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“They were only trying to protect me,” Sabrina said.
He shrugged off her hand, pushing his way past her. “I know, Sabrina. So am I.”
Drawing her cloak around her, Sabrina scanned the pale ribbon of road. The darkening spread of trees to either side. The sun had sunk until naught but a haze of orange and yellow brightened the western sky, a smearing of thin clouds painted bright red. Long shadows striped the ground and reached up the walls behind her. Mingled with the smoke from the fires within.
A figure topped the rise. Paused for long minutes as if judging whether to proceed.
Impossible to identify from this distance, but definitely male. Tall. Lean. A greatcoat hung open over high boots.
Sabrina leapt to her feet. Waved, hoping to coax him down.
He lifted a hand in answer. But rather than approaching, he disappeared back over the hill.
And though she waited until full dark and the rising of a late moon, he did not come again.
She slipped within the gate, her dark gown a paler black against the night, a hood covering her hair, yet he recognized her. The agile, clever movements, the slenderness of her body. And when she turned toward the stables seeking him out, her face glowed milky in the moon’s dim light. Tears glistening upon her cheeks.
He ducked farther into the gloom, and she passed him without pausing.
Whom had she left to meet? Who would draw her from the safety of the order in the middle of the night?
The answer struck.
Brendan Douglas.
His hands closed to fists, the presence uncoiling to glide up from the darkness where Daigh had chained it. He fought back but it had grown sly enough to evade his few defenses. A pitiless, reptilian smile daggered through his brain until he could barely stand, and he clenched his jaw to keep from moaning.
Máelodor read his thoughts. And celebrated success.
Like a fuse burnt to the touch hole, Daigh’s time ran out.
The true battle began now.
The child tugged her skirts. Shoved the note into her hand before running back to the gaggle of children playing tag. Sabrina looked around. Was Brendan hidden beneath the disguise of a thin-shanked farmer unloading bags of seed from a tumbrel? The man hunkered over a dice game? The messenger in tall muddy boots and a threadbare jacket idly picking his nose in the library doorway out of the rain?
She unfolded the note carefully as if it might blow up in her face, dread making her heart thump painfully in her chest.
The crossroads. Come immediately.
B.
She’d said it before: Letters never boded well.
They met upon the road, almost as if he’d been waiting for her. Despite his coarse homespun, weathered boots caked with mud, and a rough leather coat that stretched over his broad shoulders and ended at least three inches above his wrist, he strode forward with a confident air. Head up. Jaw tilted at an arrogant angle. A commanding gleam in his gaze, a broken branch clutched carelessly in a loose fist.
“Should you be out here alone?” he asked, whipping at the tall grass of the verge with his branch.
“We’re still on the order’s lands.”
“So were we once before,” he answered, falling in beside her. Nothing of the lover in the ominous, hulking anger. Electrifying an already charged atmosphere. His manner pulsed with barely repressed savagery and a thunderous rage.
She swallowed her tears before they’d show upon her cheeks. She’d known this day approached. Still it hurt with a swift, lancing pain.
Crossing a stile, they entered the orchard. Threaded their way through an arched avenue of bare mingled branches, the order’s walls glimpsed here and there beyond a fold in the hill.
“He’s mad to risk coming here,” he snarled. “Does he want to be caught?”
Her stomach shot into her throat, throwing him a horrified look.
