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Alexandru slowed Cruentas down to a trot at the end of the flower field. I looked out into long plots of flat land with neat rows of long grassy plants that appeared to be wheat. It went on forever, and I noticed there were dozens of men scattered in the distance laboring over the wheat in the sweltering heat.
I gave an unexpected yelp as Cruentas took off at full gallop again, the momentum pressing me back into the wall of muscle behind me. He had not said a word the entire ride, which left me to my own chaotic thoughts of what I was supposed to do in this situation, and what Blondie was planning on doing with me exactly. Because the steel grip of his forearm around my waist was starting to feel more and more like shackles than a seatbelt.
The glaring problem at hand was our language barrier, which was the one thing I still felt like I needed to communicate to Death through is memories. The continuation of this memory had been an unexpected surprise, like I was watching a movie play out before me.
I wondered if my presence had disturbed what would happen next, and if there was still a way for Death to recognize he was unconscious without the memory collapsing again. After the last memory and the PTSD flashback of him turning to ash between my fingertips, I'd decided telling him directly what had happened had been the wrong way to go about this. Or at least I would have to make it a last resort and see if somehow worked the second time.
All I knew was this realm felt unstable, and I had no idea how long these memories would play out. Caito had mentioned Death's life was flashing before his eyes, which made me feel pressed for time that this memory wouldn't last very long.
The farmland seemed to go on forever. Alexandru seemed to know where he was going by memory, and I wondered if this land was his. We approached a massive barn, and he slowed Cruentas down again. Alexandru's large hand slid from my stomach to either side of my waist to straighten my spine. He seemed to give me a little shake, which made me aware of just how locked up my entire body had been in fear of falling off the horse.
He gave me another shake, and I lifted my head straight ahead in confusion. This time, he also pressed down on my legs to squeeze my thighs tighter against the saddle and then he taughtened the reigns in his hands. Cruentas slowed down even more, as I fought the urge to elbow him in the side for manhandling me.
He muttered something at my ear that I didn't even bother to understand. All I could focus on was the fact that his hands had gripped my hips, and he appeared to emphasized whatever he was saying. His breath felt so pleasantly warm and a little tingly as it fanned across my cheek.
Then I noticed a little too late that he'd handed me Cruentas' reigns.
Not to mention, he'd let go of me all-together.
Before I could process what was happening, Alexandru hopped off Cruentas while the stallion was still trotting.
My eyes bulged and I gripped the reigns hard.
"Are you fucking––?" I craned my neck of my shoulder, my heart pounding as I saw Alexandru walking directly behind Cruentas. And he was grinning. "Hey! What are you doing? Why are you smiling like that?"
He picked up his pace so that he ran well ahead of me and Cruentas. He turned and faced me and motioned with two fingers toward his eyes for me to watch him. He lowered into a squat with his arms out as though he were saddled and kept his back straight. Then he motioned to his legs and made an inward motion with his hands pulling gently back toward himself.
"Are you seriously teaching me right now? You're supposed to do that before the person gets on the––"
As Cruentas passed Alexandru, he gave the stallion a smack on the butt. Cruentas launched into a faster trot, and although it was not nearly as fast as we'd been riding before, my hair blew back from my face and I desperately held on to saddle with my legs and the reigns for dear life.
Cruentas veered right on his own, and we passed a fenced in area with pigs drinking from a trout of water and a startled a group of chickens that sprinted across the ground with their wings spread out.
An unexpected laugh came out of me, and I smiled so big. Holy shit, I was riding a horse. I was riding a horse!
Then it dawned on me that I had no idea how to stop.
Cruentas looped around another animal pen, and we passed Alexandru carrying a bale of hay on his shoulder.
"Are you doing chores?" I bellowed, and when I turned back to look at Alexandru, he lifted his free hand and waved like he had no concern at all about my situation. What the hell? Was he trying to kill me? "You saved me in a river only to die by your damn horse?" I could hear his deep laughter as he entered the barn with the bale of hay. "DON'T YOU LAUGH AT ME! GET BACK HERE AND GET ME OFF THIS DANG––!"
I I was nearly tossed from my seat as Cruentas suddenly veered left. The ground blurred beneath me, and I knew a fall from this speed would end in a quick death.
I looked up, and my eyes bulged as we approached an obstacle of a broken wooden fence that was at least four feet tall. Cruentas charged faster than ever. I lowered myself into the saddle with a high-pitched scream. He launched into the air and cleared the fence easily.
Before he kept running around like a crazy horse with zoomies, I tried to think of a quick way to end this madness.
Straightening my spine, I tried to pull myself together and implement the posture Alexandru had put me in on the saddle. I closed my thighs and tautened the reins in my hands. It took a few tries, but Cruentas finally slowed to a gentle trot.
I sagged on the saddle with a heavy sigh, sweat pouring off my face at this point.
A sharp whistle made Cruentas turn and head toward the barn. My face felt hot from adrenaline and how fast Cruentas had ran, and I had no doubt that my hair was standing up in every which direction. My fingers were gripping the reins so hard that I was certain they were blistered, too.
Alexandru was leaned against the open barn door with his arms crossed over his broad chest. He cast a glance up at my livid expression and laughed, before catching Cruentas' reigns and stopping him.
"That," I breathed out, "was so not cool. But also, really fucking awesome."
Even though I knew he hadn't understood a single word, the one side of his mouth lifted in a lopsided smirk. But as quickly as the playful moment with Cruentas and him came, it ended, as his expression grew serious, and he not-so-patiently reached up to plucked me right off the horse. At least he'd settled me gingerly on the ground so that I could go easy on my foot.
He unstrapped my backpack from Cruentas' saddle to hand it to me like it was a giant hot coal. Probably didn't want to be zapped again.
As he unsaddled Cruentas' like he'd done it a thousand times, I glanced at the exposed parts of his legs in his off-white wool tunic and felt like I was looking at something obscene. Not that I hadn't already gotten an X-rated body shot of the guy already that day. I'd just never really gotten a good look at Death's legs, especially without all the tattoos.
Cruentas blew hot air into my ear, jarring me from my thoughts.
"What?" I asked him. "He started it with coming out of that river naked and literally not giving a single shit. Imagining having that kind of confidence in front of a stranger. I could never."
Cruentas bobbed his head once and whinnied.
"Aw, well thank you."
Brushing past me with Cruentas' saddle, Alexandru frowned down at me like I was cracked in the head.
"I was just talking to the horse," I said, and then I made a face, realizing that maybe he had the right to assume that.
I watched Alexandru lock Cruentas into his stall and carry various bucks back and forth a few times across the barn. He checked on the two other horses in the barn and appeared to talk to them as he did so, before returning back to me and motioning with his head for me to follow him.
"Veni."
We followed a dirty path from the barn, past the penned areas for chickens and pigs, to another nicer path of stone. As it turns out, Alexandru and Death weren't that much different, as he was walking well ahead of me with his long, powerful strides.
Hmph. How quickly he'd gone from threatening me with a knife in my face to considering me the least of his worries.
This property was massive and like a little piece of paradise, with gorgeous fruit trees scattered around in bloom and various arrangements of flowers along the pathway. I plucked a flower from a bush as we walked past it and inhaled its sweet scent before rolling the stem in my dry fingers. The details in this realm were unbelievable. Everything felt so real, and although I couldn't change Death's past, I had to remember that it could change me.
I glanced down at my injured foot as I limped on. Although I could walk better than before, my foot was still throbbing with every step that I took. The last thing I wanted to deal on during this journey was an injury, which meant I really needed to get this healing ability under control. Not that I had all my other powers under control yet. It was definitely a work in progress.
We came to three stone staircases with wide steps, as though meant for horses to go up and down. Since there was no railing, I made an embarrassing attempt to climb lightly on my foot, when a bug landed on my arm. I squealed and swatted it away, when it flew right into my face.
My foot slipped, and I my stomach lurched as I began to fall back, when a hand snatched my arm at the last second. I looked up into mismatched green eyes. Alexandru had been far ahead of me. He'd moved so fast that it'd been a blur, and it was then I had confirmation that younger Death still had some supernatural abilities of his own, even before he became the Grim Reaper.
By his uneasy expression, he hadn't wanted me to notice a slip up like that. Little did he know how familiar I was with his speed and is soon-to-be habit of manifesting out of nowhere in dramatic entrances.
He clutched my arm and started to drag me up the stairs with a exasperated, "Veni."
I swatted at his hand. "Just because there's a frustrating language barrier, doesn't mean you can manhandle––" Gripping my upper arm even tighter, Alexandru practically carried me the rest of the way up the stairs.
"Okay, or you can do that."
He kept his hold on my arm and forced me to keep up with his ridiculous hurried pace, even after we climbed the stairs. I couldn't help but feel like a prisoner again, until I took in the enormous, charming Romanesque villa ahead. It was built of stone with a tiled roof. It was surrounded by various leafy fruit trees, flowers, and shrubbery. Fountains rippled in an exquisite garden of more exotic flowers as we approached a door.
Alexandru turned toward me, and I nearly crashed into his broad chest. He gripped my shoulders and steered me to the side, jabbing a finger toward me in a clear, "Wait" before putting finger to his mouth.
"Mater!" he bellowed into the house. He walked further inside. "Pater! Hic es? Pater!" His voice got a little further away as he repeated what he said, and it dawned on me that he was checking to see if either of his parents were home.
"Ah, shit," I muttered, pressing back so that nobody could see me through any of the windows of the house. Past Malphas. I hadn't even thought about him until now. Taking a girl to your parents' home must have been a scandalous thing two-thousand years ago, and Malphas didn't exactly sound like a "chill" parent. So why had Alexandru taken me here?
Alexandru returned to the entryway. He seemed to be in a rush, especially when he reached for my arm again and practically hauled me into the home. I stumbled on something with a lip on the entryway and nearly fell on my face, had he not been held my whole weight up.
Fed up with this whole "grabbing-Faith-and-yanking-her-around-like-a-dog" behavior, I finally turned around and shoved him hard at the chest.
He looked down at his chest and then at me in disbelief, as if that had been the last thing he'd expected.
"Stop manhandling me like that," I exploded, and pointed at my foot. "Don't you see I'm freaking injured, Blondie?"
I didn't even know where that rage had come from, but it'd definitely come from some suppressed, frustrated spot deep inside of me. How else was I supposed to feel? I had three days to find Death because I was a total idiot and managed to cross paths with that Caito Gaurdian of the Unknown guy. It was incredibly discouraging to have landed in this place and not even be able to communicate with Death.
Alexandru had narrowed his eyes at me as I screamed at him. His expression darkened to something briefly sinister. For a second, I saw a bit of Death in that expression, before it closed back up.
He reached for the door leading into the backyard and clutched the knob.
"What are you going to do, kick me out of your home?" I asked, continuing to stand up for myself, even when he was looking at me like he was having a lot of dark thoughts about me. "I said what I said."
His hand lifted off the doorknob and instead locked the door.
Then, without looking at me, he turned and walked into another room. "Veni."
I wiped a bit of sweat off my forehead as I watched his towering frame retreat through an archway. "Okay, like that dramatic locking the door thing really wasn't necessary, though," I muttered. "Now I feel like he's going to kill me."
The villa obviously wasn't air conditioned, but it was very airy which somehow created a cooling effect throughout the entire house. Since the house was very open, I could see out past pillars with textiles into a courtyard with an open roof at the center of the house, which had a decent sized pool with two benches around a stone table. Another open garden flourished with herbs and flowers bursting with color. Flowers that matched the exotic arrangements in vases set in almost every room we walked through, as were elaborate tapestries, rugs, and bronze and exotic looking wooden furniture with generous cushions to sit on. Vines of grape and ivy hung from the pillars and the open roof like canopies.
As I continued to follow Alexandru through this gorgeous home, I peered into a dining room with generous wooden table for many guests. There were two benches with cushions on either side of the dining table and chairs stacked up in the corner of the room, and I wondered if they had guests often. The entire table was arranged with utensils, ornate bowls and plates.
We passed another smaller pool with an open roof and mosaics all along the walls, and at this point I was just trying to wrap my mind around how colossally sized and lavish this home was. I don't know what I expected from the Roman Era, but this definitely wasn't it. This house bared a relatively close resemblance to what houses looked like now and appeared to even be bathrooms.
We walked down a hallway with open windows and grape vines canopying for privacy, and the first room I saw next distinctly reminded me of a gym with various handmade weights and bowling ball looking things that I imagined had something to do with Alexandru's twelve-pack stomach.
Reaching the end of a hallway, Alexandru leaned on an entryway into a room with one hand and indicated for me to go inside. I hobbled into the room, extremely aware of how he was leaned slightly into me as I brushed past him, all while staring at my face with an unflinching intensity.
God, does he really have to always look at me like that, even two-thousand years ago?
The moment my eyes fell on the room, a chill slid down my spine. Tables against the walls and shelves were stacked with various herbs and bronze bowls. The strong smell of some sort of essence that had been burning filled my nostrils, and I gulped down a lump in my throat at the sight of bones in a bin on the floor.
"Great," I said. "That's always a good sign."
I looked over at Alexandru. He was facing toward the room, leaning both his hands on the archway of the door to watch my reaction carefully.
"Why did you take me in here?" I asked him, even though I knew he wouldn't understand.
Alexandru took a slow step toward me. Then another. I slipped off my backpack and held it in my hand, as though that would somehow fend him off if need be. The room seemed to shrink down in size with him in it. He had a body built to kill and fight, from what had to be hours of training, and the way he was looking at me right now and looking at my backpack in my hand made me feel like I was in the arena with him. My pulse raced uncontrollably as he stopped to stand directly in front of me, filling my entire line of vision with his upper body.
He reached up his calloused hand and tilted my head up with his knuckle.
I stared at the scar slashed through his lighter green eye. How the color in his iris seem to shift around like a kaleidoscope, right before his iris swallowed the entire width of his eye. I pressed back against the table behind me, held helplessly in a trance, as he cradled the back of my neck and gazed deeper into my eyes.
That menacing black shadow drew back into his pupil, and the blonde slashes of his brows caved together in annoyance. He pulled away from me with a gruff, "Maleficium."
My whole body was trembling. I realized my fingers were gripping the table behind me, and I couldn't shake the sensations I'd just felt. What the hell was that? Had he just looked into my soul? Whatever he had seen, it didn't seem to spark any fear in him, as he nonchalantly gathered a few jars of supplies off a shelf and a handful of bandages. He set them down on the table beside me, his attention focused on the task at hand.
Which, I now knew, was my injured foot.
His hands gripped my waist, my mouth falling open with a gasp as he hoisted me onto the table with ease. The fact that pre-Grim Reaper Death could pick me up without any effort at all like that seemed to make my already wonky equilibrium seem to tilt a bit.
Still evading eye contact, he cleared his throat with an arched eyebrow, and I realized I was clutching his biceps for dear life.
"Oops," I said, and quickly put my arms down at my sides. He actually laughed under his breath, which made my face burn hotter than it already was in this godforsaken place, before dragging a stool from underneath the table to sit in front of me. He picked up my leg and carefully put my foot on his thigh.
I felt flooded with more warmth as his long fingers slowly unwrapped the fabric around my foot, which he'd torn from his own tunic. Blood stained through the inner layers of the cloth, and I breathed a little bit of a sigh of relief that there were still some remnants of a gash there. Didn't seem like the right time to flash him anymore glimpses of my healing abilities.
Disposing of the dirty bandages into a bin at his side, Alexandru reached for a jar of liquid and rinsed his hands with it over the bin. Then he soaked a cloth and started cleaning the wound with two different liquids, when an unbearable burn centered round the cut.
My foot jerked upward, but his hand caught my calve before I kicked his feet.
"Ow, you fucker!" I cupped a hand over my mouth at the accidental slipup.
Another small snicker laugh escaped his lips. "Infans."
"I sure hope you didn't just call me an infant."
He gazed up at me past his long lashes and grinned. "Et Latine loqui?"
"Latin?" His face brightened as he seemed to understand the Latin part. I shrugged my shoulders with my hands up. "I'm only getting little bits of things, but I don't speak Latin."
I recognized the mortar and pestle in Alexandru's hands as he placed some dried herbs in it with more liquid and mashed it together to create a paste. Holding my foot on his lap with one hand, he applied the paste with a careful precision, spreading it over the wound with his finger. It created an odd numbing effect on the wound. I glanced at the various items he'd put out beside me and saw a thread and needle. Guess the Romans knew how to stitch, too. Thank God, he hadn't needed to stitch me up without any anesthetic.
When he was done bandaging the wound, his fingers prodded various sections of my foot. Being that close to him, feeling his hands on my body, had made me wish it was really Death. But this was just a moment in time. A memory that would fade into nothing, maybe forever, and there was nothing I could do about it. Not if I couldn't talk to him.
Alexandru tilted his head up at me, silently asking if the place he prodding on my ankle was tender, since I'd visibly flinched, but really my breath had just hitched because I'd failed to keep my emotions together. His features softened, and he carefully set my leg down from his thigh so that it dangled off the table.
The tightness in my throat gave nearly gave out into a sob. Alexandru stood and reached out to touch my shoulder, and I almost lost control. I could tell he felt uncomfortable, so I offered a small smile and pulled myself together in an instant.
He looked down at the sleeve of my shirt and pulled at his own clothes. "Tunica?"
It took me a second to realize he was asking me if I wanted clothing. I nodded my head yes, even though I was pretty sure Romeo had packed spare clothing in my endless magical bag. The truth was, I just wanted to be alone to gather my thoughts.
Alexandru left the room, and I let out a shaky breath. My nails had been clenched so hard into my palm that they had left deep crescent moons.
I quickly crossed the floor to close the door, and then unlocked my backpack with my password. As I scrambled to search through the endless bag, my stomach released a loud grumble. I put my hand to it, not even remembering the last time I had eaten. Fishing through the bag, I thankfully felt for a few items of normal clothes and sighed in relief.
No way was I wearing one of those tunic things the rest of this journey.
Sitting down on the cot in the corner of the room, I leafed through the bag some more. Romeo had packed a bunch of gadgets and potions with labels, and there was even a manual.
"I really should have read that before I got the bag."
The fact that I was so unprepared for this particular memory made me feel sick to my stomach with a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe that bad taste was river water.
I searched through the bag for a toothbrush, thankfully finding a pack of gum.
"Oh, thank god."
There was a knock on the door. I quickly stuffed all the things I'd taken out of my backpack back inside and rushed to the door. Alexandru had a folded stack of clothes and shoes in his hands. He gave a small smile, before indicating he'd be outside, as he pointed down the long hallway that we'd traveled down to get to this room.
I gave him a thumbs up. "Got it. I'll be right there ."
I locked the door behind him and plopped the stack of clothes on the cot, running hands aggravatedly over my face. I somehow managed to peel my pants and underwear off of me. Since I couldn't find a fresh new bra inside of the bag, I decided that the bra had to stay for now. I ran my hands over the blue cotton tunic Alexandru had given me with a scarf of some sort. It was much more conservative than what I had on and the tunic nearly hit the ground/ I could only imagine what he thought of me.
There was a bronze silvery mirror in the room that I could check my reflection in. I tried to fix up my hair the best that I could and tested my breath in my mouth. "River breath. Ick."
I went back to the cot to collect my bag and grabbed that pack of gum to stuff the piece of spearmint gum into my mouth.
I made it halfway to the door, when the gum suddenly grew oddly thicker in my mouth. I tried to work it with my tongue and stretched my jaw out, and it kept getting stuck to my teeth. Frowning, I tried to chew it one last time, when suddenly I realized, my mouth was wired shut.
And that was when it got, well, a lot worse.
My tongue felt heavy, thick, it was swelling in my mouth. I thought for sure I was having an allergic reaction and started choking. I started for the door for help, when a sharp headache centered at the sides of my skull. The worse migraine I'd ever had took over, and then my ears exploded with pain, and something really, really terrible was happening.
I fell back against a table, gripping my skull with the inability to scream, since my jaw was wired shut, and knocked over a glass jar to the floor. The contents spilled over the floor right as I regained the ability to open my mouth.
Gasping for air, I lunged for the mirror ahead of me. I didn't look blue in the face. My throat wasn't closing up. The headache was gone and so was the spearmint gum. But my tongue still felt so weird...
"Damnit, Romeo!" I hissed. "I just wanted fucking gum!"
There was a bang on the door, and I startled.
"Are you okay?" Alexandru bellowed. "What is all that noise?"
"Sorry, sorry, I'm fine!" I quickly kicked the fallen herbs under the table and glared down at the pack of gum in my hand, before tossing it into my backpack. Then I threw open the door and ran my hand anxiously down my braid. "Almost died chewing gum, but no big...deal..."
Alexandru's catlike eyes were wide as saucers. "You understand me now?"
***
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