Cora’s eyes snapped open in the near-pitch darkness of the room that had been so comforting and safe only a few hours before. The fire had burned down and all she could see were the embers, reflected dimly across the stones. Cold stone. Damp air. Her whole body was shaking and she opened her mouth to scream before she realized she was already screaming, still screaming, had perhaps been screaming since the flames claimed her body, if not earlier than that, if not when the man had struck her fractured jaw again and again and again and again —

It was not possible to conceptualize the experience as a dream. That was beyond her now. All that there was, was panic, fear, a huge surging wave of it. Any emotion she’d successfully suppressed in her life — a skill she’d prided herself on, once, self-control — was like a ripple in a duck pond. This was a tidal wave. This was a tsunami. This was apocalyptic, this was the end of things. Her mind circled and shrieked inside her skull like a caged bird beating itself bloody on the bars. All she knew was the desperate, keening need to get out, get out, get out, the desperate hope of freedom too acute to articulate in words or to allow yourself to think —

The blankets and quilts finally shook free of her body and it realized that running was an option that somehow, miraculously, it had been made whole — and she was up on her feet and running before she knew what was happening, dashing wildly through the dark, abandoned corridors of the castle. As she ran, she bit down hard on the screams that had continued to bubble up from the dark place beneath her lungs, though none of her terror had ebbed — to scream would be to be found, to be located, to be imprisoned again and hit and torn at…she dashed away the tears that were standing in her eyes and obscuring her vision, and on a panicked impulse burst through a door at complete random.

An empty chamber, thank God, a chamber with a pile of old chairs stacked haphazardly in the corner, but when she turned to slam the door shut her breath froze in her body because there was a man there, a man standing tall and broad and strong, a man with a stick of wood in his hand and all of the breath went out of her — no power left even to scream — here it came, here it was, she’d been a fool, so long she’d had to do away with herself and she’d squandered the opportunity and now he was going to make her regret every wasted instant, he was going to make her a prisoner of her tortured flesh again and —

“Cora?”

“Ian?” The word wrenched itself out of her mouth almost without permission. Cora became abruptly aware of what she must look like — hair and clothing askew, tears streaking her cheeks, hunkered in the dark like a caged animal about to strike at its tormentor in desperation and fear. She straightened her back, breath rushing back into her lungs, then staggered as the wild sprint through the castle caught up with her.

But Ian’s eyes weren’t on her — they were scanning the hallway outside, wildly, fingers clenched around the stick in his hand. A torch, she saw now, an unlit torch, not a truncheon like the wicked thing wielded by the men from before — she still couldn’t call it a dream, she couldn’t weaken the experience like that. If that was a dream then she was insane, and Cora Wilcox was not giving up on her sanity that easily.

“Who’s after ye? Have the walls been breached?”

She took another deep, steadying breath. “No. No. I was asleep. A — a vision. A memory. Something. I — God —” Her voice was shaking like a leaf in a storm and she felt the tears surge back to her eyes, hot and immediate.

“You put up that racket because of a dream?” he asked, disbelief strong in his voice. “You howled half the castle down, lassie. It’s a miracle you didn’t wake the whole keep and the village besides. It’s okay,” he said sharply, turning his head to address someone down the hallway. “Back to bed. Belay the alarm.”

Something about his voice — the tone of command — sent shivers crawling down her spine and she sobbed again, hating herself, hating the weakness of it but still the dream was so real, the men with their weapons, the way her soul had craved death so desperately that it hardly dared think of it —

She staggered, and would have fallen, but for Ian swooping in to support her. His arm was strong and reassuring around her waist and she leaned into him, abandoning all pretense that she had her wits about her. “Now then, lass,” he murmured into her ear, again and again, held her as she shook and sobbed, waited for the storm to pass. “Now then. Now, now.”

Eventually — and it was a long time — Cora began to come back to her senses a little. She discovered that Ian had gently eased them into a sitting position, and she was cradled in his arms. It would almost have been nice if her heart hadn’t been beating like a drum. She stiffened a little and he released her immediately, almost as though he felt guilty about holding her like that — she sat up, trying to gather her wits back about her.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Ian asked, his voice gentler than she’d ever heard it.

“Bellina,” she breathed, knowing before she even spoke that it was the truth. “I dreamed — I dreamed of Bellina. The end. Her death. They — they burned —” and there it was, the memory burning as vividly in her mind as if she’d experienced it herself, of the bones of her ribs cracking under high heat, the flesh peeling back from her bones as life itself left her body…

“Shh, lass, shhh —”

She realized that she’d started whimpering like a wounded animal again, and Ian had reached to her, pulled her against his broad chest again. She took a deep, steadying breath, and the scent of him filled her head and made her dizzy.

“That confirms it,” she murmured, eyes downcast. “I’m — her. I must be. I remember — I can remember, now. I can remember her. I remember being her.”

Ian looked at her for a long moment, his face almost impossible to make out in the gloom. Seemingly satisfied that she wasn’t going to lose her mind again, he stood, offering his hand to pull her to her feet as well.

“Come on, now. I think you could do with some fresh air.”

But instead of leading her to the courtyard, he pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked a door she’d assumed was an armory or storeroom or similar. At her look of confusion, he winked. “Donal got up here one too many times. We locked it for his poor mother’s peace of mind.”

The flights of stairs seemed to go on forever. Just when Cora was beginning to suspect Ian was trying to exhaust her body enough to send her unprotestingly back to bed, they came out on the battlements of the castle — and Cora gasped at the spectacular sight spread out before her. She ran to the very edge of the parapet, heedless of the height or the freezing wind that whipped her hair behind her, drinking the sight of the countryside in and letting it banish the hideous memory of the cell, and the dank corridors, and the courtyard through the flames…she could see only trees, farms, cultivated fields dotted across the natural beauty of the landscape. If she hadn’t believed she was back in time before, this removed all doubt — the village in the distance could never belong to her twenty-first century home. But it wasn’t the village she was staring at — it was the wild moors, stretching as far as her eye could see and further.

“Oh, Ian, this is beautiful,” she breathed.

He had moved up beside her, and she could see out of the corner of her eye that he was smiling too. “I come up here to think. It helps me get perspective on the crazy old world sometimes.”

The sky was gray, and the horizon was beginning to lighten. As she stood, the first sliver of orange appeared above the treeline as the sun began to rise. There was a strange noise distracting her from the majesty of the view — after a moment’s thought, she realized with a start that her teeth were chattering. She was freezing.

And gently, as though he’d been planning it all night, Ian wrapped her in the folds of the fabric that was draped around him — a kind of extension of the kilt he wore, in MacClaran colors. It was incredibly soft, and she let herself lean against his strong chest, warmed by the heat of his body. Her teeth stopped chattering almost immediately.

“Cora, I don’t know what to do about your dreams, or your connection to Bellina, or even how to get you home. But I know that you’ll figure it out. You’re an astonishing woman, Cora Wilcox. And if I can stand at your side and fight off your foes, it would be an honor.”

His heart was beating hard against her back and she could feel how deliberately still he was standing. The warmth of his body against hers — the beauty of the sunrise — the soft sensation of his breath ghosting across her ear…for once, she let herself stop thinking, stop planning, stop analyzing.

And as though it was the most natural thing in the world, she turned her head a little — and found his lips waiting to claim hers in a kiss that lasted as long as the sunrise.