Page 74 of Forbidden

“I want to ease you.”

“Breaking my vow won’t ease me.”

Amber took a deep, shaken breath. What she was going to do was dangerous, two parts of the bleak prophecy fulfilled. Yet she could not endure Duncan’s pain any longer, not when the means to banish it lay within her.

“I release you from your vow,” Amber whispered.

Duncan surged to his feet.

“Don’t tempt me, golden witch. I already wear the fragrance of your passion. ’Tis like breathing fire. I can’t take much more.”

The silence that followed Duncan’s words was filled by distant rustles and murmurs and eerie cries that swelled until they were a breaking wave of sound pouring across the fen. Air whistled through thousands upon thousands of wings as skeins of wild geese spiraled down, their bodies dark against the falling sun, their voices calling in autumnal urgency, crying of untimely winter.

Death will surely flow.

Death will surely.

Flow.

Death will.

Surely.

Amber put her hands over her ears to stop the sounds of a terrible prophecy coming true.

9

ERIKwaited for Duncan and Amber in a chair of riven oak whose seat was softened by a loose cushion. Despite luxurious wall hangings and a roaring fire in the central hearth, the great hall of Sea Home’s manor house was cold. Each time a violent gust of wind forced icy air through chinks in the manor’s thick timber walls, the tapestries stirred. Though the carved wooden screens were placed so as to turn the drafts from the manor’s main door, torch flames leaped and wavered when the door opened, as it just had.

The flames of the central fire bent and whipped in the draft. Their dance was reflected many times over in the eyes of the rough-coated wolfhounds that lay at Erik’s feet, in the peregrine’s unflinching glare from the perch behind the oak chair, in Erik’s own eyes…and in the ancient silver dagger that he was turning slowly in his hands.

A door bar thumped home as the main door was shut once more. Moments later the leaping flames shrank to their accustomed size. Sounds of hurrying footsteps accompanied the low urging of Alfred’s voice as Erik’s knight approached the great hall.

Without a word, Erik stared at the three people who had barely beaten moonrise back to the keep. Egbert looked sheepish. Amber appeared flushed with more than the cold wind that had sprung up. Duncan looked like what Amber had named him—a dark warrior.

In the silence that stretched and stretched, Erik watched the three people, ignoring Alfred entirely. In defiance of Erik’s usual good manners, he invited no one to sit on the chairs that had been dragged close to the fire for warmth and ease.

It was very clear to Amber that Erik was holding on to his temper by a bare thread.

“You seem to have brought winter with you,” he said.

Despite Erik’s nearly tangible anger, his tone was mild. The contrast between his voice and the dagger gleaming wickedly in his hands was alarming.

“The geese,” Amber said. “They have just come to Whispering Fen.”

The news did nothing to soften Erik’s expression. Yet his tone remained the same, calm to the point of flatness.

“Ahhhh. The geese,” Erik murmured. “Cassandra will be pleased.”

“By an early winter?” Duncan asked.

“It must be reassuring to have one’s every though turned to truth,” Erik said without looking away from Amber, “while mere mortals must depend upon such slender reeds as trust and honor.”

The blood left Amber’s face. She had known Erik for her entire life, yet she had never seen him quite like this. She had seen him angry, yes, for he had a volatile temper. She had even seen him in a cold fury.

But never with her.

And never this cold.