Page 16 of Only a Breath Away

Zach said, “Have we ever, in the history of these vessels, ever ever, in the—”

Emma rolled her hand, “Get to the point, Zachary.”

“Have we ever glimpsed multiple realities or I don’t know, an alternate timeline?”

I said, “Ye mean side by side?”

“Yeah — I mean, we haven’t, right? It’s always been up and down the timeline. Past, future, present, up and down, jumping forward and back, but it’s never done this before.”

I shook my head. “So ye think Kaitlyn might be in the thirteenth century and I might be in the thirteenth century but one is written over the top of—”

“Or untangled, unwoven, lying side by side. I don’t know…”

I exhaled. “I hoped ye would tell me that I was not sensible and none of this could be true. I was relyin’ on ye tae come up with a better explanation than, ‘something that has never afore happened is happenin’ and we need to figure it out.’ It sounds like a great deal tae figure out.”

Fraoch said, “One thing I hae learned is whenever we need Zach tae explain what is happenin’ we are in a verra complicated situation.”

I chuckled. “This is true.”

Zach said, “So we have Katie in a castle with James, Quentin is there somewhere. We need to write all this down.”

I asked, “Colonel Quentin has a vessel?”

“Yeah, and he knows we’re here.”

“Then I expect he will return any moment, or we will go get him.”

CHAPTER 18 - QUENTIN

Icrouched in the trees eyeing an encampment up the river from Stirling. I supposed it was military, but being the thirteenth century it was really just a bunch of men in rudimentary tents. They each carried a sword, which was something, I supposed. Overall there were fewer weapons than at a NASCAR race.

I was exhausted. Since James and Katie had been taken a few short hours ago, and Zach, Emma, Beaty, and the kids had escaped, I had lugged the crates full of weapons and food into a ravine and hidden them with leaves and branches.

I needed to figure out how to rescue James and Katie, but the castle was occupied by assholes and I was alone.

I hoped more men were on their way, but beyond watching for a storm, which was boring and made me feel useless, I needed to do something. What I really wanted to do was kick some ass. Those guys on the castle walls had used real honest to god guns, it wouldn’t be an easy fight without knowing what I was up against.

I thought about jumping away and jumping back but—

I was hit on the back of the head with something big and painful, and…

I came to a while later on the ground inside the camp.

A man on a nearby piece of log eyed me while holding my semiautomatic rifle in his hand. Because of the safety though, he couldn’t do anything with it, thank god.

I groaned. “Where am I?”

“Ye are in m’camp, and who are ye?”

“My name is Quentin Peters. I need to see Mag Mòr.”

The man shook his head.

“The king? Mag Mòr?”

The man said, “The only king around here is Ormr, but we are tryin’ tae solve that trouble.” Then he stated the obvious, “Ye are black as night.”

I said, sitting up, “I don’t know about that, I mean there are shades. Compared to your pasty white ass I might be dark, true, but ‘black as night’? I’ve been in black-as-night, you need to get a…”

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