It was Westley.
Diara’s breath caught in her throat. She stumbled to a stop. She tried to take another step but couldn’t manage to do it. The only thing she could do at that moment was feel complete, unrestrained horror.
If Westley was here and not the entire army, his reasons for coming could not be good.
“Oh… God,” she breathed, her hands flying to her mouth. “Sweet Jesus. Why… why is he here? Why is Westley here?”
She was starting to panic, and Kyne reached out to grasp her as Westley bolted in her direction. The knights both reached out to steady her as Westley took her hands and forced her to look at him.
“Steady, Lady de Lohr,” he said. “I’ve been sent ahead to prepare you.”
Diara broke down, falling to pieces right before their eyes. “Prepare me forwhat?” she wept. “Where is Roi?”
“He is coming,” Westley assured her. “Truly, it’s not so terrible. But he will need a comfortable bed to recover in, and he has sent me ahead to tell you. He did not want you to be worried when you saw that he had been injured.”
That didn’t help Diara in the least. She was sobbing. “Injured?” she cried. “What has happened to him?”
Westley was genuinely distressed to see how upset she was. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I did not do this very well. I wanted to tell you in private that we found Roi. He had been injured in a skirmish. But he is alive and he is coming home. He simply needs some time to recover, but heisalive, Diara. I swear to you, he is alive.”
That did absolutely nothing to ease her. She wept for an entirely different reason now, knowing her husband was injured but alive. He was coming home, in what condition she didn’t know, but at least he was heading home. Diara wept for another solid minute, struggling to catch her breath, while Kyne and Westley desperately tried to comfort her. But just as quickly, she took a deep breath, stopped her tears, and wiped furiously at her face.
“He’s alive,” she said, more to herself than to them. “He’s coming home and he’s alive.”
“Aye,” Westley said, still deeply concerned. “But please do not tell Roi that I made you cry. He will kill me.”
That had Diara bursting out into laughter. “If you are worried about that, then he must not be too seriously hurt,” she said. “I promise I will not tell him. But the next time you come to prepare me for something like this, the first words out of your mouth should be that my husband is alive and will be fine, given time.”
Westley nodded. “I will try to remember that,” he said. “But hopefully, there will not be another time.”
Diara couldn’t disagree with him. She continued to wipe at her eyes, composing herself as best she could. “Now,” she said, trying to focus on what needed to be done. “I will go to the keep to ensure that our bed is ready for him. Is there anything else he needs?”
“Only you, I am sure,” Westley said. “He has been talking about you, without stopping, since we found him.”
Diara wanted to ask him so much more, but that would have to wait. She knew that Roi was coming home and that he would be well again, and that was all that mattered. She broke away from Kyne and Westley, rushing back to the keep and sending Finnick into a fit when she gave him the news. The man whipped the servants into a frenzy, all of it directed at preparing the master’s bedchamber for his return. As she turned to head to the kitchen to talk to the cook about preparing food that was easy to digest, she caught sight of a few soldiers coming in through the gatehouse. Soldiers meant army.
The army had returned.
She made a run for it.
Westley, in fact, was at the gatehouse and had to hold her back. Diara fully intended to go charging into the ranks to find her husband, but that would only get her trampled, so Westley held on to her as the bulk of the army passed beneath the gatehouse. The wagons, slower, were tagging along behind. Once Diara caught a glimpse of the wagons, Westley lost his grip on her.
She ran like the wind.
The first wagon contained food stores, but the second wagon contained several de Lohr brothers, sitting on the bed and on the sides of the wagon, and right in the middle of them was Roi. When Diara caught sight of him, she cried out, and, startled, heturned to see her trying to vault onto the wagon. Douglas was there and lifted her up, straight into Roi’s open arms.
Actually, it was only one arm, since the left one had been bandaged into position so it couldn’t move. Both of his wounds were on the left side, so the physic that traveled with the de Lohr army bandaged him up tightly so he couldn’t move the limb. But he didn’t need that arm to hold Diara, who had her arms around his neck and her face in the side of his head, weeping softly at the joy of the reunion.
Truth be told, Roi shed a few tears himself.
“They told me what happened,” Diara wept. “I’m so sorry, Roi. Sorry my father did this to you. I’m so very, very sorry.”
He kissed her repeatedly, on the cheek and on the hair, holding her so tightly with his one arm that he was squeezing the breath from her.
“You tried to warn me,” he said. “I should have listened. I am so sorry that I did not.”
She pulled back to look at him, running her hands over his face to reacquaint herself with him. He was dirty, sweaty, and his lip was swollen from where he’d clearly been hit, but he’d never looked so good to her.
“In a world where my father is a normal man, you would have been perfectly correct not to listen to me,” she said. “But he is not a normal man. He’s horrible and vindictive, but this went beyond anything I believed he was capable of. I will never speak to him again as long as I live.”
