An old soldier. A medieval knight. Together in the wrong place and the wrong time.

Jake Border leaves the Civil War battlefield behind as he marches toward a certain death. The unnamed knight has waited for centuries for someone to release the curse. But when these two meet, they stand shoulder to shoulder in a strange fantasy world that is hard to accept.

 

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Release Date: April 20, 2026
Genre: Time Travel / Historical Romance

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Excerpt

Chapter One

The sergeant staggered forward. At least it seemed so to him. Blood ran down his face and despite his feeble attempts to wipe it away, still flowed steadily.

Jacob Border feared he might be dying. Would die if he couldn’t find his way out of these infernal woods. He stumbled, went down on one knee, his arm braced against an oak. Using the sturdy tree, he pulled himself up but leaned against the damp truck, gathering his waning breath and fading strength.

“One foot in front of the other, Jake,” he mumbled, his sight narrowing to black then returning. That’s what he told the men in his unit when they fought. They followed him despite his distance. He didn’t want to know about their wives or kids or fears. He heard their whispers in the darkness of night or carried on the smoke of a warming campfire. He didn’t want to know because he had nothing to share in return.

He’d always looked for challenges. That’s what drove him forward. With no family and living on the streets of grubby towns, joining the army seemed like a reasonable challenge when he was sixteen or so.

Years later though, this war was a challenge he couldn’t figure out. Why were men in the same country fighting each other? Men from the North. Men from the South. Men wearing blue uniforms. Men wearing butternut brown uniforms.

Jake stumbled again, his vision blurred. His hearing came and went. Did he hear drums? Gunfire? Was that the smell of smoke from discharged rifles? All the horrors he’d endured—and lived through—in the last three years ran together in his foggy brain.

His legs trembled now, and he fell, hitting the ground hard enough to elicit a deep groan. He reached out to a fallen log next to him but had to try several times before he actually had a firm enough grip on it. Even then, he wondered if he had strength enough to get up again.

He managed to pull himself up so his back sagged against the log. His gaze swept the area—a skill that often saved his unit from surprise attacks. He didn’t trust his eyes or ears right now though.

“Maybe it’s time to rest, Jake. Looks like a good place for that. Nothin’ here but me and a bunch of damn trees.” Saying the words aloud helped him feel alive, but he realized he wouldn’t last much longer.

Jake never gave into regrets. If he made a decision that turned out bad, he took the consequences on the chin and moved on. Right now, though, he regretted not thanking the kid who beat the drums for them when they moved into battle.

A long hard day followed by a night filled with meetings with officers planning a surprise attack meant he got only a few hours of sleep last night. He woke feeling old and grumpy. He no sooner pushed back the flap of his tent and stepped out into the thickest damn fog he’d ever seen than the drummer appeared at his side, using two hands to hold a full cup of coffee.

“Real coffee, sir. Cobbed it from the captain’s tent when the cook was distracted.” The kid held out the cup and grinned—a grin that told the sergeant the boy created the distraction so he could snatch this cup of precious liquid.

Too busy holding the cup to his mouth then savoring the taste of actual coffee beans, Jake never got a chance to thank the boy. The youngster had no reason to bring him anything, but the kid was sharp. Must have realized Jake needed something strong to get through this next big push.

“Not dying here. I’ll rot like this log.” He patted the log as if it were a friendly dog then rolled over and pulled his worn-out body up onto his stomach. By dent of sheer will, the hardheaded fifty-year-old sergeant finally stood.

“You fall again, you damn fool, you’re not getting up,” he warned. His rational thinking played out about then. He banged from one tree trunk to the next. “I never moved like this even when I was stinkin’ drunk,” he told the next tree he reached for.

Too bad his next move was to a sapling not stout enough to hold his weight. The tree bent, and Jake fell face first at the base of a massive tree, its base covered with ivy.

A breeze moved over his body, cooling the aches, the insistent pounding in his head. His hands lay buried in the bright green ivy, the dirt beneath rich, refreshing. Pink flower petals lay atop the greenery. Two fingers reached for one pale petal, its softness like nothing Jake had ever felt. He held that delicate blossom as if it might break. He moved his hand, reaching for another, but the effort took more strength than he had.

His hand fell forward, resting on something hard. Not natural. Not a tree trunk. Metal? His fingers explored. That’s all he had energy for now—wiggling his fingers, using them to make sense of what he’d discovered.

A shoe? A metal shoe? His declining strength—boosted by natural curiosity—surged momentarily so he could push his fingers higher, feeling what might be an ankle. Metal still encased whatever this was. A statue? In the middle of nowhere?

He was dying—no getting round that reality any longer, but he’d be damned if he left before he uncovered what he found.

Gathering what strength he had left, he pushed his hand against the metal shoe, shoved, then screamed in excruciating pain, to lie on his back facing what he reasoned was a sight intended only for those who had finally drawn their last breath.

His arm lay propped up against a leg—one covered in plates of metal. Moveable pieces lay across the knees and elbows. Metal armor covered the body up to the head. A round helmet protected the neck and face. A cape fell from the shoulders down one side of the figure, pulled up to lie across the lap.

It sat, head down, slumped against the broad tree trunk, its hands clasped together in the lap atop the cape. Something about those hands seemed out of character. Not quite what he expected from this—this person.

Or was this a statue tucked away by some eccentric in a forgotten forest?

Person or statue, Jake recognized a warrior. Someone like himself. A warrior who gave all and succumbed to the one thing no one could defeat—death.

His arm moved so he could turn one last time. Even in death, Jake wanted to be closer. He laid his head across the foot, his hand resting on the other. Blood trickled from his head onto the metal. A hot tear trickled down his dirty cheek to drop softly on the shoe.

He thought the shoe moved, but he was dead. What did he care? His last breath came as a soft glove touched his unshaven face.

 

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