Draziel's POV
When I held her in my arms earlier, I felt a sudden jolt in me, a strange heat claiming my veins—pulling me, urging me to drag her deeper into my arms, breathing in more of that raw jasmine scent that sipped from her. But I knew better—that was the recipe for disaster.
My future me might have been foolish enough to fall in love with a human, but not me—never would I doom myself eternally for something as fickle as love.
I threw my hands into the customized pockets of my robe as I strode down the broad stone corridor for the library.
My eyes drifted beyond the stone balustrade to the guards downstairs. The report of steel crashing against steel, yells and grunts as they sparred, and the stench of sweating bodies all made it to me upstairs.
I watched them, my gaze drifting over their glistening bodies from sweat. Yet my mind wasn't really with them. It was elsewhere—with her—the woman that had claimed to be from my future. I wasn't so versed yet with the rules of time travel. But it was basic knowledge that a little thing going out of order in the past is enough to cause a massive change in the order of the events in the future.
I wondered what changes her presence in the past would cause to the events in the future. And more importantly—what would happen if I rejected her in this timeline? Would she fizzle out of existence from the timelines she shared with the future me(s)—would they never meet again and start up a doomed love affair, as I hoped they wouldn't?
Well, I wouldn't know, I sighed, inhaling long and hard, the cold air stinging my lungs a bit. My gaze drifted to beside me—to the maids and servants who bowed in greeting as they filtered past me, hurrying for their various destinations. With my mind busy, the most of them I glimpsed as they drifted past was their tiny demonic horns…
But even if her presence in the past doesn't change things—I'd have to change the future myself—and the first thing to do was avoid all human females—especially her. I'd just have to reduce my visits to the real world—delegating any task that requires that to Zarek. Then, I'll have to find the scroll fast enough so I could send her back to where she came from before she could wither away in this timeline.
I pushed the 10-foot double doors with both palms, the large and old mahogany structure squealing open slowly, their lower edges scratching the stone tiles. And I strode into the usual mustiness.
Massive, tall shelves, completely filled with scrolls on diverse subjects, spread backwards in hundreds of neat rows. I, Varin, and Zarek had been going through the shelves for a year now, searching for the time-traveling scroll. Yet, neither have we found the scroll nor have we gone through half of the library—I wasn't surprised we hadn't.
Father had used nearly two centuries to stack it up, and we had just gone through it for a year. But now, I knew we could no longer adopt the previous approach. We had to be smart about the search now. I had to find it fast enough that I could master the time-traveling techniques before a year—or worse, six months—before the human could wither away. She had to live and leave. Appearing here is an aberration enough—dying here would create another.
I teleported to the center of the library. I shut my eyes very tight, breathing and listening to the silence that raged violently around me, and I thought, where would that bastard—father—hide the scroll in the library?
I leaned my arms wide to the silence, to have it speak to me, point me in a direction.
A voice killed off the silence behind me. I grunted, my jaw clenching tight—Zarek. What was he doing here disturbing me?
"You might want to do this later," he said, his voice tainted with an amusing tinge.
I opened my eyes, turning sharply to him. "And why is that, Zarek? Can't you handle a weak little human again?"
"I can," he sighed heavily, throwing his arms into the air, as if in defeat. "But not this one, not this lady. She is cute, but she is also a headache. I can't seem to get through to her. Apparently, the only thing she wants to do is kill me. The whole room is a mess already because whatever she sees, she throws at me." He sighed heavily again.
"So what do you want me to do now?" I asked, my brow cocked questioningly at him. Though I had an idea what his response would be.
"Come and talk some sense into her. She is your guest. Your future girlfriend or something. Perhaps you can get through to her."
I couldn't tell him that I couldn't do that because I wanted to avoid her at all costs. For the first time in my centuries of existence, I was scared—scared of what might happen if I stayed longer around her. I have this nagging gut feeling that something will. "Just handle her however you see fit. Assign some maids to her or something."
He leaned onto the wooden wall of a shelf, propping himself up before he responded. "She doesn't want the maids either. She believes they are all working for me, that I had bribed them to kill her. She believes a lot of stuff. Do you imagine…" He paused, narrowing his gaze to me now, his upper lip drifting upwards to enunciate the ludicrousness of what he was about to say. He rose carefully from the wall. "She believes I will kill you, that I have killed her multiple times in the past, and when I ask her why she thinks that, all she says is that I am just pure evil. I don't know what she experienced in the future, but you know I would never hurt you or anyone important to you, you know that, right, Draziel?" He said now, his voice strained with pain; it was so palpable I could feel it. He was already blaming himself for a crime he didn't even know if he would commit or not.
"It doesn't matter what I believe. What matters is what you believe, and I think you already believe what she says about you."
"I don't—" then he paused, sighing heavily again. "I just can't take it that someone important to you hates me so much for crimes I would never commit against you. When I look into her eyes, all I see is raw hatred for me…"
I poked my tongue lightly against my cheek as I watched him continue to be an emotional baby again, letting what others thought about him weigh him down. I grew bored of it, and I sighed, making a long, easy inhale. "Okay, I said. I will talk some sense into her—"
He leaned eagerly from the wall again, his crimson eyes brightening. "Let her know I would never hurt you or her."
"I will," I grunted. Then I teleported to the room. I stared over the mess she and Zarek had made in the large room, but she wasn't there—she was nowhere in the room.