Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles) Read Online Free Page A

with tidings. Dire ones, I could tell.
    He grasped my arm, hard enough to leave bruises, and growled, “What in God’s name have you done? The baron is demanding to see you, and he is in a towering rage!”
    I wrenched free of my tutor’s hold, drawing myself up in fury even as terror seeped into every part of my being. In our village and in all the barren lands surrounding it, Afton-St. Claire was the most powerful of men, and my fate was most definitely in his hands.
    When I did not answer his question immediately, Challes leaned in close and spat, “Damn you, bootmaker’s son, what have you done?”
    I remembered holding Brenna the day before, while she cried over our parting. Even though I might die screaming for daring to touch her, when I searched my heart I could find no regret. ‘The Lady Brenna was weeping. She laid her head against my shoulder.”
    “And you touched her with your hands?” Challes cried in a strangled voice. “Fool! Arrogant, willful fool!”
    I straightened. “Where is the baron? In the great hall?”
    Challes ran one narrow hand over his face. “We’re all finished, you know. Not just you, you young peacock! The Lady Brenna will be locked up until her husband comes to claim her, and Krispin’s education will be come to an end, as well as your own. And I will lose my position!”
    I wanted to apologize, I truly did. I couldn’t bring myself to proceed, though, because in my deepest being
    I knew I had done nothing wrong. If others suffered because of the situation, it would be by the baron’s decree, not by mine.
    “Where is he?” I asked again. Stiffly.
    Challes’s sigh contained all the misery of that difficult and unjust world we lived in. “You’ll find him in the inner courtyard—practicing with his sword.”
    I was no fool, though Challes had called me one. I wanted to bolt from that keep, to run for my life, but there was nowhere to go.
    I made my way to the inner courtyard, careful to keep my shoulders straight and my head high. When I arrived, the baron, a muscular, thick-chested man, was indeed wielding a sword, battling a knobby-kneed squire who was plainly terrified. It was little wonder, given the baron’s earnest dedication to his task. The nobleman was drenched in sweat and bellowing like an outraged bull.
    I stood waiting, and beyond the clanging flash of the swords I saw the Lady Brenna huddled in the shadowy arch of a doorway, watching me.
    I was destined to lose her, I knew, and the realization gave me a strange, desolate sort of courage. Facing a lifetime apart from her as I was, years of knowing another man was laying his hands to her, in love and perhaps in anger, I could not but think that death would be a mercy. Any sort of death.

CHAPTER 2
    Valerian
    Las Vegas, 1995
    She was there.
    Even before I walked onstage that fateful night, to regale the baffled masses with my illusions, I felt her presence in the grand showroom of the Venetian Hotel. The knowledge that she was nearby left me so shaken that I could barely concentrate on the performance. Brenna. Dear God, my Brenna . . .
    My lusty Elisabeth. And sweet, fragile Jenny. And Harmony. And Sarah.
    But of course she had a new identity now, and those other names, all of which had been her own at one time or another, would mean nothing to her. Nor would I, I was certain.
    I’d be lying—not that I’ve ever hesitated to bend the truth should it serve my purpose to do so—if I said I took no joy in the prospect of another encounter with my elusive beloved. Just the thought of speaking to her again, of touching her, was rapture, but there was fear, too, and I already felt the weight of the sorrow that would inevitably follow any bliss we might share.
    For my darling and me, the story, played out over and over on the stage of six centuries, had never had a happy ending. Not once.
    Invariably, except in her first incarnation, the ruby ring had arrived, out of nowhere, a mysterious thing of splendor and