by Nora Roberts
She rolled her shoulders, took one last cleansing breath, then eased the car forward.
As she did, she heard someone—something—whisper her name.
Kayleen.
Instinctively, she glanced to the side, out the rain-spattered window, into the gloom. And there, for an instant, she saw a shadow take shape, the shape of a man. Eyes, green as glass, glittered.
She hit the brakes, jerking forward as the car slid in the mud. Her heart raced, her fingers shook.
Have you dreamed of me? Will you?
Fighting fear, she quickly lowered the window, leaned out into the driving rain. "Please. Can you help me? I seem to be lost."
But there was no one there. No one who would—could—have said, so low and sad, So am I.
Of course there was no one. With one icy finger she jabbed the button to send the window back up. Just her imagination, just fatigue playing tricks. There was no man standing in the forest in a storm. No man who knew her name.
It was just the sort of foolishness her mother would have dreamed up. The woman lost in the enchanted forest, in a dramatic storm, and the handsome man, most likely a prince under a spell, who rescued her.
Well, Kayleen Brennan could rescue herself, thank you very much. And there were no spellbound princes, only shadows in the rain.
But her heart rapped like a fist against her ribs. With her breath coming fast, she hit the gas again. She would get off of this damned road, and she would get to where she intended to be.
When she got there, she would drink an entire pot of tea while sitting neck-deep in a hot bath. And all of this… inconvenience would be behind her.
She tried to laugh it off, tried to distract herself by mentally composing a letter home to her mother, who would have enjoyed every moment of the experience.
An adventure, she would say. Kayleen! You finally had an adventure!
"Well, I don't want a damn adventure. I want a hot bath. I want a roof over my head and a civilized meal." She was getting worked up again, and this time she couldn't seem to stop. "Won't somebody please help me get where I'm supposed to be!"
In answer, lightning shot down, a three-pronged pitchfork hurled out of the heavens. The blast of it exploded the dark into blinding light.
As she threw up an arm to shield her eyes, she saw, standing like a king in the center of the road, a huge buck. Its hide was violently white in the slash of her headlights, its rack gleaming silver. And its eyes, cool and gold, met her terrified ones through the rain.
She swerved, stomped on the brakes. The little car fish-tailed, seemed to spin in dizzying circles propelled by the swirling fog. She heard a scream—it had to be her own—before the car ran hard into a tree.
And so she dreamed.
Of running through the forest while the rain slapped down like angry fingers. Eyes, it seemed a thousand of them, watched her through the gloom. She fled, stumbling in the muck stirred up by the storm, her bones jolting as she fell.
Her head was full of sound. The roar of the wind, the booming warning of thunder. And under it a thousand voices chanting.
She wept, and didn't know why. It wasn't the fear, but something else, something that wanted to be wrenched out of her heart as a splinter is wrenched from an aching finger. She remembered nothing, neither name nor place—only that she had to find her way. Had to find it before it was too late.
There was the light, the single ball of it glowing in the dark. She ran toward it, her breath tearing out of her lungs, rain streaming from her hair, down her face.
The ground sucked at her shoes. Another fall tore her sweater. She felt the quick burn on her flesh and, favoring her left arm, scrambled up again. Winded, aching, lost, she continued at a limping run.
The light was her focus. If only she could make it to the light, everything would be all right again. Somehow.
A spear of lightning struck close, so close she felt it sear the air, felt it drench the night with the hot sting of ozone. And in its afterglow she saw that the light was a single beam, from a single window in the tower of a castle.
Of course there would be a castle. It seemed not odd at all that there should be a castle with its tower light glowing in the middle of the woods during a raging storm.
Her weeping became laughter, wild as the night, as she stumbled toward it, tramping through rivers of flowers.
She fell against the massive door and with what strength she had left, slapped a fist against it.
The sound was swallowed by the storm.
"Please," she murmured. "Oh, please, let me in."
By the fire, he'd fallen into the twilight-sleep he was allowed, had dreamed in the flames he'd set to blaze—of his dark-haired maid, coming to him. But her eyes had been frightened, and her cheeks pale as ice.
He'd slept through the storm, through the memories that often haunted him even in that drifting place. But when she had come into those dreams, when she had turned those eyes on him, he stirred. And spoke her name.
And jolted awake, that name sliding out of his mind again. The fire had burned down nearly to embers now.
He could have set it roaring again with a thought, but didn't bother.
In any case, it was nearly time. He saw by the pretty crystal clock on the ancient stone mantel—he was amused by such anachronisms—that it was only seconds shy of midnight.
His week would begin at that stroke. For seven days, and seven nights, he would be. Not just a shadow in a world of dreams, but flesh, blood, and bone.
He lifted his arms, threw back his head, and waited to become.
The world trembled, and the clock struck midnight.
There was pain. He welcomed it like a lover. Oh, God, to feel. Cold burned his skin. Heat scorched it. His throat opened, and there was the blessed bliss of thirst.
He opened his eyes. Colors sprang out at him, clear and true, without that damning mist that separated him for all the other time.
Lowering his hands, he laid one on the back of his chair, felt the soft brush of velvet. He smelled the smoke from the fire, the rain that pounded outside and snuck in through his partially open window.
His senses were battered, so overwhelmed with the rush of sensations that he nearly swooned. And even that was a towering pleasure.
He laughed, a huge burst of sound that he felt rumble up from his belly. And fisting his hands, he raised them yet again.
"I am."
Even as he claimed himself, as the walls echoed with his voice, he heard the pounding at the door. Jolted, he lowered his arms, turned toward a sound he'd not heard in five hundred years. Then it was joined by another.
"Please." And it was his dream who shouted. "Oh, please, let me in."
A trick, he thought. Why would he be tortured with tricks now? He wouldn't tolerate it. Not now. Not during his week to be.
He threw out a hand, sent lights blazing. Furious, he strode out of the room, down the corridor, down the circling pie-shaped stairs. They would not be allowed to infringe on his week. It was a breach of the sentence. He would not lose a single hour of the little time he had.
Impatient with the distance, he muttered the magic under his breath. And appeared again in the great hall.
He wrenched open the door. Met the fury of the storm with fury of his own.
And saw her.
He stared, transfixed. He lost his breath, his mind. His heart.
She had come.
She looked at him, a smile trembling on her lips and sending the dimple at the corner of her mouth to winking.
"There you are," she said.
And fainted at his feet.
Chapter 2
Shadows and shapes and murmuring voices. They swirled in her head, swelling, fading in a cycle of confusion.
Even when she opened her eyes, they were there. Revolving. What? was her only thought. What is it?
She was cold and wet, and every part of her was a separate ache. An accident. Of course, an accident. But…
&n
bsp; What is it?
She focused and saw overhead, high overhead, a curved ceiling where plaster faeries danced among ribbons of flowers. Odd, she thought. How odd and lovely. Dazed, she lifted a hand to her brow, felt the damp. Thinking it blood, she let out a gasp, tried to sit up.
Her head spun like a carousel.
"Uh-oh." Trembling now, she looked at her fingers and saw only clear rainwater.
And, turning her head, saw him.
First came the hard jolt of shock, like a vicious strike to the heart. She could feel panic gathering in her throat and fought to swallow it.
He was staring at her. Rudely, she would think later when fear had made room for annoyance. And there was anger in his eyes. Eyes as green as the rain-washed hills of Ireland. He was all in black. Perhaps that was why he looked so dangerous.
His face was violently handsome—"violent" was the word that kept ringing in her ears. Slashing cheekbones, lancing black brows, a fierce frown on a mouth that struck her as brutal. His hair was as dark as his clothing and fell in wild waves nearly to his shoulders.
Her heart pounded, a primal warning. Even as she shrank back, she gathered the courage to speak. "Excuse me. What is it?"
He said nothing. Had been unable to speak since he'd lifted her off the floor. A trick, a new torment? Was she, after all, only a dream within a dream?
But he'd felt her. The cold damp of her flesh, the weight and the shape of her. Her voice came clear to him now, as did the terror in her eyes.
