Special Delivery
This is a deleted scene from the end of Dragon's Child (Book 6 of the Blood of the Covenants Series).
I originally wrote it as part of the final chapter, but then I realized this scene was so long and detailed, it didn't work as a flashback and had to stand on its own. And that meant that it no longer fit within the book itself. So, bonus content it became!
Haven't read Dragon's Child yet? Then spoiler alert! (Also, it won't make sense. Just sayin'.)
Setting: Commander Rivers of the Time Corps has just sent Korrien and Sierra back in time to Sarah’s suburban Pennsylvanian neighborhood to hand deliver the three US passports that Ben, Kor, and Yvera will use to travel with the Linds to Greenland in Dragon’s Tear (Book 3).
POV: Korrien.
As I walked down that cement path hand in hand with Sierra on that humid early morning, with the birds singing and flitting about and the sky pink and golden with dawn, and scanned each house for what would have been Mother’s last childhood home, I was struck by an overwhelming feeling of incongruity I couldn’t quite explain.
Sierra looked up at me and stopped her bouncing steps—the greatest leakage of her poorly concealed excitement at our “secret mission.”
“Hey, something wrong, highness?”
I shrugged, trying to erase my troubled frown. I was taking our instructions to appear like a couple going for a casual morning stroll much more seriously than she was. “I don’t know.”
Sierra looked around us, as if truly seeing our surroundings for the first time. Since she had insisted ever since we had been given this assignment that she was now a trusted, highly skilled “time operative,” that level of obliviousness would have made my lips twitch in amusement at any other time.
“Well.…” Sierra said, dragging out the word. “Though this is the epitome of ho-hum white-picket-fence normality for me, I suppose this all would look rather strange to you, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, but I was prepared for strangeness,” I said with a sigh. “That’s not it.”
I looked back at the rows of buildings—houses, I reminded myself—in the middle of their green lawns, some with neat garden beds, others with children’s toys scattered around, most with a metal wagon or two parked in their driveways.
These flimsy wooden structures, their exposure to the elements, even their sameness all spoke of a security that many of my people would envy.
Then what felt so off to me? So…saddening?
“It all looks so…safe, doesn’t it?” I murmured.
And then I had it, the clue being in the wrongness I felt as soon as I said the word “safe” out loud.
I spoke my epiphany as it came to me. “But ‘safe’ is not the same thing as ‘peaceful,’ is it? Particularly when that safety is only an illusion.”
I pulled us to a halt as I finally spotted the metal numbers nailed to the side of the house that matched the ones on the recipient’s address on the white cardboard envelope in my left hand.
“Mother spent a year of her life here,” I whispered. “Her last year being a child. Yet she’s not there even now. Right now, she’s not a child, and she’s not safe—she’s risking her life to make a better world for me…for all of us. And because of that, tomorrow, that house…will be gone. Burned to ash. And with it, any illusion of ‘safety.’ Because there will be no safety until there is peace. And there will be no peace until every person in this place, in this world, knows of the enemies that still linger in the shadows and chooses to do their part in driving them back.”
Silence fell for a moment or two. I looked down at Sierra to see her frowning at me.
I sighed. “What now?”
She tsked, shaking her head. “Those are far too serious thoughts for such an exciting time, Rien. It worked, didn’t it? It all worked out, and it all is working out. We’re doing it, you and me. We’re saving the worlds, together. And they will be saved. Rivers—as much as she weirds me out—and all her people are proof of that.”
There were some problems with her logic—there were a great many things Rivers still wasn’t telling us—and I didn’t think I should ignore the tragedy unfolding here…but I felt a returning trickle of hope for us, all the same. Sierra had that kind of effect on me.
“Hmm,” I said, allowing the corner of my mouth to lift. “Perhaps there’s something to that, Ms. Knight.”
Sierra rolled her eyes. “‘Perhaps.’ This is why you need me, angel boy.”
“Right,” I said, the lift of my lips growing into a crooked smile. “Besides needing you to tell me where to put this? In one of these ‘mailboxes?’”
I lifted the white envelope.
She laughed. “It’s about to bite you, Rien.”
She reached across me to grab a tab on a black metal container sitting on a wood post and pulled the door down to reveal the cavity within.
My cheeks heated. “Ah. Yes. That…seems rather obvious now.”
I already knew this was one of those things that Sierra would never let me live down.
I hurriedly stuck the envelope inside, mindful that we’d lingered too long already, and closed the door. Then I tightened my grip on Sierra’s hand and moved us along, trying to avoid the urge to glance back at Mother’s home.
“Hehe, we did it,” Sierra said gleefully—fortunately having the presence of mind to keep her voice low. “Easy as pie. Really, this was an errand below the caliber of time agents like you and me, but all heroes must do mundane work now and then—”
I chose the wrong moment to give in to the urge to look behind me, because just then, I heard feet pounding down the path that ran perpendicularly to our own, through some woods and between two houses to end at the cement walk. By the time I glanced toward the sound, I wasn’t prepared to control my expression when I saw Grandfather jogging down the trail.
Of all the people in this time and place that I had been hoping to avoid.… Our instructions had been so strict, so specific, particularly about timing—and I couldn’t blame our failure on Sierra. That extra half-dek of lingering had been all my fault. Yet I hadn’t expected Grandfather to not just be awake but out here, now, going for a morning run.
Horror filled me, even as Sierra kept babbling obliviously.
Grandfather had already been studying us with his usual inscrutability as he approached, but at my start, his eyes—still unnervingly sharp even for their current duller blue color—narrowed.
Instead of jogging right past us as I’d been fervently praying he would, Grandfather slowed and then came to a stop just in time to meet us where his path met ours. His eyes narrowed further at Sierra’s even more obvious surprise, complete with a stumble as we came to a halt. I kept her upright with our joined hands, clenching hers tightly.
“Morning,” Grandfather said through his heavy breaths. “Apologies if I startled you both.”
“No harm done,” I said with a tense smile, then I made as if to keep moving.
But Grandfather only kept pace with us, even though he had to walk on the grass to do so. “You two new to the neighborhood?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sierra babbled. “We just, um, moved in there!”
She waved at a house a few buildings ahead.
“Interesting,” Grandfather said, glancing ahead with an unreadable look. “So quickly I must not have noticed the commotion. You also didn’t bother to take down the ‘For Sale’ sign yet, I see.”
I didn’t know what exactly that meant, but from the way Sierra clenched my hand more tightly and ducked her head, I gathered she’d made a mistake.
Besides pointing to a house we could not prove we owned by walking inside.
A problem that became apparent when we reached the walkway to that house a few moments later and had to come to a stop. Grandfather did so as well, scrutinizing us both—but particularly me. And I didn’t think it was just for my white hair.
This was going from bad to worse. I was now certain that Grandfather was on to us, and had been from perhaps the beginning.
But how? Sierra and I had been chosen specifically so that, in a worst-case scenario such as this, we would not be recognized.
Or…had we? Hadn’t Rivers said that at some point? My mind, which should have been coming up with some excuse to explain our behavior or at least get away, instead scrambled to remember everything Rivers had said about why it had to be the two of us…which, now that I thought about it, was actually very little.…
“Oh, er,” Sierra said, “what I meant was, we just bought the place, but haven’t moved in yet. Don’t even have the keys, haha. Ah, home-buying—such a whirlwind, am I right?”
“You remind me of someone,” Grandfather said, ignoring Sierra’s nervous laugh to look me straight in the eye.
I swallowed. “Do I?”
“Yes,” Grandfather said. “A young man, about your age, who I saw in a dream.”
I froze. His duller blue eyes and sandy blond hair had thrown me off, but only now did I remember that Grandfather wasn’t entirely powerless at this point. Even now, a couple days before his investment, he had the Gift of Sight.
Not only that, but he and his family had seen Mother and those who were with her in ice every sunset since she left.
“But, also, somehow, my daughter…” Grandfather said, his voice lowering to almost a murmur even as his eyes tightened. Those eyes never left mine, as if seeking the answers he somehow knew would be written there. “…who disappeared over a week ago.”
I couldn’t help it, seeing that pain and uncertainty in my younger Grandfather’s eyes finally coming through. Perhaps that pain had even been why he was out here at this hour, pounding his helplessness into the dirt.
I knew the smallest sliver of what he had to be feeling, and I was staggered for a moment by that similarity, that connection.
We were never entirely alone in our mortal experience. It all was a circle, wasn’t it? One continually looping circle of life, the same patterns, emotions, pains, insecurities, and struggles. And yet, if we noticed the hints that our Trees provided us, the lines that They drew from one to the next, we found our way through them…to hope.
Perhaps Sierra was more right than I had realized. Perhaps I hadn’t been sent here to have such heavy thoughts—or rather, not just for that. Perhaps I had been primarily sent here to bring…hope. To us both.
“She’s alright,” I blurted. “She’s fine. In fact, she’ll be coming back…”
I hesitated, unsure how far I could take this, and decided to avoid specifics.
“…soon.”
Grandfather nodded slowly. “This Tree said that. But to be frank, I find it comforting to have a second witness.”
His mouth tugged at the corner in the smallest and wryest of smiles. “Or perhaps this is just further evidence I am going mad.”
“Oh, you’re not going mad,” I said with a strained chuckle. “Trust me—you’re the sanest of all of us.”
I winced a little as I realized he might now be wondering who I meant by “all of us.”
He just smiled, though—a more genuine smile for all that it remained slight. This was still Grandfather, after all, even nineteen years before I last saw him. The Trees knew that there were few people who could be better trusted to keep this kind of secret for nineteen years…than him.
“I had probably better let you go now, shouldn’t I?” he said.
I let out a hopefully subtle breath of relief and nodded. “That would be best.”
He nodded back. “Just tell me one more thing, if you can.”
I stiffened.
Grandfather’s eyes became almost wistful as he tilted his head. Now, he seemed to be trying to memorize my face. “What’s your name, young man?”
I hesitated a few heartbeats, but I felt nothing inside prohibiting me, so I said with another breath of relief, “Korrien, sir.”
Grandfather’s lips twitched, but he said, “A good name.”
“Isn’t it?” Sierra said with a grin. “The perfect name for a prince like him, if you ask me.”
I stiffened again, this time at her inaccurate but still revealing slip about my rank. I tried to cover it up by waving at her and saying hastily, “And this is Sierra.”
“His fiancé,” Sierra put in, her grin turning smug as she wrapped her arm around mine.
I stilled, breath catching. We hadn’t even touched on the topic since before the Devourer’s defeat, and I thought for good reason. I…hadn’t thought…hadn’t dreamed…that she would have been ready to marry me yet.
I glanced at Sierra in time to see her eyes widen, as if she was just as startled by her final claiming of me as I was. Her eyes darted to mine, narrowing in chagrin, but what she saw in mine…made that chagrin disappear. She lifted her chin and beamed at me.
Only then did I realize a smile had been growing on my face, nearly as wide as hers was now. “Right,” I said with amusement. “My mistake.”
Grandfather blinked as he looked between us. “Interesting.… Well, I’ve held you up long enough. I have to be going, and I see you two have some things…to discuss.”
“Yes,” I said, this time with a meaningful glance at Sierra. “We do.”
“Good to meet you, Korrien,” Grandfather said with a final nod to me, then to Sierra. “And to you, Ms. Knight.”
Then he turned and began jogging down the cement path toward his house, and we watched him go in silence. Only when I saw Grandfather pick up the newspaper on his front porch before going inside did I realize.…
“We never told him your last name, did we?” I said faintly. “I specifically remember leaving that out.”
“Nope, we didn’t,” Sierra replied, shrugging. “But then…it kinda comes with the territory, being the president’s niece and all that.”
I sighed. “Now, given all he’s just learned…what do you possibly think he makes of us?”
My betrothed giggled, completely over any twinge of concern she might have had at how we had just irrevocably altered the river of time.
But was it truly altering if it was what we had already done? And perhaps…were always meant to do?
“Why don’t we go back and ask him?”