Alaine could hear the fighting outside the tent, the clash of hand-to-hand combat, swords ringing, men shouting and screaming with courage, with fear, and with death. The sounds rang loudly in her ears, much more intensely in her dream than what she remembered, flooding her mind with memories. She smelled the blood, her Henry’s blood, its sulfur tang biting the back of her throat, and she looked down into his pleading eyes in the moment before he passed from the living to the great beyond. He was stricken on that backward world, the one caught in an ancient time warp where nothing was modern, and everything was done the hard way, including dying. He wasn't supposed to die before they were rescued from this god-forsaken world, where their spaceship crashed and where they loved, lived, and built a kingdom together. Now Alaine has to go back to fulfill the promise she made to him so long ago. She has to return to that world that is stuck in the middle ages.