“You still care about me.”
She closed her eyes again. “Ronan . . . ”
“I’m leaving now, but I’m coming back for you. You’re mine, Bella. You always were and you still are.”
She wrenched her arm from his grasp and turned from him. “You’ve got no right to call me yours. You threw me away years ago, you bastard.”
“I made a mistake. I’ve regretted it for years. I thought at the time it was the right thing for you.” Bella stopped short, but didn’t turn around.
“I was wrong. I have wanted to turn back the clock for decades now, make the other choice. I didn’t know until tonight that you still carried any residual feeling for me.” He paused. “But you do, don’t you? Otherwise you never would’ve offered marriage to save me.” She said nothing for several moments, her hands clenched tightly at her sides and her mind in a whirl of surprise and confusion. Her words had left her completely. She didn’t know what to say anyway. How dare he tell her these things after he’d rejected her all those years ago and left her alone!
“I’m going to the Boundary Lands. There’s something there I need to retrieve, something I didn’t think mattered until you came to me at the prison. Now this object means everything. It will save my neck and make it possible for us to be together.”
The Boundary Lands. A little thrill went through her at the prospect.
She turned and studied him, her brow knitting. Memories of the years following his rejection of her welled up. A muscle in her jaw worked. “This object you need to get from the Boundary Lands, it’s what you stole for the Phaendir, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“I can’t tell you, for your own safety. I’m going to retrieve this object, and when I come back, you’re mine, Bella.”
“I’m not yours. I’ll never be yours. You made sure of that three decades ago.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He didn’t believe her. Why should he? She barely believed herself. This man held a power over her that she could not deny. “As you wish.”
“I’ll see you safely out of the building and into the square. I’ll wish you luck and then we’re saying good-bye. Forever.”
His eyes clouded black for a moment. “I’ll take what I can get from you, but this doesn’t mean it’s the end. Now that I know you have a seed of emotion for me, I intend to make it grow.” She stared at him, unable to believe the words he’d just uttered or the ferocity behind them. Not in the last thirty years could she have imagined she’d be hearing them from him. “It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late. I want you and I won’t give up until you’re mine.”
“You didn’t want me before. What makes you think I want you now?” That made him blink. Good. His level of confidence where she was concerned disarmed and annoyed her. Her head was still spinning from the last twenty-four hours.
She turned and stalked into her bedroom, where she dressed in a pair of jeans, a warm gray sweater, and a pair of black boots.
He was lucky she had a whole stack of Yule gifts in her closet at the moment, waiting to be wrapped.
Some of them were clothing items for men. After she found him a black sweater, a coat, and a pair of boots, she grabbed her own coat and they made their way out of the building.
Her shoes crunched the snow on the cobblestones as they kept to the shadows along the edges of the square. The Imperial Guard marched at the far end of the open expanse, a sight that made Bella far colder than the winter air biting through her heavy burgundy coat.
Above their heads, the Wild Hunt returned to the Unseelie Court, their pockets stuffed full with fresh souls, perhaps. The air above Bella and Ronan stirred, and the soft sounds of wings and the baying of the hounds broke the snow-laden quiet.
But Ronan’s soul wasn’t in that mysterious dark man’s possession. At least, not yet.
A block away, two revelers laughed and drunkenly slapped each other on the back, on their way home from a Yuletide fete, no doubt. All the evergreens around the edges of the square gave off a gentle glow of festivity, dressed with lights and ornaments. Even the much abused and hated statue of Jules Piefferburg, founder and architect of the fae prison, was dressed in Yuletide finery. He even had a sprig of holly tucked behind one charmed iron ear. Normally they dressed the statue as a woman or adorned it in rotten fruits and vegetables. If it hadn’t been made of charmed iron, much worse would have been done.
“There, you’re in the square. Good luck, Ronan. I sincerely wish you well. May you successfully evade the guard and return with the object, victorious.” She turned back toward her building.
A hand clamped down over her wrist. “Don’t put me too far from your mind, Bella. I’m coming back for you.”
She turned back to him with wide eyes, her surprised breath huffing out white in the cold air. “Let go of me. All I have to do is scream and the guards will come running.” Magick tingled against her skin. A bolt of blue darted across his pupils, like lightning. “You wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t.”
“Don’t make assumptions when your life is at stake.”
A rustling came from nearby. The tromp of imperial boots in the snow. Suddenly panicked for him, she pushed him backward into the shadows and then followed. The reaction was instantaneous; she needed to protect him. It proved everything he’d said, but she wasn’t about to admit it.
“Ronan Achaius Quinn and Bella Rhiannon Caliste Mac Lyr, stop in the name of the Summer Queen.”
“Gods damn it. They saw you,” Ronan growled. In one smooth move, he had her over his shoulder and was running along the wall toward the shadows between the buildings.
The guards shouted and gave chase, boots in multitude crushing the snow and ice in pursuit. Ronan muttered a few words of Old Maejian, the ancient language of the Tuatha Dé, and a duplicate image of Ronan and Bella split from their bodies and headed in the opposite direction, running across the square while they—the real they—melted seam lessly into the inkiness of the space near the base of the Rose Tower.
The guards took the bait, changed directions, and followed the illusion. Magick like Ronan’s came in handy.
“Let me down!”
He stopped and eased her to the snowy pavement. He’d covered their snow tracks with another illusion.