Black Moon Draw(54)

“Heroes are normal people who do extraordinary things,” she replies. “Not always because they choose to and rarely because they want to. But you know what? When it matters, they take a step they never thought they’d take.”

I’m losing an argument with a dead woman. The thin veneer of denial preventing me from becoming completely submerged in this new world is also dissipating.

“There’s another thing.” I’m grasping at anything to remain afloat. “He’s kind of a mass-murderer. Why would any Hero anywhere find him worth saving?”

“Really? That’s the best you can do? You know why he fights.” She laughs.

“Yes.” I clamp my mouth shut. Deep down, I acknowledge that he hasn’t been the monster I thought he was since he told me what’s at stake.

I’m drowning. Breathing gets harder and my dream ripples as if someone tossed a stone into the middle of it.

“Oh, to activate the medallion, you need to –”

She’s gone, along with the dream and whatever secret she meant to leave me with.

I’m getting sick of learning pieces of the puzzle without being able to see the full picture.

My eyelids open to reveal the stone ceiling of a hold. Or castle. Fortress. Whatever it is. I’m just happy I’m inside. I can’t imagine we’re still at the Red Knight’s, but I also don’t think I was in any shape to be moved. At least I’m neither achy nor hurting when I wake up this time.

“You live.”

Couldn’t give me a moment to myself, could you? I roll my head to see the Shadow Knight and my eyebrows shoot up.

His nose is crooked, one eye black and his cheekbones bruised. Despite this, his rugged, chiseled, masculine features become more compelling every time I see him. From the beard growth along his jaw to the intent way he looks at me to his muscular body, I can’t get over how incredibly good looking this man is.

“In better shape than you,” I reply, unable to resist the dig after he yelled at me on the roof. I sit up. I feel really good, possibly the result of the magical medallion and my natural resiliency to death and dismemberment here.

“You gave your life for me. I will allow your sharp tongue.”

Rolling my eyes, I start to protest.

He thrusts a mug of something at me. I sniff at it. It smells like tea. I shift to drink without spilling and notice I’m not wearing the dress I had on when I fell. I’m in a nightgown again.

“Where are my clothes?” I ask a little self-consciously.

“You were in too many pieces to stich it together.”

I lower the mug. “Oh. That sounds horrible.”

He nods. Accustomed to blood, the Shadow Knight is unconcerned, but I can’t help feeling a little rattled about being dead. His multi-hued eyes are on mine, his thick body clothed in leather pants and a tunic.

I don’t like the way he’s watching me, the way lionesses hunt gazelles on those nature shows on the television.

“Where are your weapons?” I ask, gaze lingering on the outline of his shapely thighs, visible through the snug pants.

“The gaoler did not allow me to keep them.”

“We’re in jail?” The room resembles a bedchamber. Although I notice the room is round, like we’re in some sort of prison tower from a fairytale. “So you didn’t defeat the troll and Knights?”

“I beheaded the troll at great cost. The Red Knight brokered a peace. It was necessary to save your life.” The Shadow Knight’s answer is clipped. “And we are here.”

He’s not telling me something. The instinct that wants me to go home and resume my pitiful, miserable life digs in its heels.

I don’t ask why there’s a flicker of sadness in his pretty eyes, but it takes effort. Diving off a cliff for a man you barely know seems easier than talking to him when he’s looking directly at you like this.

I take a drink of the tea instead, not liking the idea he allowed himself to be taken prisoner instead of . . . I don’t know. Leaving me. Beheading everyone.

“Are all women of your world hairless from the waist down?”

I choke and spew tea everywhere, my face hot. Coughing hard, my eyes water. It takes me a moment to quell the fit, but there’s nothing that will take the heat from my cheeks.

“How do you know that?” I demand, humiliated. “Were you . . . doing things to me when I slept?”

“Aye. Cleaned up the blood. Stitched pieces of you back together. Dressed you.” He’s calm and factual.

I’m speechless.

He points to the corner nearest the bed.

I look, if only because I want to hide my red face. “Oh, god.”

Rags soaked with rusty blood are piled in the corner, knee high and a good two to three feet wide.

That’s my blood. I can assume when I hit the ground that I probably exploded or something but to see evidence of it . . . “How am I alive?”

“You are indestructible.” He stretches forward to grab the mug tilting dangerously from my hands and sets it on a trunk beside the bed. “You should be grateful I cared for your womanly blossoms and not the squire. His hands are not steady enough.”

Could this get any worse? I cover my face. I’ve been naked with men before, of course, but this is him. The man with the sexiest body on the planet, who’s also engaged to someone else, whose hands I’ve already experienced over every inch of my body – and loved it.