Page 1 of Misadventures with a Time Traveler

Prologue

Max

1789 – Angers, France

Time has turned traitor on me.

Angry shouts are followed by fiery swoops of pitch-dipped arrows. The reflections of the attack make their way inside, painting the stone walls in shades of red, orange, amber. The lights dance up and down the hall like gleeful wraiths of hell itself.

But the mob outside is not gleeful at all.

They are furious.

France is birthing itself into something new. The old ways—and every single member of the aristocracy representing them—are now seen as evil as Lucifer. And as is the way of birth, there must be blood.

Tonight, the rabble is out for mine. Furious whispers suddenly echo behind me in the corridor.

“By the saints. They are going to kill him,” gasps Kavia. The servant who has always been like a second mother to me has never sounded so petrified, and I clench every muscle to fight the tangible pull of her fear.

“Oui.” Carl is no help, which comes as no surprise. Kavia’s burly spouse has never been much for words. At a time like this, I am not certain whether to thank him or curse him for the trait. “Most likely,” he adds. “And soon. Unless we do something.”

“You mean unless I do something.”

Kavia’s comment has me pivoting back around to fully face them—but my scrutiny can’t help me decipher the truth behind their words. They have spoken to each other like that, with meanings layered upon meanings, since the days Kavia was shoo’ing me and my wooden play swords out of her pristine kitchen.

“Dieu!” she spits into the tense pause. “This is insanité. Because the king is a dolt, they paint every landed man and woman in the country with the same colors?”

“Oui.”

As Carl returns to his brevity, Kavia huffs again. “How does this make any kind of sense?”

I admit my own dire interest in a usable answer to that. Our family can never be labeled as the idle rich. We have worked hard to give back to this valley, helping its denizens through births, deaths, and the crises between. Many of the furious faces in the courtyard are framed differently in my mind, still joyous from when we played together as boys and girls.

At last, Carl growls out an answer to his wife. “Hatred spurns fear—and panic.”

“And sheep like to panic,” Kavia mutters.

“Oui.”

“Hmmmph,” she snorts. “So how do sheep know about screaming to cut off both his heads?”

I save poor Carl from having to answer that with my laughing bark. In the doing, I save the shreds of my own composure. For a few moments, my fear has something useful to do.

Yes, I am afraid.

And I sense that Kavia and Carl know it too, despite my feeble attempts to rebuild my emotional armor. The barriers are like tree bark now, ready to snap as soon as the mob outside becomes the mob inside—

And they drag me away.

Undoubtedly to the same fate they have given Mother, Father, and Bastien.

Or maybe they will not take me away. Maybe they will make an example of Lord Maximillian De Leon, meting a special death for a special nobleman. Drawing and quartering? Bayonet wounds and then salt bath? A forced drowning in the river?

I laugh again, but it burns now. The bile in my gut has become acid in my throat—but before I retch, Chevalier lopes up the corridor with impeccable timing. I drop to my knees and embrace my beloved wolfhound, burying my face in his damp fur. How did I barely flinch when hearing of my family’s executions but clench back tears from a mere whiff of Chev’s mangy smell?

Words. I need words. Finally, the salvation of the syllables comes. “You are the last of the family, Chev,” I croak. “You will remember our legacy, oui?”

His soft whimper seeps through my senses. He too feels the crowd’s rage on the air.