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"You are right" He looked disgusted now "Jayr--"

"Your guests are waiting Excuse me, my lord" She made her bow and ran

Chapter 14

Rainer saw Viviana slip out of the keep, and followed her, as he had been ordered to She wandered ai a handkerchief to her eyes, until she stood at the edge of the lake and stared across it

He thought he leaer in her hand She rolled the hilt between her fingers in a corip it and put it to use

The sight of the sea in hirow in its place

"It is a beautiful night," he said frohtened on the blade "Thecat from the child’s story"

Viviana sounded calm when she replied, "So it does Would you excuse me, Rain? I should like so one’s mortality" He came to stand beside her "Do you h the cord at the back of your neck?"

"I don’t knohat you mean"

Oh, how cool she was "When I leave When you kill yourself with that dagger" He cradled his throbbing ar his latest interrogation "I ao about it Surely I will bungle it unless I have solanced sideways at her "You will permit me to stay and watch, won’t you?"

"You don’t knohat you are saying" Viviana’s wet eyes closed "Go back to the keep"

"He ordered me to shadow you," Rain said conversationally "I a yourself"

"He knows me well" She shuddered

"As he does all of his victireed "How did you coe when I was sixteen," she said softly "There was no work, and when the crops failed, the youngest and the oldest began dying Then the Lady of Sherwood sent herthem to the castle When she chose ht I had saved my family I did not knohat she was, or what she meant to do with me"

"I remember you" He smiled when she stared at him "I served the lady as her fool"

"That was you?" She took a step back and looked all over him "Oh, my God It was"

"The last ti you were taken down into the dungeons Like the other girls, you never ca his head "When ht add Three days later I dug round I went at once to the lady, to warn her that she had ieons I was a consummate fool, you see"

Her face turned wooden "How did you escape Sherwood?"

"Farlae," Rainer said "He caown for the lady, and he took a fancy to e for a neardrobe The bitch traded owns and petticoats How did you attain your freedoer, and then offered it to hi it at him "Will you do it?"

He looked down at her steadily "Let me fetch another one, and we can kill each other" He lowered his voice to a whisper "I that ere secret lovers who chose death over theer slipped fro He held her with his one good arm, and let his own tears run froaze upward, and he watched a flock of birds flying across the lake as they made their way south There, he knew, they would stay until the ice and snow in the northern country melted and it was safe for them to return

"Viviana" He drew back and took her hand in his "I think I know another way"

Alex’s chills subsided as soon Michael h it took a few minutes for the numbness to recede from her hands and feet

"That feels better," she told hi quite like vampire-induced hypother of stea mulled bloodwine "This won’twhite You’ll never get the stains out"