hair, a stubborn mouth, and freckles scattered across her cheeks. Her true face. Completely unfamiliar, and yet not, because he knew her. Knew the truths that she hid no matter what face she hid them behind.
Perhaps such magic should have terrified him. But had he known what she was capable of, he would have offered her everything he would ever possess to do what she had just done of her own free will.
From those last scattered thoughts he’d glimpsed before she freed him, she hadn’t known whether it would work. Had no idea what her magic might do. It had been a final, desperate gamble, made in the hope that revealing his face might disconcert him enough that she could slip away.
On a sprained ankle in the middle of the night when she was already practically falling over with weariness. So ridiculous and determined. He wanted to laugh, and he wanted to shake her. Wanted to know her and wanted to run from her. She had seen him at his worst. She knew the ugly truth of his captivity, and he yearned to destroy everything that could remind him of that feeling. And yet, he had never been able to hurt her, even when she’d been his enemy.
And now?
He was free to go, if he chose. Free to disappear into the night and return to his home. No one would ever find him. No one would ever know what had happened. Melger could rage for the next fifty years and find no trace of the one he’d dared to consider his possession.
Except… He could not leave her like this. Even if his heart had allowed it, he would not have been able to disappear. He owed a debt. Everything within him rebelled at the idea—it was just another form of chains—but that did not change what he must do.
She would probably never understand what she had done. What a gift she had given. Even if he could fully explain… he never would. No one else should ever be forced to face the horror of that prison.
Knowing full well what he owed her, he knelt beside the woman who’d freed him and reached out with his magic. But it did not obey. It lay within him, a raging furnace of power that he could neither touch nor command.
He tried again, and met with failure. And again, as if beating himself against a door that would not open.
Fury swept through him as he acknowledged that it must be the bracers. The last remaining piece of Melger’s insidious spell, the workings on them must be what contained his magic. The mask had chained his will, but the bracers chained his power.
So he was now doubly bound once more. Even if he’d been willing to abandon his debt and his concern, he could not leave the woman yet. Whether or not she awakened healthy and whole, he was tied to her as surely as he’d been tied to the king, and the knowledge flayed him like a knife.
He didn’t want to need her, but he did. Desperately. He needed her magic if he was ever to truly be free. Whatever she asked or demanded, he would do. He would even beg if he had to—offer her anything she desired if she would agree to finish what she’d begun.
That is, if she didn’t faint in terror the moment she laid eyes on him. King’s Raven. Specter of terror. Harbinger of death.
But no. He need not be those things ever again. Raven was not his name, and he vowed to erase it from his memory as he bent and carefully cradled the unconscious form of his savior.
He would stay with her. Aid her, if she would allow it. And perhaps, if she was not too afraid, there might be some way he could convince her to free him from the bracers.
There must be a way. There had to be. For the first time in ten years, he dared allow himself the luxury of hope that he would someday be free to return to his own land and see the ones he loved once more. He finally had a reason to fight, and he would let nothing stand between him and his home.
Chapter 21
It was the fire that drew her back to consciousness—the fire, and the illusion it presented of warmth and safety.
Leisa searched for her last memory and found pain. Panic. The certainty of death.
Eyes. Eyes that glowed beneath the shadows of a hood.
Hands. Lifting her,