Ricochet Through Time (Echo Trilogy Book 3) (31 page)

Lex

I lay on the polished At floor of Nuin’s tomb until the last, hidden vestiges of my survival instincts awakened within me. Delivery had been bloody and damaging enough to my body to trigger my reactivated regenerative abilities, and after a long nap, I barely ached at all anymore. I also looked like I’d dropped about twenty pounds—from my pre-baby weight. Regeneration was a gift with a hefty price.

Driven by desperate hunger, I sought out the food stored in my satchel. I wolfed down the first loaf of molasses bread like it wasn’t some dense, slightly sticky thing akin to a protein bar. It eased the hunger pains, if only a little.

I’d never truly understood what it felt like to be starving. It’s something I used to stay all the time—I’m starving. I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. If I don’t eat something soon, I might die. I understood it now.

I attacked the wheel of cheese next, not even bothering to peel off any part of the rind. I figured it probably wasn’t poisonous, and even if it was, I was really only delaying the inevitable right now. Best-case scenario, the rind gave me more calories, a little more time to wallow in self-pity, thinking about my babies and all the things I wouldn’t get to experience, wouldn’t get to see, as I wasted away in this underground tomb.

The bitterest disappointment came from knowing I wouldn’t get to raise my children. I hadn’t failed. The twins had been born, whole and healthy, and, so far as I knew, had returned to their native timeline. To my native timeline. I didn’t even blame them for leaving me behind. They were just babies; they hadn’t known any better.

I astounded myself with the ferocity with which I devoured the wheel of cheese, moving on to the second loaf of molasses bread once it, too, was nothing but a fond memory. I forced myself to take my time, reducing the loaf to just a corner chunk and crumbs in a luxurious several minutes.

Sighing, I stared at the last bit of bread, wishing it would sprout a whole other loaf. All I had left now was that small nugget and the packet of dried boar meat sitting on the floor beyond my knee. I opened the oilcloth. Six strips. I picked one up, tearing off half with my teeth and chewing methodically. I was aiming for efficiency; I couldn’t afford any wasted energy. When the boar meat had gone the way of the cheese, I polished off the last bit of the molasses bread.

I no longer felt starving, but I was far from sated. The water filling my waterskin was lukewarm but still refreshing, and it mimicked the sensation of a full belly for a blissful moment. But soon that, too, was gone.

I sat on the floor for several minutes, staring at my bag and wondering if tales of boiled leather soup had been true and whether or not leather needed to be boiled at all in order to be edible. My stomach growled.

Frustrated, I stood on shaky legs and wandered into the large, arch-ceilinged chamber directly beyond Nuin’s tomb. It was the first addition I’d made to the underground structure when I’d expanded upon it some unknown years ago, creating my sanctuary. I’d inscribed countless words on the walls, communicating with Marcus across the chasm of time in the only way I could.

I started reading from one wall at random, hating the words because they’d been written by a version of me who still had a future, who still had things to look forward to. These words had been written by me in a time when I didn’t know that this was how I would end.

But does it have to be?

I didn’t want to die here. I wanted anything besides me dying here, underground and alone while my children grew up, motherless. My body would remain in here, locked away until Marcus opened the tomb in several thousand years.

Wait a minute . . .

That never happened. Or wouldn’t happen. The future had already been written—because it was
my
past. And one single certainty about that future-past shed a glowing beam of hope straight into my heart.

Marcus hadn’t found my body in this tomb. Marcus hadn’t found
any
body in here except for Nuin’s. Especially not
mine
.

Which meant there was a way out. I just had to find it.

***

I must have done at least seven circuits around the complex of underground chambers, each more frantic than the last. There were thirty-three rooms, each unique, and each lacking even the faintest hint of a way out. Which I’d already known, because I’d built almost the whole damn place and I hadn’t included any sort of a hidden escape tunnel.

But I hadn’t built the
whole
place; the entry chamber—Nuin’s actual tomb—had been built by him untold eons ago. That fact made laps around my mind as I returned to the entry chamber.

“It has to be something in here.” I stood in the central doorway set in the wall opposite the steep stairs leading up to the one and only exit. I’d sealed the exit myself, keying the solidified At barrier to the unique combination of Marcus’s and my bonding pheromones. If I’d had a vial containing some of his pheromones—like he had of mine—then I’d have no problem leaving. The door would dissolve as soon as I touched it, and that would be that. Would
be. If I had a vial of his pheromones . . .

I scanned the glowing, pearlescent walls, seeing the symbols etched into the surface and looking for any outliers. Anything that stood out as a possible button or latch or keyhole or
anything
. When the visual scan proved fruitless, I switched to a more tactile approach, running my hands up and down the wall’s surface. I made sure to feel around and within the engraved depression of each and every symbol.

Nothing.

With the tips of my fingers, I traced the seam where wall met floor all the way around the room.

Nothing.

Desperate, exhausted, and a little dizzy, I examined every inch of the rectangular dais displaying Nuin’s perfectly preserved body at the center of the room. “Come on . . . come on . . . come on . . .” I repeated the words over and over, a mantra keeping me going in spite of the yawning ache in my belly and the weakness settling into my limbs and the fog invading my mind as my energy stores depleted.

But still, I found nothing. No way out. No clue. Not a damn thing.

A dull headache thrummed in the base of my skull, reminding me not-so-subtly that I’d gone too long without food and water. I rested my forehead against the transparent At barrier encasing Nuin’s body and closed my eyes. “How?” I said, voice cracking. “How do I get out?”

I opened my eyes and stared at Nuin’s familiar, peaceful features. He looked so much like Marcus, and my mind was so weary that it was easy to confuse who was actually lying there, lifeless perfection taunting me. Tricking me. Fooling me that it was Marcus instead of Nuin.

“How do I get back to you?” I whispered. Tears welled as I stared at his face. As I missed his touch. As I started to accept that this was it for me. This was how I would die.

“How?” This time the word was barely understandable, dripping as it was with misery and self-pity. I would never get to hold my babies again. I would never see them grow up. I would never witness the wonder that was
them
. With a sob, I sank down to my knees. “How . . .”

“Courage, dear Lex.”

My spine stiffened, and my breath lodged in my chest. That voice—it was an impossible voice. It was a voice that no longer existed. It was the voice of the dead. The gone.

Slowly, I lifted my head and looked through the transparent sarcophagus. Nuin still rested within in his sleeplike death. So how had I heard his voice?

Neck frozen in place, I peered out of the corner of my eye, searching for the speaker. Searching for a ghost.

He stood halfway up the stairway, hands clasped behind his back and resplendent robe shimmering with brilliant colors.

“Nuin?” I clambered to my feet, focus shifting from the very real body mere inches from me to the same man standing on the stairs. “How—are you real?”

He smiled his kind, familiar smile and started down the stairs. Once his descent was complete, he paused and held his arms out at his sides. “I am here.”

I couldn’t tear my eyes from him. “But you’re also in here.” I patted the top of the sarcophagus. “So how can you be real?”

He raised his eyebrows, steepling his fingers under his chin. “Reality is such a fluid idea, don’t you think?”

I licked my lips. “I don’t—” I shook my head. My brain wasn’t capable of making sense of what I was seeing.

“Real . . . unreal . . .” Nuin clasped his fingers together and lowered his hands. “Does it truly matter?”

He’d talk me in circles if I let him, and I didn’t have time for that. “I guess not.” I eyed him. “Why are you here?”

His face broke into a genuine, heartwarming smile. “To help you, of course.”

I blinked, opened my mouth, then shut it again.

“You are stuck, dearest one. You feel you have no way out. You are giving up.” His smile turned sly. “But you should not. There is something you are missing.”

I shook my head and took a step toward him. “But I’ve looked everywhere. Literally. If you know of something I missed . . . I’m all ears.”

“I’m all ears,” he repeated, laughing under his breath. “English is such a funny language.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Nuin . . . ?”

He shook his head, still chuckling. “The answer is not out here,” he said, closing the distance between us. He raised his hand, resting his palm over my heart. “But in here.”

I searched his rainbow eyes. “I don’t understand.”

He lowered his hand. “Think about it, my Alexandra. There are no doors . . . no passageways or tunnels. The solidified At is just as impenetrable as ever, and you don’t have any of Heru’s bonding pheromone to trigger the release . . .” His eyes locked with mine. “What is the only possible way in or out?”

Yet again, I shook my head.

Nuin frowned, the expression thoughtful. “Let me rephrase—what would a person
need
in order to get in or out of here?”

I drew my lower lip between my teeth, eyes narrowing. “My and Heru’s bonding pheromones . . .”

“Besides that. What else might someone possess that would allow them passage out of here?”

“I don’t know,” I said, head aching and exasperation and hunger wearing down my patience. “I guess Nik would be able to get in here.” My eyes widened as Nuin’s coaxing smile spread into a grin. “Because he has a sheut,” I added. “The only other way in or out of here is with a sheut.”

Slowly, Nuin nodded, and I mirrored the motion. “Indeed, it is.”

My shoulders slumped. “But I don’t have a sheut.”

“No?” Nuin rubbed the side of his jaw. “Is that a fact? Is that something that we know with a certainty? Just as we
know
you don’t have access to any of Heru’s bonding pheromone and that your body will not be found in here when Heru gains access in the twenty-first century—do we
know
that you don’t have a sheut?”

“Well . . .” I frowned. “No, I guess I don’t
know
it, but . . . I think I’d be able to tell if I randomly sprouted a sheut.”

“Would you, now?”

My frown deepened. “Is that even a thing that can happen? Could someone
grow
a sheut?”

“Is that not what Aset did when she brought Nekure into the world? Did she not grow a sheut along with a child?”

“I—” I stared at him, mouth gaping open as my sluggish thoughts caught up and I thought, once again, of my own children. A spike of longing speared through my chest. I was desperate to hold them in my arms again. I raised one hand to my forehead and rubbed my temples, focusing on the most pressing issue. “Are you saying that the sheuts my children would’ve had are somehow still in me?”

“They were displaced by my and Apep’s sheuts, and they didn’t simply vanish.” He leaned in like he was about to share a secret. “A sheut, once created, can never be destroyed.” He straightened. “So, where else could they have gone?”

“I—” I shook my head, absolutely dumbfounded. “I don’t know.” But even as I struggled with disbelief, with hope in the face of near defeat, I felt my body weakening further. I leaned against Nuin’s coffin.

“Yes,” the other Nuin said, “your increasing weakness is a problem. You will need more energy if you’re to have any chance of accessing and controlling your sheuts.” His eyes slid to the corner of the chamber where I’d rested after giving birth. It looked rather gruesome now.

I followed his line of sight. He was staring at the placenta.

The blood drained from my face. “You’re not saying . . .”

“It is the only thing left within these walls with any nutritional value.”

“But—”

“You want to get out of here, do you not?”

“Yes, but . . .” I stared at the globby sack of flesh and blood that looked way too much like a gory jellyfish, bile rising up my throat.

“And you wish to see your children again? And Heru?”

“Of course, but—” I gagged involuntarily.