Black spots danced before her eyes, and for a moment Hero heard strange voices yelling before her vision brightened once more and Ian came back into focus. “Help me! Help me, please! Don’t let me go,” she begged him, staring up into his dark eyes. Eyes that normally carried nothing but love and humor now held despair.
“I won’t, my love. I can’t,” he assured her through gritted teeth, but she could feel his grip slipping on her bloody wrist. “Just hold on!”
“Oh God, Ian,” she whimpered as again her vision dulled. Now red lights like those in her nightmares flooded her vision, and Hero knew then the nightmare had shown her her death. She blinked the image away, trying to focus on Ian.
“I won’t let go! I won’t!” He clenched his teeth and pulled harder, lifting her back up, until she was able to throw one arm around his waist, affording him the opportunity to reach down and get a better hold on her. “I’ve got you, Hero. I’ve got you, my love.”
The terror subsided as she felt his arms come around her. She tried to help him by lifting a knee over the edge of the balcony, but her skirts wouldn’t allow it. She was still helpless, though safe for the moment. “We’re fine,” she gasped into his shoulder. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“That was bloody beautiful to watch,” Kennedy sneered. “You really would do anything for her, wouldn’t you? Alas I’m afraid your conclusion is quite incorrect.”
Hero looked up to see Camron standing over them, his face bruised and bloody. He leveled the barrel of the pistol to the base of Ian’s skull. Terror unlike any she had ever experienced flooded her. She reached out in supplication. “Please. I beg you.”
“Say goodbye.”
The command was so merciless, Hero knew she had only a moment to do just that. Ian hadn’t moved, his arms still curled protectively around her. No thought to his own demise. Even with a pistol to his head, his only thought or action was to save her. Her eyes met his and in a split second that look said everything of their regrets and of the love that could have been theirs. A single tear slipped down her cheek. Why? Why had fate given so much? Given something neither of them knew they wanted or needed, only to rip it away?
Why?Her heart cried, twisting painfully. “Ian…”
A shot rang out, and Ian’s eyes widened. “No,” Hero screamed hoarsely, clutching him to her as the force of the shot threw him against her. “Ian!”
He looked up at her one last time, but the life was already leeching from his loving brown eyes. His lips moved, “Hero...my love…”
The pistol fired again.
“No, Ian, no!”
Agony clawed at her heart. Anguish ate at her soul as she cradled his bloodied head to her breast. She pressed a kiss and then another against the crown of his head heedless of her tears as they mixed with his blood.
A thousand bullets could not hurt more than this.
“Please, don’t go,” she whimpered.
His arms began to relax, but she couldn’t bring herself to care over her precarious position. He was gone. Gone! For her. Ian had died for her. He could have taken Camron apart, but instead he’d come to save her. Pain engulfed her, numbing her to everything around her. No wind, no thunder of the waves below. Nothing.
“I love you,” she choked out the words hoarsely from her tear-clogged throat. “Always. Forever.”
“Very touching, Lady Ayr,” Kennedy grumbled, putting a booted foot against Ian’s slumped shoulder. “But it’s time for us to say goodbye as well.”
Hero gasped in alarm as she realized what Camron intended to do, and instinctively reached with one hand for the wall that still stood.
“No!” came a thundering shout just as Camron shoved at Ian’s shoulder. Behind Camron, Hero could see her father running along the ramparts toward them with both Cooper and Simms on his heels. “Get away from her, evil monster!”
Kennedy turned and raised the pistol again, but this time the fall of the hammer was met with nothing more than a click. He cocked and fired again with the same result before he was tackled to the ground.
Just a few seconds more and she might have been saved. Hero tried to hold on, but without Ian’s support and with his weight pressing against her, she stood no chance. She clawed at the stone wall and then the air.
Her father’s tortured face faded away. The rush of air pulled at her hair and skirts and the cacophony of crashing waves filled her ears. The last thing Hero saw was Ian’s blank eyes as they fell together. She reached out for him…
Then there was only darkness.
There is nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be...
John Lennon
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Again! Hit her again!”
