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Then another.
Fast.
I straighten slowly, the brush still clutched in my hand as Étoile raises her head and turns toward the stable doors, ears pricked forward.
Someone is coming.
The rhythm grows louder, uneven and hurried, with branches snapping somewhere beyond the tree line as a horse pushes hard along the overgrown trail.
I drop the brush and leave the stable.
Boone rides into the garden, and for one impossible moment, I think weeks of wandering through this place looking for a man who was no longer here have finally tipped me into madness.
“Rhys!”
He swings one long leg over Bramble’s side without waiting for the horse to come to a complete stop and runs toward me. I remain frozen where I stand, watching him cross the garden and trying to understand how the man I left in front of that cottage is suddenly here.
Boone crashes into me.
His arms lock around my neck and his face buries against my shoulder. Then he sobs, the sound raw and desperate. My arms remain stiffly at my sides as my mind struggles to reconcile the man clinging to me with the one I watched walk away.
Then I feel his breath against my neck.
He’s real.
He’s here.
He came back.
Back to me.
My arms close around him so quickly that I nearly lift him from the ground. I hold him against me, every selfish part of me wanting to ask why he came back, whether he changed his mind, whether this means what I desperately want it to mean.
Another sob tears through him, snapping me out of the haze that seeing him again has left me in.
This is not relief.
Something is wrong.
I draw back and cup his face in both hands. Boone immediately grabs my wrists and holds me there, apparently afraid to let go. Only then do I see how pale he is despite the flush of exertion across his face.
“What is it?”
“They took him,” Boone sobs.
“Who?”
“My father!” He releases one of my wrists and scrubs frantically at his face, wiping away tears only for more to replace them. “Lucien … he … he’s forcing my hand, Rhys. You have to help me.”
I stare at him, trying to understand. “Forcing your hand?”
Boone’s watery gaze finally finds mine. “He’s going to make me marry him.”
No.
That will never happen.
If Boone is going to marry anyone, it will not be this fucking Lucien.
