Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale by Christine Bell

froze, then turned to face me.
    I strained to hear him over the pounding of my heart, but he just stood there with his eyes closed, not saying a word. So I kept talking. For the better part of an hour I talked. I told him about Gilly and about his life and his death. I told him about time travel and how it worked and about places I’d been. I even told him about my mother and how she left me. I was terrified to stop, in case he stayed silent. That would be the death knell, the nail in the coffin, Taps bleating from the trumpet. But eventually, I ran out of both steam and saliva, and silence filled the great hallway, nearly suffocating me with its weight.
    A long moment passed; then, to my great relief, he spoke.
    “Do you want to play a game with me?”
    “What kind of game?” I asked, trying to maintain my composure despite the sudden urge to faint.
    “A game of guessing.”
    “Yes, I do.” I said without hesitation.
    “What do you have to wager, then?”
    “Well,” I said thoughtfully, trying to sound nonchalant as my entire world clicked into place with an almost audible snap, “I have this emerald ring. It’s got a latch and a secret compartment, in the event that you need to poison someone.”
    “Sounds intriguing. But I’d rather have the skirt.”
    “The skirt I’m wearing?” I asked, feigning shock.
    “That’s the one,” he said with a smile. But the smile faded, as he moved to stand in front of me. He reached out to cup my chin in his hand. “ Eu te iubeste pentru totdeauna.”
    “What does it mean?”
    “I will love you forever. And I will, Stormy.”
    “I’m not wearing dresses and corsets everyday, I’ll tell you that right now,” I began to babble. “And you can forget all that ‘obey’ stuff too. That’s not how I roll. I can’t cook either. So don’t say I didn’t war—”
    “Oh, for the love of God, would you shut up?” he asked. It was a rhetorical question. He pulled me tightly to his chest and planted a searing kiss on my lips.
    A long while later, I pulled away. “I will love you forever too, Dev,” I said, my voice shaking. Sucking in a deep, shuddering breath, I allowed the last of the fear and panic that had been my constant companion for the past two weeks slip away. I worked up my best siren’s smile and asked him, “Now, how about that game?”

Epilogue
    And so it went that we soon became the Loony Duke and Mad Duchess of Leister. Through with running away from our problems, we moved back to London. With me around town in my britches, hair flying loose, my new nickname was a reasonably good fit. Even so, the locals have really come around to treat us as more of an eccentric novelty than with the previous cruelty they had shown to Dev as a youngster.
    To address our desire to effect real change in people’s lives, we opened a safe house for children. They can stay, learn a trade, get a hug, eat three squares and sleep in a warm bed at night. We can’t save them all, but we do our absolute best.
    I also finally uncovered the mystery to Devlin’s torture chamber back in Lordship. Once he had inherited his parents’ fortune, he had used much of it to purchase an old asylum. He had stripped it of its outdated, miserable treatment devices and made it into a real hospital where people could go and be safe while doctors tried to learn more about their patients’ psychological disorders.
    Devlin kept the items in the hopes of using them to demonstrate the cruelty many mental-health patients were forced to endure. He felt certain that if people saw them and were faced with the brutality of it all, they too would be spurred into taking action. Already, we have two hospitals in England agreeing to try alternative and humane treatments.
    I’ve used my goggles once a year for a time-traveling adventure. When we travel now, we go to the past and do a little “collecting” for Gilly’s House. The trips keep my instincts sharp and the coffers full when we have a lot