Not in his arms, after all, she realized, the familiar scent of peat smoke and lavender finally hitting her awareness.
Sweet relief overtook her confusion. Puck had come for her.
“Sorry, lass, but I’ve decided not to let you die. The last time I left you, I felt something. I think it was regret, and I wish to experience it again.”
His greatest aspiration was to feel regret? His life was as sad as her own.
“Will...marry,” she told him. She tried to track their location, but everything was a blur. He must be doing his too-fast-to-track thing. “What...need...do?”
“Just repeat after me.” He turned a corner, her head spinning. “I give you my heart, soul and body.” He waited until she’d echoed him, even though it took her a while; she had to push out the words between panting breaths. “I tie my life to yours, and when you die, I die with you.”
The tone of his voice had deepened, as if the words he’d just spoken carried more significance than any he’d previously uttered.
The seriousness of what she was doing registered. There would be no going back. Once they were bonded, he would be her husband. They would be a unit. A family. And even if she wasn’t having sex with him, he would have to come first. Puck before William.
The burn returned to her eyes. Was she really going to do this?
Her hands and feet grew colder by the second, but her muscles didn’t have enough juice to shiver. She was so close to the end. Too close! So, yes, she was really going to do this.
Again, she echoed his statement.
He proceeded. “This I say, this I do.”
“This I say, this I do.”
When he said no more, she realized they were done. She expected something wondrous to happen. A tidal wave of strength. Warmth. Something! She got zilch, zero, nada.
“It didn’t work,” she managed to whisper.
“Don’t worry, lass.” Puck finally stopped running. He set her down on something soft then straightened, severing contact. The only bit of heat she’d had vanished. “We aren’t done yet.”
He pressed something even warmer against her lips. Something wet. A copper tang coated her tongue, and she gagged. Blood?
“Swallow,” he commanded.
She shook her head in negation, the trickle sliding down her cheek rather than her throat.
“You will.” He held her nose and jaw with one hand, preventing further movement, and held his wrist over her open mouth with the other, forcing her to obey.
Well. There was no way she was going to complete the ceremony now. He was too high-handed. Too uncaring about her plight.
But the blood slid into her stomach at last, and another black shroud covered her mind. This time, the gossamer fabric didn’t send her into a state of unawareness. Puck lifted her arm, cut her wrist—the sharp sting made her cringe—then licked away the well of blood.
“Blood of my blood, breath of my breath,” he said. “Until the end of time. Repeat the words.”
“No.”
“Then you die, and William and I will war for nothing.”
Argh! She couldn’t allow William to get sucked into another war. She repeated the words and finally, amazingly, the “thing” happened, and then some. Lance after lance of strength sped through her. The warmth inside her sparked hotter and hotter, and soon she felt as if she’d swallowed the sun.
A pang of sadness—she’d never experienced anything so magnificent, but she wasn’t experiencing it with William.
The black faded from her mind completely and suddenly she could see. Sunlight! An open, airy bedroom. The decadent scent of lavender coated the air, stronger than ever before. She lay on a large bed, wisps of white fabric billowing from four posts.
I’m alive! Laughing giddily, she jolted upright. Puck perched beside her, watching her with a blank expression, and in a rush of sudden gratitude, she threw her arms around his neck to hug him. He’d saved her, despite the risk to himself—oh, no! The risk! Would William punish him?
No, no. Of course not. Puck had saved her, and that’s what William—her friend—had wanted.
And since this was basically a marriage of convenience, she and Puck could even move into the fortress. Or she could return without her husband in tow. Nothing had to change!
She tried to pull away, but his arms wrapped around her and held on tight. Too sexual! her mind screamed. Too much, too fast. She wrenched backward, cutting off all contact as her heart hammered a staccato rhythm. He frowned at her.