So for the past ten days, he’d focused instead on the sweet half of bittersweet, drawing succor from her sunny optimism and endless enthusiasm. Each day that passed, he grew ever more fascinated by her. He’d known she was intelligent, strong, and had a true heart, but it was the small things about her that truly enchanted him. The way her eyes went wide and excited whenever Silvan read a choice bit from one of the texts. The way she’d stood hovering above The Compact for half an hour, hands curling, but refusing to touch because she wouldn’t risk marring the soft gold with so much as a fingerprint. The way she chased his young half brothers around the hall in the evenings after supper, pretending she was “a wee fierce beastie,” until they were shrieking with excitement and mock-fear. The way she teased his cantankerous da, flirting with him in a winsome way, until she succeeded in bringing a blush to his wrinkled cheeks and a smile to his lips, chasing some of the worry from his somber brown eyes.

He was proud of the woman she was, and savagely possessive of her. He was fiercely glad that he’d been the one to awaken her to intimacy, that he was the one to whom she’d entrusted a small part of her heart.

Aye, he knew he’d touched her heart. She was not a lass who could hide her feelings, she simply didn’t possess such guards. Though she’d not said the words, he could see it in her eyes, and feel it in her caress. No woman had ever touched him quite the way she did. At times, it seemed she was touching him with near reverence, as if she was as awed as he was that they meshed so perfectly, two interlocking pieces of wood carved from the same tree.

She had no idea what it did to him to see her dressed in the colors of his clan, strolling through his childhood home. It made him feel all elemental warrior and lover, a man of fierce needs and primitive laws. The only thing that could make it sweeter would be if he, too, could don the Keltar colors again.

But that was a bearable loss. At a time when he’d expected little from life, she’d given him everything, including a reawakening of the wonder and hope he’d so long ago lost. The heathery fields seemed again fertile with burgeoning life. Everywhere he looked, he saw something of beauty: a wee pine marten questing the breeze, a golden eagle soaring overhead, tawny-crowned and majestic, mayhap simply a stately oak he’d walked past a hundred times but not truly seen. The night sky ablaze with stars seemed again full of secrets and miracles.

Chloe was a shaft of sunlight that had lanced through the storm clouds he’d lived beneath for so long, illuming his world.