Fallen in Love (11 page)

Roland withdrew his sword from Alexander’s neck. He sheathed his weapon, mounted his horse, and rode out of the stable into the night.

The road was bare and blue in the moonlight.

Roland headed north. He still needed to find Daniel—at least one love should be redeemed in this joust with time. For a quarter of an hour, Roland lost himself in thoughts of Rosaline, but the memory was too painful to indulge for long. His eyes refocused on the road when he saw a rider galloping toward him on a coal-black horse.

Even in the darkness, there was something strange and yet familiar about the knight’s armor. For a moment,
Roland wondered whether it was his own former self, but when the knight put up a hand to slow Roland’s ride, his gestures were more urgent than Roland’s would have been.

They stopped before one another, their horses whickering as they circled, breathing frost.

“You come from yonder estate?” The knight’s voice boomed across the road as he pointed toward the castle in the distance.

He must have thought Roland was Alexander. Had this knight been sent to escort Alexander to the front?

“Y-yes,” Roland stammered. “I am a replacement for—”

“Roland?”
The soldier’s voice changed from what Roland realized was a hoarse, affected boom into something effervescent and fantastically charming.

The knight threw off his helmet. Black hair rolled like rapids down the suit of armor, and then, in the moonlight, Roland saw the face he’d known better than any other since the dawn of time.

“Arriane!”

They leaped from their horses and into each other’s arms. Roland didn’t know how long it had been since his medieval self had seen this medieval Arriane, but the emotional battle he’d just survived made it feel like centuries had passed since he’d last seen a friend.

He spun the wiry angel around. Her wings bloomed
out of slits in her armor, and Roland envied her their freedom. Of course her clothes would be tailored for wings—all of them had been back then.

Roland felt caged in his borrowed metal suit, but he didn’t want to complain to Arriane. She did not know yet that he was an Anachronism, and he wanted to keep it that way. He was so glad to see her.

The moonlight shone like a spotlight on his friend’s white skin. When she turned her head, Roland gasped.

A horrific burn glistened on the left side of her neck. The skin was marbled, knotted, bleeding, the most gruesome kind of wound. Roland recoiled without meaning to, making Arriane self-conscious.

She reached up to cover the wound but groaned when her fingers grazed it.

Roland had seen this scar a thousand times in future encounters with Arriane, but its origin remained a mystery to him. Only one thing could hurt an angel that way, but he’d never known how to ask her about it.

The wound was fresh now, like a rash of flames across her neck. She must have sustained the injury only recently.

“Arriane, what happened to you?”

She looked away, not meaning to give Roland an even clearer view of her ravaged skin. She sniffed. “Love is hell.”

“But”—Roland closed his eyes, hearing the line repeating
itself in his mind—“an angel’s form cannot be marred, except by …” Arriane looked away in shame, and Roland drew her to him. “Oh, Arriane!” he cried, clasping his arms around her waist, his eyes drawn to and repelled by her neck. He could not embrace her as he wanted to, could not squeeze away the pain. “I ache for you.”

She nodded. She knew. She had never liked to cry. She said, “I’ve just come from seeing Daniel.”

“I was on my way to meet him,” Roland said, breathless with the luck of it. “His presence is required at Saint Valentine’s Faire.”

“He rides to town this evening. He may well be there already. Lucinda will be happy, at least.”

“Yes,” Roland said, remembering more clearly now. “You were the knight who came to deliver that message to the others in the camp. It wasn’t me. You forged the king’s decree that told the men to take their Valentine’s leave.”

Arriane crossed her arms over her chest. “How did you know that?”

“Clairvoyant.” He was surprised to find himself smiling.

It was enough to have her here, his dearest friend. It made this journey into his past heartbreak a little less bleak.

Roland picked up Arriane’s helmet, helped her back
onto her horse. He mounted and dropped his visor once again. Side by side, the two knights rode for the city.

Sometimes love was not about winning, but about wise sacrifice and the reliability of friends like Arriane. Friendship, Roland realized, was its very own kind of love.

A
rriane looked out at the thyme-scented Tuscan morning and sighed.

She was sprawled on green-velvet grass, propped on her elbows with her chin in her palms, relishing the unseasonable warmth and the sensation of soft fingers running through her long dark hair.

This was how Arriane and Tess spent their rare afternoons together: One girl braided, the other spun stories. Then they switched roles.

“Once there was an extraordinary angel,” Arriane began, turning her head to the side so Tess could sweep the hair up from her neck.

Tess was better at braiding than Arriane. She would sit beside Arriane with a basket of forest wildflowers in her lap. She’d lean over Arriane’s narrow back and weave tight plaits into the angel’s thick hair. She’d pin the braids so they zigzagged across Arriane’s scalp, until she looked like Medusa, which was Arriane’s favorite style.

Arriane, on the other hand, was lucky to get Tess’s wild red mop into a single crooked braid. She’d pull and tug and wrestle the comb through Tess’s locks until Tess yelped in pain. But Arriane was better at storytelling. And what would braiding be without a good story?

No fun at all.

Arriane closed her eyes and moaned as Tess’s fingernails swiveled up her scalp. Nothing felt so good as a lover’s touch.

“Arriane?”

“Yes.” Her eyes opened, her gaze drifting over the pasture where dairy cows loafed on the farm’s two hundred acres. These were her favorite moments: quiet and uncomplicated, just the two of them. It was late in the afternoon; most of the milkmaids who worked on the farm where Arriane had taken her employment were already back at their cottages.

She’d chosen this job because it wasn’t far from Lucinda, who, in this lifetime, had grown up in an English fiefdom a few minutes’ fly north. Generally, Daniel felt stifled by the presence of Arriane and the other angels tasked with watching over him. But from the dairy, Arriane could give him space and still fly to him and Lucinda quickly if needed. Besides, Arriane enjoyed dipping into a mortal lifestyle every once in a while. It felt good to be given work on the dairy, to satisfy a boss. Tess never understood that urge, but then, Tess’s master was a little more demanding than the Throne.

It was rare to have a stolen moment with Tess. Her visits to the dairy—to this part of the world, in general—never came quickly or lasted long enough. Arriane didn’t like to imagine the darkness that awaited Tess as soon as they said goodbye, or the master who hated to see Tess straying from his realm.

Don’t think about him
, Arriane chided herself.
Not when Tess is by your side and there is no need to question your love!

Yes. Tess was by her side. And the grass beneath was so soft, the air of the farm so perfumed with wildflowers, that Arriane could have wafted into the nurturing bosom of a reassuring dream.

But the story. Tess loved her stories. “Where was I?” Arriane asked.

“Oh—I don’t remember.” Tess sounded distracted.
Her fingernail scraped Arriane’s neck as she scooped up a section of hair.

“Ouch.” Arriane rubbed her neck. Tess didn’t
remember
? But Arriane was the one who got lost in her thoughts, not Tess. “Is something wrong, love?”

“No,” Tess said quickly. “You were starting some story.… An extraordinary … um—”

“Yes!” Arriane said happily. “An
extraordinary
angel. Her name was … Arriane.”

Tess tugged her hair. “Another one about you?” She was laughing, but her laughter sounded distant, as if she had already flown far away.

“You’re in it, too! Just wait.” Arriane rolled onto her side to face Tess. The arm Tess had been braiding with slid down across Arriane’s hip.

Tess wore a white cotton gown with a narrow bodice and short, ruffled white sleeves. She had bursts of freckles on her shoulders, which Arriane thought looked like galaxies of stars. Her eyes were barely darker than Arriane’s startling pale blue irises.

She was the most beautiful creature Arriane had ever met.

“And what was so extraordinary about this angel?” Tess asked after a moment, picking up her cue.

“Oh, where to begin? There were
so
many extraordinary things about her!” Arriane flicked her head, musing on an inspired direction in which to take her tale. She
could feel the unbound braid scissoring loose on the side of her head.

“Oh, Arriane!” Tess said. “You’ve ruined it!”

“I can’t help it if my hair has other plans! And maybe yours does, too!” Arriane reached for the ribbon tied around Tess’s long red braid.

But the girl was too quick. She scrambled backward in the grass like a crab, laughing as Arriane rose to her feet and chased after her.

“This
most
extraordinary angel,” she called after Tess, who dashed through the high grass and the bracing February wind, “had the most
disgusting
nest of tangles in her hair. She was famous for it, far and wide. Tanglelocks, some called her.” Arriane high-stepped, her hands raised, her fingers wiggling to evoke her hair. “Cities vanished in her mighty mane. Whole armies were swept up in her snarls! Grown men wept and were lost in the black abyss of her serpentine tresses.”

Then Arriane tripped over the long hem of her shapeless milkmaid’s gown and went down hard onto the ground. On all fours, she looked up at Tess, who’d stopped between Arriane and the sun, a halo of light circling her red hair.

Tess leaned down to help Arriane up, her hands soft around Arriane’s wrists.

“Until one day”—Arriane went to rub her muddy palms on the front of her dress; Tess slapped them away
and produced, from her stringed pocket, a cotton handkerchief. “One day, this angel met someone who changed her life.…”

Tess lifted her chin a bit. She was listening.

“This person was a little devil,” Arriane said. “She was rather serious, always thwarting Tangelocks’s pranks, always mocking her ingenuity, always reminding Tanglelocks that some things were more important than plain old
hair
.”

Unexpectedly, Tess turned away. She sat down in the grass with her back to Arriane. Perhaps she’d found her character’s introduction unflattering? But there was more to come! Every story required a turning point, an element of surprise. Arriane sprawled across Tess’s stretched-out legs and propped herself up on one elbow in the grass. With her other hand, she reached to uncross the arms Tess had fixed firmly over her chest. But even with her hands clasped in her lover’s, Tess’s eyes would not be wrested from the pale yellow wildflower in the grass.