Page 33 of Nineteen Eighty

She knew him.

Red hair. Strange clothes. Sword dangling at his side.

The man looked up. “I’m going to heal him. If I do not, he will die.”

“We need to call an ambulance!”

“He will not make it,” the man said, both hands pressed, palms spread, against Connor’s wet chest. She needed to lean in, to look, but she couldn’t. “I will heal him. In the same way your sisters heal when their own skills are required.”

“They… what?” Elizabeth whipped her neck back to the strange redheaded man. “Who are you? Where did you come from? Why are you here?”

“You may call me Tristan, but that is not my name,” he replied. “As to your other questions, I cannot answer them, nor is an answer required, to save him. To right your wrong. To set you both back on fate’s correct path.”

“Look, I’m going to get help—”

But then he was in her mind. Elizabeth. Stop. Let me do my work. Sit here, by his side. Hold his hand. Find purpose in another way. Let me do what you know I can do. What you have seen Colleen and Evangeline do.

Elizabeth was stunned into submission. Until she felt the salty warmth trickle into the corners of her open mouth, she hadn’t realized she was crying. She blinked, and the tears blinded her. She gasped for air. Nothing helped. Not her pacing, her unanswered questions. She didn’t know who he was… she knew nothing, except that he was like her, in some way. Like the Deschanels, like her sisters, who could save Connor if they were here. And this man, who called himself Tristan, claimed he could save Connor and she had to believe that, because he was right. If they had to wait for help, Connor would be gone, and then, she, too, would be gone because there was no world worth living in without him.

She did as he suggested and settled down in the grass next to Connor, taking his hand in hers. It was cold… too cold. His flesh gave no response when she grasped it, and she felt no heartbeat through his palms, which always ran so hot. Was he too late? God, was he too—

Not too late. Now, be calm.

Elizabeth tried, but she couldn’t help but replay her last foolish moments over in her head. She did this to him! She and her fears and her ego, thinking he’d be better off without her, without whatever years they yet had ahead of them.

Tristan turned to her, standing. He was quite a bit taller than he’d seemed crouching, or when she’d looked down upon him in the street. His red hair was bright even in the darkness, but it wasn’t the red reflecting but shocks of silver woven through. The scar at his temple resembled a lightning bolt, but more crude, as if someone had taken a rusted, unsharpened knife to his face. His sword reached nearly to the ground, the sheathed tip swaying mere inches above the ground. He didn’t belong in Paris, but she couldn’t imagine a place where he did belong.

“He is resting. When we are done with our palaver, I will take him and place him in his bed. I’ve wiped his memory of the past hour. To remember it would destroy him.”

“Tristan is my future son’s name.”

“Aye,” Tristan said. “A decision born of this night.”

“Why are you here?”

“I told you. To set you back to rights.”

“Why?”

“You have seen your son’s future. It must come to pass.”

Elizabeth snickered. “So, you didn’t come here to help Connor?”

“All life has value. Your son’s has infinitely more than most.”

“But why? I don’t… I don’t understand any of this.” Elizabeth backed into the stone wall, still searching for solid breath. “I don’t understand why you’re here. Who you are. Why any of this matters.”

“One day, you will.”

“Why not now?”

“Because it is not determined that you should know this now.”

“But you coming here and changing the future is?”

“I changed nothing. I was always meant to be here. To save him. To meet you and give you the name of your son.”

“None of this makes any sense.”

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