“If your father walked out of the darkness right now and said, ‘Come with me, or everyone here will die,’ you would go with him,” Curran said. “Knowing that I would fight for you with everything I’ve got, you would walk away. You would leave me a note that said I shouldn’t look for you, because you would want to protect me.”

There was no point in lying. “Yes.”

“That’s my line in the sand,” he said. “Would you still walk away?”

“Yes.” If his life were on the line, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

“Even if I leave you because of it?”

“Yes.”

He spread his arms.

“I can’t change who I am,” I told him. “Neither can you. I get it.”

“I love you and you love me, and we’re both too fucked up for anyone else. Who else would have us?”

I sighed. “Well, clearly we’re both crazy and this relationship is doomed.”

“I love you so much,” he said. “Please don’t leave me.”

He leaned forward. I knew he would kiss me a moment before he did, and I realized I wanted it. I remembered him holding me. I remembered him risking himself against impossible odds for me. I made him laugh, I told him things that would make most normal men run screaming, things I spent all my life keeping secret, and I drove him to the point of near-blinding rage. In my darkest moments, when everything was crashing down around me, he told me everything would be okay. The taste of him, the feel of his lips as his mouth covered mine, the way he made the world fade, as if kissing me were the only thing that existed in his life, pulled me right back through time, before the castle, before Hugh, and before Lorelei. Curran was mine. If my life were on the line, he would do it again, and I would be mad at him again. And if the reverse ever happened, he would rage and roar, and I would tell him that I loved him and that I would fight to the death to keep him breathing.

He was right. We loved each other and nobody else would put up with us.

“I’m still mad at you,” I whispered, and put my arms around him.

“I’m an ass,” he told me, pulling me closer. “I’m sorry. You should make my life hell for the next hundred years.”

“Do we need to give you some privacy for the makeup sex?” Astamur asked.

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 17

An hour or so before sunrise, Curran and I decided that we did need some privacy. We borrowed a couple of blankets and climbed the mountainside to a small ledge. We made love on the blankets and now we were lying quietly.

“Still mad at me?” Curran asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to stay?”