The Sun Witch

One year later
KANE DISMOUNTED AND tossed the reins of his fine new horse over a low limb. This was it; the place where his life had changed. Here, on this very spot, he had been transformed from a lost soul who had no hope for the future, a man who had every intention of drinking himself to death, to a man determined to put the past behind him and to make something of himself. He had gone to sleep beneath this very linara tree, drunk and hurting and wishing for death, and had awakened to see his Angel in the water. Smiling, asking impossible questions, then walking out of the water more beautiful than any mere woman could ever be. She had loved him, healed him, and changed his life.

With Angel in his arms he'd slept without nightmares. He'd awakened alone.

He'd thought her a dream, for a while. But the next night when he'd stopped for a few hours' sleep he'd found the evidence that she had indeed been very real. A spot of her virgin's blood stained his bedroll. His Angel's blood. He'd dreamed of her every night since.

He had tried to return to this place when he'd realized that his Angel was real and not a whisky-induced dream, but somehow he'd gotten turned around. He'd taken a wrong turn, then another wrong turn. He'd gotten completely and totally lost before giving up the search.

Since leaving this mountain he'd been a different man, yes, and he'd also had the devil's own luck. Not two days after leaving the hills behind, he'd found a coin on the road. The gold piece, struck with the image of Emperor Sebestyen as a regal child, had been sitting there in the dirt catching the bright rays of the sun. He'd taken that coin and slipped it into his pocket, and when he reached the next town he walked into the nearest tavern, intent on drinking it down. But there had been a friendly card game in progress, and instead of drinking away his newfound treasure he'd decided to gamble it. He'd won. He'd won big.

He'd won everything.

For the past year, Kane Varden had gambled his way from one town to the next. It didn't matter what the game might be. Whether the pastime of choice were whist or faro or slam, he always won. He couldn't stay in one place for long. People tended to distrust a man who couldn't lose. A dozen men or more had tried to prove that he'd been cheating, but of course since he had not been cheating there was nothing to prove. Still, he'd found it was simply best to move on after a few days in any one place.

Women were drawn to a man with good fortune and a bundle of cash in his pocket, and in the beginning Kane had taken full advantage of his newfound luck with the ladies of a certain type. But lately ' for the past six months or so ' he had been living like one of the emperor's saintly priests. Or, more rightly, like a faithful married man. In his heart he knew it wasn't right to dream of Angel while another woman slept in his bed, and he had come to feel like he was cheating on her when he so much as looked at a pretty woman. He had come to feel like he was obligated to this Angel, and that wouldn't do.

The only way to end that fanciful supposition was to face her one more time. When he realized that the angel he'd conjured in his head was nothing like the real woman he'd shared a moment of happiness with, he'd be able to move on, once and for all. She was a woman like all others.