Medieval 02 - Forbidden

warrior who had been defeated in battle only once, and that by the hated Norman usurper, Dominic le Sabre. In exchange for his own life, Duncan had sworn fealty to the enemy.
    It was rumored that Dominic had defeated Duncan with the help of his Glendruid witch-wife.
    Amber remembered the face she had glimpsed through Duncan’s thick veil of forgetfulness—hair of flame and eyes of an unusually intense green.
    Glendruid green.
    Dear God, could he be Dominic le Sabre, Erik’s sworn enemy ?
    Staring at Duncan’s eyes, Amber tried to see them as gray, but honestly could not. Green, perhaps. Or blue. Or brown. But not gray.
    Amber let out a long sigh and prayed she wasn’t deluding herself.
    “Where did you meet these unusual men?” she asked. “Or were they women?”
    Duncan opened his mouth, but no words came. He grimaced at the fresh evidence of his lack of memory.
    “I don’t know,” he said flatly. “But I know that I have met them.”
    Amber went to Duncan and put her fingers over his restless sword hand.
    “Their names?” Amber asked in a soft voice.
    Silence answered her, followed by a curse.
    She sensed Duncan’s raw frustration and growing anger, but no faces, no names, nothing to call forth memories.
    “Were they friend or foe?” she asked quietly.
    “Both,” he said hoarsely. “But not…not quite.”
    Duncan’s hand clenched into a heavy fist. Gently Amber tried to soothe the fingers into relaxation. He jerked his hand away and pounded on his thigh.
    “God’s blood!” he snarled. “What kind of dishonorable cur can’t remember friend or foe or sacred vows?”
    Pain twisted through Amber, pain that was both Duncan’s and, eerily, her own.
    “Have you made any such vows?” she asked in a low voice.
    “ I—don’t—know !”
    The words were almost a shout.
    “Gently, my warrior,” Amber said.
    While she spoke, she stroked Duncan’s hair and face as she had through the long hours when he had been lost in an odd kind of sleep.
    At the first touch, Duncan flinched. When he looked into Amber’s troubled golden eyes, he groaned and unclenched his hands, allowing her gentle caresses to soothe him.
    “Sleep, Duncan. I can feel your exhaustion.”
    “No,” he said grimly.
    “You must let yourself heal.”
    “I don’t want to go into that fell darkness again.”
    “You won’t.”
    “And if I do?”
    “I’ll call you forth again.”
    “Why?” he asked. “Who am I to you?”
    Amber hesitated at the blunt question, then smiled an odd, bittersweet smile as Cassandra’s prophecy echoed like distant thunder.
    He will come to you in shades of darkness .
    And he had.
    She had touched a man with no name and he had claimed her heart.
    Amber didn’t know if she could bend events so that life as well as death flowed from her reckless action. She knew only one thing, and she knew it with a certainty greater than that of the sun’s burning progress across the sky.
    “Come heaven, come hell,” Amber said in a low voice, “I will protect you with my life. We are…joined.”
    Duncan’s eyes narrowed as he realized that Amber had just given him a vow that to her was every bit as binding as any that lords might make among themselves. The fierceness with which she was prepared to defend him against the darkness that had claimed his memory both reassured Duncan and made him smile.
    She was so fragile-looking, a handful of sunlight and softness, a fragrant breeze, a sweet warmth.
    “Are you another ruthless Boadicea, to lead men into battle?” Duncan teased gently.
    With a small smile, Amber shook her head. “I’ve never held a broadsword. They look like great, clumsy things to me.”
    “Fairies weren’t meant to wield swords. They have other weapons.”
    “But I am not a fairy.”
    “So you say.”
    Smiling, Duncan traced the long fall of Amber’s unbound hair.
    “Odd to think that you are mine and I am yours…” he murmured.
    Amber didn’t correct Duncan’s misunderstanding, for there was a curious difference in his touch now. It sent tendrils of sweet, secret fire through her.
    “Only if you wish it,” she whispered.
    “I can’t believe I would forget such a fey, beautiful creature as you.”
    “That’s because I’m not beautiful,” she retorted.
    “To me you are as beautiful as dawn after a long winter’s night.”
    The genuine belief in Duncan’s voice and eyes was reinforced by his touch. He was not paying her courtly compliments. He had spoken what was