God help me.
9
The rain hammered the shutters until the wood shivered around the hinges.
Kristen lay on her side and watched the dawn through the cracks. When the next gust rattled the iron, she gave up on sleep, slipped from the bed, and padded to the window. The wood was cool under her feet. Far below, the guards moved across the yard, their lanterns small as fireflies.
Behind her, the bed almost seemed to breathe. Neil slept on his stomach, shirtless, the blanket loose around his waist, and the scars on his body catching the faint light. His back rose and fell in a slow, even rhythm she had not seen from him before.
She pressed her palm to the sill as a thought came to her.
Is this the first good sleep he has had in years?
Her eyes kept drifting back to him. His broad back. The long line from his shoulders to his hips. The spot where the blanket pooled around his thighs.
She scolded herself inwardly and looked back down at the guards. Thunder boomed, like a club on the roof of the world, breaking her resolve just a little.
As she struggled to compose herself, Neil jolted up with a strangled sound. His hands clawed at the air as if something were bearing down on him. For one breath, his face contorted in fear.
“Neil,” Kristen said softly. “Neil, look at me.”
Torchlight.
Not the fireplace.
Smoke, thick and bitter.
Rope on damp wood.
A door that never opened.
The thunderclap became a blow, and Neil instinctively reached for a weapon that was no longer there. He found only the edge of the mattress and the sweat on his palm.
“Out,” he rasped to the cabin, except it was no longer the cabin. “Out.”
Kristen dropped to her knees beside the bed. “Ye are in the castle,” she soothed. “Listen to me. Finn and Anna are asleep in the nursery. Maggie is snoring louder than the storm, and she will get angry if ye let thunder beat her.”
The wild look wouldn’t leave Neil’s eyes.
She slowly lifted her hand, palm open. “’Tis just me,” she murmured. “It is Kristen. Ye are home. Ye nay longer have to worry.”
Her fingers touched his forearm, and heat jumped under his skin. He flinched, and his breathing grew ragged, but he did not lash out. She kept her hand on his forearm and put the other on the blanket so he could see both.
“Look,” she said. “Walls of stone. Our bed. The old chest with the crack on the lid. Hear the rain. It is only rain.”
“Door,” he growled. “Bolt the door.”
“It is bolted,” she assured him. “See?” She nodded toward the latch. “I did it before I lay down.”
His jaw clenched. His fists loosened a fraction, then another.
“Breathe with me,” Kristen coaxed. “Slow. We will count. One. Two. Three.”
Neil was fighting it. She could see it in the way his throat worked.
She slid her hand close to the scar on his shoulder and felt the beat under her palm. “Four,” she breathed. “Five.”
Neil closed his eyes. He breathed in and out, the sound still ragged, then growing steady. Thunder boomed again, longer and lower. He did not jolt.
