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were damp.” She blinked once, as she saw his thoughts in his eyes. Then she laughed, low and long with a female richness that stirred his blood. “Oh, Cal, you have a most attractive body. I’ll not deny I looked. But in truth, I’m after preferring a man awake and participating when it comes to the matters you’re thinking of.”
    Though furious, he only angled his head. “And would you find it so funny if you’d awakened naked in a strange bed after taking tea with a strange man?”
    Her lips pursed, then she let out a breath. “Your point’s taken, well taken. I’m sorry for it. I promise you I was thinking only of giving you your ease.” Then the humor twinkled again. “Or mostly only of that.” She spread her arms. “Would you like to strip me, pay me back in kind?”
    He could imagine it, very well. Peeling that long, thin dress away from her, finding her beneath. “I want answers.” His voice was sharp, abrupt. “I want them now.”
    “You do, I know. But are you ready, I wonder?” She turned a slow circle. “Here, I suppose, is the place for it. I’ll tell you a story, Calin Farrell. A story of great love, great betrayal. One of passion and greed, of power and lust. One of magic, gained and lost.”
    “I don’t want a story. I want answers.”
    “It’s the same they are. One and the other.” She turned back to him, and her voice flowed musically. “Once, long ago, this castle guarded the coast, and its secrets. It rose silver and shining above the sea. Its walls were thick, its fires burned bright. Servants raced up and down the stairways, into chambers. The rushes were clean and sweet on the floor. Magic sang in the air.”
    She walked toward curving steps, lifted her hem and began to climb. Too curious to argue, Cal followed her.
    He could see where the floors had been, the lintels and stone bracings. Carved into the walls were small openings. Too shallow for chambers, he imagined. Storage, perhaps. He saw, too, that some of the stones were blackened, as if from a great fire. Laying a hand on one, he swore he could still feel heat.
    “Those who lived here,” she continued, “practiced their art and harmed none. When someone from the village came here with ails or worries, help was offered. Babies were born here,” she said as she stepped through a doorway and into the sun again. “The old died.”
    She walked across a wide parapet to a stone rail that stood over the lashing sea.
    “Years passed in just this way, season to season, birth to death. It came to be that some who lived here went out into the land. To make new places. Over the hills, into the forests, up into the mountains, where the faeries have always lived.”
    The view left him thunderstruck, awed, thrilled. But he turned to her, cocked a brow. “Faeries.”
    She smiled, turned and leaned back against the rail.
    “One remained. A woman who knew her fate was here, in this place. She gathered her herbs, cast her spells, spun her wool. And waited. One day he came, riding over the hills on a fine black horse. The man she’d waited for. He was a warrior, brave and strong and true of heart. Standing here, just here, she saw the sun glint off his armor. She prepared for him, lighting the candles and torches to show him the way until the castle burned bright as a flame. He was wounded.”
    Gently she traced a fingertip on Cal’s thigh. He forced himself not to step back, not to think about the hallucination he’d had while driving through the hills toward this place.
    “The battle he had fought was fierce. He was weary in body and heart and in mind. She gave him food and ease and the warmth of her fire. And her love. He took the love she gave, offered back his own. They were all to each other from that moment. His name was Caelan, Caelan of Farrell, and hers Bryna. Their hearts were linked.”
    He stepped back now, dipping his hands into his pockets. “You expect me to buy that?”
    “What I offer is free. And there’s