Whenever Dillon was away, the wisewoman could more often than not be found in her chamber beneath the kitchen’s massive storerooms. Speculation ran rampant regarding what secrets might be found within its walls. Other than the lords of the castle, none had ever crossed its threshold and beheld the interior. A few, desperate for her healing skills, had garnered enough courage to knock upon her door. But they always kept their eyes averted, fearing a curse would befall them if they saw whatever sorcery she performed within.

Alyssa knew not if seeing her chamber would ease their fears or enhance them. ’Twas on the sparse side, with very little adornment of any kind. A single enormous tapestry woven by her mother garnished the wall that bordered the dungeon, which frequently lacked occupants. Dillon was neither unduly harsh nor exceptionally lenient when dealing with his people. If punishment was called for, he did not hesitate to exact it. The harsher the crime, the more severe the penalty that must be paid. And sometimes that necessitated imprisonment.

No sunlight touched her chamber. Only candlelight and the flickering flames of the hearth dispelled the gloom. Two wide floor-to-ceiling bookshelves packed with ancient tomes and scrolls divided the room in half. The farther half served as her sleeping chamber, boasting a modest wood-framed bed, a small table, and a trunk containing her clothing and a few keepsakes.

The closer served as a workroom that tended to terrify any who accidentally caught a glimpse of it. A small stool rested beside a long table, strangely organized in all of its bizarre clutter. Stoppered jars, containers, and packets of herbs vied for space on its surface. Bladders filled with strange liquid concoctions hung from the ceiling. Ropes and sticks and staffs of all widths and sizes clustered together in groups. Cauldrons fit for brewing any witch’s potion abounded. And, in one dark hidden corner, three cages housed her pets.

Standing at her worktable now, Alyssa measured out several herbs that, when mixed together and added to goat’s milk, would aid new mothers who were having difficulty nourishing their babes by stimulating healthier milk production. She had performed the task so often in the past that she could do so in her sleep. Which was fortunate, because she seemed to be having difficulty concentrating.

Her mind kept wandering, abandoning the actions of her hands.

Dillon wanted a wife.

A familiar tightness settled in her chest at the thought.

That he would marry eventually she had always known. He was the Earl of Westcott, a man of great power and wealth, friend to the king, with numerous properties and his title to bestow upon an heir. Though Dillon had professed many times that he would happily bequeath it all to his brother, he deserved more than to live out his life alone.

He was a good man. An extraordinary man.

Dillon may be reserved—if not gruff—with others, but he had let her see enough of his soul to know that he would make an excellent father, showering his daughters with love and affection, lavishing attention upon his sons and guiding them into becoming fine, honorable men.

But to get those sons and daughters, he must first take a wife. And Alyssa did not know if she could bear to watch him do so from the shadows.

“Healer!”

Starting violently at the sound of that frantic voice shouting through her door, she scattered powder across the table and knocked the remnants of the dried ginger root to the floor.

“Healer, please! ’Tis urgent!”

It must be, she thought, shaking off her morose thoughts. Naught else would prompt the superstitious people of the keep to seek her out whilst she reputedly practiced her dark arts.

Pulling the cowl up to shield her face and hair, she strode to the thick wooden door and yanked it open.

A boy, barely old enough to grow a beard, staggered back a step, breathing heavily.

Her heart stopped. Prickles of dread tickled her nape. ’Twas Marcus, Robert’s new squire, covered in sweat, grime, and dried blood.

“Speak quickly,” she hissed. If aught had happened to Robert…

“Lord Dillon has been wounded,” he blurted.

Shock rippled through her. “How badly?”

“Mortally, Wise One.”

Ice filled her lungs, choking off her breath.

Mortally.

Spinning around, she grabbed a cloth bag and started to rake bandages and assorted containers into it. “You will take me to him immediately. See that the fastest mount in my lord’s stables is readied for me at once—”

“Nay, Wise One. ’Tis too late for that.”

The bag slipped from her fingers. “What?” she asked faintly.

His voice softened with regret. “’Tis too late.”

Her knees buckled. Collapsing onto the stool beside her worktable, she stared blindly at the floor. Never had she known such despair.

Dillon dead? It could not be. Dillon could not be dead. She would have known it. She would have felt something. Why had she not felt something?

“They were ambushed,” Marcus said, daring to venture a step or two inside. “Sir Robert and I raced forward as soon as the first shout arose, but Lord Dillon had already been felled.”

Felled.

“Sir Robert said ’twas too well timed. They knew everything. They knew ’twas not Lord Dillon who left with the bulk of the troops. They knew how few of his guard accompanied him. When he left. What route he took. They knew everything. And he was their only target, Wise One. Had we not routed them out so swiftly, they would have melted back into the trees without engaging the rest of us.”

An awful numbness swept through her as she listened, paralyzing her, freezing her insides. She thought that if she were to attempt to move in that instant, her body would shatter into as many pieces as the broken jars in the cloth bag at her feet had when she had dropped it.

“Sir Robert was not injured?” she forced through stiff, unmoving lips.

“Nay, Wise One.”

“Had he any instructions for me?”

It cannot be true! It cannot be true! Please, do not let it be true!

“He said Lord Dillon was betrayed, Seer. By someone amongst his own, someone with access to my lord’s movements and strategies. Only one of the men who attacked him still lives and he will soon be locked in the dungeon.”

Hope stirring, she leapt to her feet. “Lord Dillon and Sir Robert are here?”

“Nay. Sir Robert sent several of us onward whilst he obtained a cart in which to transport Lord Dillon’s b—” He broke off, swallowed. “In which to bring Lord Dillon home. He wanted me to deliver his message with all due haste, so I rode ahead with the others. He asks you to ferret out the man who betrayed him.”

Robert was bringing Dillon’s body home in a cart.

It was true then. Dillon was beyond her reach. He was gone.

Dillon was dead. Dillon was dead. Dillon was dead.

The litany in her mind blocked out all else. She could hear naught. She could see naught. She could feel naught. Except the yawning chasm his loss spawned inside her.

It could not be true. How could it be true?

For seven years now, every day of her life had been greeted with a dual purpose—to use all of the powers at her disposal to keep Dillon safe and to serve him in any way he desired. She had begun as his advisor and gradually progressed to his friend and confidant. Though he had been somewhat hesitant to trust her in the beginning, he had rapidly come to rely upon her. He had needed her.

As she had needed him, had he but realized it.

“Come closer,” she ordered, her voice hoarse from struggling past the lump in her throat.

Eyes widening, Marcus inched a few steps nearer. He jumped when her hand shot out and grasped his arm.

Unease. Sadness. Concern for Robert.

No hint at all of deception.

Shaken, Alyssa released him and watched mutely as he placed some distance between them.

Dillon truly was dead. He was lost to her.

A future without him stretched before her, empty and frightening. What would she do? What reason would she find for rising from her bed each morning? What would drive her to brave the superstitious mutterings, the surreptitious self-crossings, the fear-filled glances that tormented her so?

The answer came in the form of a single word, slinking insidiously through her mournful thoughts.

Revenge.

Ah, yes. Revenge.

Renewed purpose spread through her limbs, solidifying within her and silencing the screams of denial that clamored for release.

She would do it for Dillon. Avenge his death. Every man, no matter how obscure his involvement, who had been part of Dillon’s downfall would pay for it with his life. She would see to it personally. However long it took. She would not let this crime go unpunished.

Fury greater than any she had heretofore experienced flooded her veins, its fiery heat replacing the terrifying cold as she rose.

“Go,” she ordered the youth still huddled inside her door.

Marcus did not hesitate to obey her.

Retrieving two cloth bags, Alyssa headed for the cages hidden in the farthest corner of her workroom. Next, she retrieved a wicked-looking dagger that was older than the building that housed her.

She would have her answers.

She would have her revenge.

* * *

The taunts and threats of three guards greeted her as Alyssa entered the dungeon via a secret passage, seeming to magically appear within their midst. Both the guards and the prisoner gasped and fell into silence, their hard faces filling with unease.

The small dungeon boasted two cells. One bore four damp stone walls and a thick, wooden door. The second had three walls of stone and one constructed of bars spaced a hand’s breadth apart. ’Twas in this one the transgressor had been placed.

“Tie his wrists to the bars.”

Without delay, one of the guards shoved a burly arm through the iron and grasped the man’s tunic before he could back away. The other two bound his wrists tightly several feet apart so that his body nigh touched the metal.

Their task finished, they stepped back in tandem and awaited further instructions.

“Leave us.” Alyssa’s gaze remained on the prisoner, who regarded her with some alarm.

The guards appeared even more eager than Robert’s squire had been to leave her presence, their speculative murmurs cut off by the rumbling of the heavy oak door closing behind them.

“So,” she said, coldly conversational, “you attacked the Earl of Westcott and survived whilst the rest of your accomplices were cut down.”

He curled his fingers nervously around the bars that separated them.

“You shall soon wish you had not.”

“I do not fear you,” he blustered in a pitiful attempt at bravery.

She could see that rumors of her gifts had reached him and took satisfaction in the fear they inspired. “Fear not. We have time to remedy that.”

He remained silent.

“Who is your spy within this keep?”

He laughed, regaining a portion of his flagging courage. Apparently he believed his misbegotten knowledge gave him the upper hand. “I will die ere I tell you aught. What think you of that, Witch?”

She tilted her head to one side. “Methinks you shall pray for death ere I have finished with you. But I shall not give in to your wishes until the betrayer’s name has crossed your blood-frothed lips.”

Knowing there was more than one way to gain the information she sought, she upended one of the bags she hid beneath her robe and fought the urge to recoil as furry bodies tumbled down her legs.

The front of her robe shivered as though disturbed by a breeze, drawing the prisoner’s yellow gaze. He gasped when the hem twitched and shifted as a dozen plump rats skittered out from underneath it, racing toward him, joining him in his cage. Though he hopped from foot to foot and danced away from them as much as the ropes binding his wrists would allow, several found purchase in his hose and began making their way up his legs.

Alyssa had doubted her grandmother’s assurances that training rats to do such could be used either to frighten away anyone brazen enough to enter her chamber without her permission or to elicit information from miscreants without applying a blade and using torture.

She should not have. The prisoner grew more frantic the closer the rats came to his groin.

“Give me the name,” she prodded between his ghastly screeches.

“Get them off! Get them off me!”

“You will not tell me?”

Not answering, he flung his body against the bars several times in an effort to jostle the creatures and shake them off before they reached their destination.

“Very well.” She upended the other bag she concealed. Weight plopped down on her feet. Her robe shimmered again.

Then two hungry snakes large enough to give any man pause slipped from beneath its hem and slithered up after the rats.

The prisoner knew not that the snakes’ only interest lay in dining upon the rats. He saw the rodents and serpents heading toward his groin, coupled them with the rumors of Alyssa’s sorcery, and drew his own conclusions.

Very dark conclusions, she thought with some satisfaction, were she to judge by his screams.

The howls and agonized cries of the prisoner echoed up to the great hall for a quarter of an hour or more, growing steadily more frantic and hoarse until they abruptly halted. The knights and men-at-arms taking their evening meal—most of the women having exited upon hearing the first screams—heaved a collective sigh of relief as blessed silence embraced them.

“She must have finally killed the cursed whoreson,” one man speculated.

“Put him out of his misery,” a second agreed.

“Never heard cries so filled with terror as those were,” another commented. “And I have fought in many a bloody battle.”

Several men nodded.

“How do you suppose she tortured him?”

An older man shook his head solemnly. “With those unholy powers of hers… I only pray she will never have reason to turn them against me.”

The talk continued, each and every man oblivious to her presence. Alyssa stood in the dimness of the stairwell, listening as they competed to see who could guess the most gruesome tactics she may have employed on her deceased lord’s behalf.

Making no sound to alert them, she cautiously entered and circumvented the great hall so she could approach the table from the opposite side.

All of her attention remained centered upon one man.

He spoke in a gravelly voice and possessed few of the manners the other knights exhibited. Oily brown hair and a day or two’s growth of beard marred a handsome face that still managed to attract women willing to brave his stench. A great hulk of a soldier, he was one of Dillon’s personal guard and had ridden out by his side early this morn, laughing and talking with him as though they were the best of friends.

And all the while deceit had driven him.

Her eyes narrowed as she made her move.

By the time the men around the table glimpsed her, ’twas too late. The point of Alyssa’s dagger already rested against her target’s throat just beneath his left ear.

When her intended victim would have drawn his sword, she applied just enough pressure to elicit a single drop of blood.

All movement in the hall ceased. The knights, the men-at-arms, the servants… everyone froze. Even the hounds that foraged for scraps beneath the table went still, emitting periodic whines.

“What means this, Wise One?” Baldwin, the eldest of the soldiers across from her, questioned hesitantly.

Her focus did not stray from the man glaring up at her, though her cowl showed him only darkness. “On whose orders did you act?” she hissed, placing her empty hand on his shoulder to see the truth of his response.

“All here know I follow Lord Dillon’s orders,” he gritted, his face full of malevolence.

Very slowly, Alyssa dragged the blade across his neck to his right ear, leaving a raw red mark in its wake. “On whose orders did you betray my lord?” she repeated evenly.

Baldwin stood as her meaning sank in. “’Twas you, Gavin? You are the one who—?”

“Nay!” he exclaimed. “The witch lies!”

Her blade retraced its path to his left ear, dipping a little deeper, drawing blood this time.

He stiffened, beads of sweat popping up on his forehead.

“I ask you again. Whose orders did you follow?”

His eyes darted to the men around them. “Will you do naught but stand and stare? She is mad, I tell you! Take her!”

They moved restlessly, glancing at each other, then at the seer. All were wary of her sorcery. All were loyal to Lord Dillon. Most of the eyes that returned to him filled with contempt.

A sneer twisted Gavin’s lips… until the blade followed the shallow trench back to his right ear.

“You are running out of time.”

Swallowing jerkily, eyes rolling nervously, he finally bit out a name. “Sir Robert.” Someone gasped. “’Twas Sir Robert. He covets his brother’s land and wealth.”

“You lie.”

He whimpered when the blade moved yet again across his throat. Warm blood now trailed down to soak his collar.

“Answer me truly this time or your life will be forfeit,” she lied. She would leave this man’s fate up to Robert, confident that he would avenge his brother’s murder in a manner that would satisfy them both.

Whatever bravado Gavin had managed to maintain left him in a rush. “’Twas Lord Camden of Pinehurst!”

“Why?”

“He will not relinquish his land and title and thought to buy himself time enough to get back in the king’s good graces.”

“The king is not a fool. He would know him for the knave he is.”

“Camden plans to blame the thieves who attacked Sir Robert. The same thieves, he will say, absconded with the money he owes in delinquent taxes and killed Lord Dillon.”

“Thieves do not assassinate, then withdraw without collecting the booty.”

“They did not expect Sir Robert to be there and panicked when they heard his battle cry.”

“You speak the truth?” she persisted, although her gift had already confirmed it. She wanted to be certain those seated and standing around the table were left with no doubts.

“Aye! I swear it! ’Tis the truth!”

“Very well.”

His shoulders wilted with relief.

“Surely you do not think your admission absolves you of your guilt,” she stated coldly. “Lord Robert no doubt will kill you upon his return. You have merely earned yourself a brief stay of execution.”

Withdrawing her blade, she turned to leave, trusting Dillon’s men to see to the beast’s incarceration.

A slender knight moved out of her path, then looked over her shoulder. His eyes widened.

Alyssa spun around.

Gavin loomed over her, one arm raised high, a dagger clenched in his fist.

Fear pummeling her, Alyssa reacted without thought.

Her blade sank deep into Gavin’s slick throat before he could drive his own down into her flesh.

His eyes bulged and flew to her hood.

Alyssa’s heart pounded in her chest as the moment stretched.

The men at the table jumped when she abruptly jerked her blade back, liberating Gavin’s blood. His fist slackened, dropping the dagger with which he had meant to impale her as he fell back onto the table.

“Do with him what you will,” she instructed, struggling to keep her elderly wisewoman voice steady so none would guess how shaken she was.

Turning, she exited the hall, her carriage painstakingly correct. The violent trembling of her legs went unseen beneath the many folds of her robe, the rapid thumping of her heart unheard in the hush that followed her down to her chamber. Closing the door silently behind her, she took two steps and halted. The ancient, blood-soaked dagger fell from now nerveless fingers, hitting the floor with a clatter and splattering small, crimson droplets in its wake.

She had slain Sir Gavin.

A hairline fracture formed in the ice that filled her, lengthening in both directions, branching out, growing, allowing pain to seep in through the cracks.

“A life for a life,” she murmured hoarsely and sank to her knees. At last her grief found its release in tears that erupted from her in harsh, rending sobs. “Forgive me, Dillon.”

Robert burst through the door he had never before even dared knock upon and tripped over a figure kneeling on the floor. “Umph!” Sprawled facedown, he rolled to his back and propped himself up on his hands to view the damage.

The wisewoman crouched amongst the rushes, her arms wrapped around knees drawn up to her chest, her unseen forehead resting upon them.

“Healer! Forgive me. I did not see you there.”

She made a slight gesture with one hidden hand. “Please leave me, Robert.”

Hearing the odd catch in her speech, he rose to his knees and scooted closer to her. “Are you hurt? Did I injure you?”

“Nay,” she said, her voice a bit stronger. “Please, go.”

“Go!” He scowled and pushed himself to his feet. “I have no time for this. We must—”

“I have already located and dispatched the spy, as well as identified the man who filled his pockets. What more could you ask of me?”

Fury flooded him. “How can you ask that? My brother lies in his bed. Why are you not by his side?”

“To what purpose?” she demanded, her voice full of resentment as her body unfolded and rose. “Your brother is dead. My powers do not extend to resurrection.”

“Unless he expires as we speak, my brother still fights for his life!”

“Dillon lives?” she breathed, falling back a step. “Marcus said…”

Understanding struck. “’Twas Gideon! Damned useless whelp!”

“Dillon’s squire?”

“Aye. ’Twas chaos. And the boy refused to leave Dillon’s side to carry my message to you, so I had him send Marcus in his stead. I told Gideon ’twas not too late, but all he saw was the blood. He was inconsolable. He must have told Marcus… Wise One, Dillon is not dead. But he soon will be do you not—”

He broke off when she spun around and fled the room. “Your herbs!” he shouted after her to no avail. He had not realized a woman her age could move so swiftly.

Not knowing what she would need, he grabbed a nearby basket, swept a number of containers into it, and took off after her.

* * *

More than one servant shrieked as the wisewoman raced past, her black robes fluttering above and behind her like demon wings. Up the stairs and into the solar she flew, desperate to confirm Robert’s words.

As long as he draws breath, there is hope. As long as he draws breath, there is hope, she chanted silently. She had healed harsh wounds on Dillon’s large, muscled body before and would eagerly do so again.

She tore through the doorway, his name upon her lips, and felt her stomach sink. Robert had warned her that there was a great deal of blood. Nevertheless, her first glimpse of Dillon devastated.

Skidding to a halt beside the bed, she stared down at him in horror. She had expected a sword thrust, a puncture, a gaping slash mayhap deep enough to expose bone beneath the muscle. Instead, not one, but three quarrels protruded from his body.

The shafts had been broken, allowing his surcoat, hauberk, gambeson, and chausses to be carefully removed, leaving him in his hose, braies, and linen undershirt—all a sticky ruby red. Cloths had been stuffed into the ragged holes the quarrels had carved. There was some evidence of the herbs she had given Robert before he had left to join Dillon, but the outpouring of blood had washed away most of them.

The quarrel in Dillon’s right shoulder did not concern her greatly. She extended a hand over the one in his right side just above his waist and confirmed that it, too, had damaged naught vital. But she did not need her gift to tell her that the remaining one had.

It had struck Dillon in the chest. He could only take tiny, gasping breaths. And she could hear fluid rattling around inside him with each. Crimson liquid pooled on his lips and forged paths down both stubbled cheeks. With shaking fingers, she reached out and turned his head to the side so he would not choke on it, then felt for the pulse in his throat. Almost indiscernible, it weakened rapidly as the internal devastation took its toll.

Alyssa bit her lip, suppressing a sob as sorrow pressed down upon her, crushing the hope that had so fleetingly flared to life.

Naught had changed. Dillon was no less lost to her now than he had been only minutes earlier when she had believed him dead. With wounds such as these, he would perish did she not heal him with her hands. And once she did, she would never look upon his cherished face again. She could not heal so severe an injury as the one in his chest without surrendering her own life. But she would not hesitate to do so. For him.

Tears once more overflowed her lashes as she let her fingers trace the scar on his eyebrow, then follow a path down his temple, along his rugged jaw to the one on his chin. If only he would open his eyes and speak to her. Let her hear the deep rumble of his voice one last time. Let her pour out the words that had been bottled up inside her for so long ere they were forever separated.

Leaning forward, Alyssa pressed trembling lips to his in a brief kiss that expressed but a fraction of what she felt for him, then rested her warm, damp cheek against his.

“Good-bye, Dillon,” she uttered brokenly, knowing what she must do. “I love you.”

Robert sprinted into the room. “Does he still live?”

The healer seemed to be listening for Dillon’s breath. “Aye.”

Stepping up to the opposite side of the bed, he thrust the basket toward her. “Your herbs.”

“There is not time. Set them aside.”

Scowling, he did as she directed, then watched as she climbed onto the bed and knelt beside his brother’s motionless form. Dillon had been conscious for a few precious moments after they had cautiously loaded him into the cart, and the black-robed figure bending over him was the one he had repeatedly asked for. He had called out every name he had ever given her—Wise One, Seer, Healer, Soothsayer, Sorceress (a title he only used when she vexed him), Wisewoman—as if by doing so he could make her miraculously appear at his side.

Well, she was there now, swiftly cutting away his clothing and tossing it to the floor. Robert prayed she was not too late, for the faint gray hue his brother’s skin had acquired terrified him.

“As quickly as you can, I want you to pull the quarrel from his chest and stand clear,” she ordered.

“Would it not be better to push it through to—?”

“Your brother will die in the time ’twill take me to explain! Just do as I ask! Now!” she shouted in a voice so loud and clear that it shocked him into obeying. Wrapping fingers that trembled around what remained of the shaft at the quarrel’s base, he yanked it out.

The healer slammed both hands down over the ragged hole. Robert caught a glimpse of blood inundating age-spotted skin before the sleeves of her robe slipped down to hide her from his view.

Still holding the warm, slick quarrel, he moved back a step, then another, to give her whatever room she needed and hoped that every rumor he had heard about the depth of her sorcery was true.

She kept her arms as stiff and straight as a sword’s blade, applying pressure as she infused Dillon with that strange tingling heat Robert had felt when she had healed his thigh. The cowl of her robe masked her features. Though she had always remained silent in the past when healing, a faint murmuring met his ears. Words indecipherable.

Soon, an opalescent glow unlike aught he had ever seen began to seep from beneath those sleeves. Swallowing hard, Robert retreated another step and continued to watch with wide, disbelieving eyes.

Minutes passed, lengthening until hours seemed to pass instead. The glow grew brighter. He imagined he could feel the heat himself from where he stood.

At last, the murmuring ceased. The light faded to nothingness. Those thin, straight arms bent. The healer swayed, slowly sliding her hands off the wound. Only a pale pink, puckered scar remained beneath rapidly drying blood.

Sweet relief rushed through Robert. Dillon’s breathing was now slow and easy.

“Come forward…, Robert,” the healer summoned.

His head jerked toward her. Dillon’s breath may have eased, but the wisewoman’s had grown ragged.

Dropping the quarrel he had forgotten he held, he approached the bed. “Wise One, are you—?”

“Remove… the last two quarrels.”

As much as he loved his brother and wanted Dillon’s suffering to end, he hesitated. “Should you not rest ere you—?”

“There is no time,” she gritted. A guttural cough racked her body. “He has lost… too much blood. Blood I cannot… replace. I must heal the remaining wounds now… ere he loses more.”

Uneasy, Robert leaned forward, grasped the quarrels, and pulled them out—gently this time, since panic no longer rode him so rigorously.

The healer’s hands slipped forward to cover the wounds. “Place your hands… over mine,” she instructed haltingly.

He dropped the quarrels and stared down at her hands in confusion. Surprisingly small, they were sticky with congealing blood where the robe did not conceal them. “I do not understand.”

“Cover… my hands with your own. Hold them fast… against the wounds. Do not allow me… to release him.”

His gaze swinging to the hood, Robert wiped his moist, bloody hands on his tunic. She was too weak. ’Twas why she asked for his help. She could not even trust herself to maintain her hold.

His hands clenched into fists, everything within him telling him he should refuse her. Dillon would want him to, fearing the healing would tax her too greatly. But she was a sorceress, was she not? Healings had never harmed her in the past. He had witnessed too many to believe otherwise.

“Robert.”

If this one taxed her overly or harmed her in some way, Robert vowed he would be her servant until she fully recovered. His brother’s life was worth the risk.

“Now, Robert.”

Tentatively, he placed his much larger hands atop hers.

“Harder.”

Sweat began to bead on his brow as he increased the pressure. Her hands felt so fragile—almost childlike—beneath his that he feared crushing them.

Seconds passed.

A slow heat began to build beneath his rough palms. At first, ’twas like the welcome warmth of the sun. It proceeded to intensify, however, and soon grew uncomfortable, as though he held his hand above a candle flame. A dim glow seeped up between his fingers, much as blood had through the healer’s when she had first covered the wounds. He stared, awed, as the light grew in strength.

Chanting accompanied the marvelous illumination, barely audible, as though lips moved, but breath did not pass them.

So intent was Robert on his hands and the action taking place beneath them that he almost cried out when his brother sighed.

“Dillon?” Robert said.

The light flickered, then vanished. The chanting concluded. The hands beneath his grew cold.

“Is it… Are you finished?” he asked her uncertainly.

The healer nodded, shoulders slumped, head drooping.

“I should release you then?”

“Aye,” she wheezed.

He did so. Straightening, he rolled his shoulders to ease the stiffness in them.

A sinking feeling hit his stomach when he heard her increasingly burdened breath.

She did not even try to straighten. Withdrawing her hands, the wisewoman sagged sideways.

Robert lunged forward across Dillon in an attempt to catch her. But she fell so swiftly his fingers barely grazed the hem of her robe.

“Umph! What the hell?” Dillon’s drowsy voice uttered. “Robert? Get off me. What are you doing?”

Wincing with dismay, Robert rapidly reversed directions and removed himself from his brother’s newly healed chest. “Dillon?”

“Are you surprised ’tis me?” he countered dryly. “’Tis my chamber, is it not?”

“I am not surprised ’tis you,” he denied, so grateful to hear his brother’s voice that tears burned the backs of his eyes as he hastened around the foot of the bed. “I am surprised you are talking and breathing as if you have not just escaped death by a hair’s breadth.”

Dillon frowned. What was Robert talking about? And why did he look as if he were struggling not to weep?

Dillon glanced around the room.

What was he doing at Westcott? In bed? Had he not ridden for Pinehurst?

“What happened? Why am I so sluggish? Did you talk me out of leaving and drink me under the table again?”

A watery chuckle burst forth from Robert’s lips as he halted on the other side of the bed and knelt. “Do you not remember?” he managed to ask.

“Remember what?” Dillon demanded. Every muscle in his body felt weighted down, as if he were wearing a full suit of armor. Taking a deep breath, he shoved himself up onto his elbows.

His head swam. The chamber dipped and swayed. And it took a moment for him to focus clearly again.

When he could, he glanced down. His heart stopped, then resumed beating much more urgently, pounding in his ears.

His body was bare, his torso sticky with congealing blood. A hasty exploration with one hand sent shivers dancing through his limbs. Three wounds. One in the side. One in the shoulder. One practically covering his heart.

By all rights, he should be dead.

“You were ambushed,” Robert explained as he leaned over something on the floor, “and took three quarrels.”

Dillon only half listened. The wounds were healed. All three of them. Something he had not believed the healer capable of accomplishing. “Where is she?”

“She collapsed.”

Dillon bolted into a sitting position as Robert lifted a small figure swathed in black into his arms. “What?”

“Only seconds ere you woke.” He rose, then hesitated, brow furrowing with uncertainty.

Throwing back the covers, Dillon scooted over to make room. “Place her here beside me.”

Gingerly, Robert complied.

“Careful!” Dillon snapped, wishing he had sufficient strength to perform the task himself. Instead, he busied himself with placing a pillow beneath her hooded head, wondering if she would view his imminent removal of that hood as a betrayal of her trust.

“Dillon…”

Dragging his attention away, he looked up at his brother and froze. Terror filled him.

The front of Robert’s tunic, his sleeves, and his hands glistened with fresh blood. Their eyes met, then flew to the wisewoman.

“Nay.” Tremors coursed through Dillon’s hands as he reached for the front of the healer’s robe. He knew deep within his heart what it concealed. “Please,” he whispered.

Bunching the material up in both hands, he rent her shroud from neck to hem.