She nodded. “It is.” Her gaze found Nicholas rubbing his hands down his face. “But the earl has made it quite nice.”
Walter looked at Nicholas and then at her. “Are you prepared to go back?”
“Yes,” she said with the slightest hesitation.
“All right. Here is what we know so far. The brooch is in the hands of Arthur’s knights in another realm, as I had thought. They are searching for him, waiting for his return. Some say the brooch was crafted by Morgan Le Fey or even Viviane of the Lake to guide her to Arthur, her only love. ’Tis rumored that both sisters loved him, so we do not know who crafted the pin. ’Tis also rumored that Arthur cast his own spell on the brooch, using it to show folks the path toward true love. After being burned several times while it hung from awitch’scloak, the brooch—”
“It was charred and blackened,” Kes told him on the barest of breaths, realizing how many people had been burned as witches.
“The nine sisters decided something must be done, but the brooch could not be destroyed. They cast further spells around it so that the instant it was used it would return to the hands of the Round Table knights.”
“This is getting crazier as we go,” Kes mumbled. “Those people aren’t even real.”
Walter shrugged his shoulders. “The saying goes that sometimes there is truth in legend.”
“I haven’t heard that saying,” she told him. This didn’t sound right. She wasn’t into magic and sorcery. Sure, it took some kind of magic to bring her back, but all this Lady of the Lake nonsense was too wild—even for her.
There was another answer. What if whatever she was experiencingnowwasn’t real? What if she hadn’t traveled back in time but was lying on a hospital bed somewhere in a coma, fantasizing about this dark knight?
She settled her gaze on Nicholas. What if he wasn’t real?
Panic seized her. She wanted him to be real. How would she ever know? What if she recovered from whatever had put her in that hospital bed, and opened her eyes and that was it? He was gone forever? No! Her knees felt weak. She reached her arm out to him.
Nicholas.
He came quickly to her side. “What is it?”
“Are you real?”
Why did it feel like it mattered more than life or death? “If he isn’t real, let me wake up now,” she prayed out loud.
“Kestrel.” Nicholas closed his fingers around her arms. “Look at me! I am real.”
“How do you know?”
“Miss Locksley, he is real,” said Old Walter. “As real as everyone in your day, say… a month ago.”
He’s real. How could this be happening? How could she be falling for a man who could be dead soon when he returns to the battlefield?
She felt like a fool for reaching for him like some needy child. She realized she liked him close because it was the only time she felt safe.
“Forgive my outburst,” she asked them. “I don’t know what came over me. I think this has really been too much.”
“Of course,” Walter assured.
Nicholas stared into her eyes. He wasn’t buying it. He knew there was more. How could she tell him she didn’t want to begin something with him that would end if she could get home—or woke up.
She eyed Walter. “How well do you know this traveler? Or about traveling?”
“Well enough.”
“What are the chances of going back to my time and not three hundred years too far? I don’t think the twenty-fourth century would be to my liking if what’s happened so far is any indication.”
“Ah, but you were looking for a brooch, my dear. Not a way home.”
“Are you saying there are other ways home?” she asked.
“There could be, but we haven’t been looking!” Walter threw up his hands. “All right. Well, I will let him know to stay away from the other realm, for now.”