Spellbound

might have smiled, but that sly voice was muttering in his ear. Still he sat, picked up his fork, tapped it idly against the plate. “You didn’t answer the question. If I’m to believe you can’t lie to me, isn’t it odd that you’ve circled around the question and avoided a direct answer? Yes or no, Bryna. Did you will me here?”
    “Yes or no?”
    Her eyes were burning-dry, though her heart was weeping. Did he know he was looking at her with such doubt, such suspicion, such cool dispassion? There was no faith in the look, and none of the love she needed.
    One night, she thought on a stab of despair, had not been enough.
    “No, Calin, will you here I did not. If that had been my purpose, or in my power, would I have waited so long and so lonely for you? I asked you to come, begged without pride, for I needed you. But the choice to come or not was yours.”
    She turned away, gripping the counter as she looked out the window toward the sea. “I’ll give you more,” she said quietly, “as time is short.” She inhaled deeply. “You broke my heart when you shut me out of yours. Broke it to pieces, and it’s taken me years to mend it as best I could. That choice was yours as well, for the knowledge was there in your head,and again in your heart if you chose to see it. All the answers are there, and you have only to look.”
    “I want to hear them from you.”
    She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. “There are some I can’t tell you, that you must find for yourself.” She opened her eyes again, lifted her chin and turned back to him.
    Her face was still pale, he noted, her eyes too dark. The hair she’d bundled up was slipping its pins, and her shoulders were stiff and straight.
    “But there’s something that’s mine to tell, and I’ll give you that. I was born loving you. There’s been no other in my heart, even when you turned from me. Everything I am, or was, or will be, is yours. I cannot change my heart. I was born loving you,” she said again. “And I will die loving you. There is no choice for me.”
    Turning, she bolted from the room.

C HAPTER 8
    She’d vanished. Cal went after her almost immediately but found no trace. He rushed through the house, flinging open doors, calling her. Then cursing her.
    Damn temperamental female, he decided. The fury spread through him. That she would tell him she loved him, then leave him before he had even a moment to examine his own heart!
    She expected too much, he thought angrily. Wanted too much. Assumed too much.
    He hurried out of the house, raced for the cliffs. But he didn’t find her standing out on the rocks, staring out to sea with the wind billowing her hair. His voice echoed back to him emptily, infuriating him.
    Then he turned, stared at the scarred stone walls of the castle. And knew. “All right, damn it,” he muttered as he strode toward the ruins. “We’re going to talk this through, straight. No magic, no legends, no bullshit. Just you and me.”
    He stepped toward the arch and bumped into air that had gone solid. Stunned, he reached out, felt the shield he couldn’t see. He could see through it to the stony ground, the fire-scored walls, the tumble of rock, but the clear wall that blocked him was cold and solid.
    “What kind of game is this?” Eyes narrowed, he drove his shoulder against it, yielded nothing. Snarling, he circled the walls, testing each opening, finding each blocked.
    “Bryna!” He pounded the solidified air with his fists untilthey ached. “Let me in. Goddamn it, let me pass!”
    From the topmost turret, Bryna faced the sea. She heard him call for her, curse her. And oh, she wanted to answer. But her pride was scored, her power teetering.
    And her decision made.
    Perhaps she had made it during the sleepless night, curled against him, listening to him dream. Perhaps it had been made for her, eons before. She had been given only one single day with him, one single night. She knew, accepted, that if she’d been given more she might have broken her faith, let her fears and needs tumble out into his hands.
    She couldn’t tell him that her life, even her soul, was lost if by the hour of midnight his heart remained unsettled toward her. Unless he vowed his love, accepted it without question, there was no hope.
    She had done all she could. Bryna turned her face to the wind, let it dry the tears that she was ashamed to have shed. Her charge would be protected, her lover spared, and the secrets of this place would