East

I didn't fight or try to understand exactly what was happening this time when I emerged from the darkness to feel the sensations of time travel. I didn't care. Whether or not he meant to, Carter had destroyed me with the last trip through time. The Old West softened me up, and the Mongol Empire smashed my heart into a million fragments.

My thoughts were on Batu, on the raw pain of learning who he was and the knowledge I'd never see him again. My only solace - knowing he had a shot at a normal life. Hopefully. At the very least, he was going to live. Carter had sworn as much.

The final boom hit, and the intolerable heat reached its peak. The sense of floating began to subside.

I waited for the cool touch of the outside world of wherever Carter had sent me to begin to dispel the heat. I wasn't anxious at all to open my eyes and see where I was. In fact, I was half tempted to just lay there and see what -

Freezing water swallowed me, jarring my senses. I freaked out. My eyes opened, but all I could see was darkness, and water flooded my mouth and into my nose. Panicking, I kicked my legs and clawed at the liquid around me. My fingertips were numb already and coldness touched my bones.

I broke free of the water and coughed, sucking in deep breaths of air laced with sea spray. It was salt water, and fear shot through me.

If Carter dropped me into an ocean …

"Over there!"

Thank god. I bobbed, at the mercy of tall waves that tugged me under, released me, then smacked the back of my head. Stars were bright in the velvety night sky above, and I struggled as my limbs quickly grew numb. I was shaking and cold.

A lantern attached to the bow of a small boat morphed out of the darkness, headed towards me. "I'm … here!" I shouted. The waves pulled me under, and I barely had the strength to kick back to the surface.

Someone grabbed me by the back of my neck and dragged me roughly over the edge of the rowboat and dropped me into the bottom. I strained to catch my breath and blinked away water to determine what I could about where I was.

"You are far out for a night swim," a male voice said.

The other two men in the rowboat laughed.

The face of the speaker leaned over me. He was a large man with pale skin, long, dark hair and blue eyes that glinted silver in the moon. He wore little more than a fur-lined vest and leather pants despite the cold night and flung a blanket of fur over my shaking body.