Page 3 of With You Here
The man twitched, and Christyne focused on the point of metal protruding from his flesh.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.
He turned with her careful movement, but her muscles strained against his weight and the slow, deliberate pressure she used to rotate him. When he was on his side, she stopped and peered at the wound from the other side. The wooden shaft appeared to have been snapped near the flesh. His body teetered, and before she could stop his progress, gravity pulled him with athunkinto a supine position.
He cried out, and she lost her balance and stumbled onto her bottom. Hesitantly, she scooted forward and listened. Had she killed him? His head moved listlessly from side to side. Not dead. Good.
The rest of the Lord’s Prayer left her mouth in a whispered rush as she peered down at his dirt-caked face. Having no rag to clean him with, she lifted the hem of her undertunic and swiped along his forehead and cheek. He appeared young, the lines around his mouth and eyes soft instead of deeply carved. His nose was straight, unlike many of the Imperial knights she had seen, and his strong jaw was shadowed by coarse hair. His skin appeared fair beneath the grime. As unmarked as her own. This man was no farmer, out in the sun all day. She glanced down at his hands, suspicions rising. Ink stained his fingers. Why had a scholar been the target of an arrow’s strike?
“Gelehrte.” She addressed him by his academic title, hoping her voice would rouse him from his delirious state.
His eyes fluttered open and her breath hitched. Like an animal caught in a trap, she was ensnared in his gaze.
Never had she beheld such an ice-blue hue. Like snow and sky woven together. His gaze held hers, though glazed with pain, and she reached out to stroke the damp hair away from his forehead.
“Has God…sent…an angel…to help me?” His words were stilted, as if pushed out by sheer power of will. Then his back arched and his hand gripped his wounded limb. “My leg.”
Her hand reached out but stilled before touching him, afraid she would cause him more pain. “I am no angel, though I wish to help. Pray, tell me what to do.”
He winced but pushed himself up onto his elbows. Christyne hurried closer to his side, hooked an arm around his back, and helped him to lean against the trunk of a tree. She stared at him as beads of perspiration dotted his brow, ignoring the flip in her stomach at their close proximity. “Who did this to you?” she whispered.
“Ketz—”He winced, licked his chapped lips, and tried again. “Ketzermeister,” he breathed out, his haunting eyes rolling back in his head with the effort of the single word.
Christyne’s blood froze in her veins, and her hands stilled on his brow.
Heretic hunters.
Chapter Two
Germany, Present Day
A person couldn’t outrun their doubts. Amber Carrington had tried. A twenty-six-hour flight, with a layover in New York and then another in Sheremetyevo, and the misgivings that had nibbled at her frayed conviction continued to scrape their pointy teeth against her exposed dreams.
She rested her head against the seat of the big jumbo jet and closed her eyes as the landing gear groaned beneath her. Bone weary, she tried to reach back into her memory and grasp hold of the calling that had felt like a heavenly mantle wrapped around her shoulders at one point in time.
There. In the faded, dusty corners of her mind, she could barely make out the silhouette of what she would consider the beginning. The stained-glass window as morning light shone through the hospital chapel. The peace amid the rising storm pelting her family as doctors continued to update her parents on her brother Michael’s surgery and amputations. The—
Breath tainted by cheese crackers assaulted her nostrils, and a knee came down on her wrist, which lay on the armrest between the seats. She peeled open one eye, the other flying wide a second later as she scooted to insert a bit of personal space between herself and the little tyke that was trying to hurl himself over her to get to the small rectangle of window on the other side.
The preschooler—he couldn’t have been more than four or five—had been an angel the entire flight, sleeping most of the way and then playing happily with Hot Wheels cars and the coloring books his mother had distracted him with. Sure, there had been a few dozen replays ofBaby Sharkon his mom’s phone at one point in time, but Amber had tuned out the too-catchy song with earbuds of her own. Now, however, he seemed to have reached the end of his tether. Or rather, broken free of it all together, if his bony knee in her thigh was any indication.
“Look, Mama, look. A castle!”
The whole back half of the plane should be able to hear him at that decibel.
Amber pressed her spine into the seat, holding in her laughter at the young mom’s horrified expression. Amber didn’t mind the little guy in her lap, truly. In fact, if she hadn’t been so absorbed in trying to banish the thoughts that had insisted on accompanying her like a second carry on, she would have been clearheaded enough to offer her window seat to the little family in the first place. What kid didn’t want to sit by the window, after all?
“Could it be King Arthur’s castle, Mama? Could it?”
“I am so sorry.” The boy’s mom unbuckled her seat belt and pushed up both armrests, snaking her arm around her son’s waist and pulling him back. Her face flushed pink with embarrassment.
Amber smiled. Both to reassure the woman, who didn’t look much older than her own twenty-one years, and because who wouldn’t feel lightened by the exuberance of little children?
“It’s not a problem,” Amber assured her as the boy was lifted from across her thighs. “How about we switch seats? I should have thought to offer before.”
The boy squealed, immediately gluing himself back to the window.
“You sure?”
