AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Aric caught her easily in his arms and folded his magic around her, seeping it into her skin and deeper, into her muscles and veins. He healed her as he pulled her into his lap and threaded a hand through her hair. It took several seconds for the last of her internal injuries to reverse, and though he would rather not have, he catalogued each one. Each scrape of skin and fractured bone. Each missing fingernail. The punctured lung. All of it.
He wanted to let her rest naturally, to allow her system to recover from the ordeal she had clearly been through. But there was still the issue of Denham and Cecilia to deal with, and he couldn’t afford to risk letting them get away. For himself, for Yafae, possibly for the sake of the King … mostly for Rochelle. If he allowed himself a moment of honesty, he could sit back and let Denham go until the prince had taken such action that his treachery was irrefutable. It would be easy enough to protect King Jensen if it came to that. But Denham was targeting Rochelle, for reasons that seemed connected to her roots in another world, and Aric couldn’t let that continue.
So he waited, a few minutes, and magically cleaned up the residue of blood in the area while her body settled from its latest trauma. Her breathing evened out and she shifted into his hold, as if unconsciousness had transitioned into a deep slumber. Then he pressed a kiss to her forehead and forced himself to do the more responsible thing.
****
She was tired—sotired—but comfortable, in a way that stiff bed in her rented room never allowed for. All she wanted was to sleep. Yet something, or someone, was attempting to wake her.
For a moment, all she could really hear was rushing water and a closer, deeper vibrato. Then she felt something tickle her ear, and words in a voice she hadn’t heard outside her dreams since she’d left Emyr practically exploded inside her head. “I’m not a patient man, Rochelle. Wake up before I’m compelled to do something drastic.”
Her breath lodged in her throat.Aric!How … how was that possible? She swallowed hard and dragged her heavy eyes open as her hands lifted, immediately making contact with something warm and solid and covered in a smooth, silken surface. Aric’s chest. She was in his lap. His ever-glowing green eyes stared down at her, a smile threatening to tip his lips, when her vision finally cleared. “Y-you…”
Aric cupped her cheek and leaned in, sealing his lips against hers without a word. His tongue pushed into her mouth, stroking along hers and sending heat blooming inside her.
Rochelle moaned and curled her fingers into his shirt. She should have been confused, but all she knew was how much she’d missed him. And how much easier it was to breathe in his presence.
The kiss broke and Aric met her gaze again, not releasing his hold. “We have several things to talk about.”
She nearly laughed. Of all the things he could have led with, she wouldn’t have guessed that. Her amusement was short-lived, however, when her memory kicked back in and she realized how incredibly strange the situation was. All of a sudden it seemed much more likely that she was experiencing some moments-before-death hallucination. She let her head drop to his shoulder with a soft sigh. “Is this a dream?”
“No,” he said. He threaded his fingers through her loose hair and made no move to push her away or stand. “Neither is it going to continue to be a nightmare.”
His words gave her pause. She drew in a breath and lifted her head again. “What happened?” She shook her head. If this was real—and obviously Aric had healed her—there were more pressing questions. “How did I even get here? How did you find me?”
He smirked at her and she wanted to sob at the same time as her insides melted. She had known she would miss him, had known it would hurt, but she hadn’t been prepared. She certainly wasn’t prepared for how it felt to see him again.
“How did I find you?” Aric clucked his tongue. “I followed your magic, obviously.” He reached up and brushed his thumb over her cheek, as if wiping away a tear she didn’t remember crying. His expression softened. “Did you come here purposefully and under your own power? Or were you sent here?”
A hard breath rushed from her as flashes of that room and the pain she’d endured, the fear she’d felt, washed over her. “He was going to kill me,” she said. “Denham and Cecilia had me all tied up, again, and they were trying to torture me for information, and I wasn’t giving it to them. But he didn’t snap until I figured it out.” Remembering her realization helped ground her, and she stared into Aric’s burning gaze. “It was Denham. I don’t know how, he didn’t confess, but he’s responsible for me coming to this world. I called him on it, and he gave up all pretenses of trying to interrogate me. He just went straight for the kill.” She swallowed. “I was terrified, and I tried to visualize myself back in this place just to make my last moments less frightening, and then I was here.”
Aric’s eyes widened and he pulled her closer, tucking her head into the groove of his shoulder. “I want to congratulate you on that achievement, but now isn’t the time.” He paused for a moment. “You’re sure, about Denham’s involvement?”
“I’d bet my life on it.” She couldn’t explain the feeling, and it took her a second to remember what had cemented the idea. “He wanted to know about my old world. About what I was doing when I was brought over, about what it felt like and all that sort of thing, but heneverasked if I had any idea who was behind it. Or how it happened. And I finally remembered something he said the first time … something about smelling his spell on me.”
Aric hummed. “And he did all of this in front of Cecilia?”
Rochelle’s chest tightened. She didn’t know how things between Aric and Cecilia had been since she’d left. She’d left specifically to avoid destroying their friendship … and might have destroyed it, anyway. But she refused to lie when she hadn’t done anything wrong. “Cecilia was there. She got to do most of the torturing, and she loved it.”
Aric slid a hand up to Rochelle’s nape and pressed a kiss to her temple. “I will see them both punished for this,” he whispered into her hair. “Whatever Denham’s aim, I will uncover it. I will unravel it.” He eased her back. “Did Denham ever say anything about King Jensen? Or the throne?”
The question was unexpected enough that Rochelle stared blankly for a second before another flash of memory struck her. “For the most part, I was the center of their hateful attention. But Denham did say something like that, too—like his turn on the throne is inevitable.”
“I see.” Aric stood them upright without warning and set her gently on her feet. “I need to return to the others and wrap this up,” he said. “But I would like to take you somewhere safe for the time being, until this is settled.”
Rochelle frowned. “I’m not a porcelain doll, Aric. I know being kidnapped twice makes for a bad argument, but in my defense, they only got me the second time because a roof fell on my head first.”
His eyebrows shot up his forehead. “They dropped a roof on your head?”
“No.” She paused. The fire had seemed entirely out of nowhere, and she hadn’t had time to analyze how or where it might have started. Was it possible Denham or Cecilia had been behind that, too? “At least, not directly. The store where I’ve been working was on fire. I had to save my employer to keep his son from becoming an orphan. They’ve had a hard enough go of things since coming to Yafae.”
Aric stared at her for a moment, then amusement lifted his features again, and he pinched his nose as if trying to fight it. “You’re Breila.”
Rochelle’s mouth fell open at hearing her alias on his lips. It was true she’d only chosen the name to keep anyone who might have been looking forRochellefrom being directed to her, but she had never considered Aric would hear that made up name. Let alone repeat it to her. “I … um … yes.”Wait.“How did you know?”
He smiled. “Von told us about you.” He took her hand in his. “You did an excellent job, saving those two. Although I am worried the fires might have all been a dramatic distraction for Denham to get his hands on you, that’s irrelevant now. They’re extinguished and he’s captured.”
Rochelle swallowed hard, her head spinning. He’d used the plural, meaning there had been other fires? She wanted to panic about that, but if they were dealt with, then she needed to conserve that energy for other things. She held tighter to his hand. “So Amund is all right?”
