“This is not all on you. Everything that has happened to me, I have remembered,” said the gryphon. “I have held my place and my identity as time and space have flowed around me. The past has shifted twice for us already, and I remember all of it. If you fail somehow—if you die—I swear I will look for a way to walk through time again to find you. No matter where you are. No matter when. I swear it.”
He should have known. The joy that filled her face had a keen ferocity that would propel her forward through the centuries. Gods, what passion this mortal had. It filled the chalice of her heart to overflowing.
He thought of his Carling, sitting unprotected in the hotel suite. Time was flowing for her as well. “I have to leave,” he said abruptly. “You must take shelter. Go inside. Do not sleep. Do everything you can to protect yourself. This night, for you, is a dangerous one.”
She looked around in sharp, quick assessment and gave him a firm nod. “I will take care. It will be all right.”
This young woman wasn’t his Carling. If Rune and this young woman had the luxury of unlimited time together, realistically he wasn’t even sure if they could find anything much to talk about for any length of time. But he still could not resist cupping her soft cheek. “I will treasure the memory of meeting you like this,” he said, and he kissed her.
Carling stood frozen and focused everything she had on the touch of his mouth on hers, so fierce yet tender, and filled with the blaze of his Power. It was the first time anyone had ever touched her like that. She knew she would never allow that elderly petty king to touch her on the lips. Then Rune let her go and scooped his weapons off the ground, and she watched as he turned on his heel away from her and faded from sight.
He just faded away, like a dream. Or perhaps a spell-induced vision.
She fingered her lips. They still tingled even though he was gone.
You must live or I will die, he had said. And that could not happen, not to the one who held her soul.
I will treasure the memory of meeting you too, she thought.
And wait forever for you.
? ? ?
Carling opened her eyes and gazed out the open French doors in the hotel bedroom at the rich heavy gold of the westering sun. Morning might be bright and beautiful, but it did not hold the same poignancy as the evening, that had gathered all the day’s memories and carried them into night.
She sat on the bed with her legs curled up, her back braced against the headboard. Rune stood at the open doors, facing outside. He leaned a broad shoulder against the frame, his arms crossed. His quiet, strong profile had an uncertain vulnerability she had never seen in him before. He looked proud, self-contained and braced for bad news, a god in black who claimed he was not a god, great and golden-haired and so intensely formed, his life force boiled the air around him.
He was indeed best seen in the hot bright light of day, where he shone with all the colors of creation’s fire. Copper, yellow, gold, bronze, and the warm fierce amber of those playful, ageless lion’s eyes.
Yes, that was exactly how she remembered it, both so long ago and again just recently on the island. Her soul, winging out of her body, and flying irrevocably toward him.
Some instinct told her he knew very well she had come out of the fade. Why wouldn’t he turn to look at her?
She stared out the window again, and thought. The silence of ages lay heavily between them.
I will remember you, very soon after the Adriyel River. And when I do, you will come to mean everything to me. Who I am at this moment, this man who is standing in front of you—I would wait forever for you.
While she was not familiar with the details, she knew that when Wyr mated, they did so only once. Dragos, Lord of the Wyr, had just found his mate. Tiago, Wyr warlord and thunder-bird, had mated with the Dark Fae Queen Niniane. Was that what Rune had meant? Was she that lucky—and he that damned?
She straightened her spine and took a breath, and began to speak. “You did not change me this time.”
His head jerked sharply to the side, as if she had struck him, but other than that he did not move and he still would not look at her.
“I cast a spell one night and had a vision of you. That was my experience of it, anyway,” she said. “I remember you warning me to take care. After that I studied defensive spells, and I put up wards when I slept. I was very careful.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Rune asked coldly.
She looked down at the fun, flirtatious outfit she wore and gently smoothed the soft material of her top. She kept her voice calm as she told him, “I’m working through what happened, and what might have been different. I remember agreeing that you needed to go back to warn me and I remember taking responsibility for that. I think we got lucky. I think we changed what we needed to change, and everything else stayed stable.”