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Her fingers lifted and she grabbed his hand, slowly sliding down from the saddle.
Her boots thudded to the ground and she lifted her gaze to him, afraid that she’d just given up all that she was.
His brown eyes swept across her face. Relief. Desire. But most clearly, resolve shined in his eyes. He was going to keep her safe. Of that she was certain.
She hadn’t lost a thing of herself.
“We will figure this out together.” His right hand reached up, sliding behind her neck and he leaned forward, his lips finding hers in a kiss that started gentle, but expanded, swallowing her, searing her to the bone. Emblazoning his mark on her soul.
He broke the kiss, his fingers moving along the hair aside her temple as his forehead dipped to meet hers. “You didn’t answer me last night, but I need this from you, Sloane. I need you to swear to me that you’ll tell me if you remember. If your memories come back, you come to me first. Don’t leave. You need to tell me.” The fire in his look warmed the gold in his eyes. Warmed them to the space where all coldness had vanished, only concern left in the wake.
Her eyes closed against him for a long breath. “I don’t ken if I can promise that.”
“You can.”
She nodded, her forehead moving against his.
But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
~~~
Just as Vicky turned about a rounded tower corner of the castle in front of her, a waft of smoke from a fire by the stables blew in front of Sloane and the thick air sent her eyelids closing against the sting.
The acerbic air singed her nostrils, the unyielding destruction of smoke and embers filling her head. It instantly sent her mind into a whirlwind of blackness. Lost to another world.
A world she couldn’t touch, but was drowning in just the same.
Ash, smoke all around her. Suffocating. Screams. Pain. Pain that gripped onto her soul and dragged her into a hell of flames and suffering.
“Sloane.”
Her eyes popped open and it took her several blinks to focus on Vicky in front of her.
“Are you coming, Sloane?”
She nodded, the terror that had just snaked around her chest easing.
The blasted dream.
She’d had it twice now. The first time, she’d mostly forgotten it, though stray remnants of the terror had stuck in her chest for days. The second time she hadn’t forgotten so quickly. The horror of it, the snippets of a building crashing around her, smoke smothering her, screams, her hand stretching out, reaching for an arm in the blackness.
Those moments of the dream had wedged into her mind, real and visceral, the raw terror not dissipating with her open eyes as it had the first time.
She exhaled through her nose, trying to clear the smoke from clinging inside her nostrils. With a quick shake of her head, she started forth again, following Vicky. It was a beautiful day, the cool wetness from the past few days easing into sunny, dry skies.
Sloane kicked a rock with her toe, sending it careening into the stone at the base of the castle. Vicky glanced over her shoulder at her and with a smile, picked up her steps around the outer southwestern wall of the castle.
For the thousandth time that week, she was asking herself why she wasn’t already sixty miles from Wolfbridge. Reiner had given her permission six days ago. Saddled a horse for her.
Say the word and she could leave.
So why wasn’t she already gone?
The wily scoundrel. He’d given her free rein to leave—but now she wanted to know what she was doing here just as much as he did. There were too many questions for her to just leave and never look back. Questions that needed answers she wasn’t sure she could find anywhere else.
Not to mention the fact that in her heart, if she was honest with herself, she didn’t want to leave Vicky. Didn’t want to leave Reiner.
He’d been nothing but a gentleman the past days, even managing to keep all their interactions within the respectability of being in front of Vicky or the staff. Even as he was still wary of her intentions at Wolfbridge, he was wooing her, in his own peculiar way.
