Consciousness arrived like a former mistress-familiar and accepted reluctantly. Cal did not open his eyes but sampled the environment through his remaining senses like a blind man. The sheets and the mattress were not his own. The sun outside the window, higher than it usually was when he awoke, did not warm the skin, but a dull red glow radiated against his eyelids. The air smelled cool and damp and tinged with moss. Years of sleeping with a partner made him aware of the void beside him. A rarity, because he was the early riser in their home. He didn’t hear anyone else in the room. Perhaps she had finally left; had enough of his mess. Her leaving would be a just dessert.
Eyes open. A vaulted ceiling with wooden beams; a circular chandelier made from deer antlers dropped from the ceiling’s apex and hung on a single chain cutting down the center of the room. A spent blaze smoldered in the stone fireplace under a richly ornate oak mantel. It reminded him of Aandor. A stray thought suggested it was Scotland, a castle on the moors; one of the many bedrooms connected to Ben Reyes’s nexus. The late Ben Reyes.
He had dreamt about Chryslantha before the nightmare about the grave. A hallucinatory vision of blissful peace and lust that culminated in a dry, sticky residue that coated his crotch. He hadn’t done that since before his first woman, Loraine. Chryslantha had become a fixture in his dreams. He was grateful for the morning solitude. There was no satisfactory explanation he could offer his wife.
Cal considered living out his remaining life in this spot. He tried to lift his arm but it refused. Everything was still connected. The signal from his brain was sent. The arm simply didn’t respond. The effort was akin to triggering the last mechanism of a Rube Goldberg device without setting the preceding steps in motion. A nameless force was at work. An empty space sat heavily on his chest and head and pressed down with a father’s authority. Thoughts whizzed through three at a time. He couldn’t focus. The jumble of images made lucidity difficult-his brain had been coopted by the chaos in his life; overwhelmed by his duty to his kingdom, his lost prince, his family in Aandor, his wife and daughter, the newly created widow Reyes, his responsibilities as a citizen of this world and, ultimately, to himself. All these forces vying for his faithfulness-he could not remain true to all of them by serving any one. Yet in the wings of his mind, like an invisible subprogram, a linear vein of reason watched the anarchy on the main stage. Was it a side effect? His mind had been twisted and prodded like taffy the past twenty-four hours. Consequences were only natural. Expected even.
Time stopped. The pressure in his head squeezed at the recesses of his memory. He shucked it aside, over and over, trying to shut it out, only to have the prodding claw return sharper, longer, with more fervor each round. A drunken barber had shaved his brain and culled his motivation like cream from a bucket. The problem pirouetted before him like an elephant in a tutu. The subprogram in his head yelled at him from under the din, scolding him with the natural authority of an elder.
Get up, get up, get up, get up! You useless sack of shit! Get your ass out of bed this instant! You’re on a mission!
Semiconsciously, Cal knew the culprit yet resisted his own edification. Stress and anguish, much like with the roof jumper who was fired from his job and went home to find his wife in bed with his best friend, conspired to wring the last vestiges of chemical harmony from his worn-out mind.
Cal had attended many department seminars to sharpen his skills in negotiating with the mentally unhinged. Confronting suicides was a daily event for the NYPD. Apparently-and this was only a guess-his levels of neurofactor three (serotonin) were posting a low. His factors one, two, and seven weren’t faring any better. Neurons fired with the efficiency of a gelding stud. He teetered on the precipice of despondency. If Cal could just get a modicum of cooperation from life, the universe, and everything else, things might be okay. Is this what the “ledge jumpers” thought, too?
Cal decided to roll on his side, an ambitious decision he was quite proud of. He lay on his back waiting for something to happen. The details on the ceiling beams were mesmerizing. The grains ran the length of the wood. Some beams were curved to follow the ceiling to its apex. Did they do that with water, the same way they bent drywall?
Drywall? Aandor has been invaded. Your family’s been hunted, maybe tortured, the kid you took an oath to protect has been lost for thirteen years, Ben was mauled to death… and you’re wondering about how they bend wood? Get up!
He pulled the sheet over his head.
Why was this so difficult? Just before the sleep wore off, for a nanosecond, he was the man he used to be. Then reality seeped in like poison. Couldn’t he hold on to that moment-wrap it around him like a shield? Why couldn’t he stay this mental hemlock? He’d led men through massacres; through battles whose likely outcome was a lacerated death. He was decisive, acute, confident. Why was turning over in bed arduous? It’s a spell. Yes, that was it, a spell. Everything would be okay. Lelani would find a remedy. Probably an herbal tea made from yak’s piss and eye of Newt Gingrich.
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” came a familiar voice.
A grumbled whisper, “Chryslantha?”
The sizzling odor of sausage and maple syrup wafted through the covers. Cal shut his eyes. The bedsheet pulled back, like a magic trick, to reveal him. He peeked to find a Cheshire Cat hovering over him.
“No, it’s not Christmas,” his wife said. “Just thought you might like breakfast in bed.” She pulled the drapes back the rest of the way and flooded the room with light. Cat notched the window open. A cold breeze blew through the room. “Sorry,” she said. “Wanted some fresh air. Didn’t think it’d be arctic. I can get the fire going.”
“What time is it?” he rasped.
“Almost ten. You haven’t slept this late since you did twelve to eights.”
Cal pulled himself up and let Cat prop the pillow behind him. “Thanks,” he said. “What’s with the room service? Something else happen?”
“Can’t a wife spoil her husband once in a while?” She was glad, he realized. Grateful to still have her spouse. “We’ve never been to Scotland, you know.”
And technically, they still hadn’t. The only access to the bedroom was through Ben’s bungalow in Puerto Rico. Entry from the castle itself had been sealed with stone and mortar years earlier. To get to the moors they’d have to rappel three hundred feet down from the window and avoid the moat, which doubled as a sewage outlet.
Cat rested the bed tray over Cal’s thighs and lifted the warming covers from the plates.
“Have some?” Cal offered.
“No.”
“Did you eat already?”
“Skipped. Having trouble keeping things down. Probably nerves.”
“Hmm,” Cal said, swallowing java. One thought, a minor one until this moment, rose above the din in his brain. “Was that a pregnancy test box I saw in the bathroom trash at home?”
Cat was silent. She sat on the bed facing away from him with her hands on her lap.
“You coppers never miss a detail.”
“Wouldn’t be very good if we did. Is there something I should know?”
“The test results were ruined in the fight. I don’t know for sure, but it sure feels like…” She didn’t finish. Cal edged up to her and stroked her shoulders. “I didn’t want to add to our problems,” she said. “Not in the middle of all this.”
He kissed her on the nape of her neck. “You’ve always been the solution to my problems,” he said.
Chryslantha marched herself to the forefront of Cal’s brain. For a moment, it was her scent he smelled, her voice he heard. Someone had hooked his navel from the inside and was pulling it back toward his spine. He smiled at his wife. Could Cat see the other woman in his eyes?
“What’s the plan?” she asked him.
“We poke around the neighborhood up here, find a lead on the boy. Then, back to New York. The others from our group might head to the city looking for me.” As an afterthought he added, “The ones who are still alive.”
“And then?”
“Then we find the boy.”
“And then?”
“One thing at a time.”
“Let’s say you’re successful. Do we take the kid from his legal parents? Do we raise him ourselves? Do we move to his town? Buy the house next door to his? Do we bring him to the Bronx?”
“I don’t know. Let’s find him first.”
“Do you have to take him back to Aandor? Or can Lelani do it?”
“Let’s not talk about this right now.”
“If not now, when? What’s the plan? Are we actually making it up on the fly? We got lucky finding Ben and Helen up here.”
Not so lucky for Ben and Helen.
“Who knows when we’ll be able to catch our breath again,” Cat continued.
“I’ll know more later…”
“Have you made a decision about going back?”
“Can’t we drop this, Cat?”
“Drop this?”
Cat stood up from the bed. She rubbed her arms, suddenly chilled, while she made her way to the doorway. Cal had a tinge of guilt. She was so distraught, she was out of character. The woman he married would never drop anything.
Suddenly, Cat stopped and turned to face him. “You’re the guy who had every stage of his career with the NYPD mapped out before he graduated the academy!” she said. “You’re the guy who had the colors of our apartment picked out before we even bought the building!”
Cat circled slowly back around toward Cal, still lying immobile in bed.
“You’re the guy who plays chess five moves ahead of his turn. You have your endgame picked out after the first move and suddenly, in real life, you don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow or the next day. Are you delaying decisions you don’t want to face, Cal, or have you made them already and don’t want to tell me?” Cat demanded, hovering over him.
Cal would have preferred the battle at Gagarnoth to this moment. His back was again against a cliff, except he couldn’t slash and hack his way out of this trap-he was an immovable object confronted by an unstoppable force… a slip of a woman who held the key to his heart. The problem was his heart now had a second lock, a backdoor key that led to his past, and more and more it looked like both keys needed to be turned in unison to keep him whole, like submarine commanders launching a ballistic missile.
“The first one,” Cal finally said.
“The first what?”
“I’m delaying decisions I don’t want to face. All options look like I’ll have to go back if I’m successful. And I have to be successful.”
“Or die trying?”
“Or die trying,” he confirmed. “There are millions of people depending on me. Aandor is a city that became a nation that became an empire. A whole society. The entire balance of power is unraveling there. We need to preserve the succession and reclaim our seat of power over the empire to preserve peace on the continent. My family is depending on me.”
The words “my family” struck Cat like a slap. She and Bree had been his whole family until yesterday.
Cat took a moment and then asked, “Is there room for your daughter-for me-in your new life? In whichever world you choose?”
“There has to be. I’ll make it so. I have to sort things out first, then come back for you.”
Cat stepped back from the bed, arms tense, fists clenched. A tear broke through her veneer.
“Cat… it’s complicated.”
“There’s no guarantee that you’d even live through this war!” she said. “You could be hacked to pieces with those fucking meat cleavers you medieval jocks use.”
“As opposed to getting blown apart cleanly in the Bronx by a drug dealer’s bullet.”
“Don’t be smart with me, Cal! You don’t have the right to be smart with me! If you did manage to live through that hell, if you go back, there’s a good chance that the next time I see you Bree will have her own kids and I’ll be an old crone. What the fuck am I supposed to do for the next thirty years? Pretend you’re dead? Live my years never knowing for sure? What about Bree? What about our child inside me?”
“WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO, CAT?”
Cal shoved the food tray off the bed. He leaned forward challenging Cat for answers.
“Tell me what to do!” he persisted. “Should I ignore that the prince exists? Go back to the Bronx and take my ESU training? Retire in twenty years with a beer gut, coach Little League, walk my daughter down the aisle, bounce fat grandkids on my lap, and fish until I keel over in my rowboat? Be content that I led a good life?”
“Fuck you,” Cat said, in tears. For a moment, Cal thought she would slap him. Instead, she hugged him hard. “Yes. Damn it. Yes!” she whispered in his ear. And even as she repeated the word, Cal sensed Cat knew better. That she would never respect him or love him again with the same fervor if he could turn his back on his family and his responsibilities that way, even for her sake. Her tears rained on his shoulder.
“I love you, Catherine,” he said.
“I know you do,” she said, sniffling. “I’m just trying to figure out what our life is becoming. Has become. Will things ever be the same again?”
Cal took a moment to think things through. He was figuring out his strategy as much for himself as to give Cat her due. She deserved a straight answer. He got out of bed, pulling the comforter behind him for a cover. He threw kindling on the dying fire and a big log on top of that, then took a chair next to the hearth. Cat sat on the stone platform in front of the fireplace facing him.
“I know you came up here with me to defend our life-to help find a quick fix and make all these new people in our lives go away,” Cal said. “For a brief moment in time, Cat, I believed we might do it, too. But it’s not going to happen. There’s no easy fix. I have to look for this boy, Cat. Not as a hobby or something I do in my spare time. I have to look for this boy,” Cal emphasized. “If I can’t find him during my sick leave, grieving over Erin’s murder, then I’ll cite psychological stress and use my vacation time, too.”
“That’s about four weeks in all. What if you still-?”
“Then I’ll think of something else. With Lelani’s help, I hope to find the prince in the next few days. I’ll consider what to do with the boy as I search. It would depend on his current living situation.”
“Fair enough,” Cat said. “And if he’s not alive?”
Cal stoked the fire. It popped a few cinders on Cat, which Cal quickly brushed off with his hands.
“If the prince is dead,” Cal continued, “my mission is a failure-and House Athelstan loses its claim to the throne. If the prince is dead, it would be better for me not to go back. My family there would be better off for it.”
“God forgive me, Cal…” Cat’s eyes began to well. “Part of me wants the boy not to be alive. I feel like a selfish horrible monster. I want you back home.”
“Catherine-”
“But if this little boy died because you weren’t there to protect him, you’ll never be the same man again. You’d never forgive yourself.”
“Will I ever be the same again either way, Cat? Will anything?” Cal was scared, about his mission, his family, his very purpose for being, and Cat was the only person on earth he could ever admit such a thing to.
“I always wanted you to find your past,” Cat said. “Be careful what you wish for, huh?”
“Let’s take things one day at a time. One of the other guardians might have raised the boy. If we whip the bad guys, we might have years here before any big decision needs to be made.”
“What if everything turns out okay? Are Bree and I even invited to join you in Aandor, Cal?”
Cal was surprised by the question. He had assumed Cat could join him if she wished. Yet did she want to be a nobleman’s wife at court in a feudal society? Her family, friends, and history were here-Cal understood what it meant to not have those things in one’s life. How could he place such a burden on someone who never bargained for problems of this magnitude? Or perhaps he didn’t ask her to come because of Chryslantha. The thought of his wife and his betrothed actually meeting bothered him greatly. He felt he had betrayed them both. But what was he thinking… that he’d return to Aandor without Cat and Bree and take up with Chryslantha as though nothing had happened? Cat would haunt his memories in Aandor just as Chryslantha preoccupied them now.
“Cal, are you okay?”
“What?”
“You spaced out.”
“I would never abandon you, but… do you really want to come to Aandor?”
The air hung heavy between them as Cat considered the question. A medieval life without modern conveniences; no electricity, television, motorcars, public education, women’s equality, or even aspirin. How would Bree take to that change? What would she lose by going to a medieval world?
“I don’t know,” Cat answered honestly. “I’m trying to be a ‘Stand By Your Man’ type of woman. Fucking song! But this-”
“We don’t have to figure it all out now,” Cal said. He took her hands, leaned forward and kissed the tears on her cheeks. She moved to his lap and nuzzled her face in his neck. “Let’s see how things play out,” he added.
Cat laughed softly. “I always thought the worst scenario I’d have to contend with if we found your family was that they lived in trailer parks and were related even before they got married,” she confessed. “Our problems never came this big.”
“It’s not the size, it’s what you do with it that matters,” Cal said, smiling.
Cat chuckled, even as she was tempted to punch him. She kissed him instead. “Dope,” she teased.
With her arms around his neck, she asked, “What now, my lord?”
“We get out of this room and attend a good man’s funeral. Come up with a plan to pick up the prince’s trail. The sooner we accomplish this, the quicker we can get back to New York and see our daughter again.”