mead took a toll on her control. Her chin trembled. “When will you depart?”
“Tonight.”
“So soon?”
“Why not?”
She lowered her gaze, as if she realized her next words were unworthy of her. “’Tis ten more days until my nuptials.”
He pretended he didn’t know what she meant by that. “Aye, ’tisn’t much time to plan the weddin’.”
When she looked up again, her eyes were filled with a desperate panic, as if life were pulling her under the sea and drowning her. “Kiss me.”
His gaze was drawn to her lips. Lips he remembered were soft and warm. Lips that trembled with hope. Lips literally begging to be kissed.
And though it cost him every bit of cruel restraint, he muttered, “Nay, ’twould be a mista—”
She refused his refusal, crushing his velvet cotun in her fists and hauling him to her, planting her mead-sweet mouth on his with a fierce passion that took his breath away.
For a long, mindless moment, he let his emotions ride on a runaway steed. Felt the heady swirl of her affections as they wrapped around him. Returned her kisses with mad abandon.
But somewhere deep in his conscience the champion awakened. He knew the truth. Consummating their desire now would do nothing but sharpen their yearning and bring shame to the friendship they had.
It was a mistake to violate their honor. No matter how badly they both wanted this.
So using all his willpower, he broke off the kiss and set her at arm’s length. “Nay, Hallie. We mustn’t.”
For one breathless moment, they stared at each other in a kind of shock. Astonished by the speed and fury of the fire they’d started.
“Take me with you,” she blurted.
For the smallest instant, a tiny glimmer of possibility brightened his thoughts. In that split second of time, he saw a future where they fled Creagor together, companions in exile, living by their wits, stealing through the forest by day, making love by the fire at night.
It was a romantic notion.
And completely unthinkable.
“Ye know I cannot,” he murmured. “And ye…”
She knew. He saw it in the dimming of her gaze. They both knew it. Hallie couldn’t run from her responsibilities. And he couldn’t be the one who’d deprived a man of his wife and a clan of their laird.
Despite her attempts to remain stoic, in her inebriated state, raw despair flooded Hallie’s eyes. Extinguishing love’s flames. Dampening her passion. Bruising his heart.
He reached up to caress her jaw.
“Och, my darlin’ Hallie, do not despair,” he said, brushing his thumb across her cheek to collect a stray tear. “Our clans are joined now. It may be a while. But we’ll meet again.” He wondered if that was true. “One day we’ll look upon this time with fondness. Neither of us wants to tarnish this sweet memory with an unchivalrous and selfish act.” If there was a harsh edge to what he said after that, it was no less bitter than what he felt in his soul at the cruelty of fate. “I’m not the kind o’ man to make love to another man’s wife,” he said, lowering his hand from her face. “And in ten days, that’s what ye’ll be.”
Hallie’s throat clogged with tears.
She cursed the mead that had brought her emotions to the surface. And she cursed the man before her who had dared to speak the ugly truth in such stark words.
But in the end, she knew he was right. At heart, they were people of honor, both of them.
It was better to deliver a coup de grace to their love than let it suffer a lingering death.
She had been foolish to think coming here would change anything.
“Where will you go?” she croaked.
He shrugged. “I’ll let fate steer my course, I suppose.”
Her brow creased. That sounded unwise. So far, fate had been a brutal navigator.
She reclaimed his hand in both of hers, hugging it to her breast.
“I’ll yearn for you always,” she said, her voice catching.
“And I’ll ne’er forget ye, my beautiful Valkyrie.”
Her eyes fogged. Before she could break down sobbing, Hallie fled the room. She didn’t join the others, but instead made her way to the lowest levels of the keep, in a shadowy corner of a stairwell, to sorrow in peace. Like snow after a thaw, grief frozen for days escaped as hot tears, slipping between her lashes and rolling down her face.
She wept for lost innocence. For lost youth. For a love that might have been. For an unavoidable destiny. For her heart—shattered like glass and lying in bits on the ground.
When