“I dinnae ken,” he rumbled again, his voice troubled and tentative as I opened the door and blinked back more tears,seeing the dried herbs I had hung there so long ago. “I need to ken, Ellie, because this doesnae—”
“My full name is Elowyn, Tavish,” I said softly, looking over my shoulder into his eyes where he stood at the threshold of my cottage, knowing my dragon had been able to keep the truth from him thus far despite his growing connection to my sisters. Kept it from him to protect him from the painful truth. “It represents the elm tree and was given to me by my father, Malcolm Sutherland, because it had always been my name, then and now.”
His pupils flared, and he narrowed his eyes. “When isthen?”
“I think you know,” I said gently. “I think somewhere deep down you’ve known since the moment you laid eyes on me.”
“Nay,” he said hoarsely, shaking his head in denial at my innuendo. His gaze swept over me in disbelief because I didn’t look like I had in that life. “It cannae be...yecannae be.”
“Yet I am.” While I wanted to cup his cheek and offer him comfort, it was too much, so I headed inside my cottage, knowing my way around, and did what I had done numerous times in my last life. I set to work making a poultice, doing my best to ignore the fur-covered bed we never got a chance to enjoy together. As it were, I had been saving myself for our marriage. “I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true.”
I proceeded to tell him what I remembered, which wasn’t much because I could not recall my actual death or who killed me, only the moments in the Hereafter, as I watched over him. I bit back a fresh wave of emotion, and ground the herbs in a wooden mortar, releasing their healing oils, then added a dash of honey to form a paste. Although there had been a lot of difficult moments for him since my death, I focused on the ones that affected him most, namely, my burial and how deeply he had grieved in the days, months, and years that followed.
“It broke my heart to watch how much my death changed you,” I said softly. “You went from being so loving and quick to laugh to angry and brooding.” My throat thickened with emotion. “And I’m sorry for that. I truly am.” I shook my head and blinked back tears. “I should have never gone into the forest that day without more protection.” I gestured at the same wooden chair I always made him sit in when treating his injuries. “You should sit so I can tend to your wound.”
Clearly unsure what to say about any of this, Tavish glanced from the chair to me. While he appeared more uncertain and troubled by the moment, he did as I asked and urged me to go on, however roughly, as he battled his own emotions. Did that mean he believed me? It was impossible to know.
Either way, we had come this far, so I had no choice but to go on, because something told me if I didn’t, the Hereafter would take matters out of my hands, like it had earlier. So I described in more detail the nuances of the Hereafter and how it didn’t leave me be, even when I was reborn, but remained a window not only into the afterlife and the spirits roaming it, but placed him in my dreams ever since I was a child.
“We shared so many dreams together since I,Elowyn, passed, only I appeared to you as I do in this life,” I murmured. “We were always here in medieval Scotland, and I know you don’t remember.” I urged him to remove his tunic. “Not yet...and perhaps you never will.” I gestured at the cottage and chanted warm water and a cloth into a bowl beside him. “But that’s how I knew you kept this place vacant.” I blinked back tears again when I met his eyes. “How I knew you stayed here instead of in your own chambers whenever you were home, trying to keep my memory alive instead of moving on.”
He kept eyeing me with a frown and a furrowed brow, hesitating to remove his tunic before he reluctantly pulled it off and merely watched me without saying anything, clearly intenton assessing how I tended him. In fact, I knew even though he was dumbfounded and in complete shock and disbelief, he had been quietly assessing me and my every move all along.
Did I know where everything was?
Did I move like her?
Did I share mannerisms with her that he might not have noticed before?
And I got it, I really did, because I would feel the same way if our positions were reversed. I also knew he saw I did. I couldn’t help it. Not here in my true home with the love of not just one life but two.
While I did my best to remain unaffected by the sight of his bare torso because now wasn’t the time, it was no easy task ignoring his broad shoulders, muscular arms, and chiseled abs. While he had been fit in our younger years, his body was now that of a seasoned warrior, accustomed to wielding heavy weaponry. And while I saw it in dreams via the Hereafter, seeing him in person was so much more intense.
Doing my best to focus on caring for him, I wiped the blood spatters from his neck before carefully cleaning the wound on his shoulder, glad to see it was only on the surface rather than anything more substantial.
“Those deeper wounds always did worry me more than they did you,” I murmured, not looking into his eyes because I knew his steady gaze never left my face as he tried to make sense of all this. Before I could stop myself, I brushed my finger over the ridged scar on the side of his neck. “This one especially.” I shook my head and tried not to remember that fear all over again when he’d come so close to bleeding out right before my eyes. “You have no idea how close you came to dying that day.”
“All things ye could gather from yer connection with my kin via yer sisters,” he said, his voice still thick with his brogue, telling me he didn’t quite buy what he was saying but was tryingto for the sake of his own sanity. “Via the connection dragons share.”
“Yes,” I said softly, focusing on the poultice next, gently pressing it into his wound, murmuring as I always did about how it would act almost as well as cauterizing it with a flame. He would heal quickly because his dragon would like it. I finally met his eyes because I couldn’t help myself. “It will be even faster now for obvious reasons.”
“And what would those be?” he asked just as softly, despite knowing full well, based on the heavy ridge straining against his trousers because of my proximity. More specifically, the scent of arousal I was putting off. One he didn’t want to acknowledge any more than I did, because again, the conversation was so strange, and his desire for me likely still felt like a betrayal.
“I think we both know the answer to that,” I said, referring to why he would heal quicker than usual this time under my care.
“Yet I would like to hear ye say it.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Because your human half likely finds it inappropriate,” I forced myself to say, focusing now on wrapping his wound. “Yet your dragon feels otherwise and will heal your human half quickly, so it might appeal to me and allow your human to mount me.” I couldn’t help but smile a little, because I was particularly fond of that memory. “Or so you told me when we were teenagers, and you hoped I might give in before marriage.”
“Again, ye could have learned those details through our kin,” he replied, but I didn’t miss the slight amusement in his voice as he no doubt recalled how hard he had tried but never got his way.
“Yes,” I agreed, hoping to leave it at that, but it seemed he wasn’t done with this line of conversation.
“And what do ye think of my dragon’s reasoning now?”
