“I’ll go find him. Or I’ll sit at my shop and wait for him,” she said defiantly. “I need to be alone right now. I need to think.”
He held fast to her arms, trying to stop her. “Sabine.”
“Damnation, Max, you can’t fix everything, and you can’t protect me from something greater than you and all your guards.” She exhaled slowly. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.” She shook her head and walked away.
She stepped into her room, noting the trunk at the foot of her bed, half-filled with her belongings. Sabine had been packing when she’d gone downstairs to discover Justin in Max’s study. Now it seemed futile to continue. They weren’t leaving, not yet.
She wanted to throw something, but that wouldn’t solve anything. Instead, she went back to the pile she’d made on the bed. Slowly she returned her possessions to their proper places. Her hairbrush went back on the dressing table with her combs and few pieces of jewelry.
From her reticule, she pulled out some money and a pair of earrings she’d worn to the party the other night. But something was missing. She felt around to the bottom of the bag, but the necklace wasn’t there.
She tore through the dressing table, picking through each item, one by one, to find it. But it was not there. Still clutching the earrings, she searched the rest of the room. The bed was empty, so she checked the floor, and still, she could not find it. Her elixir was gone. The small vial Agnes had given her. The one she’d used on Max when he’d injured himself in the bathhouse.
She sank to the bed, sitting right on the edge. The earrings dangled from her hand. It was a few nights ago, after they’d made love, and he’d handed her the reticule. That must have been when it happened.
Damn him! He’d stolen it. The earrings fell to the floor with a clang.
He hadn’t wanted her, Sabine realized. He’d been after the elixir the entire time and had seduced her as a distraction! She’d known she’d been nothing more than a diversion, a dalliance, but she’d never doubted his desire for her. How could she have been so wrong?
The other night she’d given him every opportunity to tell her that he cared about her above and beyond his quest for Atlantis. He’d been angry with her for lying about her being the guardian. And she’d thought for a moment, she’d hoped, his anger stemmed from deeper feelings for her. That she’d wounded him because he cared. But that was only what she wanted to hear; it wasn’t the truth.
Did Max have intentions of stealing the rest, only he hadn’t been able to locate Agnes’s amphora? Would he take it, then simply watch her aunt die? He’d always expressed doubt that the guardian’s mortality was mystically attached to the elixir. He’d suggested the Chosen One had killed them. But she knew different.
What hurt the most was knowing that despite this, she still loved him. She still wanted him to come to her, pull her into his arms, and tell her it would be all right, that the Chosen One wouldn’t win, and that she and her aunts would survive this. She wanted him to tell her that he loved her, and he’d never let harm come to her. And that somehow, they would manage to find a fairy-tale ending when this was all over.
But all of that would be a lie. He couldn’t protect her now. It was time for her to take matters into her own hands and fight the Chosen One. She couldn’t allow Agnes to risk her life, so it was up to Sabine to bring about this madman’s destruction.
If only she knew how to find him.
She swiped at a tear just as her aunts entered her bedchamber door. She tried to smile, but she knew they’d seen her.
“Sabine, what’s the matter?” Calliope said as she came over to hug her niece.
“I’m tired, that’s all,” Sabine said.
“We saw the inspector leaving as we arrived,” Lydia said. “What happened?”
Sabine’s shoulders sank. “The man they arrested is not the Chosen One; neither was the woman. He’s still out there.”
Her other two aunts were by her side instantly. Hugs and squeezes and words of encouragement surrounded her.
“I feel as if I’ve failed,” she said quietly. “We tried to find the dove, and we did. We even have that bloody sword. But how am I to find the Chosen One and destroy him?”
“No one expects you to,” Lydia said.
“That sword might help, but you already have everything you need within you to defeat him,” Agnes said.
Sabine shook her head in frustration. “I appreciate the encouragement, but now is not the time for platitudes.”
“No, Sabine, she found something,” Calliope said. “In Phinneas’s book.”
“The quest,” Lydia said, “was not meant for you and Max, but rather for the Chosen One. A diversion, you see, created by our ancestors. But you stumbled upon it by mistake.”
“What are you talking about?” Sabine asked.
Agnes stood and retrieved Phinneas’s book from the chair where she’d set it. “That’s why the first clue, the one that sent you to Lulworth Cove, was so simple. It was meant to be blatant in case the Chosen One got his hands on Phinneas’s book. It was a false clue, meant to set the Chosen One on a potentially fatal trail. The real message, the truth, was more challenging to uncover. It’s an old secret code he and I used in our letters,” she said. “Once I deciphered the journal using his code, I was able to see what he was really trying to tell us.”
Sabine looked from one aunt to the next, but saw no sign of their trying to tease her. “I don’t understand,” she said. “We risked our lives and wasted time for nothing?”