Disoriented, Taveon flipped head over heels in the water. Not knowing which way was up or down, he thrashed this way and that, searching for Viviana, refusing to go back without her.
"This way,"
a female voice called out, guiding him.
A circle of aqua-blue formed above him.
He kicked toward the surface. His head burst out of the water. Cool air filled his lungs as he searched for Viviana. Through the mayhem of rolling foam, he caught a glimpse of black hair webbed like seaweed atop the surface.
A bout of hysteria hardened his muscles.
"Viviana," he hollered and fought an undercurrent sucking at his booted feet. Taveon reached for her just as she slipped beneath the surface. His hands grasped at wet nothingness. He dove into the water, again and again.
"Viviana!"
he screamed in his head and plunged deeper. Acidic salt burned his wide eyes as he followed the silhouette of her body downward. "
No!"
His fingertips grazed her hair.
Still, her body slipped further from his grasp.
What felt like a dozen hands pushed him deeper. "
Save her."
Her limp wrist fell into his grip.
Heaving her behind him, he swam to the surface and wrenched her out of the water. He sucked in air and struggled to stay afloat with her weight now pulling him under. Draping his forearm across her breast, his hand lay atop where her heart should be beating.
It did not.
His body shook violently beneath the water. He felt as if he was experiencing his own death. There was so much pain. He was drowning in it.
He pulled her toward the shoreline and dragged her out of the water then stared helplessly in horror at the lifeless body beneath him. Her angelic form lay still as death in a tangle of grasses. Her kirtle gathered and bunched all around her, and her raven hair coiled in a web around her face and mouth. Taveon cradled the dead weight of her head into his palm and cleared the hair from her mouth. The ashen tint around her eyes sunk deep beneath her cheekbones, and her lips were the bluish color of death.
"No!" he wailed as hot tears rolled down his cheeks. "Viviana!" he shouted a hairsbreadth from her face. "Damn-it-to-Hell! Breathe!"
But she didn't move, she didn't breathe.
She was dead.
Sick with grief, Taveon leaned over her and succumbed to convulsions.
* * *
It was quiet, frighteningly quiet and dark.
"Elise,"
Viviana called to the woman inside her, but she was no longer there.
"Taveon, are you there?"
she asked, but part of her already knew he wasn't. There was an echo to her words, to her thoughts. The blackness surrounding her was desolate, detached, and so very empty.
Viviana was alone, utterly alone, and terrified. She wanted someone to come for her, to find her, but she didn't know where she was.
She remembered falling. She'd landed in the water. She should be wet, cold.... She should be in pain, but she wasn't anything.
"Viviana, this way,"
a female voice beckoned.
"Elise?"
Her head snapped up. Above her was the tiniest dot of bright light, a star mayhap, a comfort she desperately wanted to be closer to. The balance in her body rotated at an awkward angle and she moved toward the light.
It grew steadily and a hum began to penetrate the awful silence.
"No! Viviana!"
She stopped, whirled.
"Taveon?"
She was confused, dizzy... scared. Her heart should be pounding, but it wasn't. She should be trembling, but there was nothing. Lost, she looked back at the light.
"Damn-it-to-Hell, Venus!"
She turned back toward Taveon's voice, back toward the pitch and ran through a whorl that coiled into a tunnel, a dark maelstrom surrounded by walls of black boiling clouds. Viviana was afraid to touch them, but more, she was petrified of the place she might end up should the clouds suck her in.
A high-pitched chirping noise grew in volume as she raced through the tunnel, then all at once, Taveon's face appeared in front of her—a beautiful apparition with sparkling blue eyes. She didn't know if he was real or a manifestation born of her fear. Nonetheless, he was there, and she desperately wanted to reach him.
A bright light flashed and drew a vertical line in front of her. Suddenly, she was on the bank, staring down in horror at the scene before her.
"Open your eyes!" Taveon splayed his fingers around her skull.
She willed herself to do as he commanded, but her body remained unmoving in his thick arms. The hue of her skin was ghostly white, her lips were blue.
"Oh,
cazzo
!"
She was dead. This revelation induced a panic that caused a quickening of hot energy to spiral around her.
"Dinnae leave me. I love ye." He crushed her to his chest and sobbed uncontrollably into her neck.
"I'm here,"
she cried out, wanting to console him, wanting to return his embrace and his words of love, but didn't know how.
"Go to him."
Viviana jerked her head to the side.
"Elise?"
Her smile was warm, her floral scent comforting. She leaned into Viviana and kissed her eyes one at a time.
"Thank ye, Viviana."
Elise brushed her hand over Viviana's face and dragged soft silky fingers over Viviana's eyelids.
"May ye reap the rewards of your bravery."
And with these words, Elise pushed her back into her body.
What felt like the weight of ten stones sat atop her chest. She whimpered.
"Viviana?" Taveon's voice cracked.
She coughed, gagged, then spewed salty brine from her lungs. Her body tingled and began to thaw. The blood raced through her veins and forked into her fingers and toes. She listened to her heart beat as a cool pass of air whisked over her lips. She felt bruised. She ached, but she was alive.
Her lids fluttered open as the fog of confusion melted away. Her rebirth radiated with a plethora of colors, but none more magnificent than the blue eyes of her champion. The sight of her husband, her lover, her king filled her insides with a jubilation that pushed hot tears over her temple.
"Thank ye." Taveon kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her chin. "Oh, God, thank ye," he offered his gratitude to his Maker and pressed his lips to the skin beneath her ear.
"I think I died," she said simply, still slightly bewildered, and shivered inside her cold, wet garments. "There was a light and a passage of black clouds. I was afraid, but I heard your voice."
Taveon laughed, or mayhap he cried, and pulled her impossibly closer. He inspected her limbs, her back, and her skull, checking for injuries, then he splayed his shaking fingers over her belly. "Think ye there will ever come a day when ye practice more caution?"
Viviana sat up taller in his arms and cupped his tightened jaw. "All is well. I am well as is your son. It is over." She flattened her hand over his and silently offered her own gratitude to God for the gifts He'd bestowed upon her.
The ebb and flow of the tide drew her attention to the coastal rock where Sister De Rosa's body lay mutilated and broken. The woman would always hold a place in Viviana's heart. She admired her bravery and wished she could have prevented her death for Lily's sake.
Taveon followed her gaze. "We shouldn't have survived the fall. Something saved us."
"Or someone." Without a doubt, the women had saved them. They'd guided them away from death to give them the chance to live. The chance to love.
A quivering pop sounded over the water like the snap of a breaking bone. Purple light exploded beneath the surface.
"Shite!" Taveon wrapped protective arms around Viviana, but she twisted in his hold determined to see.
The same chirping noise she'd heard in the tunnel escalated to a volume so painful she had to cover her ears. Black shadows slithered out of the sea resembling slime covered newts without hind legs. A half dozen of them crawled onto the rock and circled Sister De Rosa's body.
The eerie, spine-scraping noise ceased abruptly.
"Oh
cazzo
!" Viviana clung to Taveon's broad shoulders as he scurried backward, pulling her with him.
A phantom surged from Sister De Rosa's body. An entity of black mist. A demon. A witch...
"Gillian," they whispered in unison.
A howl of suffering shook the ground beneath them. The tide rolled backward. Rock and debris fell away from the side of the cliff. The shadows coiled around Gillian and the ear-piercing chirping resumed, drowning out her hoarse screams of protest as they pulled her beneath the surface.
"Shite!" Taveon's heart thudded against her arm, and his protective hold didn't seem to lessen even when the sounds dissipated.
Silence prefaced a hair-raising rush of whispers causing more gooseflesh to sprout over Viviana's already pebbled skin. The women gathered into a cluster atop the rock, each one of them distinct in her own way.
"My God in Heaven." The man who'd denied their existence the whole of his life stared in bewilderment at the ethereal beings before him. "The women are on the rock," he explained making her smile all the more. "I wish ye could see them."
"I can." Viviana felt comforted by their presence. They reminded her of the alabaster statues the great artists sculpted at the Medici Palace, so loving, so at peace. "They are wonderful, are they not?"
Taveon looked down at her and caressed her bare neck. A troubled look stitched his dark brows together. "Ye can see them?"
She nodded. The amulet was gone, lost forever into the sea, yet somehow she remained privy to the talisman's power. She recalled the last moments of her death when Elise kissed her eyes and wondered.... "I cannot explain it, but I believe Elise left a piece of herself behind." A gift Viviana would treasure forever. "She delivered me from death and into your arms."
"And for that I will be eternally grateful." Taveon's gaze returned to the scene. He held her hand and gently stroked her palm.
One of the women lent a hand to the second spirit emerging from Sister De Rosa's broken body, then a corridor filled with light and stars made a glittery path across the sea. A man—tall, thickly built—appeared in the passageway. His features resembled Taveon's, but Viviana knew without a doubt who he was.
Kael had come to lead them to the other world.
The women glided into the mouth of the entrance, but one paused, turned, and raised her hand in parting.
"Is she Elise?" Taveon held his eyes wide, unblinking.
"She is your mother." Viviana returned Janetta's wave with an open palm, and then curled her hand in Taveon's. She didn't dare close her eyes for fear she might miss this phenomenon most would never witness in a hundred lifetimes. "Fare the well, sisters. God speed."
Viviana watched in wonder as Janetta followed Elise and the others across the water. Their fragile opaque spirits walked from this world toward a pink horizon and began their journey home.
The passage blinked out.
The water returned to a steady billow. Horse hooves thundered down the pass behind them, bringing them back to a world less complex, but for Viviana it was a world forever changed. Never again would she allow her past to rob her of a single moment she had remaining on this earth. She vowed then and there to live each day in bliss, loving her husband.
"It seems so simple now," she decided aloud.
"Simple?" He drew her tight against his chest. "Ye died. I will likely never sleep again."
Viviana wrapped her arms around Taveon's neck as he scooped her off the ground. She studied his handsome face as if seeing him for the first time and in some ways she was. The tiny lines at the corners of his eyes forked into temples that sprouted the slightest sprinkle of grey hair. Memorizing his features, she traced the line of his strong jaw covered with stubble. "You are really quite comely."
His perfect lips twitched beneath her tickling fingertips and curved into a haughty smile. "Ye are just now realizing this?" He grinned, his chin raised, and his walk turned into a swagger with each step he took toward the path. "Wait until ye see me naked."
Oh, he was an arrogant and wicked man, but he was her man, and he loved her. Her smile split into a toothy grin. "Say the words, again," she demanded with confidence. "Tell me you love me."
"I love ye, Viviana." He professed his love with ease, no longer fearing its destruction, and pressed his smile against her lips.
She hugged him tighter, savoring her moment of victory, never wanting it to end.
"Have ye words for me?" he asked, the hint of mischief returned in his tone.
"I suppose I love you, too," she teased and nipped the salty skin of his neck.
"Suppose, aye?" He looked down at her, one brow raised in question. "And when, pray tell, do ye
suppose
you fell in love with me?"
His blue eyes twinkled, reminding her of the first time she'd been blessed to gaze upon their brilliance at Chillion Castle. "I dare say it was love at first sight."
Epilogue
"Uffa!"
Viviana's hips shot upright. Pain sluiced through her insides clear to the marrow in her bones. Only a short moment passed before she settled back into her skin atop the velvet covered settee. She blew air through her smile and peeked at her husband beneath her heavy lashes.
Taveon caressed her bare hip and lowered his lips to her mound where he'd removed another piece of resin from her mons. "Sorry, love." He looked at her with those wicked blue eyes and set a goblet of watered wine into her hand before returning his attention back to his task. He pushed her knees a little wider and applied another dollop of hot wax to her nether lips.
Viviana took a long draw of wine, thinking her husband didn't appear to be sorry at all. Oh, but he would be. "You've been away a long time. One would think a man of your status would have far more important duties to tend than playing maid to his wife."
"Ouish, woman." Taveon smoothed a piece of cloth over the resin. "Think ye I enjoyed my time in the wood with the hunters? They dinnae smell nearly as sweet as ye."
Viviana melted a little with his compliment.