She ran forward with Harper hot on her heels. She didn’t see many flames, but the underbrush was burning. It would be almost impossible for the animals to run on the ground.
She pulled the lever again and fired the agent onto the ground while she ran forward.
She almost fell over Gray’s body.
“Gray! “Gray!” She screamed falling to her knees to lift his head in her arms. She didn’t wait for Harper to catch up, but quickly checked to see if he was breathing. He was! She felt dizzy with relief.
His eyes fluttered open and he smiled when he saw her. “I dreamed…” He coughed and began again, his voice weak. “I dreamed this. I couldn’t abandon my friends to the fire. I came back to save them, Aria.”
“Ssh, don’t speak, my love,” she whispered gently, holding him.
“I would have found a way back to you,” he breathed out, his eyes closing again. “I love you…” He was quiet. Aria feared he had passed out again. But then, she heard him.…“most.”
Harper appeared beside her and together they hoisted him up and dragged him beyond the trees. She heard Toric cawing overhead and felt as if she could understand him. The others. She turned to look behind her and saw a line of forest critters and a few deer following on the cooling ground.
When they broke through the trees, Aria and Harper collapsed with an unconscious Gray between them.
Aria was no nurse, but she knew Gray could be suffering from smoke inhalation. When she suggested they return to the twenty-first century to get him to a hospital, Harper insisted they bring him to their grandmother first.
“Where’s my brother? Aria pleaded the instant she reached Mrs. B.
“There now,” Mrs. B. said, patting her hand. “He’s well at the Gable holding. He’s been sent for so that he can go home with you.
Aria smiled with great relief, but Mrs. B. wasn’t done. “You disobeyed me,” she admonished her great, great…many times removed granddaughter.
“I know,” Harper said as he was carried away to a sickbed. “I love him.”
Mrs. B. gave Harper a scowl that didn’t reach her eyes and then shifted her gaze to Aria.
“I love him too.”
Mrs. B. broke into a smile. “I’m glad my Gray is so well-loved.
“Our Gray,” Aria corrected, then followed her up the stairs to Gray’s room, where he was being put into bed.
Mrs. B’s gaze warmed on Aria. “He didn’t want to be separated from you, Aria, dear. But he was afraid that if they caught you, they would do the same thing to you that they did to his mother. He told me if that happened, he would step into the flames with you. There would be no point in him escaping.”
Aria felt like bursting into tears. He’d risked his life and their life together to come back and save his friends and she loved him all the more for it. She wouldn’t lose him now that she’d willingly returned to the past for him.
They were quiet while Tessa Blagden examined him. When she stood over him, quiet for a long time, Aria went to her. Was she a healer? Was she healing her grandson?
“What are you doing?” she asked the older woman.
“I’m praying, dear.”
Aria nodded and joined her, taking Gray’s hand while she bowed her head. She prayed first to God, and then,
Gray, my darling love, if you can hear me in that thick beautiful skull of yours, I need you. I need to be by your side as your wife with your seven children around our knees, loving you enough to have seven more. Come back to me, Gray. Come back and dance with me again. Come back and touch me again.
His finger moved over hers, startling her and making her look at his hand. He tightened his grip as she held his hand and then moved his pinkie over hers again.
Tears filled her vision, and she swiped them away to see him. His eyes were still closed, but his touch promised her a lifetime.
Epilogue
Upstate, New York
2033