Fifty-Three ◑ The Fade
The shock that had coursed through Lucille was equivalent to lightning: swift, bright, and pretty painful. Painfully awkward and embarrassing.
Keiran. His lips. On hers. Parting them open and trying to breathe air into her.
While Dimitri watched.
So wrong. This was so, so wrong.
She bucked her body, using her arms to push Keiran off. His eyes went wide, and he immediately stumbled back, slamming right onto Dimitri, who was rushing to pull him away from her.
"You're awake," Keiran mumbled.
“What are you doing?” she demanded and sat up. With a deflating kind of disappointment, she realized that they were still in the bathhouse. “Oh, it didn’t work.”
“No, it did not,” Dimitri agreed, casting a sideways look at his brother. “We’ll just have to refine our strategy.”
Keiran winced and composed himself. His entire face was red. “Hey, uh, I’m so sorry about that, Lucille. I swear I didn’t mean to—”
“I know.” She couldn’t look Dimitri in the eye. “Let’s just. . . .”
Lucille faltered. The ripples in the pool had just grown larger, more intense. The twins followed her line of sight and simultaneously adopted slack expressions. As she got up to stand at the edge of the pool, they gathered the supplies and joined her.
Then, the water took on the color of molten gold and began to pull them right in.
Like the lake, the pool hard turned into a vast, empty pace where nothing but awareness existed. However, this time, she could feel herself spiraling faster, to the point where she was scared she’d be swept away. She wanted desperately to stick close to the two gods, to feel that they were with her, but they seemed to be just as intangible as she was.
The vacuuming sensation grew more intense, making her nauseous. But just as she reached her limit, it stopped.
She landed on a field of wet grass, the surface cold and slick with a thin layer of melting ice flakes. Her sandal-clad feet touched the ground first, nearly pushing her flat on her face. Thankfully she propped her arms in front of her just in time. . . .
Just in time for her to see that her wrist was bleeding through her bandages.
And the bracelet was still there, wound tight around the stained fabric but no longer shining, not perfect.
Her sight tunneled. She could only see the bracelet now, nothing else. She could even ignore the pungent smell that hung in the cold air. The dark, snowy clearing where she ended up in was slowly fading into black. With her throat tight with worry, she brought the bracelet towards her line of sight.
The band of gold was no longer smooth and reflective. It was now riddled with rough brown spots. They looked like rust marks, which she found strange since gold didn’t rust. The ruby pendant was no longer as red as it had been, not as vibrant. Even in the light of the full moon above, it was darker, closer to maroon than red, as though it had accumulated a black film layer in the span of days.
How odd all of this was. What was odder, however, was the spike of familiarity that the corroded bracelet ignited in her mind. She could almost swear that she’d seen it before, exactly in this condition.
“Dimitri, Keiran,” she said eagerly, tearing her gaze off the bracelet and turning around. “Come take a. . . .”
She trailed off. The two gods were nowhere to be seen.
“Dimitri?” Lucille shot to her feet, her breath fogging up in front of her. “Keiran?”
Silence. Only the low rustle of leaves and the hoots of owls could be heard in the thicket of pine trees surrounding her. In the far distance, perched at the side of the hills, were lanes of stone cottages that nearly blended in the background. Stables, horses, and carriages were also scattered in the landscape.
She didn’t want to jump into conclusions but she was pretty sure she’d transported from the Roman period to the fourteenth century era.
And the brothers weren’t with her.
Fear gripped her insides. Had she left them in that temple in Rome? If so, how would she get them back? This time travel thing was inaccurate at best, dangerous and unpredictable. Had she lost them forever?
“No,” Lucille breathes, scrambling around to look around the clearing. Her clothes and her hair were still wet, causing a wave of coldness to close over her body like a fist. “Dimitri! Keiran!”
THUD.
The sound of something heavy falling made her flinch and whip around. Even with a shaking body, she prepared to tackle and fight whoever was behind her.
However, what met her was the twins themselves, crumpled on the ground.
Keiran jumped to his feet immediately, shaking his head and crinkling his nose. “Phew, what’s that smell?” He paused and squinted at the lane of cottages. “Ah, shit. We’re in the medieval period. I hate this.”
“That explains a lot,” Dimitri muttered, straightening one of the robes they’d packed as he stood. “Lucille, come on, let’s get you . . . hey, what’s wrong?”
They both faced Lucille with matching concerned looks, frowning at her dread-filled eyes.
“If it’s the smell,” Keiran joked, “you’ll get used to it after a few whiffs.”
Dimitri offered a smile, and Lucille’s emotions broke. She’d been so scared at the prospect of being left alone that she couldn’t even string a coherent sentence. As they approached her with the robe in hand, she rushed towards them with the full intent of giving them a hug.
But that was when something strange happened.
Instead of colliding with their bodies, she passed through thin air.
Lucille slipped on the slick grass, stopping herself just in time to avoid falling. Her throat was tight with dread. She’d just passed through Dimitri and Keiran like they weren’t there.
Slowly, she turned around to face them once more, her fear intensifying when she saw that they were wide-eyed in shock too. Worse than that, their forms slowly flickered and became washed-out. Ghostly, almost translucent.
Keiran looked at his hands and slowly, very subtly exchanged meaningful looks with Dimitri like they were expecting this all along.
“What’s going on?” Lucille demanded, a dry sob blocking her windpipe. “What’s happening?”
Dimitri opened his mouth to reply, and just then they started to fade a little more before her eyes.