Chapter 19

Alcina wakes first.

This time, she awakens with the immediate and keen awareness of precisely where she is. That is not her own bed, but the one she'd just shared with Lord Brendan.

Lord Brendan, who is evidently still asleep when Alcina looks to her right.

Alcina can't help but to stare.

In sleep, the lord's features seem impossibly young - with none of the heavy presence that bears on him like an ever-present weight when the lord is awake.

It's something about his eyes, Alcina thinks; those dark, fathomless depths that speak of years much, much beyond the lord's age of twenty-five.

And there's a fascination here, too, of being permitted to observe such a feared man up close like being allowed into a tiger's den when the ferocious tiger is declawed in its slumber.

"If you leaned in any closer, one would think it is my person people should worry about, rather than yours,"

Lord Breandan's low, rough timber - pitched mo