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PROLOGUE

Three years ago, we were best of friends, sitting thigh-to-thigh, knee-to-knee, elbow-to-elbow in
the courtyard, laughing under the sun as it warmed our skin. We were the sounds of laughter,
dancing in the wind, the rain, singing merrily against the green underbrush.

Two years ago, we were tangled fingers and limbs, hot lips pressed against blazing skin, tangled
clothes, dark passionate nights, and song of the crickets chirping through the morning fog. We lay
together under the trees in the meadow, elbows linked, those same thighs touching, the same
knees bent together in the same crooked angle.

One year ago, you left me alone to fend for myself. I lay at night alone, grasping for something
that isn’t there at my side any longer. Eventually, someone else fills my bed beside me, but he
isn’t the same person as you were. He doesn’t love in the same gentle way that you did. He’s the
father of my children, but he’ll never be the claimer of my heart.
CHAPTER ONE
Lyran

“FIGHT me, damn you!” the angry scream echoed out from behind me. I sighed, coming to a
stop, my hands resting at my sides. I was cold, wet, and tired, and I wanted nothing more than to
drop off at the nearest inn and to get some rest for the night, but it was not to be.
In fact, I was farther away from any inn than my mind wanted me to be. I was not in fact
resting, but being challenged by a peculiar highwayman dressed in black, looking very bat-like in
the darkness, topped off by a severely, and ridiculously, pointed hat. “What will come of this?” I
sighed as I drew my sword to answer the man’s challenge. I would only disarm him and be on my
way.
The young man danced around in his ridiculous costume, greed making his eyes gleam as
he watched me turn to face him. He chuckled to himself and then lunged forward with a rather
loud, “Hiya!” and a very badly-executed lunge which I didn’t even bother to parry. A step to the
side sufficed in throwing him into the mud as the rain fell down around us.
“So how ‘bout it,” I asked him. “Let’s see that challenge of yours. Show me what you’ve got.
Stop mucking about in the mud.” He sat up with a glare, trying to shove the hat off of his face. He
gave up and let it hang there in front of him and got to his feet.
With a snarl, he attacked again. Blocking a widely-thrown punch with the hilt of my sword, I
dropped my weapon in time to grab up his other fist that had followed the first. Putting my weight
on his crossed wrists, I yanked them down near my hip and threw the lighter man neatly over my
shoulder. He landed in a clump of bushes.
As he untangled himself, I plucked my sword up from the mud, wiped it off as best as I
could with my mud-covered clothes, and set off down the road, leading my horse beside me. The
rain began to fall in earnest now, and I began to think of home – before I had to leave.
Things were easy then – I was apprenticed to the blacksmith of the town and my job was
steady and I learned a lot. The blacksmith had told me that I was to the point where I wouldn’t be
able to learn anything else from him any longer. He told me that I could put an edge on a blade
that no man could, hone a sword so sharp it would cut through anything, and weld a horseshoe
onto a horse faster than any man alive. He was proud of me – and he was like a father to me.
Then, there was his daughter, the pretty girl that I fell in love with.
Serafina was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, and she had the sweetest soul in the
world.
CHAPTER TWO
Serafina

EXHAUSTED, I hoisted the squalling child onto my hip and brushed back a strand of hair before
she could catch it in one waving hand. “Mama!” she wailed, her blue eyes tearing up as she
stared at the pony ahead of us. The pony was being led away by a stablehand as we stood there
in the warm afternoon sun.
“Come on, let’s go home, Twi. We’ll be back tomorrow,” I soothed my baby girl as the
three-year-old began to cry. Twilight was fussy as Nathan, my five-year-old, was calm. The little
boy now came skipping up to us, golden-brown ringlets bouncing about his small shoulders. His
new sturdy breeches clung to his little legs as he faltered from a skip to a run, his little boots
thumping the dusty yard.
“Mama – Captain Rush says that I can shoot a bow as well as any grown man!” Nate
panted as he crashed into my legs. Smiling down at him, I managed to free a hand to ruffle his
hair. He clung to a fold on my dress and grinned his little boy smile up at me.
“That’s very good, Nate. Wait until Papa hears you’ll be such a great hunter some day,” I
told him.
Gleefully, he let go of my skirt and with a hollering whoop, he ran down the short path
ahead of us, back inside the mansion. Twi looked at me from where she was, sitting comfortably
in the crook of my arm. “Mama – will I be a good hunter like Nate, too?” she asked me. She’s
already forgotten about the pony. I smiled at my little girl and gave her a kiss on her button nose.
The gentle summer breeze caught her hair in its gentle grasp, wrapping it around our faces in a
golden mask.
“You will be a beautiful lady of the court,” I assured her in a murmuring voice. “Hunters are
for boys. You will be a beautiful lady and the prince will come and take you to his castle on his
white horse.”
Her green eyes shone with the vision of it as my heart twinged with the thought of my baby
girl leaving me. Her skin was scented with the summer, her hair shone with sunlit highlights. In
ten years, she would be a young woman, and she would be in the arms of her husband. Her
summer scent would be made bitter by her worldly troubles. “Will I have horses and ponies to
ride?” she asked me.
“Everyday,” I assured her as we entered the shadow of the mansion. My smile was
plastered on my face, painted on with no feeling behind it.

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