Page 41 of A Bloom in Winter

All around the bedding platform, set in little glass containers, there had been roses and carnations and sprigs of baby’s breath.

It had been spring in his sorrow.

And that was when he’d cried.

Not for long, though. He hadn’t had a lot of time if he wanted to avoid a goodbye he didn’t have the strength for . . .

A goodbye he still didn’t have the strength for.

“Apex,” he whispered—

“No, I am afraid that is not me.”

Callum spun around. The male who had come up behind him was a striking figure, tall and lean, dressed in a black robe that fell to the floor, his black hair long and straight. At first glance, you might mistake him for some kind of ascetic, a religious figure who wafted through the physical world doing good deeds.Not it. Those gleaming dark eyes were calculating in a banked-nuclear-bomb kind of way.

Funny, how appearances could be deceiving.

The male’s nose flared and there was a flash of surprise. “Oh, it’s . . . you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I know you.” The figure drifted forward as if he were floating, bypassing Callum and pausing at the door. “Come in. Join me for a meal. It’s the least I can do to pay you back.”

Callum blinked. “For what?”

“Your hospitality.”

Shaking his head, Callum blurted, “You must have me mistaken for someone—”

“Oh, no. I haven’t.”

“Who the hell are you?”

The male bowed. “Blade, blooded brother of Xhexania. And it’s true, you do not know me, but I know you.”

As the entrance was opened, Callum’s entire body was suffused in fight-or-flight, echoes of the past whipping at him.

The male regarded him steadily. “You were hurt here, then?”

“Yes,” he replied in a rough burst.

“And you’ve come back to see if the pain is still with you?” The smile was part sly, part soulful. “Hard to get stains out of the soul, isn’t it.”

“How do you know me?”

“I stayed in your cave. Up on Deer Mountain.” The male touched the side of his nose. “I recognize your scent.”

Lights flared in the interior, and even though Callum didn’t want to see, his eyes locked on what was revealed.

The exhale that came out of him was not relief, per se. But it was a release of some kind.

Nothing was the same. There was no bedding platform. No weapons on racks on the walls or lying about on tables.No combat clothes, no combat rations, no combat-clad guards waiting for a turn with him.

No female watching him get violated with hungry, angry eyes.

Just a lot of elegant, sleek furniture—and a white shag carpet that he had the absent, stupid thought was absolutely inappropriate in the middle of an abandoned goddamn sanatorium.

The bitch would be hard to vacuum, too.

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