They must have thought he had never left.
Ahead of everyone else, he took the stairs from the hall two at a time, finding speed he did not know he had. He ran down the corridor and up into the tower, where he threw two guards down the steps and kept going until he faced and fought the other guards posted outside the tower door. His strength felt like a gift from Heaven and he fought as powerfully and unrelenting as did the huge archer on the wall.
The ring of metal against metal was still in his ears when he used the guard’s key to unlock the door, only to be stopped in his tracks by an orange wall of burning flames, and over the top of them, the horrific, haunting sight of Glenna leaping out the tower arch.
26
The lengths of rope Glenna had tied to the manacle chain ended only halfway down the tower, where she was dangling. She looked down. It was a sheer drop to the lake below. Too late now, her great idea to escape down the outside of the tower didn’t look so brilliant from her current vantage point. She felt as if she were hanging off of Ben Nevis. The cat, an added nuisance, was looking at her contentedly from the sling around her shoulder. The little beast had no idea what was coming.
Clinging to the rope, Glenna used her feet to push off from the tower wall, swinging outward, trying to find the courage to let go and fall into the lake. She kept touching the wall with her feet, and shoving off, touching the wall with her feet, and shoving off….
“Glenna!Glennnnn-na!”
“Montrose!” Startled, she looked up and there he was, her beautiful golden knight, half hanging out of the arch, black smoke billowing up above him. Coughing, he tested his weight on the rope, then pulled off his smoldering gambeson and tunic in one swift motion, and crawled out, barechested, then shimmied down toward her.
A breath she hadn’t known she held escaped in relief. Her knuckles grew white she held onto the rope so tightly; it swayed and shook from his motions. Tears burned her eyes.
He had come for her. He had come for her!
Then he was there, so close the warmth of his breath touched her face and ruffled her hair. She felt his strong arm wrap firmly around her. His mouth closed over hers, and she was swept up and carried away as if lost in the waters of Lethe. There in his arms, it mattered not that they were hanging off a burning tower. She felt safe, as if she could fly like the gulls that wheeled over the sea, like the eagles that circled the treetops, or the plovers skimming across fields of heather. She clung to him as if he was her breath and blood, her heart and life.
Longing and relief ran through her veins and felt so joyous and natural and pure she questioned if those emotions came from her or him…perhaps, from them both. Together, they were different than who they were alone; they were solid and strong and one. Loving him was everything, a power to which she could surrender because instead of weakening her, loving him made her stronger.
Montrose. If she fell to her death at that moment, she would have died in complete elation, because he was holding her and kissing her, because he loved her.
The cat mewed…loudly.
He pulled back. “What have you there?”
The cat stuck its mangy head out from under her arm and looked up at them from eyes the color of the island summer sea.
“I couldn’t very well leave it to burn,” Glenna told him.
“Aye. The room is well gone. I almost didn’t make it to the arch. The floor collapsed behind and under me.” He looked down, paused, then said seriously, “You know we must jump. There is no other way.”
“Aye,” she said with mixed emotions. That water looked far, far away.
“And yet, here you are with a cat hanging off of you.”
“I planned to hold onto this cat tightly when we hit the water,” she said brightly, as if fear were the farthest thing from her mind. “And here you are with me hanging off of you.”
“I plan to hold onto you tightly when we hit the water.”
"We would not be in this situation if I'd had--"
"--your bow and arrows," he finished.
"At least you can admit it." She gave a shaky half-laugh, nerves still raw. “Montrose?”
“You need to stop calling me Montrose.”
She looked at him and said, “And you need to start calling me, your highness.”
He smiled. “So you have decided you like being the daughter of the king.”
“Only if being one gets me what I want.”
“You are prolonging this, Glenna. Look up there. Smoke and flames are coming out the arch. We have to leap.”
