Chapter Two

Shandley was like hundreds of other small towns spread across Columbyana. Everything of importance was located along two cross streets that met at a lively town square, and simple homes were located beyond, growing outward from the center of town like the spindly legs of a many-limbed creature.

The village had everything necessary to make a community run properly: a collection of shops; two taverns, one small and one rather large; a jailhouse; a church; a school. The sheriff of the Southern Province had an office here, but as this was a quiet rural part of the country, it was an auxiliary office that was probably manned by a couple of deputies. Maybe three.

Kane always tried to steer clear of the lawmen and soldiers in the towns he visited, though gambling wasn’t illegal and he had no interest in politics. There was little rebel activity in the Southern Province, so he wasn’t often confronted with the realities of war. Still, the sight of a soldier’s green uniform or an official’s crimson robe sometimes sent an unpleasant shiver down his spine.

Shandley’s largest tavern was near the center of town, and the smaller had been discreetly placed at the south end of one long street. It appeared that both had rooms above to let for a day or an extended stay. All around, shops flourished. A confectioner’s, a dress shop and millinery, a feed and seed store to serve the farmers and ranchers, a shop which, judging by the window display, specialized in swords and other weapons, most more suited to hunting than defense. This was quite the booming small town.

As he rode down one of the main streets on his new gray mare, studying the people and places he passed, Kane was struck by something odd. There were lots of women out and about shopping or gossiping on the boardwalk. He had never before seen so many expectant women in one place at one time. And they weren’t at different stages of pregnancy, from what he could tell. Many of them were about the same size around the middle, a few were a bit smaller or larger, but not greatly so. It was as if a large number of women in town had gotten pregnant at the same time.

Strange.

He didn’t immediately dismount and go searching for someone to tell him that Sophie was a witch. Sophie. A beautiful name for a beautiful woman. When he dreamed of her tonight, he would call her Angel one moment and Sophie the next.

He had no doubt that he would hear something ridiculous from the people of Shandley. He’d seen the fear on Sophie’s face as she’d instructed him to come here and mention her name. What she didn’t understand was that nothing could scare him away. Not her stubborn insistence that she would take lovers as it suited her, not a ridiculous story about her being a witch.

Magic was no longer illegal, as it had been during the early years of Emperor Nechtyn’s reign and during most of the years of his father before him, but people still tended to distrust what they did not understand. Especially people like these, who lived their lives so simply and easily. They set their sleeping hours by the sun, and knew very little of life beyond Shandley.

Witches were old crones who either lived in caves or plied their trade among the rich and powerful, not beautiful young women who looked like Sophie Fyne. Besides, true witches were rare creatures; he’d never expected to actually meet one. A woman who possessed real magic wouldn’t hide away here in this rural community. She’d find her way to a city where she could make a fortune with her talents. In a town he’d passed through a few months back, he’d heard that a General of the Columbyanan Imperial Army had a witch as counsel...

A sudden and severe headache split through Kane’s temple and around to the base of his skull. The pain chased away everything else. Every thought, every memory. His brain and his eyes burned, his hands began to shake. The world narrowed and then disappeared, until there was nothing in it but pain and pale shadows, grayness and agony.

Thinking of Sophie never gave him a headache. Kane turned his thoughts to her and immediately the pain disappeared. Relief rushed through him. Ease and happiness.

He hitched his horse in front of the largest tavern in Shandley and stepped into the main room. Not bad for a small town, he thought as he glanced around. The place was clean, the aroma coming from the kitchen was promising, and the matronly, slightly overweight woman who swept a clean plank floor greeted him with a smile.

He returned the smile and stepped to the desk. “I’d like to engage a room. Your nicest suite, if it’s available.”

That brought a sparkle to the woman’s eyes. “Meals included?”

“Of course.”

“For how long?”

As long as it takes. “I have no idea.”

She propped her broom in a corner and headed for the long bar on one side of the square room. From behind that bar she offered the guest book. Kane joined her and signed his name with a flourish.

“Mr. Varden,” the woman said as she glanced down, “I’m Eurneid Driskell. My husband and I own and operate this tavern. Might I ask what brings such a finely dressed and obviously cultured man to Shandley for an extended stay?”

“The woman I intend to make my wife has brought me here.”

Mrs. Driskell, who was likely approaching sixty, pursed her lips and batted her lashes. “How charming. What a lucky girl she is. Perhaps I know her?”

“Perhaps. Her name is Sophie Fyne.”

Mrs. Driskell’s friendly smile vanished; her face paled. “Oh, dear.”

Kane leaned casually into the bar. “Do you know her?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Then you will agree with me that no sweeter, kinder, more beautiful woman exists anywhere in Columbyana or beyond.” True, he had no idea if Sophie was sweet and kind or not. He had not known her long enough to be sure. But she was definitely beautiful.

“She is very...pretty.” The woman pursed her narrow lips.

“Pretty?” Kane lifted his eyebrows. “What an inadequate way to describe an extraordinary woman.”

“Mr. Varden,” Mrs. Driskell said cautiously, taking one step away from him and the front desk. “You seem like a perfectly agreeable, normal young man. Surely you don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for. Yes, Sophie Fyne is quite lovely. You’re not the first man to look at her and be tempted.”

He tried to give the tavern owner a warning glare. It wasn’t enough.

“Sophie Fyne is a harlot,” Mrs. Driskell continued. “She’s an unmarried woman who has a baby, and she will tell no one who the father is. Could be any man in town,” the older woman said spitefully. “It’s obvious that she’s a wanton by the way she looks and moves. When she walks down the street, men start to drool as if their brains have ceased to function. All she has to do is smile at a man and he’ll give her anything she asks for.”

“Really?” Kane asked, his voice low and just short of threatening.

Mrs. Driskell waved an indignant hand. “She plucked one of our innocent men from his home for her own purposes and...and...well, just consider yourself warned, Mr. Varden.” Her mouth became a raisin in disapproval. “Sophie Fyne is a strumpet and a witch. A witch, Mr. Varden! Most days she has the good sense to stay up on that hill with those sisters of hers, and that suits me just fine. We don’t want her or her child here. This is a respectable town where decent people live.”

Kane sighed. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Driskell, for sharing your opinion with me before I had the misfortune of doing business with you.”

She nodded her head. “If I were you, I’d ride away from that cursed mountain as fast as possible. I don’t know what she did to you, but—”

“You don’t understand,” Kane interrupted. “I’m not leaving town, but I will be taking my money elsewhere. You see, Sophie might not be willing to tell a bunch of disagreeable, judgmental busybodies who the father of her child is, but I don’t mind at all.” He smiled. “You’re looking at him."

“Oh.” Mrs. Driskell’s plump face paled.

“I certainly can’t reside in an inn where the proprietor holds my future wife and the mother of my child in such low regard.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you did,” Kane said as he turned on his boot heel and headed for the door. There was that smaller tavern at the edge of town. It wasn’t as nice as this one, but he’d sleep on the street before he’d give a penny of his money to this hag.

At the doorway, he turned to face the ashen Mrs. Driskell. “A witch?” he asked, shaking his head. “Where did you get such a ridiculous idea?”

The older woman nodded. “Oh, it’s not a ridiculous idea. All three of the Fyne women are witches, like their mother before them, and their grandmother before her.”

Kane stepped onto the boardwalk, leaving the bitter woman to her ramblings. Sophie didn’t want him or any other man as husband. She was apparently well taken care of. Yes, she was very pretty, but there were plenty of pretty women in the Southern Province. He did still lust after her, but he certainly did not love her. He loved the woman of his dreams perhaps, but he could not possibly love the real Sophie. As she had said earlier, he didn’t even know her.

But the child tied him to her in a way he could not—would not—deny. Other men might’ve gladly ridden away from such responsibilities, but not Kane Varden.

Sophie managed to avoid her sisters during the morning hours when they were all busy with the day’s chores, but she couldn’t escape the closeness of the shared noon meal. Ariana slept, as she usually did this time of day, and as it was Sophie’s chore to cook, she couldn’t very well plead exhaustion and take to her bed. Since she was never sick, that wouldn’t do as an excuse, in any case.

She made chicken and dumplings, Isadora’s favorite, and hoped with all her heart that the meal would distract her usually astute sisters.

The Fyne cabin had stood on this very spot for more than three hundred years, and though from the outside it appeared to be a rough-hewn home, the interior was much finer than one might expect a cabin to be. Over the years the house had been added to, and it now spread far beyond the limits of the simple home it had once been. Each of the sisters had her own spacious bedchamber, and there were two well-furnished parlors as well as a large, well-equipped kitchen.

The kitchen was Sophie’s domain, though they all worked here on occasion. Isadora cared for the animals. They had no need for a horse, but kept chickens, a few pigs, and a number of goats. Juliet tended the gardens and the hothouse.

They were as self-sufficient as most farms, and needed little from town.

Sophie kept the house. Duties were shared, they helped one another, but they each had their own specific place in this household. Neither of her sisters were as adept with the temperamental wood-burning stove as she had come to be over the years.

Juliet and Isadora came inside within five minutes of one another, and they each went immediately to the kitchen basin to wash up before the noon meal. They were dressed in their work clothes; skirts that had been patched a few times and everyday shirts with the sleeves rolled back. Each of them wore a kerchief to keep long strands of hair away from her face. Isadora’s work ensemble was entirely black, though she had mourned for Willym too long. Juliet’s skirt was green and her blouse was natural linen. Her kerchief was a dark green, brightened with small yellow flowers.

Sophie remained busy, latticing the top crust of a redberry pie to bake later in the day. She breathed steadily and said very little, hoping her sisters would not realize that her morning had been momentous.

A year ago, on that day when Sophie had met Kane, Juliet had known almost immediately that something had changed. It hadn’t even been necessary for her to touch her sister to see what had happened, which was an unusual event. Juliet didn’t see everything, not even when she tried, and she had little control over her visions. She had not known that Willym would pass away as he did, and she said her visions of the future where she and her sisters were concerned were impossible to decipher, fuzzy and maddeningly indistinct.

But Juliet had known when she touched her little sister on that day that Sophie was with child. Isadora had been furious when she was told, and it had taken both of the more serene Fyne sisters to keep her from tracking down Kane and exacting her own style of revenge.

If they knew he had returned...

“What’s the occasion?” Isadora asked as she studied the spread on the kitchen table. “Chicken and dumplings, tarrot beans, your special bread...and is that spice cake?” Suddenly she sounded suspicious.

“You two have been working so hard, I thought you deserved a treat,” Sophie said brightly. She kept her eyes on the pie crust. “Since the baby’s come, I’ve been so busy I feel like I’ve been neglecting my share of the chores.”

Isadora and Juliet had been dismayed when they’d first learned of Sophie’s situation, but they loved Ariana dearly and were the most wonderful aunts imaginable. They had been wonderful sisters as well, all but coddling Sophie during the later months of her pregnancy and in the weeks after the baby arrived.

“You’ve always done more than your share,” Juliet said sweetly.

Sophie smiled at the pie. So far, her sisters didn’t suspect that anything was amiss. Her plan had worked. She’d distracted her sisters with pie and cake and chicken and dumplings. Her smile didn’t last. By now Kane had heard one or two or even more outrageous stories. Someone had confirmed her tale that she was a witch, and he was on his way out of town. She should be pleased, but she wasn’t.

To take her mind off Kane, she tried to think of her next paramour. It might be months or even years before she chose to take another man, but when she did he would be different. Someone not quite so tall, perhaps. Someone not so conventionally handsome. Not a cheerless ex-rebel and thief next time, but a man who would laugh with her. A man who would not dare to mention marriage. A man who would not haunt her and threaten her with what she could not have.

And heaven above, the next time she would make sure her lover did not know where she lived. It caused too many complications.

“Oh, no,” Juliet said quietly as she sat at the table.

“What’s wrong?” Sophie turned about. “Did I forget something?”

Both of her sisters stared at her. Juliet dismayed, Isadora curious.

“He’s returned,” Juliet said. With a dismissive hand, she brushed back a copper curl that had escaped the kerchief. “He came here looking for you. He saw the baby, he wants to ...to marry you.”

Having a psychic sister had always been incredibly annoying. Sophie never knew what Juliet would see, but decent secrets of any sort were nearly impossible to keep. And she’d been so careful not to touch Juliet today!

But she had touched the fork her sister was using, and the plate, and she had prepared the food. There was no hiding from Juliet, apparently.

Sophie lifted her chin. “Yes, Kane did happen to be at the pond this morning, but there’s nothing to be concerned about. I sent him on his way.”

“I have a feeling he didn’t go far,” Juliet insisted.

“Can I kill him now?” Isadora asked calmly.

“No,” Juliet and Sophie said at once. Even though Sophie knew her eldest sister would not do another living being harm, she did worry about Kane and Isadora coming face-to-face. No good could come of such a meeting.

“There is nothing to be concerned about,” Sophie said as she joined her sisters at the kitchen table. “Perhaps Ariana’s father is still in the general area, but he’ll be gone soon enough.” As soon as he learned she was a witch. As soon as he understood that they had no future together. All they had was a fleeting, lovely moment shared long ago. And a daughter, she conceded silently.

“When do I get to meet this green-eyed man?” Isadora asked as she took a generous helping of chicken and dumplings.

“Never,” Sophie said with what she hoped was confidence. “There is no need.”

“It wouldn’t be so terrible to be married,” Juliet offered sweetly.

Isadora snorted. Her view on the subject of marriage was clear.

“Not for myself,” Juliet added, “but for Sophie. Marriage without love is certainly possible. It happens all the time, for goodness sake. I have always known that Sophie was destined to have many daughters and a home and maybe even a husband.”

“Your vision is unclear,” Isadora insisted. “Sophie has a home and she has a daughter. Marriage is out of the question. She is too soft-hearted to maintain any sort of a relationship without love coming into the mix.”

“To make matters clear,” Juliet said, “I didn’t have a vision about Sophie’s future, I just have a sister’s certain intuition that she was meant to have a happy life.”

“If Sophie expects happiness, she cannot marry.”

Sophie placed both hands on the table, palms down. “As this is my life you two are discussing, don’t you think I should have the right to speak?”

“Of course, dear,” Juliet answered. “Don’t you want children and a husband and a home of your own?”

Sophie smiled. “Isadora is correct when she says I have a home here. I don’t intend to leave this cabin, not ever. As for children, I suspect I will have more. Three daughters would be nice.”

Juliet nodded.

“And as for men”—Sophie smiled—“they’re very interesting. They can be truly fascinating, if you give them enough thought. Men are different. I do like them, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be so foolish as to fall in love.”

A mental picture of Kane flitted into her mind, clear and startling. Not as he had been this morning, smiling and cheerful, but as he had been a year ago. He hadn’t been so obviously handsome, then. He’d been ragged and rough. Melancholy and desperate.

It would be too easy to fall in love with a man like that one. She knew what would follow. Death for Kane and misery for herself. Sophie shivered. No man would own her, not her soul or her body or her heart. And so she would be safe.

Without warning, Juliet put down her spoon and sighed. “Good heavens, Sophie. What have you done?”

It didn’t take long for Kane to find a friendly card game in the tavern where he’d settled earlier in the day. His room above the stairs was plain and small and the meat and beans he’d been served at the noon hour had been bland and tough. But it would suffice, for now.

The stakes were not high, as card games went, but it was a pleasant enough way to pass the time. He won, of course, and soon found himself without a game. The surly losers went on their way only slightly poorer than before, leaving him alone in the tavern with no one for company but a friendly barkeep named Gudny.

Kane moved from the table where he’d won at cards to the bar, where he ordered a shot of whisky. He had never questioned the past year’s good fortune. How could one challenge good luck? The fact that the tide had changed when he’d met his Angel—Sophie—was pure coincidence. Wasn’t it?

The previous year had passed in a kind of blissful haze. He had his newfound wealth, a light heart, and dreams of a beautiful woman. He had been able to put his former life—which was even more of a haze than the past year—completely behind him. Sitting in a Shandley tavern and wondering how to proceed, new questions plagued him. Why couldn’t he remember where he came from? There were vague memories of a poor and tumultuous childhood, a pretty dark-haired girl who claimed to love him, and then a battle he could barely recall.

He had not asked these questions in the last year because he hadn’t wanted to. Asking them now gave him another of those sharp headaches, so he pushed the questions aside. All he had to do was concentrate on Sophie. The tavern proprietor, Mrs. Driskell, was jealous of her, and rightly so. No wonder men drooled when Sophie walked past. She was a sexual creature, as was evident in the way she moved and in the features that made her the beauty she was. Everything about her was curvaceous. Her body, her full lips. Even the slant of her eyes and the curve of her cheek was sensual.

And she was his in every way. Or soon would be.

If his luck held, and he was quite sure it would, she would be his wife in a matter of days. Weeks, perhaps. No, he couldn’t possibly wait weeks to make Sophie his wife.

He couldn’t wipe the image of his child and Sophie as they had been that morning from his mind, and he didn’t want to. It was the kind of sight a man could very well live for. Beautiful, true...and his.

Did he love Sophie? No, of course not, though he imagined one day he might. She was incredibly beautiful. Startlingly passionate. And her smile...

“Another?” Gudny asked in his hoarse, raspy voice.

“Why not?” Kane pushed his empty shot glass toward the smiling barkeep. One more drink, and then he’d quit. He needed to be clearheaded in order to plan his courtship and conquest of Sophie. He didn’t think the conquest would be too terribly difficult. After all, she was the mother of his child, and what woman didn’t want a man to take care of her? He was relatively wealthy, with a few thriving businesses that he’d won in the past year. A tavern here, a feed store there, a very nice inn in a small town well west of Shandley. He’d won the enterprises at cards, of course, and even though he’d left them in the hands of hired men, they continued to make money for him.

No, the task would not be difficult. Sophie would agree to marry him in less than a week, he imagined.

His memory was not good these days, but he did remember her. He remembered the way she had walked out of the pond like an angel, the way her skin had felt against his, her body, her smile...he could see it all as if he’d just met her yesterday. It was real, not a drunken dream after all. He could not recall why he had been so lost before she came to him. The headache began again with a single dull throb, and he pushed aside the questions. All that mattered was now. Today.

“Are you acquainted with Sophie Fyne?” he asked the barkeep who was busy wiping down the polished plank counter that separated them.

Gudny’s head snapped up. “Why do you ask?”

“She’s a friend.”

The man stopped wiping. “A friend, you say.”

In order to avoid another misunderstanding he quickly added, “I intend to marry her.”

The large man worked his way slowly toward Kane. His eyes flitted this way and that. There wasn’t much to study. It was the middle of the day so the tavern was empty, but for Kane. “You seem like a nice enough fella. If she put a spell on you...”

He laughed. “A spell?” More of the witch nonsense, he imagined.

“I’m telling you, mister, those Fyne women are bad business.”

“In what way?”

Gudny glanced toward the door, as if to confirm that no one else was here to listen to his tale. “There’s three of them, you know. We see Miss Juliet around town now and then, and of the three she’s the least...” Gudny searched for the right word, pursing his lips and narrowing his eyes as he pondered. “Offensive,” he finally finished.

Kane’s first impulse was to throw a punch, but his curiosity won over his anger. “Offensive?”

“She helps some of the women hereabouts with medical concerns, and I’ve never seen her lose her temper or do anything to cause a ruckus, though I did hear a rumor a few years back that she has the sight.”

“The sight.”

Gudny lowered his voice once again. “She sees things that have yet to happen.”

More nonsense.

“Then there’s Isadora,” Gudny continued. “She’s the worst of the bunch. Killed her husband a few years back, put a spell on him, she did, and he dropped dead well before his time. If Isadora gives you the evil eye, mister, you don’t have a chance.”

“And what of Sophie?”

Again, Gudny looked toward the door. “She’s a good-looking woman, and she seems friendly enough. I can’t imagine that she’d ever give anyone the evil eye like that sister of hers. But...” The big man swallowed hard and his left eye twitched.

“But?” Kane prompted.

“A few months back she comes to town with her sister.” Gudny looked directly at Kane once again. “Juliet, not Isadora, thank goodness. The dark one never comes down off that mountain, not since she killed her husband. Anyway, while Juliet was doing her errands as usual, Sophie visited some of the shops in town, said hello to folks, sat in the square and smiled at everyone who passed.”

“Well, then she must be a witch,” Kane said tersely.

“She did something,” Gudny whispered. “I don’t know what, exactly, but the gentlemen she passed by closed up shop and hurried home to pay some special attention to their wives, if you know what I mean. After Sophie said hello and nodded to them, women who normally wouldn’t give their husbands the time of day got themselves all atwitter and went searching for their menfolk to...”

“Pay them some special attention,” Kane supplied.

“Exactly.”

“I still don’t see...”

“It’s bad enough that in Sophie Fyne’s wake men lost their reason and good women behaved like sex-starved animals, but that’s not the end of it. The women—they all got themselves in the family way,” Gudny explained in a hushed voice. “Even Juno McTanni, who had been told by the doctor that she would never be able to have a child. Even Brenna Finn, who is just barely on the green side of fifty. Even—”

“I get your point.” As if by her very presence, Sophie had caused half the town’s population to procreate. Ridiculous.

“Even before we learned that all those women were in the family way, we knew something was wrong.”

“How’s that?”

“The place where Miss Sophie sat there in the town square, it changed.”

“Changed how?” Kane asked, his patience wearing thin.

“All around where she’d been sitting, the flowers that shouldn’t have bloomed so early opened. They were brighter and bigger and more sweet-smelling than they should’ve been, too, as if they were somehow bewitched.”

“The flowers were bewitched.”

Gudny nodded. “Trust me, mister, you want to stay well clear of the Fyne sisters.”

As if they had been summoned by Gudny’s warning words, three women appeared. A dark-haired woman with fierce eyes was in the lead. It was she who burst through the door and glared at Kane. For a moment he assumed she was an irate wife looking for her wayward husband. A slender redhead stood directly behind the woman, and behind the redhead...Sophie, cradling the baby—his baby—in her arms.

“Isadora, don’t...” Sophie began.

“By the moon, sister, I can see the spell from here. It floats around him like a lavender cloud. How could you do such a thing?”

The infamous Fyne sisters stepped into the tavern, and Gudny backed away from them all. “A spell,” he croaked as he ducked down to squat behind the bar. Out of sight, out of mind. Or so he hoped.

Dismissing the spell nonsense, Kane stepped forward. “You must be Sophie’s sisters.” He grinned widely, even though none of them seemed at all inclined to return the smile. Sophie had called the angry one Isadora, which meant the redhead must be Juliet. “I’m Kane Varden. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

“We are not here to get acquainted,” Isadora said abruptly. “Heaven above, Sophie,” she said beneath her breath. “How on earth did you manage this on your own?”

Sophie stepped past the redhead. “I just wished him good fortune. It’s not so very different from what you do for—”

“It is very different,” Isadora interrupted sharply, waving a delicate hand at Kane but keeping her eyes on Sophie. “Was there a linara tree nearby?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “There must’ve been. This is...is...it’s too much,” she said in a lowered voice.

Kane’s smile faded. “Too much what?”

Isadora narrowed her dark eyes. “It’s more than good fortune.”

Sophie bit her lower lip. “I removed his pain,” she confessed in a soft whisper.

Both the other Fyne sisters groaned. Kane remained thoroughly confused.

The dark-haired sister raised a hand, and without warning she pressed two fingertips to Kane’s forehead. She said a few words he did not understand—a language unknown to him or utter nonsense, he had no idea which—and then she dropped her hand and stepped back. “Go home,” she barked before she turned away and stalked toward the door.

“What have you done?” Sophie asked as she chased her sister. The redhead followed Sophie. Kane was right behind her.

“I took it back,” Isadora said as she stepped onto the boardwalk.

“You can’t do that!” Sophie insisted.

“I can and I did,” Isadora said without slowing her stride.

“But he’ll...”

Kane stopped in his tracks as a blinding headache sharp as shards of glass sliced through his brain. This was nothing like the other headaches he suffered on occasion. The pain was so great that for a moment be was blinded. Truly, completely blinded. He dropped to his knees.

It was the redheaded sister who reached him first. Juliet, he remembered. A healer. She had the sight, Gudny said. What rubbish. All he could see of her was a blur of red hair and pale skin, as his sight began to return.

“We can’t just leave him here.”

“Why not?” Isadora asked without pity.

“You go home,” Sophie said, her sweet voice almost sharp. “Juliet and I will take care of him.”

Perhaps the woman who had touched his forehead and set this anguish into motion did as her sister asked, because Kane saw drab, misty images of Sophie and the redhead. No one else. When the pain began to subside and his vision cleared, he concentrated on Sophie’s face. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “The first time I saw you...”

It came back in a rush. The first time he’d seen Sophie he’d been trying, very hard, to drink himself to death. His heart had hurt, the way it hurt now. The faces of friends he had buried, the faces of men he had killed, the home and the family that was gone...gone...would not leave his mind.

He remembered it all now, in a flood of pain that had been buried for the past year. Buried deep and forgotten. How was that possible? How could he have forgotten? The pain once again sliced through his head and his eyes, blinding him, forcing him to remember.

They’d been ambushed. Even though they had eluded the imperial soldiers and taken great care to travel a winding route, somehow the infantrymen had known exactly which road the rebels were taking, and they’d been waiting. His unit had been outnumbered more than ten to one, and they hadn’t yet had a chance to recover from the battle that had wounded and disheartened them.

Someone had betrayed them, someone they trusted. And what had come next hadn’t been a battle—it had been a slaughter.

Duran.

“Oh, dear,” the redhead said softly, just before Kane blacked out and fell face first onto the boardwalk.