Free Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles) by Linda Lael Miller Page A

and absolution lie.”
    I shrugged free of his grasp and went on, propelled by stubbornness, not strength. I ached with frailty and fatigue. “No more talk of heaven,” I growled, blinking back the stinging moisture in my eyes. “No more.”
    I knew which plot was Brenna’s, even before Brother Timothy pointed it out.
    My beloved rested beneath a gentle mound of newly turned earth, with a crude wooden cross to mark her passing. It was a peaceful place, though the sea churned in the near distance, like some tempestuous gift seeking to ungive itself. Light would dance among the shimmering leaves of the birch trees, come summer, and in other seasons the wind and the rain and the sea would sing their varied choruses.
    I pressed my palms into the raw dirt and dug my fingers in deep, as if to find her, drag her upward, resurrect her somehow. “Brenna,” I whispered. What I wouldn’t have given, facing the finality of her death yet again in the moments that followed, to be as she was, unaware, empty of emotion, immune to suffering. Hidden from the gazes of man and God.
    I trembled, light-headed from my exertions, and might have pitched forward to lie sprawled across the grave if Brother Timothy hadn’t grasped my shoulders and raised me to my feet.
    “Come away,” he said quietly. “You can do no good here.”
    I had risen from my sickbed not even an hour before, and I had no power to resist. I allowed that tenacious and good man to support me as we moved away from the village, descending the opposite side of the hill.
    Below lay an ancient structure, surely a monastery, with low stone walls and a single crumbling tower. From that height I saw garden plots, a well, a narrow courtyard without fountain or bench. I stumbled, and Brother Timothy tightened his grasp, and once again kept me from falling.
    The interlude that followed lies strewn through my memory like dried bones, disjointed and strange. I was taken to a cell, furnished only with a cot and a crucifix, and able hands stripped away my ruined garments. I was bathed in warm water, garbed in a clean, if coarsely woven, robe, given stout wine and broth by spoonfuls.
    I slept, wandering in the dark mists of my dreams, searching tirelessly and in vain for Brenna.
    When at last I returned to full awareness, body and mind rallying to a semblance of their former vitality, I discovered myself to be a dry, hollow husk of a man. My grief had vanished, but so had my conscience, my better graces, and, indeed, my soul.
    I was empty.
    “Stay with us, your brothers,” Timothy pleaded when, after days of gradual, painstaking recovery, I was well enough to rise from my cot and move about the monastery and the grounds. We were in the courtyard that afternoon and the weather was bright and crisply cold. “Surely it was a sign, our finding you—”
    “I am grateful for all you’ve done,” I said, though in fact I felt nothing—not gratitude, not hatred, not grief or joy. What followed, however, was purest truth. “I am not suited to this life, Timothy. I was born a sinner and I shall remain one for all time.”
    Would that I could have known how prophetic those rashly spoken words really were. But then, I do not believe anything short of Brenna’s return from the dead would have changed my course.
    Timothy looked pained; tears filled his kindly eyes, and he spread his hands in a gesture of pleading. “Valerian—”
    I was unmoved by the monk’s sorrow and held up a hand to silence him. In the next moment I looked ruefully down at my borrowed robe. “Have you no breeches in this dreary place? No tunics or belts or boots?”
    He drew an audible breath. “We keep a store of such garments, yes,” he admitted slowly. “Each of us arrived here as an ordinary man, after all. Our possessions are part of our sacrifice, and as a rule they are either sold for the benefit of the order or given to the poor.”
    “No one,” I said, laying my hands on my chest and looking at Timothy