He was watching her through narrowed eyes, and her panic rose. She had to make him listen. He had to go. The alternative was too hard to bear. “Don’t you understand? If you stay, then we both die, and our child will never be born.”
She could hear pounding feet on the stairs, slamming doors as the fire-demons searched each room. “Kael, you do come back for me—I have seen it.”
His hands fisted at his sides, the muscles of his face rigid, his eyes wild. But she could sense that he was wavering. She pushed. “Kael, I want our future; I want our children. You have to go.”
Kael threw back his head in a silent roar of despair. Then he reached out, gripped her shoulders. “You have seen this future?”
She nodded.
He took her face between his hands and stared down into her eyes. “You don’t die,” he growled. “Whatever they do to you, stay alive for me. Iwillcome for you, Raven.”
He dragged her against him and kissed her savagely. Then he pushed her from him. A moment later he vanished, and a sky-blue moth alighted gently on her hand. She carried it to the narrow window and watched as it stepped from her hand to the blind. A moment later it disappeared behind the edge and out into the open air.
As soon as he was gone, Raven was filled with a frantic urge to call him back. Because now, when it was too late, she finally understood the true meaning of her visions. She knew why she had been shown Kael all those years ago. It wasn’t only desire that drew her to him, it was love.
She collapsed to her knees, a scream ripping through her mind. And she wept then. For the first time since her capture, the hot tears spilled over, filling her eyes with red haze for the baby she would never hold.
She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the images, but before her closed lids the vision replayed itself, over and over again, taunting her with the future and the lies she had told. For there had been no baby in her vision, only Raven, stretched out upon the altar in the great hall. She was staring up into Sorien’s hate-ridden, triumphant eyes as the sun slowly rose behind him.
