What?
What, what, what?
Before I could verbalize my question, he kept speaking. “But you didn’t fall in love with me because you have no heart and then you proceeded to kill my love for you and twist it into something else entirely. And you keep doing it. Every bloody time I see you. Every time I speak to you. You twist it until there’s nothing in it to recognize as anything even close to what it once was.”
“You loved me?” I whispered, looking into his harsh, moonlit face.
“Don’t,” he clipped shortly.
“Are you saying you loved me?”
His arm got so tight I couldn’t breathe and his hand in my hair twisted so it wasn’t gentle anymore. Not even a little.
And as he did these things, he barked in my face, “Don’t!”
“I –”
“Play your game but don’t you ever, ever, Cora, play with that memory.”
Oh.
My.
God.
He used to love me! And, obviously, he’d told me. And, just as obviously, I’d spurned that love.
Or, more aptly, the other me spurned his love.
Oh. My. God!
His arm gave me a shake. “Am I understood?””
“Tor –”
He lost it and I knew it when his hand twisted in my hair, I cried out at the pain and he roared, “Am I understood?”
“Yes!” I shouted.
At the same time I shouted, Salem threw his mighty head back and whinnied loud.
Noctorno’s head shot to his horse, his body went statue-still then he looked over my head to the mouth of the cave.
“Gods!” he yelled, let me go but grabbed my hand and dragged me behind him as he sprinted to the antechamber. He went so swiftly, I nearly stumbled twice on the way.
“Noctorno!” I cried and he yanked back the pelt and hauled me through so roughly and with such force, I went flying.
“Hurry, finish dressing,” he ordered.
“What?” I asked, confused.
“Dress!” he thundered.
I jumped and ran to my clothes.
I was bending to snatch up my skirt when he commanded, “Meet me at Salem.”
I looked up and saw him dragging a sword off the wall.