Page 40 of Enchanted
She tossed the sheets aside. And there on the bed beside her was a spray of moonflowers.
Her heart took a hard leap into her throat and snapped it shut. Her breath clogged behind it, hot and thick. Impossible, impossible, her mind insisted. But even when she squeezed her eyes tight, she could smell the delicate fragrance.
She must have picked them and forgotten. But she knew there were no such flowers around her cottage or in the woods. Flowers such as she now remembered seeing in her dream, spread like white wishes between the spears of candles.
But it couldn’t be. It had been a dream, just another of the dreams that had visited her sleep since she’d come to this place. She hadn’t walked through the forest in the night, through the mists. She hadn’t gone to thatclearing, to Liam, or stepped into the stone dance.
Unless …
Sleepwalking, she thought with a quick lick of panic. Had she been sleepwalking? She scrambled out of bed, her gaze glued to the flowers as she grabbed her robe.
And the hem was damp, as if she’d walked through dew.
She clutched the robe against her, as details of the dream raced much too clearly through her mind.
“It can’t be real.” But the words echoed hollowly. With a sudden flurry of motion, she began to dress.
She ran all the way, not questioning when temper raced with her fear. He’d caused it; that was all she knew. Maybe there was something in that tea he brewed every day. A hallucinogen of some kind.
It was the only rational explanation. There had to be a rational explanation.
Her breath was short, her eyes huge when she ran up the steps to pound on his door. She gripped the flowers in one white-knuckled hand.
“What did you do to me?” she demanded the moment he opened the door.
He watched her steadily as he stepped back. “Come in, Rowan.”
“I want to know what you did to me. I want to know what this means.” She thrust the flowers at him.
“You gave me flowers once,” he said, almost brutally calm. “I know you’ve a fondness for them.”
“Did you drug the tea?”
Now that calm snapped off into insult. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s the only explanation.” She whirled away from him to pace the room. “Something in the tea to make me imagine things, to do things. I’d never walk into the woods at night in my right mind.”
“I don’t deal in potions of that kind.” He added a dismissive shrug that had her trembling with fury.
“Oh, really.” She spun back to face him. Her hair tumbling over her shoulders, her eyes snapping vivid blue. “What kind, then?”
“Some that ease small hurts of body and soul. But it’s not my … specialty.”
“And what is your specialty, then?”
He shot her a look of impatience. “If you’d open your mind, you’d see you already know the answer to that.”
She stared into his eyes. As the image of the wolf flashed into her mind, she shook her head and stepped back. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am. And damn it, I’ve given you plenty of time to deal with it.”
“With what? Deal withwhat?” she repeated, and stabbed a finger into his chest. “I don’t understand anything about you.” This time she shoved him and had his own temper peaking. “I don’t understand anything about what you expect me to know. I want answers, Liam. I want them now or I want you to leave me alone. I won’t be played with this way, or tricked or made a fool of. So you tell me exactly what this means”—she ripped the flowers back out of his hand—“or I’m finished.”
“Finished, are you? Want answers, do you?” Anger and insult overpowered reason and he nodded. “Oh aye, then, here’s an answer for you.”
He threw out his hands. Light, brought on by temper rather than need, flashed cold blue from his fingertips. A thin white mist swirled around his body, leaving only those gold eyes bright and clear.
Then it was the eyes of the wolf, glinting at her as he bared his teeth in what might have been a sneer, his pelt gleaming midnight black.
