Then there were those memories of him. His calloused hands on her forehead, his breath on her face. And his lips—
As if in trance, she gingerly reached up and touched her fingers to her mouth. A kiss. Had he kissed her? She couldn’t tell if it had been a dream, if she had seen him there or imagined him so close to her face, his mouth warm and gentle, kindling a sensation Vala would damn her for.
And his words—
Don’t forget I promised.
Promised what?
“I don’t understand, Miss,” the man said with pity.
Gandrett realized she had spoken aloud.
“What happened?” This time, Gandrett moved. With all her strength, she braced one hand at her side and lifted her head.
Her mission. She had to make sure Armand Denderlain found her…
The man looked back over his shoulder and called, “I need help here.” To whom, Gandrett couldn’t tell.
If this was Armand, even if he wasn’t pretty, at least he seemed to care that she could hardly move. Lim nudged her with his nose as if to make sure she was really awake this time.
She let her head drop back into the moss and groaned.
“We found your horse a couple of miles back in the clearing, and when no one showed up to claim it for a while, we started looking,” the man explained, bushy eyebrows raising. “He belongs to you, doesn’t he?”
Gandrett nodded carefully and looked past Lim’s legs at the massive, gray shape that was perched on a tree trunk.
“You killed it,” she breathed as her surroundings blurred in and out of focus. “You—”
A pair of polished, black boots stopped right before her and a voice, smooth like satin, said, “Did the beauty awake from her eternal sleep?” It wasn’t really a question.
Gandrett’s eyes followed the boots up to black leather pants and a hunting jacket in blue velvet—blue like her dress. And atop the midnight-blue, a pale and elegant face greeted her with a smile.
Gandrett blinked.
“You are safe, Miss,” the owner of the face spoke, his lips curling at one side as he noticed she was staring at him. “The beast has met its deserved end.”
Gandrett felt the urge to raise her eyebrows and ask if he was serious but remembered Mckenzie’s final instruction: smile.
So she did. It was a joke of a smile compared to what she had mastered in the weeks at Ackwood, but a smile anyway. A smile with the same lips which might or might not have been kissed by a Fae. Gandrett swallowed, her mouth suddenly gone dry.
The young man returning her gaze seemed to wait for something. So she searched for words but found none.
In the meantime, the man kneeling beside her had placed his hands on her head, inspecting the source of the throbbing pain.
“She hit her head pretty hard,” he reported to the man in polished boots. “Apart from that, she seems unharmed.”
The one in midnight-blue nodded. “And have we learned her name yet?”
“No, my Lord.”
While Gandrett shuttered her eyelids to clear her vision, the boots descended toward her shoulders, shoving aside the other man, and the young man crouched down beside her and cocked his head, exposing a ponytail of honey-blond. “So,” he studied her with depthless, hazel eyes, “does the sleeping beauty have a name?”
Gandrett tried to speak, but as she opened her mouth, no sound emerged.
“Lord Armand,” the middle-aged man with the concerned look spoke cautiously, “maybe we should get her some water.”
So this was Armand Denderlain. Gandrett blinked at him, acknowledging that despite what had gone wrong, something had gone right. She had found Armand Denderlain.
“So get her some water,” Armand hissed at the man, who stumbled to his feet and scurried away.
“You are lucky we found you,” Armand said blithely, “The beast was coiling to spring when I sent my arrow right between its eyes.”
Gandrett’s stomach roiled.
Armand read her twisting face as fear and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you make it out of this forest in one piece.”
Meanwhile, the other man returned with a waterskin, which he held out for Armand, who took it to offer it to Gandrett. “You should drink,” he suggested as she didn’t lift a hand to take it, and opened it for her before he led it to her mouth. “I’d truly like to know what birdlike voice goes with a face that Nyssa herself would envy.”
Gandrett opened her mouth, intending to say she served the goddess of life, not the goddess of love, but remembered that she was not to give away who she was. Armand, however, took the opportunity to pour some water between her lips, and she sat upright, coughing the liquid that had been going down the wrong pipe back up in a spray.
Armand chuckled, his hazel eyes gleaming with amusement. “Is it really that bad?”
Great. She hadn’t even spoken a word, and already she had embarrassed herself. That wasn’t how she had envisioned facing the enemy—the startlingly handsome enemy—but with a strong voice to speak for herself, with legs to carry her. Instead, the young lord pulled a silken handkerchief from inside his jacket and handed it to her with a leather-gloved hand.
Gandrett gingerly took the fabric and wiped her face and the splatter of wet on her chest and stomach, fully aware Armand’s gaze was following where her hands went.
“Thank you.” She folded the silk and was about to hand it back to him.
“Keep it.” He just smiled. “A token from the man who saved your life.
Gandrett was about to slap his smirking face with her fist for that statement—a token from the girl who kicked his ass.
“So you don’t forget me when you return to—” He cocked his head. “Where did you come from exactly?”
Gandrett internally frowned and fashioned a painful smile. “From the south of Eedwood,” she told the lie Nehelon had provided her with. “I rode up to hunt in Demea’s honor, and when I was about to rest after the three-hour trip north—” She paused, pulling up her trained frightened face.
“The wolf attacked you,” Armand finished her sentence, understanding in his eyes.
“It chased me all the way here…” Gandrett managed to authentically shake, voice raw. “Then…” Her eyes searched the forest ground for her broken bow. “Then, the bow snapped… I don’t understand it. My father inspected it for me before I left. He is a merchant specializing in carved weapons and jeweled blades.” She gave just enough context to hint toward her alter ego’s family’s wealth. Armand’s groomed eyebrows rose. “If it hadn’t been for you…” Her words tasted sour on her tongue. Wrong. If it hadn’t been for him, she would have pulled her knife and dagger and slaughtered that damned beast. But this way, she was bound to act like a helpless little girl in need of saving.
She shoved aside the memory of Nehelon kneeling before her on the mossy ground, his lips—
A dream. It couldn’t have been anything else.
“I am most certainly pleased I chose to follow your footsteps into the thicket. Otherwise—” He gestured at her in general. “—I would have missed this.”
Gandrett watched his hands, hidden under a thin layer of black leather, as they elegantly waved along her form, waterskin still clasped between his fingers.