Page 56 of No Place in Time

“Julian has been asking me about you for months.” Isabel’s voice was careful and measured. “He needs a wife. An heir. You are…” She sighed. “The suitable choice.”

The clinical assessment stung, though Cecily knew Isabel didn’t mean it cruelly.

“I can’t,” Cecily whispered. “Isabel, I can’t marry him. After all I’ve seen.”

Isabel’s hand found hers and squeezed. “I know. But…”

A bee droned past, heavy with pollen. Somewhere across the courtyard, a servant was singing.

“But if you do,” Isabel said slowly, “it would mean you’d live at Veyron. You’d be close to me. I would have…” She stopped, swallowed. “I’ve been very alone, moreso since my marriage.”

Cecily turned to look at her.

“I didn’t choose this either,” Isabel said. “You know I didn’t. But Julian’s cruelty is careless, born of his own wants. It is not the deliberate, watchful kind you see in Benedict.” She paused, her voice dropping. “There are worse men, Cecily. I promise you that.”

Cecily leaned her head against Isabel’s shoulder. Isabel’s arm came around her, and for a moment they simply sat together in the spring sunlight, two women with no choices, holding onto each other because there was nothing else to hold.

“I wish…” Cecily started, then stopped.

“I know,” Isabel said. “So do I.”

But Isabel had no idea what Cecily really wished for.

Finn.

∞∞∞

That night, Cecily sat on the edge of her narrow bed and stared at the wall.

Finn, where are you?

She hadn’t let herself think of him since she’d learned he was a Veyron, born of nobility. What was the point? He was gone. Disappeared, perhaps even dead. He’d forgotten her.

But he had lied. He’d looked her in the eyes and let her believe he was someone he wasn’t. He’d let her trust him, care for him, while hiding the truth. And worse—

He was Alard’s son. The son of the man who had started it all.

She had thought it a cruel irony before. Now it felt like a purposeful design, a trap laid across sixty years. And she had walked right into it, led by a young man with a secret name and a promise he never meant to keep.

And still—still—some part of her wanted him here. Wanted to hear his voice, feel his hand in hers, know she wasn’t alone.

How dare you leave me here, she thought fiercely. How dare you lie to me and then disappear.

But underneath the anger was something sharper, more desperate.

Please come back. Please be alive, she whispered. Please.

Because if Finn were here, if he came back, if he still cared, he was the only person in this entire world who could help her. He knew about the time machine. He understood what it meant to be trapped in the wrong time, in the wrong life.

He, above everything else, was the reason she couldn’t marry Julian.

Cecily lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling beams. Outside, the last light was fading.

There was nowhere to run. No coin, no ally, no path forward but the one they had laid for her. To refuse would be to insult a powerful baron and wound the only family she had left. She had fled across time only to find the same cage waiting for her.

And the one person who held a key was a liar and the son of the man who built her first prison.

Cecily turned onto her side and looked at the wall. The last light through the window had faded. And then, like a half-remembered dream, a thought came to her. The machine. If it was still there, if she could find it, she could run again. Not anywhere she knew. Just away. To another time, another place, where Julian could never find her.