LITMIR.BIZ

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stood—or rather leaped—to those very attractive feet, scowling. “I don’t like them,” he said in a lordly manner that would have brooked no argument had it come from Donnington. It would be so easy to forget that Ash was not the man he claimed had imprisoned him.

      Stop it, she told herself. She rose and resolutely picked up the shoes. “Shoes are next.”

      The difficulty of getting the shoes through the bars was daunting, but Mariah was determined to accomplish it, with or without Ash’s help. He, however, was equally determined to keep them out, and his strength was considerably greater.

      The third time he pushed them back, she lost her temper.

      “That is quite enough!” she snapped. “You will wear them, or I shall … I shall—”

      “Go!” he said, his shout all but rattling the bars. “Leave me!”

      A prince could not have spoken more decidedly. Or more arrogantly. Mariah spun for the door. She was almost out when the hiss of ripping cloth spun her around again.

      Ash was removing his shirt—except “removing” was far too fine a word for the damage he was inflicting on the perfectly fine linen. In a moment, it would be in shreds on the floor and she would have lost the battle entirely.

      “No!” she said, and returned to the cell. “No,” she said more softly. “No shoes.”

      He stopped, his hands clenched on the ragged edges of his shirt. “No shoes?”

      Not today, my friend. But soon. She picked up the shoes and tucked them under the chair. “You will wear the stockings.”

      His scowl didn’t waver, but she fancied she saw a hint of yielding in his eyes. “Yes,” he said.

      Mariah blew out her breath. “We shall do without the jacket today,” she said. “It is time to discuss what you remember of your previous life.”

      The endless night of his eyes threatened to swallow her. “Let me go,” he said.

      “Not today.”

      Deliberately he pressed his face to the bars. The welts appeared before her eyes. She gave a cry and rushed to push him back, her hands thrust through the bars to press the firm muscles of his shoulders.

      “Are you mad?” she cried. “You … you …”

      She found herself near tears and took control of her wayward emotions, withdrawing her hands before he could think to grab them.

      “I shall not be blackmailed,” she said, anger spilling out of her like poison. “I have seen what happens. You …”

      Heal yourself. As he’d healed her thumb. Now it was happening again. The marks were disappearing, gone in the space of a dozen short breaths.

      Ash was someone, something, even she could not define. Either she was beginning to lose her mind, or he was more than.

      Not even a moan of protest could make its way past the constriction in her throat. She gathered up the lantern and fled … ignominiously, thoughtlessly, and as swiftly as her feet would carry her. She had stumbled halfway down the stairs before she remembered to return and lock the door.

      Once it was done, she leaned against the heavy wood and sobbed for breath. She knew she ought to go back inside immediately, face her fears, prove to herself that the conclusion she had just reached was utter nonsense.

      But she found she could not. As she walked away from the folly, the key still in her hand, she comforted herself with the knowledge that Ash had everything he needed for the time being and she would return before his keeper made another visit.

      A little time. That was all she required to compose herself, to plan, to think rationally again. She must be prepared to find and question the keeper, and to continue her visits without arousing Vivian’s suspicions. She must keep her wits about her at all times.

      Especially when she faced his direct, merciless gaze, tempered only by that strange, contradictory innocence. That desperation combined with arrogance and subtle mockery. That mysterious past, that handsome face, that magnificent body.

      She would never be free of him until she had all the answers.

      ASH—FOR THAT was now his name—held on to the bars until the pain became more than even he could bear. He released them, flexing his fingers until his hands ceased burning, and sat in his usual place where the cool curved wall met the cage of iron.

      She was gone. He had known she would leave him; she had another existence, one he could not touch. Yet she had given her word. And now he knew she would keep it. She could no more stay away than he could walk through the bars and out the door.

      He dropped his head into his hands, weighted with sudden despair. He hadn’t meant to frighten her. His feelings would not be still, driven this way and that like golden hinds during the hunt.

      Hunt.

      The word stung worse than his flesh where it had touched Cold Iron, but he still could not remember why.

      A drift of warming air spiraled down from the small openings in the top of his cage, carrying with it the smell of flowers. Poor, pallid things they must be to produce such a faint and common scent, yet he would have given everything to touch them.

      Everything but his freedom. Even if he should never see Mariah again. He would surrender the taste of her flesh, the softness of her skin. He would sacrifice the chance to hear her voice again, reading stories in which bears turned into men and were saved by the love of beautiful women. He would no longer wonder why his body tightened when she gazed upon him, or how she would appear without the ugly mass of cloth she wore.

      Yet he could not win his freedom without her.

      Freedom to what purpose? From whence had he come? What did he seek?

      He held up his hands, turning them forward and back. They were still unfamiliar to him, though he knew much time had passed since he had been put behind these bars. He rose and stared down at his legs, at his feet in their “stockings.” His limbs, too, had been wrong from the beginning, of that much he was certain. He could make them obey him, but that did not alter their strangeness. Nor could he explain the changes in sight, smell and hearing that rendered his senses so dull and distant. And when he had spoken to Mariah of a tail, he had not meant to make her smile. The question had come from memory, from a time when he had been other than he was now.

      Beautiful. Perfect.

      His gaze fell on the basin. He knelt before it and stared into the clean water. He touched his jaw, his cheek, the line of his nose.

      Human.

      He jerked back, the word ringing inside his head. He knew it well, though Mariah had never spoken it nor read it in her book. It described what she was, just as much as the word “woman.” He touched his chest, feeling the organ beating beneath his ribs.

       Am I not human?

      He looked into the water again. The face was that of a man, like Mariah’s and yet different. A face he almost recognized. But behind that face he saw another, pale as his hair, as different in form as iron was from silver: long, elegant, noble in shape and form. From the broad forehead sprang a horn, spiraled and sculpted as if from stainless ivory. A horn of incalculable value to those who would use it to command the obedience of others.

      He touched his own forehead, naked and smooth. But the appendage was not entirely gone. It was only hidden, like the gleaming white hide and pearlescent hooves and the speed to outrun either human or Fane.

      I am not human.

      Rocking back on his heels, he felt the knowledge sweep through him in a rush like liquid fire. Not human, but rather that other he had seen in the water. A lord. A king.

      A unicorn.

      He tossed his head as the name slipped out of his grasp. He searched through the

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