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“Why?”

“Amber,” Duncan said simply. “I must have her. Yet I should not offer marriage until I know myself.”

“Amber?” Erik asked, turning toward her.

“I have always been Duncan’s. I always will be.”

Erik closed his eyes for an instant. When they opened, they were clear and cold.

“What of Cassandra’s warning?” he asked gently.

“There are three conditions. Only one has been met. Only one will be met.”

“You sound very certain.”

“I am.”

Amber smiled with a bittersweet beauty that was haunting. She knew that Duncan wouldn’t take her unless he remembered his past.

And if he did remember, she was afraid he wouldn’t have her at all.

Enemy and soul mate.

“I wonder if prophecies can be so neatly divided and thereby neutralized,” Erik muttered. “Or if it even matters.”

“You speak in circles,” Amber said.

“Both of you,” said Duncan.

The other two ignored him.

“Death always flows,” Erik said. “Rich life is always a possibility. Remember that, Amber, when you are offered a choice between a rock and a hard place.”

With that enigmatic advice, Erik turned away to face the knights who were riding up alongside him.

Silently Duncan watched while greetings were exchanged among Sir Erik’s knights. Three of the men he looked at briefly but without great curiosity.

The fourth man was different. Duncan stared at him intently, feeling almost certain that he had met the knight before. Almost certain, but not quite.

He would have questioned the knight, but a stark sense of danger sealed Duncan’s lips. It was the second time since the Holy Land that Duncan had felt such a warning deep within himself.

Duncan couldn’t remember what the other time had been, but he knew that it had occurred.

If the fourth knight recognized Duncan, he didn’t show it. In fact, other than an incisive glance from eyes like black crystal, the knight had shown little interest in Duncan at all.

Duncan couldn’t say the same. He kept staring at the knight’s features half revealed beneath his helm. The blond hair and high, sharply carved cheekbones plucked at chords of memories within Duncan.

Candles and voices chanting.

A sword unsheathed.

No, not a sword. Something else.

Something living.

A man?

Duncan shook his head fiercely, willing memory to stay rather than to slip back among the shadows.