Passion

SEVENTEEN WRITTEN IN BONE

At the far end of the Announcer’s tunnel was an engulfing brightness. It kissed her skin like a summer morning at her parents’ house in Georgia.

Luce plunged toward it.

Unbridled glory. That was what Bill had called the burning light of Daniel’s true soul. Merely looking upon Daniel’s pure angelic self had made an entire community of people at the Mayan sacrifice spontaneously combust—including Ix Cuat, Luce’s past self.

But there had been a moment.

A moment of pure wonder just before she died, when Luce had felt closer to Daniel than she ever had before. She didn’t care what Bill said: She recognized the glow of Daniel’s soul. She had to see it again. Maybe there was some way she could live through it. She had to at least try.

She burst out of the Announcer into the cold emptiness of a colossal bedroom.

The chamber was at least ten times bigger than any room Luce had ever seen, and everything about it was lavish. The floors were crafted of smoothest marble and covered by enormous rugs made of whole animal skins, one of which had an intact tiger’s head. Four timber pillars held up a finely thatched gabled ceiling. The walls were made of woven bamboo. Near the open window was an enormous canopy bed with sheets of green-gold silk.

A tiny telescope rested on the window’s ledge. Luce picked it up, parting the gold silk curtain to peer outside. The telescope was heavy and cold when she held it up to her eye.

She was in the center of a great walled city, looking down from a second story. A maze of stone roadways connected crammed, ancient-looking wattle-and-daub structures. The air was warm and smelled softly of cherry blossoms. A pair of orioles crossed the blue sky.

Luce turned to Bill. “Where are we?” This place seemed as foreign as the world of the Mayans, and just as far back in time.

He shrugged and opened his mouth to speak, but then—

“Shhh,” Luce whispered.

Sniffling.

Someone was crying soft, hushed tears. Luce turned toward the noise. There, through an archway on the far side of the room, she heard the sound again.

Luce moved toward the archway, sliding along the stone floor in her bare feet. The sobbing echoed, beckoning her. A narrow walkway opened up into another cavernous chamber. This one was windowless, with low ceilings, dimly lit by the glow of a dozen small bronze lamps.

She could make out a large stone basin, and a small lacquered table stocked with black pottery vials of aromatic oils that gave the whole room a warm and spicy smell. A gigantic carved jade wardrobe stood in the corner of the room. Thin green dragons etched into its face sneered at Luce, as if they knew everything she didn’t.

And in the center of the chamber, a dead man lay sprawled on the floor.

Before Luce could see anything more, she was blinded by a bright light moving toward her. It was the same glow she’d sensed from the other side of the Announcer.

“What is that light?” she asked Bill.

“That … er, you see that?” Bill sounded surprised. “That’s your soul. Yet another way for you to recognize your past lives when they appear physically different from you.” He paused. “You’ve never noticed it before?”

“This is the first time, I think.”

“Huh,” Bill said. “That’s a good sign. You’re making progress.”

Luce felt heavy and exhausted all of a sudden. “I thought it was going to be Daniel.”

Bill cleared his throat like he was going to say something, but he didn’t. The glow burned brightly for another heartbeat, then snapped out so suddenly she couldn’t see for a moment, until her eyes adjusted.

“What are you doing here?” a voice asked roughly.

Where the light had been, in the center of the room, was a thin, pretty Chinese girl about seventeen—too young and too elegant to be standing over a dead man’s body.

Dark hair hung to her waist, contrasting with her floor-length white silk robe. Dainty as she was, she seemed the kind of girl who didn’t shy away from a fight.

“So, that’s you,” Bill’s voice said in Luce’s ear. “Your name is Lu Xin and you lived outside the capital city of Yin. We’re at the close of the Shang dynasty, something like a thousand BCE, in case you want to make a note for your scrapbook.”

Luce probably seemed crazy to Lu Xin, barging in here wearing a singed animal hide and a necklace made out of bone, her hair a wild and tangled snarl. How long had it been since she’d looked in a mirror? Had a bath? Plus, she was talking to an invisible gargoyle.

But then again, Lu Xin was standing vigil over a dead guy, giving Luce don’t-mess-with-me eyes, so she seemed a little crazy herself.

Oh boy. Luce hadn’t noticed the jade knife with the turquoise-studded handle, or the small pond of blood in the middle of the marble floor.

“What do I—” she started to ask Bill.

“You.” Lu Xin’s voice was surprisingly strong. “Help me hide his body.”

The dead man’s hair was white around his temples; he looked about sixty years old, lean and muscular underneath many elaborate robes and embroidered cloaks.

“I—um, I don’t really think—”

“As soon as they learn the king is dead, you and I will be dead, too.”

“What?” Luce asked. “Me?”

“You, me, most of the people inside these walls. Where else will they find the thousand sacrificial bodies that must be buried with the despot?” The girl wiped her cheeks dry with slender, jade-ringed fingers. “Will you help me or not?”

At the girl’s request, Luce moved to help pick up the king’s feet. Lu Xin readied herself to lift him under his arms. “The king,” Luce said, spouting out the old Shang words as if she’d spoken them forever. “Was he—”

“It is not as it appears.” Lu Xin grunted under the weight of the body. The king was heavier than he looked. “I did not kill him. At least not”—she paused—“physically. He was dead when I walked into the room.” She sniffed. “He stabbed himself in the heart. I used to say he did not have one, but he has proven me wrong.”

Luce looked at the man’s face. One of his eyes was open. His mouth was twisted. He looked as if he’d left this world in agony. “Was he your father?”

By then they’d reached the huge jade wardrobe. Lu Xin wedged its door open with her hip, took a step backward, and dropped her half of the body inside.

“He was to be my husband,” she said coldly. “And a horrible one at that. The ancestors approved of our marriage, but I did not. Rich, powerful older men are nothing to be grateful for, if one enjoys romance.” She studied Luce, who lowered the king’s feet slowly to the floor of the wardrobe. “What part of the plains do you come from that word of the king’s betrothal had not reached you?” Lu Xin had noticed Luce’s Mayan clothing. She picked at the hem of the short brown skirt. “Did they hire you to perform at our wedding? Are you some sort of dancer? A clown?”

“Not exactly.” Luce felt her cheeks flush as she tugged the skirt lower on her hips. “Look, we can’t just leave his body here. Someone’s going to find out. I mean, he’s the king, right? And there’s blood everywhere.”

Lu Xin reached into the dragon wardrobe and pulled out a crimson silk robe. She dropped to her knees and tore a large strip of fabric from it. It was a beautiful soft silk garment, with small black blossoms embroidered around the neckline. But Lu Xin didn’t think twice about using it to mop up the blood on the floor. She snatched a second, blue robe and tossed it to Luce to help with the mopping.

“Okay,” Luce said, “well, there’s still that knife.” She pointed at the gleaming bronze dagger coated up to the hilt with the king’s blood.

In a flash, Lu Xin slipped the knife inside a fold of her robe. She looked up at Luce, as if to say Anything else?

“What’s that over there?” Luce pointed to what looked like the top of a small turtle’s shell. She’d seen it fall out of the king’s hand when they moved his body.

Lu Xin was on her knees. She tossed down the sopping bloodstained rag and cupped the shell between her hands. “The oracle bone,” she said softly. “More important than any king.”

“What is it?”

“This holds answers from the Deity Above.”

Luce stepped closer, kneeling to see the object that had had such an effect on the girl. The oracle bone was nothing more than a tortoiseshell, but it was small and polished and pristine. When Luce leaned closer, she saw that someone had painted something in soft black strokes on the smooth underside of the shell:

Is Lu Xin true to me or does she love another?

Fresh tears welled in Lu Xin’s eyes, a crack in the cool resolve she’d shown to Luce. “He asked the ancestors,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “They must have told him of my deceit. I—I could not help myself.”

Daniel. She must be talking about Daniel. A secret love she’d hidden from the king. But she hadn’t been able to hide it well enough.

Luce’s heart went out to Lu Xin. She understood with every fiber of her soul precisely what the girl was feeling. They shared a love that no king could take away, that nobody could extinguish. A love more powerful than nature.

She swept Lu Xin into a deep embrace.

And felt the floor drop away beneath them.

She hadn’t meant to do this! But her stomach was already pitching, and her vision shifted uncontrollably, and she saw herself from outside, looking alien and wild and holding on for dear life to her past. Then the room stopped spinning and Luce was alone, clutching the oracle bone in her hand. It was done. She’d become Lu Xin.

“I disappear for three minutes and you go three-D?” Bill said, reappearing in a huff. “Can’t a gargoyle enjoy a nice cup of jasmine tea without coming back to find that his charge has dug her own grave? Have you even thought about what’s going to happen when the guards knock on that door?”

A knock sounded sharply on the great bamboo door in the main chamber.

Luce jumped.

Bill folded his arms over his chest. “Speak of the devil,” he said. Then, in a high, affected shriek, he cried out, “Oh, Bill! Help me, Bill, what do I do now? I didn’t think to ask you any questions before I put myself into a very stupid situation, Bill!”

But Luce didn’t have to ask Bill any questions. Knowledge was rising to the front of Lu Xin’s mind: She knew that this day would be marked not just by the suicide of one crappy king, but by something even bigger, even darker, even bloodier: a huge clash between armies. That knock on the door? It was the king’s council waiting to escort him to war. He was to lead the troops in battle.

But the king was dead and stuffed in a wardrobe.

And Luce was in Lu Xin’s body, holed up in his private chambers. If they found her here alone …

“King Shang.” Heavy knocks echoed throughout the room. “We await your orders.”

Luce stood very still, freezing in Lu Xin’s silk robe. There was no King Shang. His suicide had left the dynasty without a king, the temples without a high priest, and the army without a general, right before a battle to maintain the dynasty.

“Talk about an ill-timed regicide,” Bill said.

“What do I do?” Luce spun back to the dragon wardrobe, wincing when she peered in at the king. His neck was bent at an unnatural angle, and the blood on his chest was drying a rusty brown. Lu Xin had hated the king when he’d been alive. Luce knew now that the tears she’d cried weren’t tears of sadness, but of fear for what would become of her love, De.

Until three weeks before, Lu Xin had lived on her family’s millet farm on the banks of the Huan River. Passing through her river valley on his shining chariot one afternoon, the king had glimpsed Lu Xin tending the crops. He had decided that he fancied her. The next day, two militiamen had arrived at her door. She’d had to leave her family and her home. She’d had to leave De, the handsome young fisherman from the next village.

Before the king’s summons, De had shown Lu Xin how to fish using his pair of pet cormorants, by tying a bit of rope loosely around their necks so that they could catch several fish in their mouths but not swallow them. Watching De gently coax the fish from the depths of the funny birds’ beaks, Lu Xin had fallen in love with him. The very next morning, she’d had to say goodbye to him. Forever.

Or so she’d thought.

It had been nineteen sunsets since Lu Xin had seen De, seven sunsets since she’d received a scroll from home with bad news: De and some other boys from the neighboring farms had run away to join the rebel army, and no sooner had he left than the king’s men had ransacked the village, looking for the deserters.

With the king dead, the Shang men would show no mercy to Lu Xin, and she would never find De, never reunite with Daniel.

Unless the king’s council didn’t find out that their king was dead.

The wardrobe was jammed with colorful, exotic garments, but one object caught her eye: a large curved helmet. It was heavy, made mostly of thick leather straps stitched together with tight seams. At the front was a smooth bronze plate with an ornate fire-breathing dragon carved into the metal. The dragon was the zodiac animal of the king’s birth year.

Bill floated toward her. “What are you doing with the king’s helmet?”

Luce slid the helmet onto her head, tucking her black hair inside it. Then she opened the other side of the wardrobe, thrilled and nervous about what she had found.

“The same thing I’m doing with the king’s armor,” she said, gathering a heavy tangle of goods into her arms. She donned a pair of wide leather pants, a thick leather tunic, a pair of chain-mail gloves, leather slippers that were certainly too big but that she’d have to make work, and a bronze chest guard made of overlapping metal plates. The same black, fire-breathing dragon on the helmet was embroidered on the front of the tunic. It was hard to believe that anyone could fight a war under the weight of these clothes, but Lu Xin knew that the king didn’t really fight—he only led battles from the seat of his war chariot.

“This is not the time to play dress-up!” Bill jabbed a claw at her. “You can’t go out there like that.”

“Why not? It fits. Almost.” She folded over the top of the pants so that she could belt them tightly.

Near the water basin, she found a crude mirror of polished tin inside a bamboo frame. In the reflection, Lu Xin’s face was disguised by the thick bronze plate of the helmet. Her body looked bulky and strong under the leather armor.

Luce started to walk out of the dressing chamber, back into the bedroom.

“Wait!” Bill shouted. “What are you going to say about the king?”

Luce turned to Bill and raised the heavy leather helmet so that he could see her eyes. “I’m the king now.”

Bill blinked, and for once made no attempt at a comeback.

A bolt of strength surged through Luce. Disguising herself as the head of the army was, she realized, exactly what Lu Xin would have done. As a common soldier, of course De would be on the front lines in this battle. And she was going to find him.

The pounding on the door again. “King Shang, the Zhou army is advancing. We must request your presence!”

“I believe there’s someone talking to you, King Shang.” Bill’s voice had changed. It was deep and scratchy and echoed around the room so violently that Luce flinched, but she didn’t turn to look at him. She unbolted the heavy bronze handle and opened the thick bamboo door.

Three men in flamboyant red-and-yellow martial robes greeted her anxiously. Instantly, Luce recognized the king’s three closest councilors: Hu, with the tiny teeth and narrowed, yellowed eyes. Cui, the tallest one, with broad shoulders and wide-set eyes. Huang, the youngest and kindest on the council.

“The king is already dressed for war,” Huang said, peering past Luce into the empty chamber quizzically. “The king looks … different.”

Luce froze. What to say? She’d never heard the dead king’s voice, and she was exceptionally bad at impersonations.

“Yes.” Hu agreed with Huang. “Well rested.”

After a deep, relieved sigh, Luce nodded stiffly, careful not to send the helmet tumbling from her head.

The three men gestured for the king—for Luce—to walk down the marble hall. Huang and Hu flanked her, and murmured in low voices about the sad state of morale among the soldiers. Cui walked directly behind Luce, making her uncomfortable.

The palace went on forever—high gabled ceilings, all gleaming white, the same jade and onyx statues at every turn, the same bamboo-framed mirrors on every wall. When finally they crossed the last threshold and stepped into the gray morning, Luce spotted the red wooden chariot in the distance, and her knees nearly buckled under her.

She had to find Daniel in this lifetime, but going into battle terrified her.

At the chariot, the king’s council members bowed and kissed her gauntlet. She was grateful for the armored gloves but still pulled back quickly, afraid her grip might give her away. Huang handed her a long spear with a wooden handle and a curved spike a few inches below the spearhead. “Your halberd, Majesty.”

She nearly dropped the heavy thing.

“They will take you to the overlook above the front lines,” he said. “We will follow behind and meet you there with the cavalry.”

Luce turned to the chariot. It was basically a wooden platform atop a long axle connecting two great wooden wheels, drawn by two immense black horses. The carriage was made of shiny lacquered red wood and had space enough for about three people to sit or stand. A leather awning and curtains could be removed during battle, but for now, they hung down, giving the passenger some privacy.

Luce climbed up, passed through the curtains, and took a seat. It was padded with tiger skins. A driver with a thin mustache took the reins, and another soldier with drooping eyes and a battle-ax climbed up to stand at his side. At the crack of a whip, the horses broke into a gallop and she felt the wheels beneath her begin to turn.

As they rolled past the high, austere gates of the palace, sun streamed through pockets of fog onto a great expanse of green farmland to the west. The land was beautiful, but Luce was too nervous to appreciate it.

“Bill,” she whispered. “Help?”

No answer. “Bill?”

She peeked outside the curtains, but that only attracted the attention of the droopy-eyed soldier who was supposed to be the king’s bodyguard during the journey. “Your Majesty, please, for your safety, I must insist.” He gestured for Luce to withdraw.

Luce groaned and leaned back against the padded chariot seat. The paved streets of the city must have ended, for the ride became incredibly bumpy. Luce was flung against the seat, feeling like she was on a wooden roller coaster. Her fingers gripped the plush fur of the tiger skin.

Bill hadn’t wanted her to do this. Was he teaching her a lesson by bailing now when she most needed his help?

Her knees rattled with each jolt in the road. She had absolutely no idea how she’d find De. If the king’s guards wouldn’t even let her look out past a curtain, how were they going to let her near the front lines?

But then:

Once, thousands of years ago, her past self had sat alone in this chariot, disguised as the deceased king. Luce could feel it—even if she hadn’t joined with her past body, Lu Xin would have been here right now.

Without the aid of some weird ornery gargoyle. And, more importantly, without all the knowledge that Luce had amassed so far on her quest. She had seen Daniel’s unbridled glory in Chichén Itzá. She had witnessed and finally understood the depths of his curse in London. She’d seen him go from suicidal in Tibet to saving her from a rotten life in Versailles. She’d watched him sleep through the pain of her death in Prussia as if he were under a spell. She’d seen him fall for her even when she was snotty and immature in Helston. She’d touched the scars of his wings in Milan and understood how much he’d given up in Heaven just for her. She’d seen the tortured look in his eyes when he lost her in Moscow, the same misery over and over again.

Luce owed it to him to find a way to break this curse.

The chariot jolted to a stop, and Luce was nearly flung off her seat. Outside, there was a thunderous pounding of horses’ hooves—which was strange because the king’s chariot was standing still.

Someone else was out there.

Luce heard a clash of metal and a long, pained grunt. The chariot was jostled roughly. Something heavy thumped to the ground.

There was more clashing, more grunting, a harsh cry, and another thump on the ground. Her hands trembling, Luce parted the leather curtains the tiniest bit and saw the droopy-eyed solder lying in a pool of blood on the ground beneath.

The king’s chariot had been ambushed.

The curtains before her were thrust apart by one of the insurgents. The foreign fighter raised his sword.

Luce couldn’t help herself: She screamed.

The sword faltered in the air—and then, the warmest feeling washed over Luce, flooding her veins, calming her nerves, and slowing the pounding of her heart.

The fighter on the chariot was De.

His leather helmet covered his black, shoulder-length hair, but it left his face wonderfully unobstructed. His violet eyes stood out against his clear olive skin. He looked baffled and hopeful at the same time. His sword was drawn, but he held it as if he sensed he shouldn’t strike. Quickly, Luce lifted her helmet over her head and flung it onto the seat.

Her dark hair cascaded down, her locks tumbling all the way to the bottom of her bronze breastplate. Her vision blurred as her eyes filled with tears.

“Lu Xin?” De gathered her tightly into his arms. His nose grazed hers and she rested her cheek on his, feeling warm and safe. He seemed unable to stop smiling. She lifted her head and kissed the beautiful curve of his lips. He answered her kiss hungrily, and Luce soaked up every wonderful moment, feeling the weight of his body against hers, wishing there weren’t so much heavy armor between them.

“You’re the last person I expected to see,” De said softly.

“I could say the same for you,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“When I joined forces with the Zhou rebels, I vowed to kill the king and get you back.”

“The king is—Oh, none of that matters anymore,” Luce whispered, kissing his cheeks and his eyelids, holding tight around his neck.

“Nothing matters,” De said. “Except that I’m with you.”

Luce thought back to his luminous glow back in Chichén Itzá. Seeing him in these other lives, in places and times that were so far from home—each one confirmed how much she loved him. The bond between them was unbreakable—it was clear from the way they looked at each other, the way they could read each other’s thoughts, the way one made the other feel whole.

But how could she forget the curse they had been suffering through for eternity? And the quest she was on to break it? She had come too far to forget that there were obstacles still in the way of her truly being with Daniel.

Every life had taught her something so far. Surely this life must hold its own key. If only she knew what to search for.

“We had word the king would arrive here to direct the troops down below,” De said. “The rebels had planned an ambush of the king’s cavalry.”

“They’re on their way,” Luce said, remembering Huang’s instructions. “They’ll be here any moment.”

Daniel nodded. “And when they get here, the rebels will expect me to fight.”

Luce winced. She’d been with Daniel twice already when he was gearing up for battle, and both times it had led to something she’d never wanted to see again. “What should I do while you’re—”

“I’m not going into battle, Lu Xin.”

“What?”

“This isn’t our war. It never was. We can stay and fight other people’s battles or we can do as we have always done and choose each other over everything else. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes,” she whispered. Lu Xin did not know the deeper meaning of De’s words, but Luce was nearly sure that she understood—that Daniel loved her, that she loved him, and that they were choosing to be together.

“They will not let us go easily. The rebels will kill me for deserting.” He replaced her helmet on her head. “You will have to fight your way out of this, too.”

“What?” she whispered. “I can’t fight. I can barely lift this thing”—she gestured at the halberd. “I can’t—”

“Yes,” he said, imparting profound meaning with the single word. “You can.”

The carriage filled with light. For a moment Luce thought that this was it, the moment when her world would ignite, when Lu Xin would die, when her soul would be exiled to the shadows.

But that didn’t happen. The glow shone out of De’s chest. It was the glow of Daniel’s soul. It wasn’t as strong or as radiant as it had been at the Mayan sacrifice, but it was just as breathtaking. It reminded Luce of the glow of her own soul when she’d first seen Lu Xin. Maybe she was learning to truly see the world as it was. Maybe, at last, illusion was falling away.

“Okay,” she said, stuffing her long hair back inside the helmet. “Let’s go.”

They parted the curtains and stood on the platform of the chariot. Before them, a rebel force of twenty men on horseback waited near a hill’s edge maybe fifty feet ahead of where the king’s chariot had been overtaken. They were dressed in simple peasants’ clothing, brown trousers and coarse, filthy shirts. Their shields bore the sign of the rat, the symbol of the Zhou army. They were all looking to De for orders.

From the valley below came the rumbling of hundreds of horses. Luce understood that the entire Shang army was down there, thirsty for blood. She could hear them chanting an old war song Lu Xin had known since she could speak.

And somewhere behind them, Luce knew that Huang and the rest of the king’s private soldiers were on their way to what they thought would be a rendezvous at the overlook. They were riding into a bloodbath, an ambush, and Luce and Daniel had to get away before they arrived.

“Follow my lead,” De murmured. “We will head for the hills to the west, as far from this battle as our horses can take us.”

He freed one of the horses from the chariot and guided it to Luce. The horse was stunning, black as coal, with a diamond-shaped white patch on its chest. De helped Luce into the saddle and held up the king’s halberd in one hand and a crossbow in the other. Luce had never fired or even touched a crossbow in her life, and Lu Xin had only used one once, to scare a lynx away from her baby sister’s crib. But the weapon felt light in Luce’s hands, and she knew that if it came down to it, she could fire it.

De smiled at her choice and whistled for his horse. A beautiful brindle mare trotted over. He hopped onto its back.

“De! What are you doing?” an alarmed voice called from the line of horses. “You were to kill the king! Not mount him on one of our horses!”

“Yes! Kill the king!” a chorus of angry voices called.

“The king is dead!” Luce shouted, silencing the soldiers. The feminine voice behind the helmet brought gasps from all of them. They stood frozen, uncertain whether to raise their weapons.

De drew his horse close to Luce’s. He took her hands in his. They were warmer and stronger and more reassuring than anything she’d ever felt.

“Whatever happens, I love you. Our love is worth everything to me.”

“And to me,” Luce whispered back.

De let out a battle cry, and their horses took off at a breakneck pace. The crossbow nearly slipped out of Luce’s grasp as she lurched forward to clutch the reins.

Then the rebel soldiers began to shout. “Traitors!”

“Lu Xin!” De’s voice rose above the shrillest cry, the heaviest horse’s hoof. “Go!” He raised his arm high, pointing toward the hills.

Her horse galloped so fast it was hard to see anything clearly. The world whizzed by in one terrifying whoosh. A tangle of rebel soldiers fell in behind them, their horses’ hoofbeats as loud as an earthquake that went on forever.

Until the rebel came at Daniel with his halberd, Luce had forgotten about the crossbow in her hands. Now she raised it effortlessly, still unsure how to use it, knowing only that she would slaughter anyone who tried to hurt Daniel.

Now.

She released her arrow. To her shock, it stopped the rebel dead, knocking him off his horse. He collapsed in a cloud of dust. She gazed back in horror at the dead man with the arrow through his chest lying on the ground.

“Keep going!” De called out.

She swallowed hard, letting her horse guide her. Something was happening. She began to feel lighter in her saddle, as if gravity suddenly had less power over her, as if De’s faith in her was propelling her through it all. She could do this. She could escape with him. She slipped another bolt onto the crossbow, fired, and fired again. She didn’t aim at anyone except in self-defense, but there were so many soldiers coming at her that she was soon nearly out of arrows. Just two left.

“De!” she cried.

He was almost fully out of his saddle, using an ax to beat down hard on a Shang soldier. De’s wings weren’t extended, but they might as well have been—he seemed lighter than air, yet deadly skillful. Daniel killed his foes so cleanly, their deaths were instantaneous, as close to painless as possible.

“De!” she shouted, more loudly.

At the sound of her voice, his head shot up. Luce leaned over her saddle to show him her nearly empty quiver. He tossed her a hooked sword.

She caught it by the hilt. It felt strangely natural in her hand. Then she remembered—the fencing lesson she’d taken at Shoreline. In her very first match, she’d destroyed Lilith, a prissy, cruel classmate who’d been fencing all her life.

Certainly she could do it again.

Just then, a warrior leaped from his horse onto hers. The sudden weight of him made her mount stumble and made Luce scream, but a moment later, his throat was slit and his body shoved to the ground and the blade of her sword shone with fresh blood.

There was a warm flush across her chest. Her entire body buzzed. She charged ahead, spurring her horse to full speed, faster and faster until—

The world went white.

Then slammed into black.

Finally it flared through a blaze of brilliant colors.

She raised her hand to block the light, but it wasn’t coming from outside her. Her horse still galloped beneath her. Her dagger was still gripped in her fist, still slashing right and left, into throats, into chests. Enemies still fell at her feet.

But somehow Luce wasn’t quite there anymore. A riot of visions assaulted her mind, visions that must have belonged to Lu Xin—and then some visions that couldn’t possibly have belonged to Lu Xin.

She saw Daniel hovering over her in his simple peasant’s clothes … but then, a moment later, he was bare-chested, with long blond hair … and suddenly he wore a knight’s helmet, whose visor he lifted to kiss her lips … but before he did, he shifted into his present self, the Daniel she’d left in her parents’ backyard in Thunderbolt when she stepped through into time.

This was the Daniel, she realized, she’d been looking for all along. She reached for him, she called his name, but then he changed again. And again. She saw more Daniels than she’d ever thought possible, each one more gorgeous than the last. They folded into each other like a vast accordion, each image of him tilting and altering in the light of the sky behind him. The cut of his nose, the line of his jawbone, the tone of his skin, the shape of his lips, all whirled in and out of focus, morphing all the time. Everything changed except his eyes.

His violet eyes always stayed the same. They haunted her, hiding something terrible, something she didn’t understand. Something she didn’t want to understand.

Fear?

In the visions, the terror in Daniel’s eyes was so intense Luce actually wanted to look away from their beauty. What could someone as powerful as Daniel fear?

There was only one thing: Luce’s dying.

She was experiencing a montage of her death over and over and over again. This was what Daniel’s eyes looked like, throughout time, just before her life went up in flames. She had seen this fear in him before. She hated it because it always meant their time was over. She saw it now in every one of his faces. The fear flashed from infinite times and places. Suddenly, she knew there was more:

He wasn’t afraid for her, not because she was walking into the darkness of another death. He didn’t fear that it might cause her pain.

Daniel was afraid of her.

“Lu Xin!” his voice cried out to her from the battlefield. She could see him through the haze of visions. He was the only thing coming in clearly—because everything else around her was lit up startlingly white. Everything inside her was, too. Was her love of Daniel burning her up? Was it her own passion, not his, that destroyed her every time?

“No!” His hand reached out for hers. But it was too late.

Her head hurt. She didn’t want to open her eyes.

Bill was back, the floor was cool, and Luce was in a welcome pocket of darkness. A waterfall sprayed somewhere in the background, drizzling on her hot cheeks.

“You did okay out there after all,” he said.

“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Luce said. “How about explaining where you disappeared to?”

“Can’t.” Bill sucked in his fat lips to show that they were sealed.

“Why not?”

“Personal.”

“Is it Daniel?” she asked. “He’d be able to see you, wouldn’t he? And there’s some reason you don’t want him to know that you’re helping me.”

Bill snorted. “My business isn’t always about you, Luce. I have other things stewing in the pot. Besides, you seem pretty independent of late. Maybe it’s time to end our little arrangement, bust off your training wheels. What the hell do you need me for anymore?”

Luce was too exhausted to pander to him, and too stunned by what she’d just seen. “It’s hopeless.”

All the rage left Bill like air being let out of a balloon. “How do you mean?”

“When I die, it’s not because of anything that Daniel does. It’s something that happens inside me. Maybe his love brings it out, but—it’s my fault. That has to be part of the curse, only I have no idea what it means. All I know is, I saw a look in his eyes right before I died—it’s always the same.”

He tilted his head. “So far.”

“I make him miserable more than I make him happy,” she said. “If he hasn’t given up on me, he should. I can’t do this to him anymore.”

She dropped her head into her hands.

“Luce?” Bill sat on her knee. There was the strange tenderness he’d shown when she first met him. “Do you want to put this endless charade to rest? For Daniel’s sake?”

Luce looked up and wiped her eyes. “You mean, so he won’t have to go through this again? There’s something I can do?”

“When you assume one of your past self’s bodies, there is one moment in each one of your lives, just before you die, where your soul and the two bodies—past and present—split apart. It only happens for a fraction of an instant.”

Luce squinted. “I think I’ve felt that. At the moment when I realize I’m going to die, right before I actually do?”

“Exactly. It has to do with how your lives cleave together. In that fraction of a moment, there is a way to cleave your cursed soul from your present body. Kind of like carving out your soul. It would, effectively, extinguish that pesky reincarnation element of your curse.”

“But I thought I was already at the end of my cycle of reincarnations, that I wasn’t coming back anymore. Because of the baptism thing. Because I never—”

“That doesn’t matter. You’re still bound to see the cycle to its end. As soon as you go back to the present, you could still die at any moment because of—”

“My love of Daniel.”

“Sure, something like that,” Bill said. “Ahem. That is, unless you break the bond with your past.”

“So I’d cleave from my past and she would still die as she always did—”

“And you would still be cast out just as you’ve been before, only you’d leave your soul behind to die, too. And the body you would return to”—he poked her in the shoulder—“this one—would be free to live outside the curse that’s been hanging over you since the dawn of time.”

“No more dying?”

“Not unless you jump off a building or get into a car with a murderer or take a whole lot of Unisom or—”

“I get it,” she cut him off. “But it’s not like”—she struggled to steady her voice—“it’s not like Daniel would kiss me and I’d … or—”

“It’s not like Daniel would do anything.” Bill stared at her purposefully. “You wouldn’t be drawn to him anymore. You’d move on. Probably marry some dull sweetheart and have twelve kids of your own.”

“No.”

“You and Daniel would be free of the curse you so despise. Free. Hear that? He could move on and be happy, too. Don’t you want Daniel to be happy?”

“But Daniel and I—”

“Daniel and you would be nothing. It’s a hard reality, okay, fine. But think about it: You wouldn’t have to hurt him anymore. Grow up, Luce. There’s more to life than teenage passion.”

Luce opened her mouth but didn’t want to hear her voice break. A life without Daniel was unimaginable. But so was going back to her current life and trying to be with Daniel and having it kill her for good. She had tried so hard to find a way to break this curse, but the answer still eluded her. Maybe this was the way. It sounded awful now, but if she went back to her life and didn’t even know Daniel, she wouldn’t miss him. And he wouldn’t miss her. Maybe that would be better. For both of them.

But no. They were soul mates. And Daniel brought more into her life than just his love. Arriane, Roland, and Gabbe. Even Cam. It was because of all of them that she’d learned about herself—what she wanted, what she didn’t, how to stand up for herself. She’d grown up and become a better person. Without Daniel, she would never have gone to Shoreline, never have found the true friends she’d made of Shelby and Miles. Would she even have gone to Sword & Cross? Where on earth would she be? Who would she be?

Could she be happy one day without him? Fall in love with someone else? She couldn’t bear to think about that. Life without Daniel sounded colorless and grim—except for one bright spot that Luce kept circling back to:

What if she never had to hurt him again?

“Say I did want to consider this.” Luce could barely muster a whisper. “Just to think it over. How does it even work?”

Bill reached behind him and slowly unsheathed something long and silver from a tiny black strap on his back. She’d never noticed it before. He held out a dull, flat-tipped silver arrow that she immediately recognized.

Then he smiled. “Have you ever seen a starshot?”