read online

  “You once peered into Joaquin’s mind to see what he saw,” he reminded Grandmother Fey.

  “Oui.”

  “Can you do the same to me? See for yourself and judge whether or not they’re true?”

  Grandmother Fey turned away and slowly stepped over to the window overlooking the back area.

  “I do not need to, Pierce. I know the predictions are very much real.”

  Chapter Five

  Welcome Back

  One day earlier . . .

  Élie sat cross-legged with her eyes closed on the floor inside her cottage. She was reaching out to Orenda. She had tried contacting her ever since Pierce told her about his vision.

  After devoting much concentration, she, at last, had broken through to her.

  You have awoken me, Élie, Orenda spoke from inside Élie’s head. I suppose this means Freya is active.

  Pierce has received a vision. His friends are in trouble. Élie explained telepathically.

  Élie could not see anything save for what little light was burning through her eyelids, yet she could feel Orenda’s presence just as if she stood right beside her.

  I see. When did you leave England?

  Seven years ago.

  Seven? I wonder what has taken her so long. Orenda stayed quiet for a while. Has Pierce conceived all of his children?

  I don’t follow. All of his children?

  It matters not, Orenda said dismissively. He must have or we would not be having this conversation. I shall be waiting for him when he returns.

  I instructed him to ignore it. He doesn’t have to leave. I’m going to figure out a way to shield him from these visions.

  Of course he needs to face her, Élie. We have had this discussion before. He must return so we might have a chance to find out what her plan is and then destroy her. Unless you have managed to figure it out during this time.

  No, Élie admitted mournfully. I haven’t thought of anything that can be created by any of our bloodlines, separate or combined. Only tricks, similar to what demon blood is capable of doing.

  Then Pierce must return. If he stays with his family and her plan fails, there is no reason she cannot be reborn into another life and try it again. Only, she will come after your grandchildren. You suspect she needs them as well, yes?

  Élie did ever since discovering Freya had had a child with Joaquin. There was something needed from the next generation.

  This goes beyond Pierce, child, and she won’t stop, Orenda went on earnestly. She’ll chip away at Pierce, hurting his friends and having them killed. And with a god on her side, there is nothing you or I can do to stop it. We cannot prevent the visions from coming to him. Pierce will soon realize these revelations are not false, and if he doesn’t act, it will eventually destroy him. All that is wonderful about him will be hollowed out, and he will be filled with guilt and torment. Do not tell me you have not foreseen this path for yourself.

  Élie had, but she did not admit it aloud.

  The grief will turn Pierce into someone else, someone cold and distant, even toward his own family. The deaths he did not prevent will eventually drive him to end his own life, and Freya wins regardless.

  “No!” Élie gasped out. Pierce would never do such a thing.

  Everyone is fully capable of doing a great many things. I have often seen it firsthand.

  Can his friends be saved if he goes?

  They are bait. Freya means to lure him back, so the chances are high that they will be, yes.

  But aren’t we treating Pierce as bait, Orenda? Élie retorted.

  In a way, yes. He is to serve as a distraction to keep Freya occupied long enough for us to break down her defenses. Freya will be overseeing her plan. She has to kill Pierce for good, and in order to do that, she must first tear away your protection over him. Understand?

  Freya has protection of her own. What about this god who is protecting her?

  We aren’t strong enough to stand against the Trickster, but while Freya’s back is turned, you and I can chisel a hole to get us through her own shield and take her down. It is our only chance.

  It all seemed so farfetched to Élie. She didn’t see this as a wise plan. Once Pierce is in England, I won’t be able to communicate with him. Freya will block me from him.

  Yes, but I shall be there.

  It isn’t fair to Pierce.

  Very little is fair in this world. But do not fret. I’ll explain it to him when he arrives.

  * * *

  “It’s true?” Pierce asked inside his grandmother’s hut.

  “Oui,” she confessed somberly.

  “How do you know?” Taisia asked.

  “Freya told me,” she explained. “In England, when I went to her home. She warned me that she would someday threaten everything and everyone Pierce cares for in order to bring him to her. And with the powerful ally she has on her side, Freya is capable of taking lives before their time.”

  “Help from whom?” Pierce asked.

  “A god. One that is capable of bending rules. He has stripped away the other paths from the Sea Warriors, as well as your friend, Robert Blackbird, setting a singular course for them—one of his own making, no doubt.”

  “And the visions I saw were these singular paths?”

  “It appears so.”

  Pierce couldn’t believe it. Now a god was involved? He remembered the Trickster he’d met years ago in Blackpool during his days as a hustler. Pierce had no doubt he was somehow mixed up in this.

  “I brought something back from a vision, and I’ve been physically wounded in another.”

  “Because the visions are real, they can have a physical impact.”

  “If it’s all true, then why tell me otherwise?” His anger rose. “My mates will die, some savagely raped, and you told me to ignore it?”

  “I lied to protect you,” Grandmother Fey retorted. “If you return to England, you are going to die.”

  “No,” Taisia whimpered.

  “Oi,” he said, wrapping his arm around his distraught wife and pulling her close. “It’s all right.” To his grandmother, he asked, “Is that a certainty?”

  The shove he received nearly knocked him off his feet.

  “Nyet!” Taisia shouted. She spouted off in Russian, which Pierce now understood and spoke fluently, “You gave yourself to me, Pierce Landcross. Therefore, I forbid you leave!”

  Pierce did not appreciate that one bit. “You forbid?”

  “Da! From now until death, I will be yours and yours alone. I give myself to you completely,” she repeated their wedding vows.

  “You can’t forbid me,” he argued.

  Taisia’s cross expression suggested otherwise. She approached him and jabbed her finger into his chest. “You are not leaving.”

  Pierce had no backbone when it came to her. She had a natural power that put people in their place.

  Taisia left the hut, leaving the door wide open as she went.

  “Oh, my,” Grandmother Fey said nervously. “Even I felt a little intimidated by her.”

  Pierce looked over his shoulder and said indignantly, “After everything the Sea Warriors have done for us, you were willing to ignore what is about to happen to them?”

  “I didn’t lie only to protect you, Pierce. I did so to prevent this thing that Freya is trying to bring about to life.”

  “You still don’t know what she wants to create?”

  Grandmother Fey shook her head. “The world, along with the universe it resides in, is a melting pot of countless mysteries. Many extremely powerful entities have died off. It could be anything. And if it is as dangerous as Freya has claimed, then it’s very important you live.”

  He kept his back to her. “So, this god is able to go over the Fates’ heads?”

  “Oui. Most certainly.”

  Pierce ran his hand through his lengthy, knotted hair. He needed to cut it. “Have you spoken to Sees Beyond like you did before? Warn them?”

  “I tried sh
ortly after you told me about your first vision. I have been blocked by the god or by Freya. The same will happen if you’re in England. I’ll be unable to communicate with you.”

  Dammit, he thought grimly.

  “Why do I have to leave? Why doesn’t this god simply kill me?”

  “I’m not sure why he hasn’t. It’s a mystery. Sending the god after you would make her job easier. Something must be preventing them from coming for you directly.”

  Pierce thought a moment. “Is there a chance my friends will live if I go to them?”

  He turned around and waited patiently for her answer. She only stared at him.

  “Grandma,” he pressed.

  “There is a good chance. Oui.”

  Pierce nodded and started to leave when she rushed over and caught him by the arm. “I like to think of myself as an honorable woman. I hate lying to family, for each of you are the dearest things to me. I even committed one of the most painful crimes an enchantress can do and surrendered my own powers because my daughter begged me to. I was not trying to ignore your friends’ sufferings, nor did I lie out of a selfish need to keep you here. My fear lies in the fact that the protection which has been with you throughout your entire life, even during the years of my illness, may not help you through this.”

  Pierce should have died several times over after his life thread was damaged. He could also have been easily, and permanently, wounded in any number of ways. Yet, by some stroke of luck—or, in his case, a combination of luck and spells—he’d survived it all and even found himself in paradise.

  “My magic can be broken down,” she added, releasing him.

  “Broken down?”

  “Oui. If the spell is constantly put to the test, it will crumble. With you being so close to her, it will make it easier for Freya to destroy the protection I have over you.”

  “What about my children? Can she hurt them?”

  “No,” she promised with vigor. “I have made sure of it.”

  He took in a healthy breath and sighed out. “I need to speak to Taisia.”

  “Pierce,” his grandmother called after him. “Remember, this is what Freya wants. Everything is happening according to her design.”

  Pierce caught up to Taisia as she was walking down the beach toward the rocks.

  “Oi, hold up.”

  She stopped and turned to him. It seemed her brief stroll had softened her mood a tad, yet anger still resided behind those cognac eyes of hers.

  “How could you even consider returning to England?” she retorted irritably.

  “I’m not going back to England. And who said I was considering leaving, eh?”

  She crossed her arms. “Weren’t you?”

  He had no response and instead chewed his bottom lip.

  “Pierce!” she shouted and stomped her foot.

  “All right. I am considering it, but only because it involves my mates.”

  She planted her face in her palms and shook her head. Her ill mood was rising, and he could feel it like a bad omen.

  “Tai, I . . .”

  “I love you, Pierce Landcross,” she cut in, snapping her head up. “My affection for you has never dwindled since we met. You are everything I could ever want in a mate. You’re the lost part of me that has made me whole.”

  Her expression was heart-wrenching. Her bright eyes were glossy, and she spoke with anguish.

  “If you leave, I am incomplete, and if you die, much of me dies with you.” She placed a hand on his bare chest, over his heart. “If you care for me as I do you, then you’ll stay here with me.”

  Pierce realized how selfish he was being. He hadn’t put much thought into how this would affect Taisia. He examined the situation from his wife’s perspective. He loved her so deeply that it physically hurt him at times. When he’d believed she had been gunned down and killed by Coira MacCrum’s people in Edinburgh, he’d been willing to die just so he could be reunited with her. He understood his love for her matched hers for him. The fear of losing him terrified her to no end. If it was she who needed to leave, he would undoubtedly have been just as upset. She was bang on. He belonged to her completely.

  “All right,” he yielded with a nod.

  She looked at him with surprise, blatantly not expecting such an easy surrender.

  “I won’t go anywhere,” he promised. “I gave myself over to you on our wedding day. If you want me to stay, then that is exactly what I’ll do.”

  She smiled and began crying harder. “Oh, Pierce.”

  He embraced her tightly and gently rocked her from side to side as the waves swept over their feet.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear.

  * * *

  Aleta had been in labor for days and, at last, the time had come.

  Her family of elves surrounded her. Her sister held her hand and ordered her to push, while her mother waited between her legs for the babe. Aleta’s golden hair stuck to her sweat-soaked face. The pain was great. It pulled on every nerve in her strained muscles from the waist down. Her lower back was in a knot. She had been carrying her child inside her womb since lying with its father seven years ago.

  “It’s arriving!” her mother announced excitedly. “Push, darling! Push!”

  In a final strain, Aleta’s child came into the world and into the loving embrace of the new grandmother.

  “A boy!”

  Aleta smiled. “I knew he would be,” she moaned exhaustedly.

  She turned her sights to Durothil, standing nearby with a proud expression. “I knew he’d be a boy,” Aleta repeated to him.

  The babe was cleaned, swaddled, and given to his mother to suckle at her breast.

  “Your name is Foster,” the new mother told her child, “but I shall say your old name just once. Welcome back, Joaquin Landcross.”

  Chapter Six

  Is There a Chance?

  Taisia felt lighter than air as she, Joaquin, and Galina went papaya picking. She had gone through hell ever since her husband started thinking about leaving. Despite what he’d seen, she knew it was a trap meant to draw him away in order to kill him. Grandmother Fey had admitted it herself.

  Taisia and her children arrived at the papaya trees, and as her son and daughter scattered into action, she placed her basket down to stretch her back.

  She felt fatigued and had been so for a few days now. She submerged the guilt she felt about the Sea Warriors deep into her mind. She told herself if Pierce had even a chance of saving them and returning safely, she’d have no qualms in letting him leave. Perhaps not entirely without objection, but she’d be much more open to the idea. That said a lot about her, because ever since Pierce came into her life, she’d never wanted to be without him. Regardless, the Sea Warriors, as a whole, had rescued thousands of Africans from becoming slaves, including her own ancestors. She would never have been born if they hadn’t. And Captain Sea Wind had brought her and her new family across the sea to a safe place. Taisia had bonded with the Apache during their voyage. Nothing the Sea Warriors had done was forgotten. She was also aware of how much Robert Blackbird meant to Pierce. The two had experienced much together as thieves, and Robert was like a brother to him.

  No, she thought, letting Pierce do this is simply out of the question.

  She closed her eyes as she stretched. The air smelled normal at first, but then turned rancid and full of body odor and raw sex.

  Lifting her eyelids, Taisia found she no longer stood amongst the papaya trees, but in a jail cell full of weeping women. Their clothing was ripped and torn, their faces battered and bleeding. Some were huddled together, sobbing. Others sat or lay on the floor, crying and moaning painfully. Taisia recognized every woman. No one noticed her. She was standing right in the center of the room, and none of them glanced up to wonder why she was suddenly there.

  Where was she? Was this real? Everything appeared so, even the smells. What had happened to the women wasn’t a mystery. Seeing them in this state of violation fi
lled Taisia’s heart with sorrow. Her eyes teared up at the painful sight.

  More people were in the next space over. She stepped over to the dividing wall and wrapped her hands around the bars. They were as cold as the room itself. In the other cell, the rest of the Sea Warrior crew was also bloody and beaten. One of them appeared half dead. On the floor, near the door, was a pool of blood with a thick red trail leading out—almost as though a wounded body had been dragged out. Had the blood on the floor belonged to Captain Sea Wind?

  Everything was exactly as Pierce had described. Taisia had stepped into the aftermath of the vision he had experienced at the dunes. Her breath fell short, and she placed a hand over her mouth with a gasp. She looked over and spied Waves of Strength sitting in a dark corner. She sat with knees up to her chin, her arms wrapped around them. Taisia went over and crouched down in front of her. Waves of Strength’s eye was swollen shut, and there was blood sliding down from the deep cut on her lip. The buckskin dress she wore was torn in many places. Her other eye was unblinking and full of trauma and horror.

  “Waves of Strength?” Taisia whispered.

  “My husband,” she muttered under her breath.

  Taisia reached out and gently rested her hand upon hers. When she did, Waves of Strength eyed her with tears sliding down her cheeks. “They killed my husband.”

  The anguish in her face tore into Taisia’s very soul. She was unsure if Waves of Strength actually saw her, but her suffering was so strong, if felt as though Taisia were experiencing it.

  “They killed my husband,” she repeated. “They bashed his head open.”

  “Mama!” Galina yelled.

  Taisia blinked and snapped out of the vision of the revolting place she’d been in. The bright, tropical world came back into view.