But what did she feel?
“You must rest now, my dear,” Harry said, rising to his feet. “I will find a maid to attend you, and inform you as soon as Caitlin is awake.” He cupped the side of her face. “Sleep well, my child. And have faith.”
She covered his hand with hers. “Thank you, Harry.”
He opened the door and nearly tripped over the bags Morgan had left just outside. With a brief shake of his head, he lifted them one by one and set them in the room.
The ache in Athena’s chest continued long after he was gone. A maid arrived within the hour to bring water for washing and help her unpack the bags. Mr. Durant, too, found time to come to her, apologetic for having neglected her but clearly overwhelmed by his additional responsibilities.
She absolved him of any need to personally look after her and arranged to have the hired girl within calling distance. She remained on the bed rather than ask Durant or some stranger to lift her in and out of her chair. Harry failed to return, and Morgan stayed away. At last she grew too sleepy to wait. The maid helped her into her nightdress, and she buried herself beneath the quilted coverlet.
Exhaustion overcame worry, and she closed her eyes. Out of the mist of half-sleep, she woke to an intense pain in her legs, so sharp and sudden that she cried aloud.
Pain in her legs. She reached down to touch them, certain she must still be dreaming. She closed her eyes again, willing herself back to sleep—but instead, she plunged into another dream, this one even more fantastic.
For she was running. Running, not on two legs, but four—running as a wolf, jaws wide to catch the falling snow. And at her side…
At her side was Morgan. Morgan as a magnificent black wolf, dwarfing her with his size and power. Yet for all his strength, she matched his blistering pace; her paws were like snowshoes, skimming over the soft quilt of fresh snow. The cold did not reach through the lush density of her coat, and her nostrils were filled with smells as rich and subtle as the colors on an artist’s canvas.
They raced the wind itself, she and Morgan. And he looked sideways at her, yellow eyes brilliant with pain, and laughed. With a burst of speed, he lunged ahead of her.
She faltered. For an instant, she knew that this could not be happening, that she had no hope of catching up to him.
But Harry’s gentle voice was there, inside her: “I am certain that there is only one person in the world who can bring about such healing.” And she understood that she must help Morgan, though she did not know how or why; she must heal him, and heal herself as well.
Heal myself? The sheer incongruity of the thought hurled her forward, and at the same time she could feel the snowy world dissolving around her, replaced with hard-edged shadows and woven carpet.
Carpet firm and warm beneath her feet. Two feet. She could see her toes in the darkness, very white at the end of a long column of fabric. They wiggled at her.
Another cruel, intolerable jest at her expense. She looked for her bed, determined to end it.
The bed was several feet away. She would have to walk to reach it. Walking meant standing.
She was standing. Her legs hurt, oh, they hurt most terribly, the way her hands felt when they had been exposed to the cold and then held before a fire.
This was no dream.
She put her hands to her cheeks. Not a dream. Not the pain, and not the fact that her muscles were far too weak to hold her up much longer.
Impossible, her heart told her as she turned carefully toward the bed. Impossible, echoed her mind as she measured out the distance she must cover—the same distance she had traveled unconsciously only moments ago.
She began to tremble. Not only her legs, overtaxed as they were, but her entire body. It was joy. She gulped on laughter and tasted saltiness on her lips.