Page 9 of Tower of Tempest
The first time Prince Lochlan took anything seriously in his life—and he died.
The playboy prince is now the dead prince.
I shook my head. This wasn’t helping.
The woman kicked at the stone, trying to find some sort of footing, but her boots kept slipping, and her hands were sliding from the ledge as well.
Right. I had to do something.
I did not come all this way just to watch her die, to die along with her. My teeth gritted together as I dug my feet into that rough stone, then used all my strength to pull myself up. I grunted as my muscles shook with the effort, until I managed to get myself onto that ledge. I hopped up through the window, and the woman gazed up at me with fear stark in her eyes. That same fear she’d had in my dream.
“I’ve got you,” I said and reached down, my hands wrapping around her waist and pulling her up into my chest.
She slammed into me with an oomph, those green eyes stirring something deep inside of me that I didn’t understand. I clutched tightto her, hardly able to believe she was real, that she was in my arms, that we were alive.
I’d done it. I’d found her. I gazed down at her, feeling so blissfully alive.
Adrenaline pumped through me, and I suddenly had the urge to kiss her. To lean down and sweep my lips across hers. After hearing her voice, seeing her face for so many nights in a row, I felt like I knew her.
A familiar smile came to my lips, the one that generally made women melt. One woman had actually fainted when I used this smile on her. I’d caught her, of course, and when she’d woken, she thanked me with a kiss.
The woman stared up at me, not moving, an unreadable expression on her face. All I knew was that we were alive, and I wanted to feel something. To feel anything after the last year spent missing so much of myself.
“It’s not every day I yank a beautiful woman out of her tower,” I said, leaning down.
She yelped, freezing me in place right as a searing pain shot through my head. My hold on her slackened as she stepped back, her figure growing fuzzy.
“Okay, so a kiss was the wrong move, then,” I slurred.
She split in half, her form growing hazy, and I cocked my head. “There’s two of you,” I said, confused. Spots dotted my vision, and I stumbled before falling and slamming against the ground. I gazed up at her, and my last thought before I fell into darkness was to wonder who in the spirits below had I just rescued.
Chapter Six
POPPY
My heart still thundered after that harrowing incident as I paced in front of the unconscious man lying on my floor. The unbelievably handsome man. Auburn curls covered his head, framing his angled cheekbones. His nose was strong and straight, his skin golden. Jaw square and strong. And his eyes. They were closed now, but after he’d pulled me through the window, they seared into me, blue as the pictures of the sapphire Dark Seas that Gran had shown me. A brown fur-lined jacket stretched across his broad shoulders, a tan tunic tucked into brown trousers that stretched over his long legs. And a sword, sheathed at his side. My stomach twisted at the sight of the weapon.
The flowerpot I’d used to hit him over the head lay shattered on the floor next to him, a mess of soil and roots and flower petals scattered over the stones.
He’d yanked me from the tower, and I’d been so sure that was my end, but then he’d saved me. Then he’d tried to kiss me. Spirits below, I didn’t know how to process it all.
I snorted.
Gran might’ve prepared me for a lot of things in life but not for asituation like this. I didn’t know what to do. Leave him here? Wait for him to wake up? Kill him while he was still unconscious?
I’d never killed anyone, and I had no desire to.
Besides, I didn’t have my knife anymore. It had fallen when this stranger had pulled me from the window. My head still throbbed from the violence of it, the way my hair had almost been separated from my scalp. I touched it just to make sure it was still intact.
The man lay so still now, yet even unconscious, he was formidable with his broad chest, thick arms and legs, tall form.
I had no idea what he could possibly want with me. Unless... I peered at him. Unless he was somehow connected to whoever had taken my gran. The hairs on the back of my neck stood. In that case, it might be better to keep him alive. Question him, and if I didn’t like his answers, then I could decide if he deserved to live.
“Hello?” A voice floated through the window.
My head snapped to it, and I stalked toward the opening in my tower. In all the chaos, I’d forgotten about the voices. The people down below who had been yelling up to the man. The ones who had helped him get into my tower.
“Who are you?” I shouted down at the person, unable to see anyone through the dense fog.
