****
Friends forever. No matter what happens.
Kiyomi pulled away from the memory and surfaced slowly in the present, that long ago silenced voice startlingly clear in her mind as she allowed herself to return to her surroundings. The beautiful, private walled garden set back from the manor house of Laidlaw Hall. A paradise of flowers, fruit trees and humming insects nestled in the rolling Cotswolds landscape.
But even her formidable mental discipline couldn’t stop the inevitable barrage of images that followed.
Horror. Darkness. Blood. A face she’d once loved, savagely beaten until the features were almost unrecognizable. Except by her.
Kiyomi would always have recognized that face.
She released a deep breath and focused on her body even as the sharp talons of grief dug into her, using all five senses to ground herself as she’d been practicing. Shifting her awareness to the solid feel of the earth beneath her where she lay stretched out on her back on a patch of sun-warmed grass. The sweet scent of roses and lavender carried on the breeze. Soft, trilling birdsong mixing with the rustle of leaves. The distinctive kak-kak of a jackdaw nearby.
Sometimes it was easy to keep the ugly memories at bay. Sometimes they stayed put beneath her consciousness.
Today wasn’t one of those days.
She fought the last of the ghostly images away through sheer force of will and consciously slowed her breathing and heart rate. You’re okay. That’s all in the past, it can’t hurt you anymore.
Maybe someday that would be true.
Opening her eyes, she blinked up at the canopy of leaves arching above her. Golden afternoon sunshine filtered through the branches, the leaves having faded from the acid green of spring into the deeper green of English mid-summer. A warm breeze washed over her, rippling the ornamental grasses where she lay inside the walled garden, making the roses and daylilies nod.
She wiped her damp cheeks with the heels of her hands and released another long breath, glad for the privacy this place gave her. Giving into tears was still embarrassing and seemed pointless, but her therapist insisted it was a sign that she was healing. All part of the unthawing process after believing herself to be numb and impervious to emotion for most of her life.
The faint crunch of footsteps on the gravel path to the left, beyond the far side of the stone wall, drew her attention. She glanced over in time to see Marcus step through the ivy-smothered archway framing the doorway cut into the stone, his wooden cane in his left hand, and his loyal Anatolian shepherd Karas at his side.
She didn’t move, just watched him come, conscious of a lightening in her soul as he approached in faded jeans that clung to his hips and thighs, and a snug T-shirt that molded to the powerful muscles in his chest and shoulders. In another couple months he would switch out the T-shirts for cable knit sweaters and sheepskin-lined jackets he favored when the weather turned cool. On him, both looks were equally sexy.
He stopped next to her and sat down, failing to hide a flinch at the pain in his left hip, the scars pulling around his eye. His injuries had healed as much as they ever would a long time ago, but the scar tissue, muscle and nerve damage were a permanent reminder of his horrific captivity in Syria.
Just as the scars on her back would always remind her of the same.
He stretched out beside her on his back, tucked one arm behind his head, and captured her hand in his. Karas lay between their outstretched legs, muzzle resting on her paws. She was still a daddy’s girl for certain, but sometimes followed Kiyomi around now instead of him.
Marcus ran his deep brown gaze over her face. “Penny for your thoughts, love?” he said in his deep, Yorkshire accent she adored.
She gave him a wry smile. “You sure you want to know?”
“Positive.”
That made her smile a little, and she was struck again by how perfectly this place suited him, even though living at Laidlaw Hall was an entirely different world from the blue-collar life he’d grown up with in Yorkshire.
He’d told her that he’d only rarely come here to visit sometimes on summer holiday with his mother as a child. It hadn’t been until he was medically discharged from the military that he’d suddenly inherited the massive property from a great uncle he’d barely known. Yet Marcus had accepted the responsibility and massive workload that came with it, to preserve this piece of his ancestral legacy.
She couldn’t imagine him living anywhere else. “Just practicing my meditation. And remembering a friend,” she murmured.
“Good thoughts, I hope?”
Mostly. “Yes.” Bittersweet ones.
“Who were you thinking of?”
“Julia.”
Flashes of memory from the stolen times they had spent together during the second, intense phase of the program without their trainers knowing. Sharing food, forbidden outside of strictly scheduled mealtimes during their training. Talking about hopes and dreams they’d both known were impossible back then, even before they’d been permanently separated into different specialties.
Kiyomi had been fortunate to survive her career as a Valkyrie, and finally win her freedom. Julia had not. Instead, her best and only friend back then had suffered at the hands of inhuman monsters before being dumped in a Moscow alley to die.
“Ah.” Marcus rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand, watching her, the dappled sunlight highlighting the puckered and pitted scarring on the left side of his face and neck.
He was still the handsomest man she’d ever known. His scars, the suffering he’d endured and the courage it had taken to overcome it all, had transformed him into the man he was. The only man who could have broken down her walls and captured her ice-encased heart.
She could smell the sweet, dusty scent of hay and horses on him, indicating he’d just come from the barn. She must have been out here longer than she’d realized. “Just get back from the northeast pasture?”
“Aye. Karas took a shift guarding the neighbor’s flock again.”
“Always on duty. Good girl.” She reached down to pet the dog’s soft head and received a wet lick on the back of her hand in reply.
“This is three days in a row you’ve come out here,” Marcus said, taking in the garden. “Seems a good spot for thinking.”
Yes. This was her very own secret garden, a magical place where healing was possible.
Turning onto her side, she came up on one elbow, resting her head in her hand to gaze down at her husband. “It’s peaceful here. And it reminds me of Eden.” A Valkyrie trained as a saboteur, and an expert with poisons. She would know every plant here, every one of their toxic properties. Now she was back in the States with Zack, tending her own poison garden. They were all scattered apart again.
Marcus met her gaze again. “You miss them.”
Yes. And it was a strange feeling for someone who had lived a solitary life as an intimate assassin. “Sometimes.” She ran her fingertips down the side of his face, across the scars partially hidden by his thick, dark stubble. “But every day I wake up and pinch myself to make sure this is still real.” That he was real, along with the life they were making together in this beautiful, historic place his ancestors had owned for over five hundred years.
He caught her hand, kissed her fingers, and reached up to slide his hand into the back of her hair. “It’s real, love,” he said quietly, and drew her down for a slow, thorough kiss.