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healing.
    Adrian cradled his treasure close to his chest, holding her and yet afraid to hold her. He had not meant for any harm to come to her, but harm had come regardless. All of the darkness he toyed with while captaining the nightmares of people—he knew what evil was and the deep, ugly places those people could go. He had simply wanted to remove her from that ugly world, to take her from all the pain she had been suffering. He had done so against every rule, he knew, had even attacked his sister, whom he truly loved, only to have it come to this?
    The remorse that filled him then was sudden and bracing. The energy of it was intense and powerful. He drew in a breath of surprise at the feel of it. It was not a dark emotion, like the ones he was used to wallowing in, but neither was it a bright one. It was a peculiar shade of gray, and yet…so strong. Yes…he had felt it before. In certain dreams, there was guilt and sadness. Sometimes so strong it would overwhelm him, just as it was doing in that moment.
    Confused and having struck down the two people who always helped him when he needed it, Adrian was lost as to what to do or feel. He gathered up his Kathryn and hurried her back over to the bed. As he had done before, he carefully arranged her limbs, smoothed her nightgown down until it was perfectly straight, and then painstakingly arranged every single curl of her glorious hair.
    But as hard as he tried, the perfection of it was flawed and ruined by those terrible marks on her body. Frustrated, he roared out angrily, trying to shake off the waves of pain riding through him with such inexplicable potency. He tried leaving the room, barely making it off the bed before he collapsed to the floor. He lay there panting for a long minute, trying to make himself get up and not understanding why he couldn’t. And then, finally, his psyche shorted out and Adrian lost consciousness.
    Something was pulling Kathryn, drawing her.
    She had been floating in a benign gray void of nothingness. Somehow she knew that she had been there for quite some time.
    But something was now beckoning her away from it.
    Slowly, with a soft sigh, she came around. She opened her eyes with a hesitant flutter of her lashes.
    Then she heard again what it had been that had called her back to consciousness.
    A moan.
    It was a low, tortured sound. The sound of someone in unbearable pain.
    And whoever that someone was, he was very close by.
    She sat up slowly, blinking once. She was aware of feeling stronger. Of feeling more well rested than she had been in a very long time. She did not even feel afraid this time as she quickly looked around the strange room. Of course, she wasn’t quite brave enough to look at any one thing for any length of time, either.
    Then the moan came again, drawing her full attention quickly to the floor beside her.
    She gasped softly.
    Whoever he was, he had to be the most massive man she had ever laid eyes on. Well, maybe with the exception of the color plates of giants in her childhood fairy-tale books. Still, the difference between seeing a drawing of a mythical giant and finding yourself sitting and staring at a real one was quite vast. Why, the width of his shoulders might be nearly twice the length of one of her arms from fingertips to shoulder! Of course, she was a little small, according to some people.
    She bit her lip and leaned closer with irresistible curiosity so she could get a better look at him.
    He was on his forearms and knees, his face burrowed into his hands. He was dressed entirely in black. The clothing, what she could see of it, was alien to her in its fashion. Even the fabrics looked strangely coarse. It was nothing she had ever worked her needle through, and she prided herself on being a remarkably fair seamstress.
    She could see the back of his large head. His features were further hidden by an outrageously thick and long tumble of silken black hair that sprouted from his scalp, tumbling forward over his