and lunge for the steps. It was long enough for him to catch up to her and when he did, he lifted her bodily against his chest and held her there until he could turn and trap her between himself and the battlement wall.
“Listen to me, Ariel,” he hissed against her ear. “You have to listen to me.”
“I have listened to you. I have listened and I have watched and I know how much you love her. I do not need to hear the words to know it.”
“Ariel—!”
“No!” She covered her ears with her hands and crumpled her eyes tightly shut, refusing to acknowledge his command for attention.
The rain beat down on Eduard’s unprotected head and shoulders, soaking his hair, running in chilling rivulets down his throat and under his clothes. His hands gripped her shoulders and trembled with the desire to shake her, but instead, with a deliberate, gentle strength, he took hold of her wrists and pried her hands away from her ears.
“Is that what you think? Do you think Eleanor and I …? That we are lovers?”
Ariel kept her eyes adamantly shut against the lure of his voice. “I do not have to think anything. You told me you loved her. You said you had pledged your life to her. You carried her ring next to your heart just as she carried yours. And now you are risking all … everything … to save her! What else should I think?”
Eduard found himself at a loss. His grip on her wrists tightened a moment, then sprang free entirely as he shoved his fingers into the wet, tangled mass of her hair. He forced her to tilt her head up, forced her to open her eyes, and meet the silvery gray intensity of his own.
“You should think … hard … about the difference between loving someone you regard as a sister, or a cousin, or a sweet and gentle friend”—his fingers raked deeper, lifting her face higher—“and loving someone who burns their way into your heart and soul like a flame. I love Eleanor, yes. With all of my heart. She was the first true friend I ever had, and I am probably the only friend she has ever had. We traded rings a thousand years ago when she exacted a childhood promise from me to always be her champion, to always slay dragons in her name. We traded again tonight”—he paused and fished angrily beneath his tunic-“when she made me swear to let the one true beast who is her uncle live.”
Ariel stared at the delicate filigreed ring and noticed where his own skinned thumb was once again bare. Her gaze rose slowly to his but she could not see him clearly for the sudden film of bright, hot tears.
“The way you acted,” she whispered raggedly. “The things you said …”
“I have acted like a fool,” he agreed tersely. “And I have said things I never should have said. What is more, I am probably going to do it again, now, when I confess the hunger—the love—I feel for you is neither brotherly nor based on friendship. It is like an open, raw wound I cannot seem to heal. It only grows wider and deeper each time I touch you, or hold you, or … dream of holding you even closer.”
Ariel’s lips quivered apart. “Me?” she gasped. “You love … me?”
His fingers threaded into her hair again, tenderly this time, more of a caress than a punishment. “If this ache I feel every time I look at you is love … then aye, I must love you. If this need I have to hold you and kiss you until you have not the will or the strength to refuse me what I would take from you … if this is love, then aye, my lady, I am floundering in it … and have been since the moment I saw you tilting at shadows in the armoury at Amboise.”
Ariel thought the walls and rooftops took a sudden swift dip downward and she had to curl her hands into the thickness of his surcoat to keep from staggering to her knees.
“The other night … at the inn …?”
“I should never have gone near you,” he said huskily. “Never. It only made me want you more.”
“But … you pushed me away.”
Eduard shook his head slowly. “I did not push you away; I pushed myself away.”
Ariel knew she should say something. She knew she should. But the quivering in her lips had