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Raquel looked up at him. She felt so unbalanced by the sudden shift in this interchange, and the pain of dashed hope, that she couldn’t find words to respond.

He started for the door.

“What happens next?” she asked, finally finding her voice.

He stopped with his hand on the door, but he did not turn. His shoulders were tight. “We leave at dawn.”

“For where?”

A breath. “I need to fix my coat, and then I’ll introduce you to my father.” He left and closed the door behind him.

* * *

Jake stopped in the hallway,just outside the door, and he dragged a hand over his face.

“Is everything all right, Your Grace?” Havarr asked.

Fates, he hadn’t even realized Havarr was standing there, and it looked like she’d brought a pail of fresh water.

“Yes, everything is… fine,” Jake said. “Just make sure she doesn’t run away again.”

Havarr frowned at the door. “Is she awake?”

Jake nodded and strode past a curious Havarr and shoved through the door opposite his own. “Tell the others to prepare for departure at first light,” he said, then slammed the door shut, irritated that he still felt pulled to the girl.

Irritated that he felt anything at all.

10

Jake did not sleep well. In fact, he didn’t sleep at all. He wasn’t one for dreams. He couldn’t remember ever having one, but last night he had dreamed abouther. The mortal girl.

Raquel.

Kissing her.

Making love to her.

Fates, his heart pounded just thinking about it, and he sagged back in his bed to relive that…intoxicatingmoment, but then the rest of his dream flashed before his eyes. The two of them had stood at a window, and he’d been behind her, his arms wrapped around her full and rounded belly while his chin rested upon her head. Strangely, this simple gesture struck him harder, struck himdeeperthananything they’d done in that bed. She’d felt like an extension of his own person, more precious to him than any lustful craving or desire.

More precious to him than his own flesh.

He’d held on to her while they’d observed two children playing in the yard beyond, picking flowers.

A girl and a boy. The girl had Raquel’s beautiful thick golden hair, while the boy had his dark locks, and in the dream, Jake had been overwhelmed. He’d been flooded with a joy that’d warmed him from the inside out, as though the sun itself had been unleashed inside of his chest.

It was preposterous. A pathetic mortal dream full of futile and fading ambitions.

In fact, it was probablyhiscurrent ambition of earning her affections that had inspired such nonsense.

And his…unspent desires from last night.

Jake pressed a hand to his bare chest, trying to massage the sudden ache out of it. He couldn’t understand why it was hurting. He hadn’t injured it, and yet there was an undeniable pain beneath his left breast, where a heart should be. It seemed to him that all of those emotions he’d experienced in his dream had been ripped out of his chest when he’d awoken, leaving gaping holes behind.

Which was utterly absurd. He didn’t want children. He didn’t evenlikechildren.

An image of that little girl with Raquel’s tumbling golden hair flashed in his mind, that smile like the summer sun. She’d had his eyes, he remembered. Sometimes dark, sometimes gold, depending on his mood, and right then they’d been bright as autumn leaves. Effervescent. In his mind, he saw her run to him and leap into his arms, call him Father.

Say she loved him.