Part 1 (2/2)

His brows were black slashes. She remembered his eyes were blue. Even dazed with pain, fever, fatigue, they had been bold and brilliantly blue.

If the G.o.ds willed it, they would open again.

She tucked him up warm, laid another log on the fire. Then she sat down to watch over him.

For two days and two nights the fever raged in him. At times he was delirious and had to be restrained lest his thras.h.i.+ng break open his wound again. At times he slept like a man dead, and she feared he would never rouse. Even her gifts couldn't beat back the fire that burned in him. She slept when she could in the chair beside his bed. And once, when the chills racked him, she crawled under the bedclothes with him to soothe him with her own body.

His eyes did open again, but they were blind and wild. The pity she tried to hold back when healing stirred inside her. Once when the night was dark and the cold rattled its bones against the windows, she held his hand and grieved for him.

Life was the most precious gift, and it seemed cruel that he should come so far from home only to lose his.

To busy her mind she sewed or she sang. When she trusted him to be quiet for a time, she left him in the care of one of her women and tended to the business of her home and her people.

On the last night of his fever, despair nearly broke her.

Exhausted, she mourned for his wife, for his mother, for those he'd left behind who would never know of his fate. There in the quiet of the bedchamber, she used the last of her strength and her skill. She laid hands on him.

”The first and most vital of rules is not to harm. I have not harmed you.

What I do now will end this, one way or another. Kill or cure. If I knew your name”-she brushed a hand gently over his burning brow-”or your mind, or your heart, this would be easier for both of us. Be strong.” She climbed onto the bed to kneel beside him. ”And fight.”

With one hand over the wound that she'd unbandaged, the other over his heart, she let what she was rush through her, race through her blood, her bone. Into him.

He moaned. She ignored it. It would hurt, hurt both of them. His body arched up, and hers back. There was a rush of images that stole her breath. A grand castle, blurring colors, a jeweled crown.

She felt strength-his. And kindness. A light flickered inside her, nearly made her break away. But it drew her in, deeper, and the light grew soft, warm.

For Deirdre, it was the first time, even in healing that she had looked into another's heart and felt it brush and call her own.

Then she saw, very clearly, a woman's face, her deep-blue eyes full of pride, and perhaps fear. Come back, my son. Come home safe.

There was music-drumbeats-the laughter and shouts of men. Then a flash that was sun striking off steel, and the smell of blood and battle choked her.

She m.u.f.fled a cry as she caught a glimpse in her mind. Swords clas.h.i.+ng, the stench of sweat and death and fear.

He fought her, thras.h.i.+ng, striking out as she bore down with her mind.

Later, she would tend the bruises they gave each other in this final pitched battle for life.

Her muscles trembled, and part of her screamed to pull back, pull away.

He was nothing to her. Still, as her muscles trembled, she pit her fire against the fever, just as the enemy sword in his mind slashed against them both.

She felt the bite of it in her side, steel into flesh. The agony ripped a scream from her throat. On its heels, she tasted death.

His heart galloped under her hand, and the wound on his side was like a flame against her palm. But she'd seen into his mind now, and she fought to rise above the pain and use what she'd been given, what she'd taken, to save him.

His eyes were open, gla.s.sy with shock in a face white as death.

”Kylar of Mrydon.” She spoke clearly, though each breath she took was a misery. ”Take what you need. Fire of healing. And live.”

The tension went out of his body. His eyes blurred, then fluttered shut.

She felt the sigh shudder through him as he slid into sleep.

But the light within her continued to glow. ”What is this?” she murmured, rubbing an unsteady hand over her own heart. ”No matter.

No matter now. I can do no more to help you. Live,” she said again, then leaned down to brush her lips over his brow. ”Or die gently.”

She started to climb down from the bed, but her head spun. When she fainted, her head came to rest, quite naturally, on his heart.

Chapter 2

He drifted in and out. There were times when he thought himself back in battle, shouting commands to his men while his horse wheeled under him and his sword hacked through those who would dare invade his lands.

Then he was back in that strange and icy forest, so cold he feared his bones would shatter. Then the cold turned to fire, and the part of him that was still sane prayed to die.

Something cool and sweet would slide down his throat, and somehow he would sleep again.

He dreamed he was home, drifting toward morning with a willing woman in his bed. Soft and warm and smelling of summer roses.

He thought he heard music, harpsong, with a voice, low and smooth, matching pretty words to those plucked notes.

Sometimes he saw a face. Moss-green eyes, a lovely, wide mouth. Hair the color of dark, rich honey that tumbled around a face both unbearably beautiful and unbearably sad. Each time the pain or the heat or the cold would become intolerable, that face, those eyes, would be there.

Once, he dreamed she had called him by name, in a voice that rang with command. And those eyes had been dark and full of pain and power. Her hair had spilled over his chest like silk, and he'd slept once more-deeply, peacefully-with the scent of her surrounding him.

He woke again to that scent, drifted into it as a man might drift into a cool stream on a hot day. There was a velvet canopy of deep purple over his head. He stared at it as he tried to clear his mind. One thought came through.

This was not home.

Then another.

He was alive.

Morning, he decided. The light through the windows was thin and very dull. Not long past dawn. He tried to sit up, and the movement made his side throb. Even as he hissed out a breath, she was there.

”Carefully.” Deirdre slid a hand behind his head to lift it gently as she brought a cup to his lips. ”Drink now.”

<script>