For all of them.
And for himself.
Gunshots echoed off the mountainsides. The wind howled out through the doors of the Sandcastle. The Dustman and the Sandman grappled and tore at one another. Soldiers bearing the crest of King Hunyadi climbed off of their horses and started to spread out, ready to fight if the Sandman should win, but careful to keep their distance.
Oliver barely noticed any of it.
The world seemed to tilt under his feet. Julianna did not belong on this side of the Veil. All that she was and all that she meant to him was so wrapped up in his thoughts of home and Maine that simply seeing her disoriented him. They were supposed to have picnics at the beach and take the catamaran out sailing. In the winter, they’d ski a little, but only to have an excuse to curl up in front of a crackling fire with Irish coffees and blond brownies.
They were not supposed to be here.
Even with Collette standing beside him in her ragged pajamas, skin baked brown from sun exposure, haggard and thin, Oliver had somehow been able to separate himself from the man he had been before Frost and the Myth Hunters had come into his life.
But from the moment he saw Julianna slide from the saddle of that horse and run toward him, something inside of him began to break down. It was as though the Veil had not only separated the ordinary world from the realm of the legendary, but had also split Oliver in two-one the mundane lawyer who’d lived a privileged but plain life, and the other the one who had survived in the wilderness of a world of the fantastic.
Now Julianna stripped that all away.
She raced toward him, calling his name. Oliver sheathed the Sword of Hunyadi. His heart leapt at the sound of her voice and the joy on her face, but with every step she took on the shifting sand, he felt more keenly the horrors that the legendary had inflicted upon his life and his family. His father’s murder and Collette’s abduction, the utter destruction of his own life and reputation, it all was real. How could he ever try to return to his old life when the friends and colleagues he’d known thought him either a murderer or the accomplice of some child-killer?
Yet here was Julianna.
He started toward her, shaking with a mixture of relief and dread. His elation at seeing her was tempered by the fear that, after all that had happened, things might not be the same between them. The last time they had spoken, on the phone, the pain in her voice had been clear. He had never meant to hurt her, but he knew that he had. He wondered how that might have changed her feelings for him, and how much she understood about what had really happened to him.
Then she was there, and all such thoughts fled. None of it mattered.
An icy wind blew down from the mountains. Her features were pale in the starlight, her auburn hair almost black in the night. All of his hesitations and second thoughts became damnably insignificant in the face of his love for her. So much could have been avoided if he had only trusted the soul he saw through her eyes, just as he saw it now-this soul that knew him, that understood and loved him.
“Oliver,” she said, voice barely a whisper, his name quickly stolen away by the wind.
Julianna ran into his arms. He felt her body, so familiar, against his, and pressed his nose into the scent of her hair, holding her tightly.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the ache in his heart making it feel as though it weighed a thousand pounds. “Oh, Jules, I’m so sorry.”
“You’re alive,” she said, face pressed to his neck. “Jesus, you’re alive. Don’t be sorry. None of this was your fault.”
“There were…there were always things I should’ve said.”
Julianna reached up to hold his face steady and stared up at him, gaze sharp with the intelligence that had always challenged and thrilled him.
“Do you love me?” she asked, searching his eyes for the truth.
For a fraction of a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Then a pang of remorse went through him, regret for all the time he’d wasted on doubt.
“More than anything.”
“Then nothing else matters.”
Oliver stared at her, his heart racing. In her eyes, he saw fear and regret and a tiny bit of hope, and he knew that it was all just a reflection of what she must see in him.
He touched her face, then bent and kissed her. The feeling of her lips against his, rough from the wind and the sun, filled his heart with such grateful relief that he wanted to just take her hand and run. Whatever hesitations he’d once felt were gone. They ought to have had a lifetime together.
Oliver pulled back and gazed at her, brushing her hair from her face. If the myth of the Legend-Born was true and if he and Collette really were the children of Melisande, then Julianna was wrong. They might not be to blame for what the Hunters had done, but it was because of them that Julianna had been dragged into it.
Now they were together, here in this impossible place. He wanted to know how she had gotten there, to figure out what it all meant, and where they would go from here.
Behind him, Collette screamed, her voice frantic and her throat raw.
“No, you idiot! Stay away from them!”
Oliver spun, one arm still around Julianna. Collette shouted again. Beyond her, the stranger with the gun-the man Julianna had been traveling with-ran at the two brothers where they were locked in battle. He was an older guy with salt-and-pepper hair and a craggy, Clint Eastwood sort of face, fifty years old if he was a day. But he didn’t run like he was fifty. His expression was full of grim rage and he held the gun slightly raised as he hurtled toward the Sandman and the Dustman.
The soldiers called to him. One, a statuesque black woman who was obviously in command, started after him with her sword drawn. The man with the gun appeared not to hear or even remember that the soldiers were with him. He shouted something as he ran at the warring facets of the Sandman, but Oliver couldn’t make out the words.
“Hey! Hey, man, don’t…” He let the words trail off, feeling like an idiot. With the way the man was shouting and the howling wind, there was no way he was going to hear anything.
Then Collette started shouting again, and Oliver pulled away from Julianna. He turned to see his sister running after the man with the gun. Collette, a petite little woman in her torn pajamas, was trying to get in the midst of a fight between myths and one crazy asshole with a gun.
The Sword of Hunyadi felt heavy at his hip.
Whatever truth there might be in the story of the Legend-Born, and no matter how much he wanted to be home, he knew he had become a part of this world. It had changed him. All of the things he had always imagined he might be, had always wished, he was becoming. And there could be no turning back now.
He drew the sword.
In the moment before he ran after his sister, he caught sight of something moving out of the corner of his eye. He glanced over and saw Kitsune by the doors of the Sandman’s castle. He’d assumed she had hung back to watch for the sand creatures that had attacked them inside.
Her soft green eyes gleamed in the dark, her fur almost orange in the starlight. The hurt and bitterness on her face was unmistakable. Oliver caught his breath. In the exultation of saving Collette and the shock of seeing Julianna, he’d barely spared a thought for Kitsune.
He forced himself to break the moment, raised his sword, and ran after Collette.
“Wait!” he shouted. “Coll, wait!”
If she heard him, she did not listen. Oliver raced after her. He figured the Sandman was so occupied trying to stay alive that he couldn’t control the constructs inside the castle anymore, which helped. But even so, the monster’s existence endangered them all. So why weren’t these soldiers helping? Even the commander who ran after the man with the gun seemed only to be trying to stop him, to draw him back. Nobody wanted to go anywhere near the Sandman except the nutjob.