Fire Witch (Hot Hex 4) by Susan Stephens

Author:Susan Stephens [Stephens, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910604366
Publisher: Susan Stephens

Chapter Seven

When she woke, Isla’s doubts had returned. “I have to return to my time and place, and as Isla the blacksmith, not Isla your queen.”

Raising himself on one elbow, Ragnar stared down. “Do I need to tell you that feelings transcend time and place?”

“No. I know they do.” She only had to think about her grandparents and the relatives they’d told her about, who had lived and loved way back in time. Their lives had touched hers just as surely as Ragnar’s. They’d existed. He existed. She couldn’t see or touch those ancestors, but they were there in her past all the same. Everything she was and everything she would be was because of them.

“Love is an unassailable fact,” Ragnar stated as he stroked her face and brought her close. “Emotion cares nothing for time and only is.”

Her world and his could tilt on its axis while he was kissing her, and Ragnar’s reassurances should have been enough, but she couldn’t forget the people back on the island that she was letting down with every racing minute that passed.

“No buts,” he warned when she started to speak again. “Live in the moment.”

But which moment? His? Or hers?

Ragnar knew every way to soothe her, and he didn’t hold back. Eventually, she found herself smiling, and he smiled too. “That’s better,” he approved. “Our handfasting ceremony will be a joyous occasion.”

Would it? All she had ever wanted was for Ragnar to say he loved her, and he had, so why was she so certain there would be trouble ahead? As an image of the gothi flashed into her mind, she just as quickly forced it out again.

There were a lot of questions to answer, but for the moment, Ragnar’s countrymen were too thrilled by his return to probe too deeply into the mystery of their king’s return. Ragnar was a fearless warrior they looked up to and admired; a ruler who protected them. It was no wonder he had easily won back the trust of his adoring people. They were already talking about him as the man who had conquered death.

Isla guessed that because of the injuries he’d sustained in battle, Ragnar had been in a catatonic state, which was why his comrades had thought him dead. Why else would they launch him and his boat out to sea? Possibly choked awake by thick smoke on his burning funeral pyre, Ragnar had managed to put out the flames and save himself thanks to a torrential rainstorm. On closer inspection his wounds were light and soon healed. He must have been knocked unconscious at some point during the battle and the terrible bruising on his body had made his people fear the worst. He sailed on through the mist, and having beached on a remote Scottish island, Ragnar couldn’t have known that he had landed in the twenty-first century. Hiking up the shore path, he would have caught sight of the lights at the village hall and heard the music at the ceilidh.

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