“’Tis sweet like a summer garden, yet the bitterness of death and fear contaminate the very vial of life.”
His frown deepened at her words. He knew not of what she spoke. “How do you mean?”
She didn’t move. “You think me mad.”
A chill went down his spine. Could she read his thoughts? “Not mad, milady, just confused.” Although, in all honesty, he was beginning to wonder about her sanity.
Or if she was a witch.
You don’t believe in that bullshit.
At least he never had before. Yet how else could he explain all this? There was something ethereal about her. Something not quite natural or of this world.
Truth was, he did feel bespelled by her.
Witchcraft was an easy explanation as to why he was captivated by her when no other woman had ever lured him this way.
Don’t be an idiot.
He’d always disdained others for those ridiculous thoughts. Only a simpkin believed in such foolery, and he refused to be a hypocrite now.
Demons, fey, and witches. Preposterous fabrications, all to explain the treachery that lived in the hearts of mankind. Better to blame the devil than admit that each man and woman was basically an evil bitch out to smite the very ones they were supposed to love and protect. To admit that instead of being grateful, people were bitter guttersnipes who used those around them for their own personal gain, and then cut the throats of those they called friend, lover, and family as soon as they were done with them.
People were so dishonest that they couldn’t even own up to their own nature. They had to invent fey and others just to have an imaginary scapegoat for their cruelty.
It was always someone else’s fault.I’m not beating you becauseI’ma monster.It’syourfault or the devil’s that I’m abusing you. I’m doing this foryourown good.It’s to save your soul for some imaginary god or demon who doesn’tgive two shits about you, or else I’d have a seizure and die while in the midst of my heartless barbarity.
He knew that for a fact.
Yet when she looked at him, the torment in her eyes took the very breath from his body and disarmed him completely. She made him want to believe that she wasn’t like the rest of the world. That maybe, just maybe she actually had a soul in her body and a heart to back it.
Could this beautiful, innocent kitten turn as rabid as all the others?
Dare he chance it?
She sighed heavily. “I’m so confused. My mind tells me one thing, yet my body says it lies. It’s as if the two are enemies waging war against each other and ’tis my soul that serves as prize. Or mayhap my sanity itself.”
Valteri wanted—nay,needed—to touch her, but he couldn’t trust himself to reach out to her. Not when she stood this close to him and he was already this weak.
She was a vicious lure for him. One that made him almost believe there was a devil tempting him to damnation.
What else could explain his reckless disregard of all the lessons he’d learned in his life about the treachery of people.
Do not trust her.
“I know of what milady speaks.”
Frustration darkened her brow and she turned back to scan the scenery below. “Nay, this isn’t desire. I know the effects of that emotion and it’s not as though I don’t feel it. I have only to look at you to knowthat.”
Those words shocked him to the core of his being. No woman had ever confessed such a thing before. Not even in his dreams.
“Please,” she whispered without looking at him. “What troubles me is much more than that. Deeper. My memories tell me that I know things, and have done things that are impossible. Things I can’t remember having truly experienced. What I see in my mind can’t be right. I know it makes no sense. And I…”
She rubbed her hands over her face, her expression one of sheer torture. “Am I deranged?”
His own memories surged. As did a fear that he’d repressed since his boyhood. “Don’t ever say that to another soul, Ariel.” He growled the words. “Do you understand? People will do unspeakable things to you if they think you mad.”
And he didn’t want to see her put through the hazards they’d dragged him through.
