wakes, I am certain I can teach him the value of discretion.”
“I must go home,” she said.
“You must?”
“Yes.” She managed to say the word with none of the hesitation she felt. Even so, as she gathered her cold lantern she had the involuntary impulse to speak the lines from the ballad: “Is there anything I can offer to repay your kindness?”
She listened, stunned at the words leaving her own mouth, and her breath caught as she waited for his response. What do I do if he asks for the same favors given the knight in that ballad? The thought was terrifying. Why had she said those words?
He reached over and touched her cheek opposite where Lukasz had struck her. He caressed her face as if he knew her invitation for what it was, and the touch was gentle, as if he knew it wasn’t her intent.
“All I ask now is your discretion. Say nothing of what happened here. Nothing of me, nothing of your vile oaf Lukasz. If you must go home, go now.”
He took his hand away and stepped back. Something in her wanted to reach for him, even as she edged away from the darkness she felt inside him. Again, she spoke against her own will: “How will I find you again?”
“I will find you,” he said. “Now go!”
He spoke with such an aura of command that she was out of sight of Darien before she realized she was running.
VIII
Darien stood in the center of the wooded path, still disbelieving. It had been decades since he had entertained even the hope of finding someone else. He had been resigned to being singular, unique.
“Maria,” he whispered, savoring the taste of the name in his mouth. He drew in a deep breath and let the remnants of her scent fill his lungs. There was no mistaking it—not her scent, not the taste of her skin.
She had even invited him to do more than taste.
Maria was unquestionably one of his kind. If he had believed in God, he would have thought it providence that had placed her in his path. And, for once, it gave him something more than vengeance to look forward to.
Then he heard a weak groan from the woods.
First things first.
Darien slipped back into the woods and stood above the semiconscious man who had assaulted Maria. He had already forgotten the oaf’s name. Not that any name was necessary; he was simply meat that, at the moment, had earned slightly more of Darien’s hatred than most men.
The man groaned on the forest floor, not quite recovered from striking the tree whose roots now supported him. A fractured bone protruded from his arm, and the side of his face was swollen and bloody.
Had it only been Darien, he might have left this sack of meat to live or die as it saw fit. If not for his actions, this pathetic man would be beneath Darien’s notice. But Darien had told Maria that this man would learn discretion.
He laughed silently at his own joke as he reached down and threw the unconscious man over his shoulder. Almost completely over; he had forgotten how light men were when they wore no armor. He grabbed the man’s ankle just in time to keep him from sliding all the way down his back, then pulled as he stood so that his burden was draped properly across his shoulder.
At some point during the process, his burden had awoken and started bellowing at him through a broken jaw, pounding on his back with his good arm. Darien ignored both as he slipped deeper into the woods.
Maria stopped in front of her family’s cottage. She had run all the way here after her meeting with Darien. She thought she should be out of breath, but she only felt a little flushed.
Her exhilaration, she told herself, was from the brisk run and the release of her fear upon coming home. She had better sense than to think it had anything to do with Darien. He might have helped her, but he was unquestionably dangerous. More dangerous than her perennial nemesis Lukasz could ever hope to be. Lukasz was young, strong, and armed, and Darien had tossed him aside like a sack of grain, disarming him simply with his bare hands.
He was clearly an outlaw, and the only thing that had saved her from a fate worse than Lukasz was that outlaw’s momentary good graces. Such a liaison belonged safely in a ballad, with knights and maids who