Free Forget Me Not, by Juliann Whicker Page B

but he drew
her back with his hand, warm against her cheek.
    “ Why would you try to
protect me? I was only a Barbarian, someone who debated logistics
and morality with you. Why would you care?” he whispered, leaning
close so that his nose brushed her cheek.
    She shivered and closed
her eyes. “I suppose I loved you.” She opened her eyes and pushed
him back, surprising strength in her arms. “Why did you slaughter
my kind? Must you take out your hatred of me on them?”
    He shook his head, smiling
slightly before he caught her once more in his arms. “I did not
fight Elsyrians until the fury when they attacked us. Perhaps you
can forgive me some day for all the evils I have done. I tried to
hate you, but how could I? Surely I had only deceived myself,
thinking that you had some feeling for me. You never spoke of it,
and I knew deep down that you were better with another man, an
Elsyrian who could give you a world of peace and beauty instead of
what I had to offer.”
    “ What is that,” she asked,
studying him intently.
    He tightened his arms
around her unconsciously. “My sword, my skill, my mind, and my
heart. I offer all I am or will ever be, to you.”
    “ You can’t still care for
me. I’m a shadow of what I was.”
    He shook his head, gazing
into her eyes. “We have both changed, but to my eyes, you are more
incomprehensibly exquisite every time I see you. Your mind was
broken, but even in madness, I would have happily stayed by your
side until eternity faded from the sky.”
    “ You would?” she asked,
doubtfully.
    He smiled and leaned his
forehead against hers. “I hope you still talk to statues and dance
in the moonlight. It would be hard seeing you and you not knowing
me, but I have ached for a century to hold you as I never did when
I had the chance.”
    She closed her eyes and
relaxed against him, letting him hold her for a moment without
thinking of the past or the future, enrapt in a single moment that
shone like an eternally falling star.
    “ I accept,” she whispered.
“That is, if you’re still offering,” she added glancing up at him
through her pale lashes.
    He frowned suddenly.
“There is no place for an Elsyrian woman and a Barbarian warrior,”
he said roughly. Suddenly she seemed light and airy as a handful of
clouds and as difficult to hold onto.
    “ Then we will make one,”
she said before she brushed his warm lips with her cool
ones.
    Balthaar’s heart sang as
he felt the soft skin against his own, his mouth vulnerable to the
sharpness he wanted to consume him and devour him until nothing was
left of the Barbarian but a skin she could wear over her
shoulders.
    He fell to his knees
before her, gazing down at her delicate hands in his. “I must
protect you. Whatever else comes, I cannot live knowing that I
brought harm upon you again.”
    “ I insist that you live,”
she said with a laugh in her voice. “You will live nearly as long
as I,” she said sounding nearly giddy. “What shall we do? Where
shall we go? It doesn’t matter,” she said, leaning her cheek
against his. “All will be well. I know it.”
    “ This feeling,” he
murmured, looking up at her with worry in his eyes. “I felt this
way before, when everything fell apart. The feeling is an illusion.
All will not be well.”
    She cocked her head at
him. “You are affected by the attachment, but you don’t understand
it. We are well-matched. Our natures compliment one another. There
will be challenges, but we will face them together, or we may if an
evil Emperor doesn’t make it his personal quest to destroy us. Even
so, he could not keep us apart forever, and when we were reunited,
my mind became whole, as did your heart.” She smiled at him,
strangely confident in spite of her past. “I will stay at your
side, and…”
    “ No,” he said, frowning
fiercely at her as he rose to his feet to look down at her
ominously.
    “ I do not want to leave
you,” she said simply.
    “ I must save the