Page 13 of The Witching Hour
It was, in short, very much like she’d imagined heaven would be—
“I thought you’d never wake. I’ve been watching your eyelids flutter for ages now.”
She rose onto her elbows, her heart swelling in her chest as the face she loved so well came into focus. “James?”
“I missed you, Sylvie.” He gazed down at her, his dark blue eyes uncertain, then dropped his gaze again. “It’s been too long since I’ve been home, too long since I’ve been here with you.”
Far too long—nearly a year—but if she was dead, it didn’t seem worthwhile to quibble over such a thing anymore. Only she didn’tfeeldead. She felt…quite vibrantly alive. More alive than she had in ages, her blood surging with abandon through her veins in a way it never had before the fever had felled her. “Never mind. You’re here now, only, where ishere?” The patchwork of brilliantly-colored flowers, the trees swaying in the breeze…it was all so familiar, yet she couldn’t quite place it.
“Don’t you know it, Sylvie?” He brushed the hair back from her face. “We’re in the wildflower meadow.”
She glanced around her in a daze. Goodness, he was right! She’d spent long, sleepy hours here as a child, and then later, when James had been courting her, they’d often stolen away to the wildflower meadow to sit under this very tree, so they might hold hands without her father’s stern eye upon them.
It was a place she’d have sworn she’d never abandon, but she hadn’t been here in years, not since the first time James had left the castle. She’d attempted to come once or twice, but it had been too painful to be here without him. “How, er…how do we happen to be here?”
James plucked at a cluster of cornflowers growing nearby and added the bright blue blooms to a growing pile he’d gathered in his lap. “I was at your beside. I laid my head down on your bed just before midnight, and I must have fallen asleep. When I woke, the clock had just finished chiming the midnight hour. You were gone, and I…” He trailed off, his face twisting with anguish.
“James?” She laid her hand on his knee. “What is it?”
“You truly don’t remember?”
“No. I recall your sitting by my bed, speaking to me of our courtship, and…there was something about a white sprigged gown with a pink sash. The last thing I remember is falling asleep, and dreaming of the weeping willow.”
“A violent storm came out of nowhere, and the creek rose, and you got trapped on the footbridge.” He shuddered. “One slip of your foot, and you would have fallen in, and…I thought I was going to lose you, Sylvie.”
“But you didn’t, James.” She sat up, and caught his cheeks in her hands. “You came for me, didn’t you? You risked your life to save me.”
He shook his head. “I think we both risked our lives, Sylvie, to save each other.”
“I remember…” She was still for a moment, thinking. “It’s hazy, but I think I recall you saying you’d always come for me.”
“I did. I promised it, and you promised you’d always be there when I did.” He smiled down at her, grazing her cheek with his fingertips.
“I will, James. I promise it.” And really, it was as simple as that, wasn’t it? As simple as making a promise, and keeping it.
He leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “I used to pick these flowers for you when we came here, before.” He plucked up one of the pretty blue blooms in his lap and offered it to her “Do you remember?”
“Cornflowers.” She took it, smothering the sigh on her lips. She’d saved every flower he’d ever given her, pressed between the pages of a book. How long had it been since she’d looked at them? Long enough they’d be nothing more than gray dust, now. How much time they’d wasted! “I remember.”
She remembered so many things from that time. Endless sun-filled afternoons, shy glances, her fingers entwined with his. It had been simpler then, a time before the distance between them grew so vast neither of them knew how to cross it anymore.
A time before bitter tears, loneliness, and misunderstandings, yet here they were again, in their meadow, safe in each other’s arms. “I miss that time.” She brought the bright blue flower to her face and sniffed, inhaling the sweet herbal scent, the hint of spice tickling her nose. “You used to say cornflowers are the same color as my eyes.”
“They are. Just the same.” He turned to her, his own blue eyes crinkling at the corners.
“They’re far closer to the color of yours.” They’d used to argue over this, back then—one of those charming lover’s quarrels that ended in laughter and kisses. Not a quarrel at all, really, though perhaps it would have seemed so to them at the time.
“Come walk with me, Sylvie.” James rose to his feet and held out a hand to her. “Down to the footbridge, and over the creek and back.”
“Oh, I…I’m not sure I can.” She hadn’t stirred from her bed in weeks, and over the last few days she’d been too weak to even sit upright against her pillows, the smallest movement making her gasp for breath, until she’d ceased moving at all.
“You can, Sylvie. I’ll help you.”
She hesitated, but if ever there seemed a right moment to take a leap of faith, it was this one, while they somehow existed together in this strange, beautiful place caught between the past and the present, between dream and memory. So, she laid her fingers in his palm, and then she was on her feet beside him, as easy as taking a breath, the weakness in her limbs and the unbearable pressure forever squeezing her chest vanishing in an instant as his fingers closed around hers.
She drew in a deep, clean breath of the scented air, her chest expanding, contracting, expanding again, her heart no longer beating in fits and starts, but a calm, steady thumping, and there was no pain anymore, just the sense of herself lifting, soaring on the first full breath she’d drawn in weeks.
Was it because ofhim? Or was it because they were here?
