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Just as the thought of the dratted man crossed my mind, a peculiar warmth inched up my throat to the corner of my jaw. A whisper of a sensation at most. I spun around to find Ruan Kivell standing behind me. Worry and exhaustion creased his dear face. His dark curls were loose as he tapped his cap on his left thigh. He’d seen better days. His suit was stained and rumpled as if he’d slept in the thing after walking halfway here.

He came.

Ruan gave me the queerest look, as if he couldn’t fathom why I’d doubt his presence. “Of course I came. Was supposed to have been here last night but there’d been a downed tree on the tracks. They needed help to clear it away…”

Relief, with the faintest edge of trepidation surged through me as I fought the urge to throw my arms around his neck and kiss him. Instead, I rummaged in my pocket for his fare with a determined expression. “Hari told you where we’re headed?”

He let out a low hum in agreement.

“And you’re certain you want to come? Back to Belgium after all that has happened…”

Ruan leaned down cupping my cheek in his gloved hand and pressed a kiss to my forehead. I drew the bracing green scent of him into my lungs, hoping it would be enough to fortify me for the journey if he said no.

He didn’t. He didn’t say yes either, but he did get on the train.

WE TRAVELED THE rest of the way in silence, as the gentle rocking of the train car carried Ruan and I through the years—ripping through the veil shrouding my present from the memories of the war, my family, and those fragile echoes of my childhood in New York before I’d been sent away in scandal.

I pressed my forehead against the cold damp glass of the window and shut my eyes. Even in the darkness, images of the war returned—the scarred landscape seared inside my eyelids from the years I’d spent traversing these same miles in my ambulance. The sound of the guns. The lingering scent of gas filling my lungs. The unending drumbeat of death in my ears. Some people managed to escape that crucible unscathed. But neither Ruan nor I were so fortunate.

If I’d known where my mother was during the war, I would have gone to her without a second thought. Not even pausing to think of the ramifications of my actions. Granted she’d been on the opposite side of the Hindenburg Line, but what were enemy fortifications to family? But with the better half of a decade having passed between us—I possessed a newfound sense of caution. What if she was not the same? What if she didn’t remember me? What if Hari was wrong and it wasn’t her at all?

“Then we will face it together.” Ruan squeezed my hands, evidently overhearing my wayward thoughts—a peculiar ability of pellars, or at least of this pellar. Neither of us had met another to put the matter to the test, and we both were only beginning to understand the inexplicable abilities he possessed.

My throat was rough with grief as I looked up at him, speaking for the first time in hours. “How will I bear it?”

The tenderness in his pale green eyes made everything worse. Ruan stood as the train slowed, reaching up to grab my valise and his own haversack. “Exactly as you’ve managed every day before this one. The truth cannot be worse than the lie you’ve come to believe.” He cleared his throat and offered me a hand. “This is our stop.”

He was right, of course. Damned man.

If I’d lived this long believing my mother was dead—how much worse could the truth be?

CHAPTER THREEAn Unwelcoming Little Spot

IT was pitch black by the time we reached the village of Saint Oda. At least I thought it was the village of Saint Oda. The rain was coming down in thick sheets. I could scarcely make out the edges of the road before us. Hari had managed to hire a motorcar that we’d picked up back in Walcourt before continuing deep into the Belgian countryside. The signs along the way had been woefully inadequate—some having never been replaced after the war, and others consumed by nature itself during the intervening years. And while Ruan Kivell was in possession of many wonderful attributes—and was by all accounts a credit to his sex—his ability to read a map was not one of them.

Mind broken and body aching, I pulled off the rutted road onto the verge and cut the engine of the hired motorcar. At worst, we’d spend the night along the roadside before finding a local and asking directions at daybreak. It couldn’t be far, unless I’d missed a turn. I rested my forehead on the wheel, exhausted from the day. Train. Ferry. Train. Now a motorcar and still no bed in sight. We’d been traveling for hours, and to make matters worse, the weather had only grown more dreadful with each passing minute.

Ruan looked dubiously at the darkened road. “Are you certain we’re close?”

As if on cue, a bolt of lightning illuminated the sky, revealing the darkened outline of a ruin upon the hill ahead. I squinted in that direction, making out the faint glow of electric lights through the driving rain. Another flash of lightning revealed the broken steeple of a chapel and the walls of something rising tall atop the high ground. A long low rumble of thunder followed. I didn’t like the look of this place. Not one bit. But perhaps it would look more inviting in the morning.

“I’d say we found it,” I grumbled, rummaging about for my valise.

Ruan sobered, taking in the stark shadows of the night. “Indeed.”

Bag in hand, I leapt out of the motorcar, armed with only a sleek black umbrella against the elements, and hurried along the main street toward the boardinghouse. The wintery rain splattered up from the puddles, soaking my skirts as a sharp sleet stung my face. It was a punishing, cruel sort of weather. The kind that gave credence to the folktales about vengeful witches and angry gods. Not that I put much stock into either of those things. Witches yes, as I could no longer deny their existence—but I’ve never met an angry god. In my experience they’re far too disinterested for that emotion.

Despite the village being battened down for the storm, it did not take long to find Mrs. Wauters’s boardinghouse. I knocked once. Then a second time as the rain pounded down, soaking through my stockings and chilling me straight to the bone. Stretching onto my toes, I peered through the threadbare curtains into the main room. The faint glow of an oil lamp burnt from within. She must be here.

I’d not taken a room at a boardinghouse in a scandalously long time, mostly as I had become soft in my adulthood and preferred electricity to whatever it was this was—a narrow stone structure only two stories up with a slanting roof and a decided lean to one side.

Charming. Utterly charming.

But at least it was dry, which was a far cry from our current state.

I reached into my jacket pocket, squinting in the light that escaped the curtains to double-check the description in Hari’s notes, before knocking a third time on the old wooden door. This time I banged hard—palm flat against wood in case the storm had drowned out the sound of my previous attempts to gain her attention.

Shadows moved inside and within seconds the door creaked open, revealing a woman at least a decade older than me. There was a flicker of something in her face. Recognition. Uncertainty. Fear? Whatever it was disappeared as soon as it came. I couldn’t fault her for caution. A woman living alone, even in a village as quiet as Saint Oda, was wise to be wary of strangers. Running a boardinghouse was a respectable enough position, yet one never knew who might be paying a call. A frisson of apprehension climbed up my spine as I stood there, hesitant to set foot over the threshold.