Page 85 of Ella’s Desire

Ella nodded her gratitude and ran in the direction of the keep.

“Ella.” Her father’s voice gave her pause. “Do not go.”

She didn’t turn back. “I wasn’t there for Mother. I will be there for him.” Her voice quavered. She had not been strong enough to face her mother’s death when she had been a girl. But she was strong enough now and made stronger by Bronson.

Ella wound through the familiar passage to where Isla kept a small room of her goods and curatives. Images of Bronson flitted through her mind unbidden with each step. The way he’d stepped in front of the dagger, saving Leila, how he’d run without complaint until he dropped from the intensity of his wound.

But him being a hero had always been there. Even in his charm, when he’d caught her as she fell from the tree that first day, the choicest cuts of meat he put on her plate, the little smile he gave when he talked about reading the stories she had written.

He had been a hero all along and she had been too stubborn to see it, too locked on the idea of a couple falling in love first and then becoming betrothed. Then later, too blinded by lust.

But now she was in love. Not through desire as before when he’d made her breathless with his kisses and the way he touched her, but true, heart-pounding, soul-clenching, all-the-world consuming love.

She loved him and she had to tell him.

Her pace quickened down the hall all the way to Isla’s healing room. The door was closed. Ella didn’t ask if she could enter, for she might be told she could not. She wouldn’t be put off again, not like she had been with her mother. Then she’d been too young, grateful for the barrier of a heavy door, for Cat hugging her and chanting that their mother would be fine.

Ella pushed into the room and stopped short. Bronson lay on the table, still and pale, blood smeared over his torso. The room was quiet. So quiet, it pressed on her soul and made a deep ache echo within her chest.

Isla glanced up and the sober expression on her face made Ella’s stomach drop.

Bronson was so damnably tired. Exhaustion tugged at him, luring him to sleep, but he fought against it.

Ella. Where was she?

She had been at his back, holding him in the saddle. Or was it, she had been running at his side in the debatable lands? Or mayhap, she was on the upper level of the tower amid sounds of battle, while he’d been desperately climbing the ladder?

The harder he tried to concentrate on what had last happened, the more the events pushed away from him. Where was Ella? Lark and Leila. They had rescued them, hadn’t they?

He groaned and the sound of it resonated with the grinding pain in his head. Why couldn’t he think?

And where was he, for that matter?

He dragged his eyes open with great effort. The walls were stone, several shelves laden with various pots and bottles. He needed to sit up, but his body would not comply with the thought, his limbs too heavy. His efforts slipped beneath a wave of fatigue and he succumbed, his eyes closing.

“Bronson, you needn’t move.” A woman’s voice sounded at his side.

“Ella.” Her name rasped from his throat.

This time, it was easier to open his eyes, especially when he knew she would be there. A reward for his efforts.

And indeed, she was. Her hair was bound back with several loose tendrils falling around her face. She blinked down at him.

“Bronson?” She leaned over and graced him with the sweet smell of sunshine and freshness.

He breathed her in with reverence. “Ella.”

She held his face in her cool hands, her blue eyes wide and desperate as they searched his. “I’ll marry you, Bronson. Even if it means going to court, I will marry you.”

“I don’t know where I am, or how I got here. But I like the words you’re saying.” His voice was weak, his speech clumsy and difficult to manage. He grinned, regardless, in an attempt to set her at ease. “Are we in the tower?”

Ella shook her head. “We’re at Werrick Castle.”

His mind clouded over. The memories of Scotland… Had those been a dream? “Lark,” he said. “Leila.”

“Safe.” Ella stroked her hand over Bronson’s brow with tenderness.

His memories jumbled against one another. “We saved them?”