The forest in the dream had changed. Snow fell like ashes through barren branches onto ground that was grayed by frost that cooled Aurie’s bare feet. She stepped over those familiar roots that rose from the ground like little ridges. Small stones were smooth beneath her toes. Her hands slid along the coarse textures of the bark of the trees leading along that same path she had followed so many times.

  She expected to find the hut at the end of the path. She expected to see its glow slowly appear through the gray, casting colors in flickers of shadows, but the clearing was empty.

  The air was warmer than the snow that touched her shoulders and the skin her white dress didn’t cover: her hands, her feet, her neck, her cheeks, her hair. Her hand rested on the tree she once fell into when Draka had shoved her back from the boar, the very same that had always been behind her as she gazed upon that hut’s glow beyond the trees, the hut of his nightmares.

  Draka was sitting there, on the cool ground, resting his chin on his knees as he stared at the empty clearing. His silver-tinged auburn hair was hanging over his face with patches of snow that had yet to melt into the wet crease of his cowlick. He was in that same cotton shirt and hide trousers, those same boots, that he wore the day they met, but his arms were thinner now, making them hang from him like drapes from a curtain rod. Even his boots looked oversized.

  Aurie reached for him but stopped herself. He didn’t seem to notice she was there. He was fixed on that space, that barren area where a hut billowing smoke from a fire within should have been, as the snow gathered on him in tiny piles that shifted like dust when he breathed. His blinking was slow, intentional. His eyes were red from crying, or perhaps the need to release those tears his heart had built in this world he had built for himself in his head. His skin had become sallow the closer she came.

  The hoofbeats were unmistakable. Aurie lifted her gaze toward them. She heard the whinny, the butterflies being blown, the prancing clops of her hooves. She searched, but she couldn’t see her. She couldn’t see Vigora through the trees. Dancing, that was what she expected to see Vigora doing when she looked. But there was nothing there.

  The snowfall thickened. White dots in darkness between gray, barren trees.

  Aurie stepped in front of Draka and crouched down. She tipped her head into the shifting of his eyes. She leaned with every turn, knowing he was trying to look around her, through her. And then she touched his head, lacing her fingers into his hair.

  His golden eyes stopped drifting away from her. The iris enlarged at the sight of her.

  His chin lifted from his knees and he rolled his cheek into her palm. His eyes were now fixed on her, concentrating on her, like an animal’s more than a man’s. There was fear in them, loss, confusion. She could see it as tangibly as his hollowed expression. She caressed his cheek, creeping closer to him, the way she would to a lost child or a stray wolf cub. A wild animal that needed help but she knew she was safe to comfort.

  “You came,” his voice was strained. It surprised her, yet she smiled and nodded.

  “Of course I did,” She slid herself to cradling him against her. “I was scared I lost you. I miss you.”

  “I don’t want this anymore,” his eyes couldn’t follow her without lifting from her palm cradling his head on his knees. Instead, he leaned into her embrace, his eyes remaining toward the sounds of Vigora’s invisible dancing. “I don’t want to be a king, I don’t want to be a Paladin, I don’t want to be without Vigora, without Philip, without Adrian, without Maud.” His breath allowed him to collapse against her so that their warmth was like a blanket in front of a fire, “without You.”

  Aurie blinked at the tears clinging to the corners of her eyes as she basked in the warmth of a body she couldn’t hold like this outside of her dreams, outside of this place. “I don’t want to be without you, either. So, you need to wake up.”

  “You once asked me,” Draka began, “Can we just stay here? Where I can’t see anyone else that I love die? Just a little longer.”

  Aurie trembled a little as she shook her head, “We need you, Draka. We need you to wake up.”

  “I can hear her here,” Draka drew in a breath that made Aurie squinch her nose to keep from weeping against him. “She loved Maud so much. And Maud, how is she going to react? First her father and brother and now? All she has left is you and you’re a Paladin. You’re no longer able to run away from the fighting. She’ll be alone.”

  “Not yet,” Aurie tucked her chin to force Draka to raise his head. “Because we’re not gone, yet. You’re what she has left. This, I—I can’t help her with. I didn’t love Vigora the way you two did. And I’m…I…” She drew it in, looking to the snowing sky through those naked trees above them for guidance as she tried to form the words.

  “Just a little longer,” Draka sounded distant. “I want to listen for a little longer.”

  “I…” Aurie winced, gritting her teeth as the top of her head leaned into the tree behind them. “I don’t know you, Draka, yet I know that I know you.” She swallowed when she felt his head rise from resting on her palm. “I don’t want to be without you. I need you.”

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  When her head rocked forward, he was looking at her, studying her. His skin was no longer sallow. The thickness had returned to his arms. The snow had thinned around him.

  Aurie’s gaze drifted from his eyes to his lips. “I’ve wanted you for longer than I will ever admit to anyone but God. But I want more. I want to know what your voice actually sounds like—out there. I want to know about your sister, about your family, about how you met Queen Isabella, about when you got Vigora, about your adventures, your losses, your victories, your favorite food, why you slept with her when you did, why you are so simple and yet so complicated and wonderful and frustrating…I want to know you because I really don’t, yet I do.”

  His gaze fell to her lips and he had shifted into a crouch in front of her with a hand no longer cradling her face in its palm.

  “I…” Aurie replaced her gaze on his eyes, “I want to know that my heart isn’t just seeing what it wants to see when I look at you. Because I know that I’m falling in love with you, but I’m scared that I won’t ever know who that is because all I ever seem to find out is that I know nothing about you. So, I need you to wake up and win this battle, so we can live long enough for you to tell me, outside of here, who you are. We’re about to be under siege and I’m scared, Draka, for the first time in my life, I’m scared in a way that I’m not sure I understand.”

  Draka leaned back from her, but didn’t retract his hand from her cheek. Their eyes hovered on each other. Tears trailed down her cheeks, pouring between his fingers.

  “I’m scared because if you don’t wake up and we lose before you do, I’ll never have the chance to tell you,” she closed her eyes and leaned into the warmth of his hand, “That I love you. All of you. Your temper, your brutality in the past…” She raised a brow with a trembling grin, “Your horrible taste in women.”

  He chuckled a little.

  “No matter what I hear, what they tell me about you, I only find myself loving you more,” Aurie shrugged through the trembling. “Good and bad. But I want you to start being the one to tell me. And I want to be there to fight your battles, too. I want to fight those demons by your side. I want to be there to see your triumphs in God’s name and hold you when you suffer your losses and I want to be the one holding you right now, but I can’t yet, because you’re not awake. Because you nearly died and, this time, I got to be the one to save you along with the others who love you.”

  “I want that,” Draka said at barely a whisper.

  Aurie cupped his hand on her cheek, piercing into his gaze, “Then, wake up. Wake up for me. For Maud. For Adrian. For Talkro. We need you to wake up.”

  He nodded. His head turned toward those dancing clops of Vigora’s hooves, hanging on the emptiness of the forest beyond for a moment, then back to Aurie. His brows pursed together and he nodded again.

  “I don’t deserve you,” He caressed her face with his thumb, tracing the ridge of her eye and cheekbone, “Balor was the luckiest man I had ever known to have found you. But you know that we can’t. The moment that we do, she’ll come for you and Maud. I’m not strong enough to protect you. I’ve only been able to prove as much. I have my doubts that God approves of our match because of how poorly I’ve faired in my battles since I arrived here. My hubris, my failures…”

  Aurie glared through the tears, “Don’t you dare, Draka. Don’t you dare use my family as an excuse. I’m not a farmer’s wife anymore. Maud isn’t some little girl in the house down the hill. She’s a queen now, preparing her people for siege and ruling a kingdom while she had her hands digging into your chest to pull out arrowheads. And I’m a Paladin, just like you. I fought through an ambush to rescue you and I’m going to fight in the battle to come, whether you’re there or not. We’re not defenseless women. If God doesn’t approve, then why did He give us the ability to fight beside you?”

  He blinked at her beneath pursed brows. “I know, but…”

  “But, nothing,” Aurie shook her head at him, “If you don’t want me, then say it. When you wake up, to my face, however you have to, but you say it once and for all. But that had better not be your reason, Draka, because, believe you me, we’re waiting for the day that we can make that bitch pay for what she did to us.” After a sneering breath, “And to you.”

  He nodded. “It’s the only reason I’ve kept away from you. I’d rather we be what we are than I lose you forever because I’m not as good of a warrior as my reputation says. God just has never let me die. And Vigora always…”

  “Maybe this is why,” Aurie grabbed his face with both her hands and nearly planted her lips on his, but planted them firmly to his cheek, where she kept them much longer than she should have but not long enough. “Wake up and we’ll face your fears together. It’s time you let it all go. I meant it when I said it. You’re not alone anymore. Not here, not in your battles, not in your life, not even in your kingdom. You’ve got a family waiting for you.”

  She was on her knees, pulling his cheek into her bosom as she ran her fingers through his hair and down his back, “You need to wake up and let us become your family. Let us be whole. I deserve a kiss for the beating I took to get you out of that mess you got yourself into.”

  He looked up to her with teary eyes.

  She let her blonde hair fall over him as she grinned down at him, “There’s only one way that can happen. Wake up for me. I’ve almost hit the seven times seventy limit on my confessions for you.”

  They both laughed.

  “Me too,” Draka said between weeping guffaws as Aurie wiped his hair and tears from his face.

  “I’m coming to you. Right now,” she said, looking down at him. “Wake up.”