A Little Fate by Nora Roberts Page A

my young friend with his training.” To prove it, Kern lowered his sword and bowed.
    â€œWhy am I dreaming?” Thane demanded. He was out of breath as he hadn’t been during the bout, and the surging of his blood had nothing to do with swordplay. “What test is this?”
    â€œYou are not dreaming,” Kern assured him.
    â€œShe’s not real. I’ve seen her now, in flesh. And this is the vision, not the woman.” Love, lust, longing knotted inside him so that he fought to ice his words with annoyance. “And neither holds interest for me any longer.”
    â€œI’m as real as you,” Aurora tossed back, then sheathing her sword, she twisted her lips into a sneer. “You fight well. For a groveling stableboy. And your sword would be all that interests me, if I believed you’d gather the courage and wit to use it on something more than smoke.”
    â€œSo, no vision, then, but the simpering, swooning female.” He lifted the cape she’d tossed aside when she leapt to his defense. With a mocking bow, he held it out. “Go back to your feather bed, else you catch a chill.”
    â€œI’m chilled enough from you.” She knocked his hand aside and turned on Kern. “Why haven’t you treated his wounds?”
    â€œHe doesn’t wish it.”
    â€œAh, he’s stupid, then.” She inclined her head toward Thane again. “Whether you are stupid or not, I regret you were beaten on my account.”
    â€œIt’s nothing to do with you.” Because the beating stillshamed him, he rammed his sword back into its sheath. “It’s not safe for a woman alone beyond the walls. Kern will show you the way back.”
    â€œI found my way out, I can find my way back. I’m not some helpless female,” she said impatiently. “You of all men should know—”
    â€œI do not know you,” Thane said dully.
    She absorbed the blow to her heart. They stood in the dappled moonlight, with only the call of an owl and the rushing of a stream over rocks to break the silence between them.
    Even knowing the risk of mediation, Kern stepped up, laying a hand on Thane’s shoulder, the other on Aurora’s. “Children,” he began brightly.
    â€œWe’re not children any longer. Are we, lady? Not children splashing in rivers, running through the forest.” It scored his heart to remember it, to remember the joy and pleasure, the simple comfort of those times with her. To know they were ended forever. “Not children taking innocent pleasure in each other’s company.”
    She shook her head, and thought how she had lain with him, in love, in visions. Him and no other. “I wonder,” she said after a moment, “why we need to hurt each other this way. Why we strike out where we once—where we always reached out. And I fear you’re right. You don’t know me, nor I you. But I know you’re the son of a warrior, you have noble blood. Why do you sleep in the stables?”
    â€œWhy do you smile at Lorcan, dance with Owen, then wander the night with a sword?”
    She only smiled. “It’s not safe for a woman alone beyond the walls.” There was, for just an instant, a glint of humor in his eyes. “You watched me dance.”
    He cursed himself for speaking of it. Now she knew of the spy hole as well as the tunnels. And one word to Owen . . . “If you wish to make amends for the beating, you won’t speak of seeing me here.”
    â€œI have no reason to speak of you at all,” she said coolly. “I was told faeries no longer bided near the city.”
    At her comment Kern shrugged. “We bide where we will,lady, even under Lorcan’s reign. Here is my place, and he is my charge.”
    â€œI am no one’s charge. Are you a witch?” Thane demanded.
    â€œA witch is one of what I am.” He looked so angry and frustrated. How she