Page 549 of Flirting with Darkness

THE MAGE CLOCK

BECOMING THE KING OF TIME

JC ANDRIJESKI

1

THE FIRST TIME

The first time I saw her, she knew me.

Sheknewme.

She knew me so well, it disturbed me to my core.

It shook my sense of reality.

It may have broke something in me.

I am certain I lived from that moment forever changed. The expression in those strangely dimensional eyes touched something in me I had longed to be touched, without ever knowing I longed for it. The realization as I stared into her pale blue irises that she saw me… that she reallysawme… it paralyzed me entirely.

I never had any doubt as to what that look meant.

She knew me.

Sheknewme.

She knew me beyond where I could be remotely reasonable or comfortable with that knowledge. No one had ever known me so well.

I know now, no one everwouldknow me as she did.

At the time, it had been tempting to see it all as some faraway dream, a part of the spell that tossed and tumbled me into her world, with little more than a broadsword and a pulsing watch in my waistcoat pocket.

I don’t think I ever caught my breath in that world before I was once again removed from it, thrown back into the time vortex that brought me to her in the first place.

I did not know then, what I know now.

I thought perhaps it was all a dream… that she must be a dream, too.

To me, it was as if death itself attacked me.

My body felt pulled apart, twisted. Tumbled and ripped into painful contortions, I got thrown through the dark so swiftly I could not breathe, think, speak.

Then, seemingly within no time at all, I got thrown through that door again.

I lost her.

I found her, only to lose her before I knew what I had.

It was too late, I thought.

I was too late.

I had finally pushed my fortune beyond my fate. I had stumbled across magicks beyond my ken. My ability to fake and charlatan my way through had abruptly met its match. I had underestimated the supernatural, scoffed at it even, and it had slapped me hard in return, if only to knock the insolence out of me.

I thought for certain I must be destroyed.

But I would rebuild again, I promised myself.

---