The wind whipped her face and she lifted her arms to shield her face from the small pellets of snow hitting her cheeks. “Eden!”
Eden appeared before her, but not as the little girl who usually appeared. She was covered in snow and her lips were blue.I want to go home.
Eve swallowed, and tears rose in her eyes. Eden was the frozen child Eve remembered the last time she had seen her alive. Eden’s words were the same ones that rang in her guilty mind; the last ones she had uttered all those years ago.
Your angel is gone.
Eve’s chest constricted in agony. There was no angel. There had never been an angel. Her father had said it was a snow storm over the pond. That must have been what it was. Eve dropped to her knees before Eden. “I’m sorry, Eden,” she wept. “It was all my fault.”
I’m cold.
“Take me with you. Don’t leave me here alone.”
Your angel will come for you.
Eve sobbed, “There is no angel.” Great tremors of remorse shook her body.
Let’s wait by that tree.
“No!” Eve called. That was the tree that Eden had fallen asleep under and never woken. “Let’s go back to the castle!”
Eden started toward the tree.
“Eden!” Eve rose and tried to run after her, but the snow was deep and cold, and she tripped, falling to her hands and knees. “No, Eden!”
Eden turned back to her.I’m cold.
Eve realized she was trembling from the cold, too. Her teeth chattered. She looked down at her hands buried in the snow. She sat back, lifting her hands from the icy pockets of snow and realized that her right hand was whole. She gasped and looked at Eden.
You can come if you want to.
Eve was so cold she could not move. She lay down in the snow and it cushioned her body like a wintry blanket. All she wanted to do was sleep. And dream. Dream of… Gabriel. Holding her. Loving her. Kissing her. She closed her eyes.
“Eve!”
Eve opened her eyes. Blue eyes greeted her. The blue eyes of her angel. She couldn’t look away. “You came.”
“Of course I came.”
She was floating then, the white falling from the sky in tiny drops. “Eden,” she whispered.
She was pulled against a strong, warm chest. And for the first time, she saw the dark hair peppered with white snowflakes that touched his shoulders. Itwasher angel. “Gabriel,” she whispered.
He looked down at her, concern in his eyes. “You’ll be alright,” he promised more to himself than to her.
She sighed and snuggled against his warmth.
Chapter Seven
Gabriel rode hard, promising himself, promising her in hushed whispers, that everything would be alright. He entered beneath the castle portcullis and into the outer ward, holding her tight against him, willing his warmth into her to save her. She couldn’t leave him. Not when he had just found her. She just couldn’t. But he remembered another child he couldn’t save. He dismounted in the inner ward, whisking Eve inside the castle. As he moved into the hallway, Michael stood, waiting. Tingles of trepidation shot across the nape of Gabriel’s neck. Just like when he was a boy.
Michael reached for her.
Gabriel pulled Eve from his touch with a snarl. “I’m no longer a boy and I am not exhausted. You will not take her this time.”
Lord Chandos and Henry led a group into the corridor. Lord Chandos’s eyes widened in surprise.
“I found her this time. Just like I found her before.” He looked down at her peaceful face. “She belongs to me.”
