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And like her, belonging to neither.
She moved with clever nimbleness like a shy forest creature who perceived predators in every shadow. Not timid. No. More as if each dawn were a gift that couldn’t be taken for granted. Each twilight a lucky success. But beneath that quick furtiveness, he sensed a courage untested. A strength belied by the willowy grace of her stance.
Her dark hair
, struggling to remain confined beneath her kerchief. The inquisitive tilt of her head as she hastened down the path, the way her body leaned toward him as if he held all her attention. Her blue eyes alight with gemstone brilliance.
He’d asked about her in the days since he’d been released to Sister Liotha. Subtle inquiries. Leading conversations. There were always those who enjoyed relaying information no matter who posed the questions.
Lady Sabrina Douglas.
Daughter and sister to the earls of Kilronan
A member of the order since coming to the sisters seven years ago at the age of fifteen.
An Other with a rare empathic gift for healing and an aspiring priestess to High Danu.
With each piece added to the puzzle, he sought to understand the strange, unshakeable connection between them. The sense that Sabrina Douglas had been part of his past. Remained important to his future.
“Here we are.” She lifted her head to the cold, salty air. Inhaled with a lung-filling breath. Cast her eyes out across the cove’s narrow beach to the choppy pewter sea beyond, a wistfulness to her features.
He’d been surprised when she’d actually sought him out that morning. Volunteered to lead him to the spot where he’d been found. He’d accepted. Not only hoping a sight of the place might jog his memory. But because it had been a perfect chance to glean more about her in innocent conversation. More difficult to do than he’d imagined, as his every gambit had been met by her clever turn of topic. By the time they’d reached the well-worn path down to the beach, he felt he knew less about this woman than he did when they’d started out.
Purposeful evasion or simply a woman unfamiliar with attention’s center?
She pushed the kerchief back off her head, hair spilling free from its pins in a riot of mahogany curls. “There were awful storms a week ago. Could your ship have foundered? Could you have been washed overboard?”
He clamped down on the sudden desire her unconscious gesture released. “Could have been, but no memory of it comes to me.” He shrugged, unable to look away as she repaired the damage. Pinned her hair and hid it away.
“I have dreams of drowning,” he said. “Water closing over my head. Fighting for air.” Speaking it aloud sent icy panic knifing through him.
“Dreams are sometimes helpful. Any others?”
He hesitated. Ran a hand across his forehead, his gaze turned inward on the stark images burning up through him. “Destruction. Heartbreak. A man’s hatred. A woman’s weeping.”
“And, well, uh . . . sometimes dreams are merely dreams,” she stammered, her distress clear in the tremble of her voice and her horrified expression.
His absorption broken, he knelt, plucking a barnacle-encrusted stave from between two rocks. One of at least half a dozen scattered across the pebbly shoreline. “So I was just one piece of a steady stream of flotsam.” Chucked the rotten wood far out into the water.
“This cove provides a livelihood for the villagers. They search it daily. Broken lumber for their houses and barns. Barrels of cargo lost to storms they can use or sell.”
Lifting her skirts, she stepped out onto a flat shelf of stone, waves lapping against the crumbing edge. “What they find here can sometimes spell the difference between survival or starvation.”
“And the bodies?” His question came sharper than intended as he strove to ignore the wind pressing her skirts close against her legs, outlining long, sleek limbs. The enticing junction between. “What is their fate?”
“We send them on to Annwn with the proper rites and prayers,” she answered simply, bending to catch up a few pebbles. Tossed them one by one into the foam.
“No doubt after they’ve been robbed of anything valuable.” He cast his own long gaze out across the water to billowing sails hull-up on the horizon. “And what of those not willing to part with their possessions?”
A guilty light darkened her eyes. “Desperation can make a savage of any man.”
Shadows blotting out the sun. Angry conversation. Crude laughter. The cold press of a knife slashing his skin. Blood, hot and flowing over his chest. Leaking onto the pebbled beach.
Rage burst against his skull. Flared along his limbs. “Had I strength to resist, they would have murdered me, wouldn’t they?”
She winced, her face going pale. She stumbled, one foot coming down hard in the surf. She righted herself with a muttered oath. Dragged her sopping hem clear of the water before meeting his gaze again, though a frown now marred the brightness of her eyes. “We prevent what violence we can, but sometimes we’re too late.”
Clamping down on the flare of brain-seething emotion, he strode the length of the cove. Pushed aside bare overhanging branches. Splashed the frozen shallows. Scattered feeding terns that scurried out of his way.
