Page 103 of An Enchanted Spring

In minutes, the four men and a bevy of guards thundered out of the castle walls, toward the forest line in the distance. The closer they got, the tighter Aidan’s throat became.

Emma shivered,the chill of the night seeping in through her woolen bodice. She sat on a tree root, looking anywhere but at the silver glint of the revolver in Ben’s hand.

The unreality of facing him at this moment in this time was disorienting and terrifying.

His dark hair was almost blue in the moonlight, his skin a wrinkled mess. He looked even worse than the last time they’d come face to face.

Which she thought might truly be the last she ever saw of him.

When the wall behind the hearth in her chamber swung open, Emma was too surprised to scream for help. And when Ben pointed the gun at her and calmly commanded her to place her hands in front of her so he could bind them, she did. Then, when he demanded she walk, Emma’s legs did as they were told, despite their wobbly shaking the entire mile out to the forest.

A waking nightmare.

After emerging from a well-concealed exit deep within the forest, they walked down a small hill, then deeper into the trees until they approached a small clearing. At first glance, Emma swore it looked like the fairy rings she’d read about in her traveler’s guide to Ireland. A circle of trees, ringed inside with large mushrooms, stood before them, the air seeming to shimmer in the moonlight.

Emma got the shivers just thinking about stepping inside its circumference.

Ben forced her inside of it, then waited, looking around as though he expected something to happen. After an hour of simply standing there, he swore.

“The men you entered the rock with. How did they do that?” he demanded.

She looked at him blankly.

“The day you disappeared, Emmaline! How did they do that?!”

She gulped. “Reilly did it, but I don’t know how. He’s a time traveler.”

“As am I,” Ben snorted. “I followed you to that rock in the ground, where he opened the crack with that strange voice. And it closed before I could get in.”

“How are you here?” Emma whispered, afraid if she spoke too quickly, he might pull the trigger.

“I told you I’d find you, Emmaline. I watched a man come in and out of the forest by your lover’s house. I followed him. I thought at first I was crazy, that I was seeing things. But no, no. It was real. He kept disappearing.”

He stepped forward and traced a hand down her face.

She shuddered, and his expression grew angry.

“I followed him the other night, this Reilly character. He did something with his voice, and he disappeared again. But this time I ran into the same spot he was and then I was falling…and there you were, in your pretty little dress, accepting a kiss from that other man.You looked so happy, like you used to with me. Are you sleeping with all of them, Emmaline?”

“No,” she started, but he cocked the gun at her and she pressed her lips shut.

“It doesn’t matter. You’ll get us back. Maybe you can get us to a different time, where I don’t have debts and you don’t have anyone else, and we can live the rest of our days together. I can forgive you for your faithlessness.”

Emma’s heart jumped into her throat.

Ben looked up to the sky. He continued calmly, “I know you think you married him today, Emmaline. See, I found that little entrance into the castle all on my own. It was overgrown, but I was so hungry. Sometimes my pills makes me hungry.”

“Pills?”

“Why do you think I need the money, Em? I need my pills.I have enough to get me through a few months. We’ll be okay.”

Drugs.

“But I’m here now, and we’ll go somewhere, and we’ll live together forever.”

“You want to kill me, Ben!”

“Oh, I did. You took another man to your bed. But I’ll move past it because you’re mine, and I don’t want you dead yet. I need your new bank password first.”

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