eyes, delicate inky black vines grow around her ring finger and his, binding them together like magic.
“Jessica,” he says again, bending to press his lips to hers for the first time.
His kiss fills her senses and she forgets the magic she has just seen. The pleasure of his mouth on hers is the only thing left in her world.
He pulls back.
“I love you,” he tells her.
Universes seem to form and disintegrate in his eyes.
She is drowning in love, so happy that she can’t even speak to tell him she feels the same.
Jessica opened her eyes.
Vines were growing over their fingers again now, the magic as wondrous now as it was the first time.
“Our rings,” she breathed.
“I thought I’d lost you forever when mine disappeared,” he murmured. “But it was only a temporary separation.”
“We’re together again,” she whispered.
“Why did you leave me?” he asked.
She reached back to the memory, but nothing followed it.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I was in a ballroom and I hated it. The queen came and took me away, and I’ve been living in that little cottage.”
She pointed at her cottage just downhill from the meadow.
The storm wind whipped through his hair as he gazed down at her pretty little home, unimpressed.
“I didn’t have any memories before that,” she told him. “Until now.”
He clenched his jaw and she could sense his fury.
“So she trapped you here in the countryside,” he growled, “and took your memories away?”
“No,” she said. “She was so kind. I was unhappy in the ballroom, but now I have everything I could ever want.”
“Can you leave?” he asked.
“I-I’ve never tried,” she admitted. “I’ve never wanted to.”
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
The words echoed strangely in her head.
How long had she been here?
She glanced back over the meadow. Her unchanging days here melted together, making it impossible to judge the passage of time.
“The seasons haven’t changed,” she thought out loud. “So it can’t have been more than a few weeks. But it feels like maybe it’s been longer than that.”
He closed his eyes, looking troubled.
“How long has it been?” she asked, trying to understand what was upsetting him.
He looked the same as he had in her memory. His hair was dark and his face unlined. It couldn’t have been that long.
Thunder rumbled close by, rumbling to her bones.
“Let’s get out of here,” he told her. “We can talk while we ride.”
She allowed him to help her up onto the pale stallion.
The big horse pranced and snorted, but calmed when he leapt on after her.
She closed her eyes as he wrapped his arms around her, soaking in his heat and the shivers of awareness his touch awoke.
He urged the horse on, and the wildflowers began to blur past them.
They headed for the hills, leaving the little cottage far behind as a cold rain began to pound down. Jessica realized that she hadn’t seen rain since she had arrived in the valley.
The cold drops felt like kisses on her cheeks, contrasting deliciously with the warm arms of the man who held her tight to his hard body as they thundered away from the only life she fully remembered.
5
Cullen
Cullen let the rain slide down his cheeks like tears.
Jessica was safe in his arms. He would never let her go again.
It pained him to see his clever beloved turned into someone lost and child-like by this world. But he would help her recover her jaunty spirits and bring her back to whole again.
And then he would rain down his vengeance on the Queen of Silence and every fae foolish enough to let this happen.
Jessica made a satisfied humming sound and leaned her head back against his chest.
Waves of joy and hunger coursed through him. He pressed his lips tenderly to her ear.
“Soon,” he murmured to her.
Soon he would claim her properly again and watch the tattoo of vines crawl up around her wrist.
They rode for hours in silence, Cullen lost in his thoughts of what had been and what would soon be.
They were finally approaching the woods as the sun began to dip below the line of the distant mountains. On the first leg of his travels, Nyx had scaled the cliffside, bypassing the trees as they made haste toward Cullen’s beloved.
But now that they had Jessica, he decided it would be better to take a little extra time and use the winding path through the woods. There was no point exhausting his mount with two riders.
“Easy, boy,” he told Nyx.
Nyx snorted, but he did as he