“I’m sorry,” he said.

She hesitated. “Does it matter to you? I can never give you a child.”

She was thinking of staying with him. Don’t read too much into it, he warned himself. They came from completely different worlds. She was a blueblood, and he was a fraud, with hardly anything to his name.

“There are sixteen adults in my family, all that remains of over fifty, and almost twenty children, most of them with one dead parent or both,” he told her. “I have many children to take care of. My worth isn’t tied to having one specifically my own.”

Charlotte sighed and caressed his cheek. Her finger traced his lips. “Funny, had you asked me that before I’d married Elvei, I would’ve told you the same thing. But somehow the quest to have a child became the most important thing in my life. I felt deficient. Almost as if I were somehow not female if I couldn’t conceive. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I realized that Elvei required a child so he could inherit the family estate. He was in competition with his younger brother, and he was trying to race to the finish line and produce a bouncing baby to claim his land, house, and leadership of the family with it.”

“He sounds like an idiot.” Who the hell would care about the lands and house when he had her?

Charlotte gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I was very naive. And my blinders were firmly in place. Elvei was always attentive. He came with me on some of my procedures. This journey toward getting a child was something we took together. It was a quest we had in common, and I thought it would bring us closer. Really, we were both at fault. He should’ve made his position clear before the wedding, and I shouldn’t have mistaken his courtesy and attention for love. I think it took a toll on him as well. He’d grown obsessive. We had to have sex in a specific position because someone had told him it was most likely to result in conception. He’d help me chart my ovulation. It was a kind of insanity that took over both of us. Looking back at it, all of that seems . . . creepy.”

Richard stared at her, speechless. Her husband was an ass. He wanted to find him and skin him alive. Saying it out loud, however, probably wasn’t the best strategy.

“In the end, when all options were exhausted, I came to him with the news. I had expected him to hug me and tell me it would all be fine and that he loved me anyway. He presented me with an annulment.”

Charlotte laughed bitterly. “My world had collapsed. I wanted to hurt him, and I almost did. I came this close.” She held her index finger and thumb a hair apart.

“What stopped you?” he asked.

“It was wrong,” she said simply. “I was a healer. I was meant to heal people, not to hurt them because they crushed my heart.”

And that’s why she would always be the ray of light in his darkness. He had to hold on to her. He couldn’t let her go. He had to not screw this up.

Charlotte closed her eyes. “We, the healers, have two sides to our power: one prolongs life, the other cuts it short. We’re conditioned to use only one. It’s repeated so often, you have it chiseled in your mind by the time you reach your teens: do no harm. Healing is hard work. You feel the magic leaving you. But doing harm is easy. You feel powerful and strong. It’s almost euphoric. You don’t realize how much magic you’ve spent until it’s gone, and you collapse dramatically and make a complete fool of yourself.”

“You may swoon as you wish. I’ll always be there to catch you.”

She laughed.

He grinned.

Charlotte turned on her side and looked at him. “Two things can happen when a healer stops being a healer. One, they drain themselves of all of their magic and die. And two . . .”

She hesitated.

“Two?” Richard prompted.

“They become a walking plague. They spend their magic, realize they require more, and began to feed on those around them, converting other lives into fuel for further killing. They cease to become human. The first time I killed, when I infected Voshak and his slavers, I wasn’t sure I had enough power to kill them all. So I fed on them. You have no idea how wonderful it felt.”

Her voice shook.

“You’re terrified of it,” he guessed. Alarm wailed in the back of his head. He was certain he read an article describing something very similar a few years back. The book claimed it was a death sentence to the magic user.

“Yes. Since then I haven’t done it. Once you start, the temptation to keep going is too strong. In the bookkeeper’s mansion, when I was near my limit, I felt you. I could sense your life force. It made me hungry.” She touched his face. “Are you scared?”

“No.” He wasn’t afraid of her; he was afraid for her.

She cleared her throat. Her voice was quiet. “Some people think they are better than others at what they do. I don’t think, I know. I’m the most powerful healer of my generation. I wouldn’t become a plaguebringer, I would unleash a pandemic on this world. I’d become a living death. I would rather spend all of my magic and die than kill thousands of people.”

She closed her eyes. “I shouldn’t have ever done it. You have to understand, back at the clearing I saw you in the cage, battered and bruised, and they were lounging about as if they were on some picnic. It made me so angry. Draining them seemed like the only way, and I did it. I knew the risks, I just didn’t realize how strong the pull of the magic is.”

“You were in shock,” he told her. “Trust me, I was there. I saw your face.”

“It’s not an excuse. A lot of healers disappear after a few years. I always thought it was because they burn out. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they succumb instead and have to be put down like rabid dogs.”

“Stop,” he said. “Don’t do this to yourself. You won’t be put down. I won’t let anyone touch you.”

“Richard, if I ever lose myself, you have to stop me.” Her lips touched his, warm and pliant, and he savored her taste. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but promise me.”

Something inside him went dead and cold at the thought. “I’ll take care of it.”

He would do it because she asked him. At the very least, he would try. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, wishing he could protect her from everything, wishing he could keep her safe. Men, creatures, beasts, he could end them. But how could one fight magic? He couldn’t cut it, he couldn’t kill it, and if it took Charlotte from him, there was nothing he could do about it.

She hugged him, sliding next to him. “Some twisted romance we have going here.”

He forced a smile. “I don’t know. It could be worse.”

“How?”

“We’re still fighting our war. We could simply give up.”

“We can’t give up,” she said. “If we did that, everything we have done until now would be for nothing.”

“Does it pull on you? Your magic?”

“It’s almost as if it has a life of its own. I picture it as a dark beast or a nest of snakes. Sometimes it sleeps, like now, perfectly content. And then I use it, and the beast awakens and scratches from the inside, trying to claw its way out.”

“I wish you had told me sooner.” He squeezed her closer and kissed her lips. She tasted so sweet. “I shouldn’t have asked you to kill the crew. I shouldn’t have let you get off that ship, period.”

“You don’t get to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.” She smiled.

“Yes, I do. You promised to obey me.”

She rolled over and climbed on him, her face full of mischief. “And if I disobey you, mighty Sir Richard, what shall you do?”

“I have no idea. I suppose I’ll growl in a ferocious, manly way.” He put his arms behind his head. Her hair spilled over her left breast. Her right was bare, a perfect, glorious breast tipped by a small dark nipple, almost pink against her soft, pale skin.

She was so beautiful. He was amazed she let him touch her. That he had her here with him was some sort of miracle of the universe.

“You’re ogling my breasts.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Of course.”

She leaned over him, her locks falling around them like a shimmering curtain. Her nipples brushed his chest, cool peaks against the heat of his body. He smelled the delicate scent of citrus from her damp locks.

“Are you afraid loving me will make you weaker, Richard?” she whispered.

“No.” She had no idea how much he wanted her. If someone right now offered him a guarantee that she would stay with him in exchange for walking away from his mission, he wasn’t sure what his answer would be. You’ve fallen too hard and too fast, fool.

No, loving her didn’t make him weaker. It made him desperate.

“You’re mine,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her. “I have no intentions of letting you go.”

She smiled, a wicked sexy smile.

“I mean it,” he told her. “You can’t escape.”

The logical side of him warned that a hope of a future together would only hinder them. It would make them hesitate. It would cause them to avoid danger and abandon caution for each other’s sake. They were able to do what they had to do precisely because each of them had nothing to lose. But that wasn’t true anymore. He shut down the logic. It didn’t help.

“Maybe I don’t want to escape.” She caught his bottom lip between his teeth, pulled gently, and let go. Her eyes were luminescent. “My deadly noble swordsman.”

He was so hard, it was making him crazy.

“I want to have you again,” she whispered. “Can I have you again?”

He rolled her over on her back and pinned her down. She widened her eyes. “Oooh, I’m trapped. What will happen to me?”

He bent down, relishing the softness of her body under him. “Let me show you . . .”

ELEVEN

CHARLOTTE swept the cabin floor, chasing the dust and tiny particles of ash into a neat pile. It had been three days since they had arrived at the cabin. Richard called it his Lair, but even lairs could stand a sweeping. Three days of nothing but conversation, savory meals, and sex. Unrestrained, amazing sex. She smiled to herself.