As if the shadows sought to bury him.
“ No-o-o!” She clapped her hands to her cheeks, shaking her head. “Please stop.”
Silence answered her, its deadness worse than hell’s coldest wind.
She swallowed hard, her fingers digging into the swell of her bosom. She began to tremble, wanting to squeeze her eyes shut when the darkness reached his neck, but she couldn’t look away.
Then only his eyes were visible.
Dark and piercing, they still glinted right at her, glowing as hotly as the hearth’s reddish-orange peat embers she could no longer see.
But then shewasstaring at the peat embers.
The raven was gone.
And she was sprawled naked across his well-appointed bed.
Her bedchamber — nae, his — appeared as always.
No black winds tore at the wall hangings or rattled the soundly latched shutters. The table by the window and her own towering stack of hump-backed, iron-bound coffers stood exactly where they should.
Untouched, and certainly notmelted.
Even the scattered bearskin rugs on the floor were undisturbed, without even a single stray bit of dried meadowsweet or what-have-you marring their glossy pelts.
That alone was a clear indication that no unholy wind had swept through the room.
Even so, she drew the bedcovers to her chin.
She knew fine what she’d seen.
Even if she also knew someone else could have stood beside her and not noticed a thing amiss.
She knew better.
Something was sorely amiss.
And she had enough experience with such matters to guess exactly what it was.
“Saints, Maria, and Joseph!” Her father’s favorite curse slipped from her lips and she fell back against the bedcushions, her entire body shaking.
Staring up at the richly carved bed ceiling, she clenched her fists and fought hard against slipping into the deceptive peace of slumber.
Two truths were bearing down on her and she could deny neither.
The first seized her each time she drew a new, lung-filling gulp of the cold, early morning air.
Ronanhadspent at least a few hours in her bed.
The sheets and coverlets reeked of him, or, better said, of the rank-smelling goldenrod goo she’d spread across his ribs and smeared onto his toes.
The second truth ripped her heart and stole her breath, its horror splitting her soul.
The blackness she’d seen consuming Ronan could only mean his death. And the icy cold, stone-drenched emptiness had to have represented his tomb.
Gelis shuddered, hating the interpretation.
But try as she might, she couldn’t find another explanation, much as the reality struck her like an iron-hard fist in the belly.
