LOGAN TOMwalked next to Simralin Belloruus, head lowered in thought. She had just finished telling him everything that had happened to the Elves over the past few weeks leading up to the moment of his arrival, and he was trying to digest it. Trying to make it seem real might be a better way of putting it. He had seen and heard of some strange things in his time as a Knight of the Word, but never anything like this. That an entire city and its people could be saved from demons and once-men by being placed inside a gemstone was almost too much to accept.

Almost.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she asked him, apparently able to read his mind. She didn’t sound angry or disappointed. She sounded mostly curious to hear how he would respond. She looked over at him, and for what must have been the fiftieth time in the past hour he found himself wishing she would never look away.

“I believe you,” he said. “I would believe you if your story sounded three times this crazy.”

He had never been in love. He had not known what it would feel like. He understood what the term meant, but his life had not allowed for exploring its possibilities. There had been few he had really loved. His parents; Michael. That was it. And that was love of a different kind. Less intense, less hungry. What he felt for Simralin went so far beyond anything manageable that it shocked him. He could tell himself it was because he found her beautiful in a way that transcended anything he had ever known. But his attraction to her was a response to so much more. To her self-confidence and her way of speaking. To her smile and the quirky way she lifted one eyebrow when she was amused. To the way she carried herself. To the way she looked at him.

Feeling like this, being suddenly, impulsively in love, was so ridiculous and so reckless and wrongheaded that he could hardly come to grips with it. There was no space in his life for this. There was no time for it. He was engaged in the most important struggle of his life, entrusted with carrying out a mission that would ensure the survival of an entire nation—a race of people he hadn’t even believed existed before he found them. He needed to be cool and detached from everything but the responsibility he had been given. Yet here he was, imagining what it would be like if this woman were to love him back.

“Your brother,” he said, needing to break the silence between them. “So much depends on him. Is he up to that sort of pressure?”