Mirrored Time (A Time Archivist Novel Book 1) (20 page)

C
HAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

H
E TOOK HER
to the Coliseum, but it was one far removed from the structure of her time. It was perfect in its wholeness, pristine stone glittering in the pale sun. Marble statues stared down at her from the many arched alcoves. Silent guardians of an abandoned city. Their blank-eyed gazes made Gwen shudder.

In this Rome, Rafe explained, a terrible plague swept through the city not long after the arena’s last brick was laid in place. A seer foretold Rome was cursed, and the gods let death loose on its streets to destroy the city built after a brother’s betrayal.

Gwen shivered as they walked through the silent streets, relics lying here and there—speaking to a life abandoned in a swift retreat. It was a lonely place, but beautiful in its starkness. It smelled of death and forgotten hopes. Yet she marveled at the curving marble and towering structure, a symbol of humanity’s cruelty and its consequences. In her current mood, she appreciated the abandoned city that spoke of such loss.

The pristine sand glared in a sun offering little warmth. Gwen shivered again and Rafe draped his coat around her.

“You looked cold.” He sat down on the stone bench, posture weary.

Wrapping the coat around her, she sat next to him, gaze tracing the arches in front of her. “Thank you for the coat. And for bringing me here. It’s beautiful.”

He shrugged, the action lifting up the sleeve of his t-shirt.

“You have a tattoo?”

Rafe pulled on the hem of his sleeve. “Sign of a misspent youth?”

“No deal.” Gwen rubbed her eyes, hoping she didn’t look as big of a mess as she felt. “If I have to be Miss Emotional, spill the beans; it’s your turn to up the ante.” He pretended to glare at her, and she stuck her tongue out at him. She found the lighthearted gesture wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be.

He sighed. Pulling up his sleeve, he revealed what looked to be a crudely drawn ‘P’ with an ‘X’ overlaying the base. Rubbing his finger over it, his face contracted in a grimace, as if he was experiencing some remembered pain. “It’s called a labarum. Chi Rho, Greek for Christ. ” He paused as if unsure of how to continue. Leaning back on the stone seats, he laughed humorlessly. “Ironic place for you to first see it.”

Another gust of bitter wind blew across the arena, and Gwen pulled Rafe’s jacket tighter around her. The place that had brought her such amazement now felt as bleak as Rafe’s gaze.

Rafe opened his mouth to start, only to snap it shut. Rubbing his hands over his face, he leaned forward, resting his chin on folded hands.

Gwen stared across the abandoned sand floor. She wondered how many people lost their lives on the pale whiteness, to the sound of a jeering crowd. For a long while, the sole sound was the lonely moan of the wind through empty arched passages. Then Rafe began to talk.

“There is a sick thrill from it. The crowd cheering and stamping so loud you can feel the floor shaking under you. You’ll never feel as alive as you do facing a man who wants your death and a crowd screaming for your blood.” He stared into the distance, ghosts of dark memories flitting across his face. “There’s electricity in the air. It’s sharp and pierces your lungs. You can never get enough. After, when it’s you and the crowd, your opponent’s blood cooling in the air, you can’t help but feel like a god, drunk of the power of it.” He shook himself from a dream, giving an apologetic glance at Gwen. “The lessons learned from many lifetimes, right?” His smile was self-deprecating.

“Why Rome?”

“I have lived for so long, as so many different men, it was worth it to stop in one place, to try to remember what being human meant. Perhaps it’s not the best place to learn such a lesson.”

She shivered. “So you became a gladiator?”

“A Roman legionnaire. Innocent enough.” His laugh was as sharp and broken as shattered glass. “The role of the soldier was always a comfortable fit, to a point. People in authority never are keen on the idea of a common soldier refusing to follow a direct command. The emperor decreed that any man condemned to fight in the gladiator arena would be marked to show his sin. My general thought it was clever to mark me with Constantine’s adopted symbol.” He shrugged a shoulder, turning to look at her with stormy eyes. “I come here to remind myself of those lessons hard earned on that sand. And there is a certain purity to this place. Of all the terrible ways it was used in other universes, no blood was ever spilled on this sand.”

Gwen wasn’t sure how to respond. She had already hurt him once, and she was terrified of doing so again. All she wanted was to fold him in her arms until he forgot the darkness of his past. “What was the order?” The question slipped past her lips before she could stop it.
Great Gwen, what an awesome response.

A dark eyebrow rose. “Apparently refusing to murder innocent women and children was passé.” His tone was flippant. The emotion behind his eyes wasn’t.

Not knowing the right words to say, she kissed the tips of her fingers, pressing them into the tattoo before moving to lean up against him, a silent and solid source of support.

For a long time, he gave no sign that he knew she was still next to him. Then a deep shudder ran through his frame, and he relaxed. “Well, you asked, right?”

“Thank you for telling me. But Rafe?” She nudged him so he turned and looked at her. “What you said, the first part, about the enjoyment, about feeling like a god—” Those shadows snuck across his face again. “—it doesn’t make you a bad person.” He opened up his mouth as if to speak, and she shushed him. “No, stop. It doesn’t. Bad people are indifferent to human life. They enjoy seeing others in pain. They are the ones giving the orders the good people don’t follow. You are not a bad person. Not even close.”

“Gwendolyn …”

She slipped her hand into his, finding comfort in the warmth from his firm grip. “Maybe you forgot for a while, but you are human.” She sighed in exhaustion. Resting her head on his shoulder, she squeezed Rafe’s hand. “And you’re a good one. If you believe anything I say, believe this. I know I didn’t treat you as you deserved.” His hand squeezed back as she fumbled on the words. “Whether I was willing to see it before, I see it now. And you’re good. Plain and simple.”

His body relaxed further, and he shifted to wrap his arm around her. “Thank you.” His words were whispered, as a prayer, into her hair.

She closed her eyes and focused on the reassuring sound of his heartbeat. For now, she would think of nothing else. Everything that existed outside the circle of his arms could wait.

CHA
PTER TWENTY-SIX

G
WEN SAT ON
A TRAIN, studying the view from the window with disinterested eyes. The scenery was easier to look at than focusing on the thoughts that whirled through her dazed mind. Traveling by train was a waste of time. Still, she didn’t want to reach her destination any sooner than necessary.

Time was racing by, and she struggled to keep up. She felt sluggish, like she was moving in slow motion. She tried to piece together the details of Maggie’s funeral ceremony, although her brain refused to focus. So, a waste of time or not, she needed the time to think.

The soft sound of leather creaking had her attention moving from the dull scenery to her travel companion. “You didn’t have to come with me, you know.”

Rafe gave her a look, as if to contradict her words. “No rule says you have to do this alone.”

She gave him a weak smile. “I’m sorry if I sound ungrateful. I’m glad you’re here.”

He rolled his shoulders and moved over to her side of the compartment, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. They listened to the clacking of wheels on the track, punctuated by the bellow of the train as it passed through cities and across streets.

“I was born in what you would call the future. It was a horrible, squalid city, long abandoned by any form of government and left to the control of the warring mobs. My mother was a pretty young thing once, charmed by the idea of helping those who were in need. It was on one of her charity missions that she met my father. He was and will always be a bastard. Still, that summer he tricked the naive rich girl into falling in love with him.” He shrugged.

“Maybe he actually loved her?” She winced. Naive romanticism didn’t suit her.

“Whatever it was, she fell hard and fast. It took a long time, but I went back and found her. I tried to tell her what my father would bring her. Believe me when I say, she didn’t appreciate the warning.” His words from earlier, when he had cautioned her not to tell Maggie the circumstances of her death, came back to her. Turns out he did know what he was talking about.

“I’m sorry, Rafe. I should have believed you with Maggie. It’s just … I couldn’t help it.”

“Believe me, I understand. You have the proof of your failure right in front of you. Yet you can’t help but say anything. I wonder if she recognized me as the stranger who warned her away from Oliver. I wonder if she hated me for it.”

She touched his arm. “I’m not pretending to be an expert, Rafe. Still, the woman I saw in your memory, I didn’t see any hatred. Instead, I saw longing and regret. She apologized, you know, when those awful men dragged you away. She must have hated how she was too weak to stand up to them, too weak to claim you as the son she loved.”

“A pleasant fiction.” His voice was rough. “I was the oldest of four. Dear old dad was never around much. When my sister died, my mom lost her will to survive. After that, Oliver didn’t even bother pretending to be a father anymore. So it was my job to take care of everyone—maybe it wasn’t right, but stealing put food on the table.”

Gwen shut her eyes.
And I accused him of being nothing more than a thief.
“I’m sorry again, Rafe, for what I said.”

He nudged her. “Stop apologizing. What’s done is done. You saw what I wanted you to see. Life’s easier when people have low expectations of you.”

“I don’t have low expectations of you.”
Not anymore.

“Don’t put too much faith in me. I couldn’t even save my own mother.” The words were bitter and sharp. “I think she felt if she left that horrible world, it would make all her sacrifices meaningless. So she stayed in that miserable apartment, waiting for the day Oliver would come home. He never did.”

“What happened to her?”

He shifted. “The memory you saw? It was the last time I went home. I tried once more to convince her to leave. When she refused, I went to … persuade Oliver to take care of his wife. Those charming men you saw caught me before I had the chance to find him. I’m not sure who the shorter one was, but my brothers sure grew up. They thought it was hilarious, pretending not to recognize me.”

“Those were your brothers?” She thought of the two men who had held Rafe’s arms as the short man punched him. It hadn’t struck her then; now the resemblance was obvious.

“They always did see my father as some kind of hero. Shouldn’t be a surprise they eventually joined his cause. Oliver fought hard and dirty to get to the top of the crime gangs. I can’t really blame my brothers for becoming his lackeys. In our world, there was no safer place.”

“Where were you headed, at the end?” Gwen whispered.

“Why to see dear old dad, of course. Can’t say it was a happy family reunion, at least not for him.” The old hatred gave his voice a steel edge. “He survived, but not without being persuaded his son was a force to be feared. With the threat of everything I promised I would do to him, he swore on his life that he would look after my mother. Since his life was the one thing he cared about, I took him at his word.”

The pain in Rafe’s eyes made her heart ache. “And your mother?”

“I went back and told her my father would take care of her. And then I left. I never saw her again. She didn’t live much longer to benefit from it. Died the next winter.” There was no embellishment in his words, just a stark statement of the truth. Yet, in his voice, Gwen heard the pain of a little boy who had lost a loved mother. Without a word, she took his hand in hers, tracing nonsensical patterns over his hand with her fingers.

“You did a good thing, trying to protect her. She would have appreciated it.”

He shook his head. “Our power is a remarkable thing, but it has its limits. I know what you are feeling; I know the desperation of having this amazing gift and not being able to save the one person that means anything to you.” He squeezed her hand and gave her a soft smile. “I did need to come. Because I know what it’s like and how much harder it is to do it alone. I couldn’t save her. Still, maybe I can save you a small amount of pain by being here.”

She couldn’t speak past the lump in her throat, so she gave him what she imagined was a wobbly smile. Leaning her head against his chest, the rhythmic beat of his heart and the steady rush of the train lulled her asleep.

The day of the funeral came too fast—well before Gwen was ready.
How is anyone ever ready for days like this?

She smoothed the skirt of her black dress with nervous fingers, looking at her pale reflection in the mirror.

She wanted Rafe’s power of creating gateways so she could slip into the mirror and find herself anywhere other than the place she now stood. Staring into her own green eyes, she ran through the checklist she had created, relieved to find that at least everything that needed to be done was completed. Maggie had been the most important person in her life. The least Gwen could do was make the celebration of her life as perfect as possible.

At least it was beautiful outside.
A perfect spring day.
The spring sunlight did little to warm the chill that gnawed at her bones. All she wanted was this horrible day to be over with, and then she could hide herself away.

She bumped into Rafe in the narrow hallway. “You look nice.”

“Thanks.” He pulled at the tight collar of his shirt with a grimace. “You look pretty nice yourself.” He took her arm. “How are you doing?”

She shrugged, moving with him down the hall. “As good as I can be, I guess. I’m not sure it’s become real yet. I know she was sick, and we should have seen it coming, but …”

“Death is always a surprise. Because before the final moment, there is always hope.”

She nodded, thankful he was able to put into words what she felt and hadn’t been able to verbalize.

The doorbell rang out in the quiet house. Louisa’s heeled shoes clacked across the wooden floors, and there was the sound of muffled voices. Gwen glanced at the silver face of her watch, wondering who would come so early to pay their respects. With a pained looked at Rafe, she moved ahead of him and started down the stairs. “So it begins.”

He answered with a sad smile.

The sight in the front parlor had her gripping the doorframe for support. It was a funeral—perhaps she should have expected to see her mother. But the shock of actually looking into Kathleen’s face stunned her to silence.

“Oh, there you are.” Her mother’s stiletto pumps snapped against the wooden floors. She kissed Gwen’s cheek stiffly. But her face lit up when she saw Rafe. “And this would be?” The familiar flirty tone to her mother’s voice set Gwen’s teeth on edge, and she moved to stand between the two without thought.

“What are you doing here? The ceremony isn’t for another few hours.”

Kathleen fluttered her eyes, making a pained expression for Rafe’s benefit. “I guess it would be too much to expect a little gratitude for coming at all. You know, Maggie wasn’t even family.”

Gwen’s jaw started to ache from the pressure. “Again I’ll ask, what are you doing here?”

Giving up the act when Rafe’s expression remained stony, Kathleen waved an impatient hand. “I need to talk to you.” Flitting around the room with nervous energy, she paused to light a cigarette with a thin, blue-veined hand. At Louisa’s visible frown of disapproval, Kathleen sneered at the older woman. “Alone.”

Gwen frowned, and she turned to Louisa and Rafe, an apologetic look on her face. “Could you two give us a minute, please?”

Louisa swept from the room with one last disapproving sniff in Kathleen’s direction. Rafe stood in the doorway longer, a look of concern on his face. “I’ll be fine, I promise.” With a quick glare at her mother, he left the room silently. Her voice had been soft, yet when she turned around, Kathleen was smirking at her.

“Nice little boy toy you got there. Wonder what a girl like you did to snare a man like him?”

Her bitterness made her face ugly.
She’s jealous.
It was too much, having to deal with Maggie’s funeral and a fight with her mother.

She sat, her voice tired and resigned. “What did you need to talk about, mother?”

A puff of smoke rose in the air, and her mother flicked the cigarette with a jerk of her wrist. “Now, you know funerals aren’t my thing, but Maggie’s lawyer sent me a letter and—”

Gwen cut her off with a bitter laugh. “You needn’t have bothered, mother. Maggie left everything to me. A quick phone call would have wrapped it all up quite nicely.” She failed to mention Maggie had also left a large sum to Louisa as a thanks for her help.

Kathleen’s eyes went cold and dead. With an angry huff, she dropped the cigarette to the floor, grinding it dead with the toe of her stiletto pump. “Why that surprises me, I couldn’t say. Maggie always was a frigid bitch.”

Gwen shot to her feet, the coldness in her eyes matching that of her mother’s. “If that is all, I will ask you to leave.”

Kathleen licked her lips, and there was a look of triumph on her face “Actually, that isn’t all. I have something to tell you, now your precious aunt is dead. God rest her soul, of course.” She gave a mocking sneer. “She made me promise not to tell you. But you don’t have to keep promises to a dead woman, now do you?”

Gwen’s patience snapped like brittle glass. “What are you talking about?”

“You. I’m talking about you. I never wanted you, you know. Even as an infant, you were a squalling, ugly thing, not like the cute pink-cheeked baby I had imagined. Even your father admitted the whole thing was a mistake.”

Gwen fought not to show how much the words hurt. “Believe me, I never was under any impression you were happy I was born. But no one forced you to get pregnant.”

Kathleen cut her off with a sharp gesture. “That’s just it,
Gwendolyn Marie.
I never got pregnant. I didn’t even pick your ridiculous name.” Her voice burned like acid on an open wound. “At least after everything, I didn’t have to destroy my figure having some brat I never wanted. Your father thought it would be a good idea, that maybe a child would fix the crumbling ruin that had become our marriage.” She laughed humorlessly. “You became a reminder of what a failure it all was. It didn’t hurt I reminded him from time to time, of course.”

Gwen stared at the woman across from her, her mind whirling. She had never liked her mother. This person spewing words of cruelness, however, this was a stranger. A stranger who wasn’t making sense. “What?”

“You always were a bit slow, darling, weren’t you?” She lit another cigarette, waving it around in the air, the smoke following her hand like a hazy ribbon. “You were adopted. And now that Maggie is gone, I don’t have to pretend any longer. Good riddance.” She took a deep drag of the cigarette.

The meaning of Kathleen’s voice sunk in, and Gwen dropped to the couch, her legs no longer supporting her. As her mind whirled, she watched the lazy progress of the smoke, the smell making her nose crinkle.

She was silent so long, Kathleen came over to stand in front of her, waving a hand bedecked with flashy rings in front of her face. “Hello, is any of this sinking in? God, why I ever signed those papers.”

At that, Louisa came bursting into the room like a ball of fury, Rafe following behind at a slower pace. “That is enough. You leave this house, right now.”