Medieval 02 - Forbidden

so valuable to me.”
    “Are you certain you were found inside the Stone Ring?” Meg asked, ignoring Duncan’s implied question.
    “Yes. That—and the talisman—was why Erik brought me to Amber. All things amber belong to her.”
    “Is she the one called Untouched?”
    “Yes,” Duncan said huskily. “Until I came to her.”
    “And then?”
    “She burned at my touch, but there was no pain. I burned at her touch and found Paradise.”
    Duncan looked up at Meg, wanting her to understand what he himself was still discovering.
    “There has never been another woman like Amber for me,” he said slowly. “There never will be. It is as though God made her solely for me, and me solely for her.”
    Simon and Dominic exchanged a look, but neither man spoke. There was nothing they could say to parry the certainty in Duncan’s voice.
    “So Erik brought you to Amber,” Meg said carefully, “because all things amber belong to her.”
    “Yes. I lay senseless in her cottage for two days.”
    “Dear God,” Meg whispered.
    “Somehow Amber called me from the fell darkness that had taken me. Without her I would have never wakened.”
    “So you married her out of gratitude,” Dominic said in a low voice.
    Duncan shook his head. “I vowed if I took her, I would marry her.”
    “So she seduced you,” Dominic muttered.
    “Nay. She was a virgin when we lay together beneath the sacred rowan in Stone Ring.”
    Delicate chills coursed down Meg’s spine. She, too, had once lain as a virgin with a warrior in a sacred place. She, too, had arisen no longer a maid. She, too, had been a participant in a destiny whose choices were not always obvious.
    And not always her own.
    “What is your memory like now?” Meg asked.
    “Leaves scattered by a dark wind,” Duncan said bitterly.
    “Has there been no improvement since you first awakened?”
    Duncan let out a harsh breath he hadn’t been aware of holding.
    “Instants of understanding, no more,” he said. “Just enough to tantalize me.”
    “Do these memories come at any special time or place?”
    “When I first saw Simon at Sea Home,” Duncan said, “I had a memory of candles burning, chants, and a knife blade cold between my thighs.”
    Duncan turned to look at Simon.
    “Did that happen?” Duncan asked. “Did I stand in a church with a woman’s silver shoe in my hand and a knife blade between my thighs?”
    Simon looked swiftly at Meg. She nodded.
    “Yes,” Simon said. “It was my blade.”
    Memory shivered and bright fragments wove together, giving Duncan more of the past.
    “It was your shoe,” Duncan said to Meg.
    “Yes.”
    “John was too ill to take part in the ritual, so I stood in his place,” Duncan said slowly.
    “Yes.”
    “And I…and I…”
    Shades of darkness descended, baffling Duncan’s efforts to recall his lost past.
    “I am so close to remembering it all,” he said harshly. “I know it! Yet something holds me back. God, let me remember !”
    Amber stirred as though called by Duncan’s anguish. Golden eyes opened. She had no need to ask what was wrong. She sensed the thinning shadows very clearly, the siren lure of memory glittering through the shades of darkness.
    Just as clearly she sensed Duncan’s fear of knowing. It was a fear she shared.
    Yet there was no choice but to confront that fear. She could no longer leave Duncan torn between past and future, bleeding invisibly, edging relentlessly toward madness.
    As I feared, it is destroying him .
    And as I feared, it will destroy me .
    It is too soon, my dark warrior, my love, heart of my heart…too soon .
    And it is too late .
    Slowly Amber looked past Duncan to the three warriors watching silently, held in check by no more than the upraised hand of a Glendruid witch.
    When Amber saw the silver pin glittering on one man’s mantle, she knew she had lost her gamble. The past had overtaken Duncan.
    And the name of the past was Dominic le Sabre.
    “Let go of me,” Amber whispered.
    It took Duncan a moment to realize that Amber had spoken to him. When he would have answered, her hand lifted, sealing his lips.
    “If you would remember the past,” Amber said shakily, “you must first let go of me.”
    Why ?
    The demand was silent, but as clear as a spoken word to Amber.
    “Because you can’t have both,” she said simply.
    Why ?
    Amber closed her eyes against the pain coiling more tightly through her with each breath. She had suspected the truth even before she had given