Rise (Roam Series Book Three) Read online

  Copyright © 2013 by Kimberly Adams

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or things, living or dead, locales, or events is purely coincidental.

  RISE (ROAM SERIES, BOOK THREE)

  Cover Design by Najla Qamber Designs

  TO ME

  TO REMEMBER THAT YOU MUST FALL TO RISE

  FROM THE DEEPEST DESIRES OFTEN COME THE DEADLIEST HATE

  SOCRATES

  Prologue

  July 14, 2013

  West

  Roam screamed, her fear resounding through the castle and into the snowy mountainside.

  Morgan already held Eva in her arms. I turned to the guard on my left, breaking his arm before his neck. Another guard approached from behind, and I sent my elbow into the man’s throat, not waiting to watch him choke.

  I knew the sound of the gunshot before the bullet reached my chest.

  . . .

  I jerked and opened my eyes at the crackling static of the baby monitor. Sighing, I grabbed my phone and slid my bare feet to the hardwood floor. After moving down the dark hall, I stopped in the doorway of her nursery, blinking away the sleep in my eyes.

  “Daa,” Eva cooed, grinning and gripping the rails of her crib as she pulled herself to her feet. Her plump cheeks were wet and shiny in the nightlight’s glow, the evidence of another new tooth coming in. After a moment, she dropped to the sheet on her diapered bottom before determinedly trying to stand again.

  “Daddy is sleeping,” I replied softly with a gentle smile, moving toward her to press a kiss to her red curls. “Eva sleep.”

  “Daa?” she repeated, her chubby fingers touching her palms in a grabbing motion as she reached for me.

  I scooped her against his bare chest, pressing two more kisses to her head. “Okay, babe.”

  Walking back to my bedroom, I watched the alarm clock change to 4:45.

  Get up and drink a pot of coffee, or see if she’ll sleep a little more?

  My phone vibrated, and I reached for it, shifting Eva to my hip as I glanced at the number.

  Morgan.

  I fumbled for a fresh diaper, carrying Eva to the changing table.

  “Morning,” I answered, clearing my throat and pinning my phone between my shoulder and ear.

  “No sleep either?” she answered, her husky voice sounding tired.

  She sounds like she’s been up all night. “A collective two hours- maybe. How soon can you be here this morning?”

  “It’s her birthday,” she whispered.

  I re-snapped the pink sleeper, gripping my daughter protectively to my side as she reached for my phone. “I know.”

  “What if we tried again today?” she urged. “Maybe, since it’s her birthday, there’s a way, or some special significance-”

  “We can try.” I thought of the inclined plane in Chili, the last one I’d attempted. “I’ll drive to Pittsburgh after my meeting at the school if you’ll stay with Eva.”

  She was silent for long moments, finally taking a deep, shaking breath. “She’s gone, isn’t she?” she asked finally.

  I moved down the stairs in my gray pajama pants, lowering Eva to her play yard before turning the air conditioner down. “No, she isn’t, Morgan. I’ve tried 1912, and I’m so close to the coordinates for 1790, so-”

  “West?” she interrupted, sighing deeply. “I’ll be over at six, okay?”

  “Hey.” I cleared my throat, closing my eyes tightly. “I will find her.”

  She disconnected.

  The last moments inside the castle roared through my memory. It was her tortured scream that made me turn back, killing two guards with my bare hands before the third shot me in the chest.

  Jason dragged me bleeding and unconscious back to the door at the tracks, and immortality healed me once more as I stopped dying in the back of my Pilot.

  When I regained consciousness two hours later, I went back to the inclined plane, taking the car up to the top of the mountain as the others waited below.

  I realized then that I could not go back.

  The days after were spent grasping for sanity.

  Logan and Roam were reported missing, and a manhunt began. Her father, devastated, worked with Logan’s parents day and night to search for their missing children. The entire country watched as their yearbook pictures flash across newscasts, and saw their parents beg for information about their son and daughter. After seven months, the FBI had no leads.

  They were gone.

  I’ve failed her.

  I gripped the counter, taking deep, calming breaths as the torrent of guilt consumed me once more. I watched her be tortured and killed a million different ways in my vivid, demented imagination, and continued suffering through the memory of standing with Eva in my arms. I had contemplated fighting anyway, as I’d planned, but Eva would have surely died.

  Or… worse.

  I saw Roam’s eyes, pleading, begging me to take our daughter to safety.

  “Goddamnit,” I cursed, fists clenched over the sink as I fought for control.

  “Daa!” Eva shouted, and I lifted his face to hers in the living room.

  “Daddy won’t curse,” I promised softly, filling the carafe with water.

  And then there was Laurel.

  Laurel had stayed with me for the first month. She explained that for her, only a year had passed. She still looked only twenty-eight years old, though more than nine years had gone by in our world since Troy had taken her away.

  One year there… to nine in this world?

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about all of this,” Laurel countered. “You were my husband,” she said, sitting quietly on the couch.

  “I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t risk your life, or Violet’s. I ended up putting you both in danger anyway.”

  “No one hurt me,” she assured me. “I sat in a cell, worrying, praying, wondering where I was and what was happening to Violet. Suddenly, one day, a man brought a baby to me, ordering me to care for her.” She stared at Eva, sighing. “I was supposed to keep her hidden. I fed her and cared for her for two days before you came.”

  “How did she get there?” I asked. “One moment, Roam held her as we passed through the fountain… and then in the next, she was just gone.” It unnerved me to think about my infant child lying on that mountainside in the snow.

  Did a compassionate soldier simply find her and take her to the castle?

  “I don’t know, West.”

  I gazed at her, realizing how much Violet truly looked like her mother. “Roam and I lost her for almost a month. We were devastated… Roam could barely go on,” I shared, and then wished my words back. It felt betraying talking about that private time in our lives with another person, and I refused to speak of Roam as though she was no longer alive.

  “She’s very brave,” Laurel said, her eyes focused on her hands. “Your Roam.”

  I shifted, cradling Eva in my arms. “I’ve never met anyone braver in my entire existence.”

  Later that week, I found a newer house for Laurel and Violet near the lake and bought it outright. “I want you and Violet close,” I explained as I offered her the keys. Laurel accepted gratefully and moved into the lake house with Violet.

  I conta
cted my lawyers and started the paperwork for our divorce.

  Violet, though thankful to have her mother back, was angry all the time. I enrolled her at Madison High to finish out the year, and on her graduation day, I was the one to put the diploma in her hands.

  She never stopped trying to find a way back to the other world… for Logan. Her broken heart was left stagnant, refusing to heal, and I wondered about how close they’d gotten in such a short time.

  I set the coffee pot to brew, reaching for Eva.

  My only solace was that Logan stayed behind.

  In all our lifetimes, I never thought Logan would be her only chance.

  “Mommy’s birthday is today,” I whispered against her soft cheek. Eva giggled, patting my lips.

  “Maa.”

  “Let’s watch Mommy,” I suggested, moving the mouse for my laptop and clicking on the icon marked Camden Christmas 2011.

  The video was taken with Morgan’s phone. Roam, wrapped in a white robe, shifted cross-legged in front of the Christmas tree and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

  “Okay, Morgan, come on, don’t take a video, I’m gross.”

  “I just want to record your reaction, Socrates. For me. Calm down.”

  “Ugh,” she complained with a playful smile, tearing into the wrapping paper.

  I watched her graceful movements, longing to feel her soft skin beneath my touch again.

  Eva reached for the screen, grinning. “Maa!”

  As Roam opened the box on the video, I watched her hand cover her mouth in excitement.

  “The Abraham Lincoln biography! Unabridged!”

  “Dude, it’s signed,” Morgan announced. “Not by Lincoln, you know… but by the author.”

  “Oh, Morgan!” she shrieked excitedly, and the video teetered as she hugged her sister. “Thank you! I can’t wait to read this!”

  “That’s the one that you wanted, right? Not the one where he’s fighting vampires?”

  She chuckled, her verdant green eyes sparkling in the lights of the tree. “No, this is it. You’re the best.”

  Morgan turned the camera to her own face, looking satisfied. “Did you hear that? I’m the best. Take note, Logan. You may date my sister, but I remain the best. “

  I closed the media window as Eva squirmed in my lap.

  “Maa,” she repeated, reaching for the mouse, and I hugged her to his chest.

  “Mommy,” I whispered against her hair, watching her toes press into the skin over my bare forearm.

  The coordinates were gone.

  Chapter One

  December 15, 2012

  Roam

  “Stop thrashing.”

  He pressed me against the stone windowsill, his cutting blue eyes reflecting in the glass as I watched everyone that I loved marching through the fallen snow toward the mountainside.

  As Troy’s hand slid around my waist, I screamed, slapping my open palms against the window with all my strength.

  As though he heard me, West turned suddenly and fought. I stilled, petrified as he attacked two soldiers before another raised his gun and aimed.

  He shot West in the chest, and my knees gave out beneath me.

  “Oh, my God… no…”

  Troy caught me before I could fall. I gripped the stone ridge of the window, holding my breath until Jason shouldered West’s weight and carried him toward the platform. In the distance, from the high elevation of the tower where I stood, they disappeared into the twilight.

  I flattened my palms over the cold window, tears burning my eyes.

  “He’ll live.” He caught my wrists, flattening his own hands over mine against the pane of glass. “I wanted you to see them go. I’ve kept my bargain. You will keep yours.”

  I shook my head, meeting his gaze in the reflection of the window. “I can’t. I can’t, please. Just end this,” I begged, my words escaping in a stifled moan.

  He turned me around to face him, pinning me cruelly to the ledge with his hips.

  I lifted my face to his, closing my eyes.

  Please make it quick.

  “You’ve promised me your complete obedience for their lives. I will give you this night- and only this night- to decide your fate.” He caught my chin in his cruel grip, and I sobbed, forcing myself to remain perfectly still. “Beginning tomorrow, and every night thereafter, if you do not submit to me, willingly, I will kill each one of them, one at a time. And Roam,” he added, forcing my face to his. “I will start with your pretty sister.”

  I remembered Morgan’s description of Troy when she’d first met him, before she knew what he was.

  Sexy… a Greek God. Nauseated, I closed my eyes again, and he released me and took a step back.

  “I won’t hurt you, Roam,” he added, as if considering. “I’ve already had my fill of torturing you. I told you that in the pool.”

  My thoughts scattered to the day that he drowned me, and his terrifying words played in my mind.

  I’ve already had my fun with you in the past. I began to shiver, every bone in my body aching from his merciless grip.

  “You let me take Eva through the fountain, knowing that she’d disappear,” I whispered, opening my eyes and gasping for breath. “That was the most torturous thing that you could ever do to me.”

  He lowered his face, and I turned away, wincing as his mouth hovered over mine.

  “That is not even close to the unimaginable ways that I could hurt you, Roam.”

  His words racked my body with chills. “Please don’t,” I begged weakly, knowing I’d be unable to fight him. Everything was confusing, and I tried to focus on evening my breathing.

  “I told you that I wouldn’t. Just submit.”

  I felt like throwing up. The bile rose in the back of my throat, and I moaned. “I want to see Logan,” I begged.

  Gasping, I sobbed as he pinned himself tightly against me. His hips dug into my stomach, and his tone grew vindictive.

  “Another demand. What have I gotten so far? And unwilling wife.”

  With a sudden rush of adrenaline, I wrenched my wrist from his, flattening my palm and slapping his cheek with all my strength. “I’m not your wife. I’m seventeen years old. I’m just a girl, an ordinary girl who never met you until that day in the pool. I didn’t sleep with your brother or your army. I am not my soul,” I fired disgustedly.

  A leisurely grin spread over his face as he looked down at me. His cheek was stained with my fingerprints, and he raised his eyebrows, towering over me. “You’re strong, little girl,” he taunted. When his lips touched mine, I held my breath, fighting more vomit. “Even without a screwdriver.”

  I endured his mouth as it covered mine, scalding tears burning my cheeks as I cried into his mouth. He pulled back, his eyes narrowed as he reached for my face.

  I tried to wrench away, but he touched my cheek, and then my forehead. “No,” I sobbed weakly, my knees buckling as I swayed.

  “Hot,” he murmured, his touch becoming purposeful. The backs of his fingers flattened against my forehead. “A fever.”

  Ignoring him, I leaned against the stone, my teeth chattering as another chill set in. He shouted for someone, and an undeterminable amount of time later I was beneath the sheets of a massive, four poster bed with an ebony canopy.

  I was aware of two women changing my clothes. They removed my jeans and sweater and pulled some type of cool, silken fabric over my head. The elder of the two, her graying hair nearly white, gave me water and asked that I swallow two pills.

  When I tried to resist and spit them out, her voice soothed. “Only water and aspirin,” she promised.

  Sleep, though frightening, was irresistible. I woke up saturated in sweat, my hair nearly soaked. The older woman came back in, and I watched her reach for a temporal thermometer next to the bed.

  “Water?” I whispered, too weak to lift my head.

  “Yes,” she coaxed, sliding her arm beneath my neck to raise my head. My fingers shook as I reached for th
e glass that she offered me. “I need a restroom…”

  “There,” she replied, gesturing to a door across the room. “I will assist you.”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled, searching her eyes for a moment as I tried to decipher the color. They changed with the light, somewhere between gold and brown. “Is he here? Is he coming in?” I begged, staring at the door and clenching the sheets tightly into my fists.

  “No, he’s traveled. You are safe,” she replied, her voice gentle with unexpected kindness. Tentatively, I climbed to my feet, and she nodded encouragingly. “The fever has broken for now but will likely return.”

  “Where is Eva?” I asked, struggling with confusion. “How did my daughter get here? I held her in the fountain, and then she was here?”

  She turned to me with kind eyes. “The infant was found in the snow, near the mountainside by one of the men. Our king was gone at the time, and we did not know where she had come from. We placed her with the woman his majesty brought over, until his majesty returned to give us council.”

  “Laurel,” I said, remembering the reason why we’d come there. Coughing, I tried to control the heaviness in my chest. Everyone at school was getting sick, I should have known. “She was just… crying in the snow?” I cringed at the thought of how cold she must have been, trying to remain calm and remember that she was alive, and finally safe.

  “You should rest, your majesty,” she encouraged.

  I ignored her word, cringing at the pain as I swallowed. “My throat hurts.” Her words registered suddenly, and I scrambled to the door, nearly tripping. “Troy traveled? To my world?”

  “No,” she replied, touching my elbows. Her cool hands supported my weight as I struggled to keep from swaying. “No, within this world. Your loved ones are safe.”

  “And Logan?” I begged, preparing for the worst.

  She nodded once. “His majesty has traveled with his brother in an attempt to acquaint himself with him. He too is safe,” she repeated, leading me to the door.

  I thought of Logan, and Troy’s powerful influence over him in all the other past lives.