Page 5 of Forbidden

Yet Stone Ring Keep was part of Erik’s estates.

Erik had fought outlaws, bastards, and ambitious cousins for the right to rule Lord Robert’s various estates in the Disputed Lands. There was little doubt that he would have to fight again. It was the nature of the Disputed Lands to belong only to the strong.

“What clothes did you find with the stranger?” Amber asked.

“I found him as you saw him. Naked.”

“Then he isn’t a knight.”

“Not all knights returned from the Saracen with caskets of gold and gems.”

“Even the poorest knight has armor, arms, a horse, clothing,” she protested. “Something.”

“He has something.”

“What?”

“The pendant. Do you recognize it?”

Amber shook her head, making her hair burn as though it were the sun itself.

“Have you ever seen or heard of its like?” he persisted.

“Nay.”

Erik let out an explosive sigh that was also a curse.

“Perhaps Cassandra?” Amber offered.

“Doubtful.”

The room seemed cold despite the cheerful fire, for Amber felt the jaws of a trap both delicate and insatiable closing around her.

Erik had come to her as he had many times before, seeking the truth about a man who could not or would not speak the truth for himself. In the past, Amber had learned what she could in whatever way she could.

Even touching.

The pain of touching was a small repayment to the son of the great lord who had been so generous to her. Touching hadn’t frightened Amber before.

Yet she was frightened now.

The prophecy that had attended her birth quivered in the room like a bowstring just released…and Amber feared the death that would be launched on the invisible, deadly arrow.

But at the same time, a need to touch the stranger was growing inside her, pressing at her, barely leaving her room to breathe. She needed to know him as she had never needed to know anything, even her own true name, her own lost parents, her own hidden heritage.

The ravenous need frightened Amber most of all. The stranger called to her in his silence, sung to her in a voice unheard, compelled her in a way she could not deny.

“Cassandra knows more than both of us together,” Amber said tightly. “We must wait for her.”

“At your birth, Cassandra named you Amber. Do you think it was a whim?”

“No,” she whispered.

“You were born to things amber in a way that Cassandra recognized but could not hope to equal.”

Amber looked away from Erik’s intent eyes.

“Do you deny that this stranger wears your sign?” Erik demanded.