The Locket (20 page)

From there, figuring out what to do was not the problem; it was how to do it that would be difficult. She searched around desperately for any kind of resource that she could use. Oh, there must be something heavy enough to knock him out! Knock him so that … yes! This will have to do.

Without taking the time to think her plan through any further, Savannah grabbed hold of the nearest vine and swung down, aiming for her target. The vine was slimy against her skin and was leaving a growing brush burn on her hand, but she didn’t care. As she had intended, when the power of her acceleration met with his head, the ogre was knocked off balance and fell head-first onto a hard rock. The knife that was once strongly held in his grasp now was released, and she picked it up the moment she regained the strength to stand firmly on the ground.

Nothing else mattered now. Her main focus was getting Christian out of harm’s way, whether or not the cause of harm was knocked-out cold. Throwing the knife on the ground, Savannah threw her arms around his chest, pulling him as best she could away from the ogre’s campsite. It didn’t shock her that, even unconscious, Christian was not light. He may have had a slim torso, but his evident muscles made up for the lost weight and made him almost too heavy for her.

At last reaching a spot far enough away for them to get a sizable head start if the ogre woke, Savannah sat and pulled Christian onto her lap, quickly inspecting him for any wounds or signs of blood. Though it wasn’t the external wounds she was worried about.

She couldn’t find anything other than a generous-sized gash on his head—that thankfully wasn’t bleeding any longer—from where the ogre hit him. There was some dried blood around the gash but that was easily fixed.

Savannah snagged the canteen out of her sac and poured a dab on her shirt to wipe the smear of red away from his wound. Her frantic mood slowly began to switch off as her body was getting used to the idea of the two of them safe, her vision spoiled.

She had changed her vision. That had never happened before.

Whether it was because she woke up before it happened or because of any other reason, it didn’t matter. What mattered now was that they were safe and she was working on reviving him back to health.

When the blood was cleared, Savannah’s eyes gradually traveled from his wound, to his entire face. Holding him close, she prayed for his eyes to open and reassure her that he was going to be all right. She hated the thought of him not waking up and felt a slight jerk in her stomach. Something more than just a pain at the thought of losing a man she knew ran through her. He was a friend; at least that’s what she had been considering him lately. But were there more than platonic feelings for him sizzling through her blood? That was still something she wasn’t sure of and wasn’t sure she wanted to think about.

True, he was conceited, self-absorbed, pigheaded, and secretive, and had been ever since they met. That was something she thought of most guys anyway, seeing the examples Marie always brought to her attention.

But she couldn’t deny the butterflies she got now, looking at his still face. He made her think, made her feel things she had never felt before. He excited her in ways that no other man had. The only other man she had ever cared for that much or had ever wanted to be around for that matter, was her father.

She lightly stroked the hair from his face. His curls were silky and calm, she noted, and then smoothly caressed his warm skin, causing a small quiver to run in her veins. Her fingers ran down his handsome features until they came upon his lips. They were so full and packed with temptation.

He began to stir. A moan emitted as his eyes gently opened, quickly filling with question.

Out of all the things coursing through his mind when that ogre was chasing him, this was not something he thought he would wake up to … if he woke up at all.

Christian had never been in a position such as this before. He liked it, though he was still confused by it, even after he had established his feelings for her. For one thing, the woman who was tending to him now had been yelling at him less than twelve hours ago. And for another, why was she clinging to him so dearly and affectionately? Not that he minded in the least.

“Are you all right?” she asked softly. His heart pounded from the hitch of concern in her voice.

Letting out another moan, he put a hand to his head where the gash was. “Yes, I believe so, with the exception of this mark on my face, of course. What happened?”

Savannah furrowed her eyes in concern, wondering if he had any memory loss. “Tell me what you remember first, and I’ll fill in the blanks of anything after.”

“From what I can recall,” he began, wincing when he touched another tender spot on his head, “I was being chased by this one monstrous ogre. He spotted me as I was walking down the path and had this look in his eyes as if I were a piece of meat in front of a starving dog. Anyway, I ran. Unfortunately not fast enough, because he caught up with me, I struggled, and, and—and that is where I blacked out.”

She nodded, relieved that he didn’t have a concussion or any memory problems. “Well after the ogre brought you to his campsite, he tied you up to an old oak tree and had a cauldron ready to make you his dinner. When I got there, I knocked the ogre out and brought you here.”

Christian sat up and kept a strong gaze on her with a rigid jaw. “You could have been killed; you should not have come after me. It is not that I am not grateful,” he added, putting a hand up when she started to protest. “That ogre was more than double your size and much, much stronger. I just do not want to see you hurt—”

“And I didn’t want to see you dead,” she interrupted. Seeing that he was silenced, ready to listen to her, she continued. “I saw that you were in trouble, I saw a way to help … so I helped. And I’m glad I did; I wouldn’t take back anything that happened.”

Nodding, though not completely in approval, Christian got up on his feet. “Then I am forever in your debt, Miss Morgan. You saved my life, and I am eternally grateful.”

“I told you, call me Savannah,” she said, as he pulled her up beside him. “Thank you.”

It seemed like the first time in a long time that she was able to see him smirk again. “Was that proper etiquette that I just heard?” he asked.

She smiled back, never thinking that she would be so happy to play his game. “Perhaps. And I think that it’s high time I received some of that. After all, one would expect at least an apology after someone else was proven wrong.”

He blushed. “Oh, ah, sorry,” he fumbled. “If I had listened to you in the first place, I would not have gotten us into this mess, and I apologize.” Then, too swiftly for her to make any objections, he leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “Shall we?” Before she could say anything—not that she could think of anything at that precise moment in any case—he was heading back to the fork.

“It was no big deal, really,” she said when she found her words again. She ignored the tingle still running down from her cheek to the rest of her body. “I was just doing what I thought my mother would have done. If people are going to ask me to do the same things they asked of her seventeen years ago, then I might as well not let them down by saving a few lives in the process.”

Christian turned the corner to the other side of the fork, appreciative to be far out of harm’s way. “You are a lot like her, you know. Gwen would have always put someone else in front of herself.”

Thinking about her, Savannah smiled. It was funny how everything—every thought, every detail, every feeling—could be so painful one day and so normal the next. For the first time since her mother’s death, Savannah was finally beginning to feel more at peace. “Yeah, I guess she would have, wouldn’t she?”

Although it gave Christian discomfort to think that his father could not draw a map to save his life, the thought that he was right in which direction to head pleased him. He was glad that any thoughts of his father getting too old or losing his mind were starting to melt away. “By the way, how did you know I was in trouble? I was under the impression you were halfway to your destination by now, on the other side of the fork.”

A wide grin spread on her face. “I have my resources.” Before he asked any questions, she turned the topic over to something more everyday than psychic visions. “So tell me about your family. It’s been forty-eight hours now since we’ve met, you know almost more about my parents then I do, and I still haven’t heard you say anything about your own.”

He ducked under a low tree branch, taking his time to prolong an answer. This whole lying game was getting harder and harder to play as he watched it go from a pebble to a boulder of lies. “My family? Well, there is not much to say about them, really. What do you want to know?”

“Anything,” she said sprightly. “Anything that would tell me more about your background. You know, where you came from.”

Christian continued uneasily forward, hoping to put some distance between them so he could think and not feel completely suffocated. He didn’t have to make up a complete lie, he could, after all, tell her what his parents were really like. He just would have to hide who they were. “Uh, well … my mother is a spirited woman. She is always so serene and collected, and very intelligent. She is also said to have the biggest heart and most courage out of any woman that had come into the kingdom. My father is a man of loyalty. He listens to what others have to say and never backs down on something that he has already started. Sometimes he can be a bit rough around the edges, but that is only to protect the ones he loves.”

Feeling a bizarre closeness to people she hadn’t even met, Savannah thought that his parents sounded like decent people. In her mind, a family could be defined as anyone who would stick by you and make you feel at home whenever you were with them, wherever you were. She once had this warm, caring environment where people who loved her surrounded her. Hearing Christian talk about his made her experience that sensation again, even if was simply for a moment.

“Sounds familiar,” she mused. “My family is a lot like that—was a lot like that. My mother always knew what to do in the event of an emergency, and my father would never let his guard down with new people until he fully trusted them. I did not know my father all that well, but my mother was an amazing person. She could juggle so many things at once, like work and me and a conversation with someone else all at the same time. She was an incredible person.”

“What happened to her?”

She did not look at him as she spoke. “She died a few days after I turned sixteen.”

A brush of sadness swept over his face. “I am truly sorry.” She acknowledged his consideration. “What about your father?”

“Died when I was four.” She didn’t know why she was telling him this. Usually she didn’t like to talk to anyone, not even Marie, about her father. There was just something about him; a trust she believed he held in himself, perhaps. He had a trust and unmistakable compassion. One of the reasons why he was so different from the other guys was because of the empathy that he demonstrated both in voice and face. They proved signs of understanding her emotions and a desire as well as a need for her to be okay. He, unlike many of the men she had met, actually listened to her when she had something to say.

Going out on a limb, she went against her initial decision and decided to trust him with her deepest secret. “Do you believe that everybody has secrets?”

“Secrets?” he asked with a slight snag in his voice. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“My biggest one I hadn’t discovered until I was four. It was my birthday and I was still asleep in bed, but my dreams were being haunted by this particular nightmare of my father. He was getting into a car crash.”

“A what?”

“A car crash. Oh, that’s right. Um, in your case, it would be more like … actually, I don’t know. You have carriages, right?”

“Of course. But only the socialites use them.”

“In my time, a car is similar to a carriage, only it rides a lot faster,” she explained. “My dream was that my father collided his into another person’s on the road and died. Waking up that morning, I rushed into my mother’s arms in tears because I was afraid. My mother rocked with me a bit in her chair to calm me down and, after a little while, my father came down the stairs, saying that he was going to pick up my birthday cake for the party that evening…” she trailed off, not aware of how upset she was becoming.

“And he died?” Christian offered. It was obvious to him that she needed a slight shove in the right direction. Preferably one that would help her cope with the ghosts that she refused to let go of.

She took a deep breath. “He died, just as I dreamt he would. He went to pick up my birthday cake, got into a car crash, and died.”

At the start of her silence, he did not know what to say. “Sorry” seemed too simple, and “I hope you are okay without him,” was too harsh. “I am sorry. I wish that I knew what else to say to you, but I am afraid that I have never experienced what you have.”

She smiled wearily. “It’s fine. I’m fine. To be honest, I don’t know why I’m saying all of this to you. Before, I never liked to talk about my father because it was too upsetting. I would always find some way to shut out my feelings. It was as if I hadn’t a care in the world, like a villain in a superhero movie.”

Christian noticed stillness in the air and realized that Savannah had stopped walking. He saw that her face was moist, her cheeks were light rouge, and her body was shaking. Perhaps, he thought, she was more easily shoved then she let on.

He came over and wrapped his arms around her. As she wept, he placed a hand gently on her head and stroked her hair. He was normally good with aiding people through their personal problems. That was, of course, one of his duties as prince and, one day, as king. Naturally, he wouldn’t be this personal with any of his subjects, but he could be with her. The girl in his arms did not quiet down after he came over and was still clearly trembling. Humming her a song his mother used to sing to him before bed, Christian finally felt the attack subside.

His voice was deep and soothing, and the vibration from his neck relaxed her. It was easy to assemble herself quickly with the mixture of his smooth voice, the warmth of his arms, and his general concern for her.

It was then that two things were brought to her attention. First, that the concern for her and the kindness he showed reminded her of her father. Second, that he had so far been the only man, the only person in fact, that had ever driven her emotions out of her. From the time when her father took his last breath until she became friends with Christian, she had packed her affections up, threw them in a container, and put a sign on them that said, “Do Not Open.” If her memory served right, not once after he died did she cry for him. Not once did she share her sorrow with any other person, not even her mother. She had held this in for so long that it felt good to finally let it all out. When her mother died, it was different because it was too close to the surface.