ROWAN PACED AROUND the small room at the back of the stables as she watched Taran pack his neatly bundled clothes into his saddlebag. Tonight, he and the rest of the Skaraven would be water-sliding off to the McAra stronghold to do the epic bait and switch. She also knew Taran would expect her to wave her handkerchief at him and say Have a nice battle honey or Gallop carefully or Try not to get yourself run through. That’s what a fourteenth century woman was supposed to do. Be helpless. Shut up and let the men handle things. Stay home and keep the hearth fires burning. Knit something while she waited for the conquering heroes to return.

She was so over the medieval woman thing.

“You don’t understand. She’s my sister, and I love her, but she’s an idiot. If there’s a way to walk out of that castle and right into Hendry and Murdina’s clutches, Perrin will find it. She’ll dance her way into it. Plus, it’s my fault she’s there, okay? I’ve been so wrapped up in this”—Rowan gestured between them—“whatever this is, that I forgot about her. I forgot about my own damn sister, Taran. For God’s sake, I have to go.”

He tied the flap of his bag and repeated the same answer as the last dozen times she’d asked.

“You cannae.”

“I could go in disguise, dress up as one of the clan.” Most of his clothes fit her. She knew because she kept borrowing them, just so she could smell him on her. “I’ll put on a big hooded cloak and stay in the back, behind Ru. Brennus will never know–”

“I’ll ken.” As the first rays of sunlight filtered in from the high windows he bent and blew out the lanterns. The light made his hair look like gilded snow. “Perrin shall be kept safe, lass. I vow it.”

“Really. Just when will you have time for the safe-keeping? While you’re galloping around ambushing giants, or fighting them off as one of the McAra’s fake house guards?” Rowan followed him out into the stables. “You can’t ditch me here. If you do, I’ll follow you.”

He stopped and looked at her, his brows arched. When he wasn’t talking, which was pretty much twenty-three and a half hours a day, he sent messages by eyebrow: up, down, pulled together, slanted, the works. Rowan was gradually learning to interpret them all. This one practically shouted Like you could.

She kicked some straw at him. “I can swim. In high school I finished the eight-hundred-meter free style in under ten minutes. I have all kinds of talents you don’t know about, pal. I’m not afraid to use them.”

His hair feathered around his face as he shook his head and took down a bridle. “To reach the midlands you’d have to swim under the ice of frozen rivers and lochs. And ’twill take three days, no’ ten minutes.”

Rowan knew she had to bring out the big guns: her druid blood. It sometimes proved rather handy, especially when she needed to make a plausible threat.

“Then I could go by sacred grove, and beat you there.”

That got his attention. “You wouldnae.”

As unreliable as the portals had been she’d likely end up treading lava in some prehistoric volcano, but that was why it made an excellent threat: it was a scary one.

“Druid kind,” she said, patting herself. “Portals adore me, unlike some people.”

Taran dropped his bridle and came to her, but he didn’t touch her. Touching, they’d discovered, often made them forget anyone and anything else existed, sometimes for hours. It seemed crazy and yet perfectly natural, but it always made it impossible to get any work done. Rowan felt reasonably sure that when they finally got past first base the known universe would collapse—and they probably still wouldn’t notice.

“’Tis far too dangerous.” His beautiful eyes looked down into hers. “I’ll have your word that you willnae use the portal.”

That was her other big problem. Rowan had a very hard time refusing Taran anything. Since the day he’d found her in the hayloft she did whatever he wanted, most of the time without thinking about it. She hadn’t yet figured out why but it only affected her. She hadn’t ruled out magic, but didn’t have someone to ask.

You cannae tell anyone of how we are together. I dinnae wish you to ask the shaman about us. You cannae go and save your sister.

“I hate you,” she told him now, although that was complete B.S. She’d have happily become his slave and grovel at his feet for the rest of her life. She knew he had beautiful feet. She wanted to kiss them, and then do explicit, X-rated things with them.

“Step away before I attack your toes. Don’t ask me to explain that, either.”

His mouth hitched. “First give me your word.”

Sighing, Rowan gave it to him.

Taran didn’t move away. He lifted his hand so that it hovered a half-inch away from her cheek. Close enough for her to feel his body heat without triggering their insane mutual attraction and subsequent oblivion.

“Look at me,” he urged, his voice dropping to a murmur. When she did he took in a quick breath.

“I still hate you,” Rowan muttered but felt glad that he wasn’t all eyebrows and no action. She also found it reassuring that this thing between them scared the hell out of him, too. “What, you want to spend another hour staring at me?”

“I must ride so I willnae.” He moved his hand so that his body heat whispered across her lips. “I wouldnae leave you again, Rowan.”

“You never leave me.”

Since the first whoa-hello-there they’d worked together, eaten together, and even slept together, sort of, in the hayloft. Taran insisted on keeping a couple of respectability bales between their bed rolls, like they were Amish. The only reason she went into the stronghold anymore was because he had. That realization shook her down to her boots.

“We have to tell someone about us,” she tried again. “The shaman. He’d know if it was some weird druid spell I accidentally cast on myself, right?”

His mouth tightened. “No’ yet, lass.”

He dropped his hand, picked up the bridle and went to get his stallion. Rowan stood watching him mount the huge white horse and ride out, and then noticed the rest of the horses were watching as well.

“God, we’re pathetic.” One of the mares snorted, blowing her hair in her face. “Yeah, yeah, I am but you aren’t.”

Rowan paced back to the rack room. She had to do something besides worry about Perrin, ache in the heart region, and sweat over what the hell was happening to her. The splitting maul caught her eye and she picked it up. Kanyth had forged the heavy iron ax-head for her, but she’d carved the sturdy handle herself out of long-grained ash. Basically, a sledge hammer honed on one side to a razor-sharp edge, the maul bit through even the toughest hardwoods.

She doubted it would even dent Taran’s stubborn ass.

In the back of the stables sat Rowan’s pile of daily frustration relief, a heap of logs the gatherers had dragged back there to be chopped for firewood. One of them, a huge oak, had a tell-tale black streak and missing strips of bark along the side. It ended in a jagged break, confirming her suspicions. Lightning had struck the tree, blown off its top, and killed it.

“You guys are so tall and hold so much moisture you’re nothing but great big lightning rods,” she muttered as she used the maul and her boot to roll the oak away from the pile. “Hope you weren’t the sacred variety. I apologize in advance if you were.”

Dragging out some other, smaller pieces beside it, Rowan paused to swing her arms and warm up. As she did she noticed the oak’s shape, like that of a torso and head. Though she’d never considered herself an artist, on a whim she started to carve.

Hefting the maul, she got a firm grip on the handle and raised it high, bringing it down to notch the oak just above the head shape. Back in the good old twenty-first century it would have taken her a half-hour to cut the log in two, but in Medieval World she had her druid ability over wood to add to the mix. After making the first cut she slapped her hand on the trunk, and the oak split apart.

“Good wood,” she said, patting it.

She notched out a neck, and then switched to the hand hatchet she used to trim away small branches. Using short, fussy cuts, she chopped out a rudimentary face on the surface of the oak head, and then spread her hand over the jagged features. Once she’d smoothed out the face, she used her gift to fuse some smaller logs to the oak, and then refined them into arms and legs.

“Well, hello there,” Rowan muttered as she stood and surveyed her creation. The sunlight pouring down over the wood gave it an odd yellowish glow. But the form was instantly recognizable: Taran. “You do look just like him.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I’ve made myself a life-size Taran doll. Next, I’ll lose my mind completely. Or have sex with it. No. Splinters. Bad idea.”

“Rowan.”

Her eyes flew open to see her wooden creation staring up at her. She backed away from the oak, stumbling and falling on her backside as it used its arms to push itself up from the ground. She scrambled to her feet, turning to run.

“Rowan, dinnae leave me again.”

She froze as she recognized the voice this time, and glanced over her shoulder. “Ochd?”

The famhair shuffled toward her, nodding with Taran’s head and smiling with his mouth.

“Hendry destroyed my body.” He looked down at himself. “You made me anew.”

Turning around to face the giant, Rowan watched as his body refined itself, becoming more and more humanoid. They stood not three hundred yards away from the entrance to the Skaraven’s stronghold. She could scream and dozens of huge, sword-swinging warriors would come running.

Only she wasn’t going to scream, not yet. Ochd had been the one famhair who had treated her decently. In a bizarre way he’d tried to be a friend.

“How did you find me?” she finally asked.

“You came in my dreams. While I waited, trapped in the dead place.” Light shimmered over his head, adding flesh tones to the features and sprouting long, hair-thin grains that turned as dark brown as his flat eyes. “When Hendry freed me, I searched until I felt you.” He touched his chest. “Here.” He gestured around them. “And here.”

To listen to Ochd’s grating voice come out of Taran’s face made Rowan swallow bile. “What do you want?”

“Naught but to serve you.” The giant went down on one knee. “I give my love and loyalty to you alone, my lady.”