He growled, and gripped her around the wrist, flinging his body over the top of her again, but this time, it was as if he was shielding her.
“Ragnar,” she said.
He rose up over her, looking somewhere back behind her, but there was nothing there but a wall. “Touch her and die.”
She put her hands flat on his chest, held them there. “Ragnar. No one is here. Nothing is happening. I swear to you. Nothing is happening.”
And then, he made a terrible, strangled sound. Like that of a man being tortured. Physically, mentally.
Wherever he was, it was a dark place. Wherever he was, it might as well be hell.
“No.”
He moved away from her then, his body shaking. He got off the bed, then he stood, like a man waiting to be taken to the executioner.
“Ragnar,” she said again. “Please. Whatever is happening…”
And then it was like the fog had lifted. It was like he could see again. Like he was with her. He made a terrible sound. Like a wounded animal. One that had been gutted. And he fell to his knees, his head in his hands. “I remember,” he said.
“Oh, Ragnar.” She got out of bed and she went over to him. She knelt beside him, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “What did you remember?”
He lifted his head, his blue eyes hunted, haunted. “It was my father. My father was the one that betrayed us all.”
Chapter Twelve
IT HAD BEENlike a thunderclap.
It had been nothing like he had ever expected. He hadn’t thought much about regaining his past memories, not truly. Because he had always felt like it was a protection to him that he didn’t remember. But he had thought that it was because it would be a terrible thing to remember the details of the deaths of his parents. Instead, it was the death of something else.
It was the death of every idea he had ever had about himself and his bloodline.
Yes, his father had been deemed somewhat selfish. A man who craved opulence. A man who loved the finer things in life, but he had never been accused of being a coward. A murderer. He had…
A sick, cold feeling slithered through his veins. As if his blood had turned to ice.
“He handed me over to a guard. To be killed.”
“What?”
“He…he killed my mother. He killed her in front of me. He couldn’t kill me.”
“Ragnar. Slow down. Why…?”
“I think… I think he was working with them. I think he knew that they were going to take over, and the only way for him to save himself was to promise to leave and to never come back. But he also promised us. As…as some sort of sign that he… That he was sincere. That he was never going to reclaim his throne. He killed my mother. He killed her.”
“No. He… That can’t be right.”
“It is,” he said, knowing now exactly what had stolen his memory from him. Exactly.
Thankfully, his memory was that of a boy. He could remember hiding in the corner. His father raising a large knife. And he could remember his mother falling, her body obscured by the bed.
But it was unmistakable, what he had witnessed.
There were guards. Military men. “Take him. Dispose of him.”
“It wasn’t my nanny,” he said, the realization rocking him to his core.
“What do you mean?”
