“Dozen, maybe more.” Aksel crouched, examining the ground. “They’ve been here a while. A week at least, maybe longer.”
A week. Someone had been watching his castle, watching his walls, for at least a week. Before Claricia had even arrived, perhaps. Planning. Waiting.
Fer what?
Erik’s hand moved to his sword hilt. “They’re gone now.”
“Aye. Moved out fast, too—didnae even try tae hide the signs. Either they got what they came fer, or they ken we’d find them eventually.”
“Or they’re plannin’ somethin’ that makes hidin’ unnecessary.” Erik’s mind raced through possibilities, each darker than the last. “We need more men out here. Search parties in every direction. I want tae ken where they went, how many there are, and who’s leadin’ them.”
“Already done. Sent word before we left.” Aksel straightened. “But Erik—if they’ve been here a week, watchin’ us… they kent when Lady Thorsen arrived. They kent about the wedding. They might even ken about the prisoner in the North Wing.”
The implications of that settled over them both like a shroud.
“We’re goin’ back,” Erik said abruptly. “Now.”
They rode hard back toward the castle, the autumn wind biting at their faces. Erik’s mind kept circling back to Claricia—alone in their chamber, guarded by men he trusted but men who could be fooled, could be bribed, could be killed.
By the time they reached the castle gates, the sun was beginning its descent toward the western horizon. Erik dismounted quickly, tossing his reins to a stable lad, already moving toward the keep.
“I’ll report tae the Council,” Aksel called after him. “Ye go check on yer wife.”
Erik didn’t slow down. Didn’t acknowledge the knowing tone in his friend’s voice.
He just moved on pure instinct.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Och, get a hold of yerself, Claricia!”
The chamber door closed with a thud that seemed to echo in Claricia’s very bones, and suddenly the space felt both too large and suffocatingly small all at once.
She stood staring at the oak panels while dust motes danced lazy patterns through the shaft of afternoon light spilling across the floor, her lips still tingling from Erik’s kiss.
I shouldnae be focusin’ on… that. I should be thinkin’ of the dead men!
She pressed her palms flat against the cool wood of the door, trying desperately to steady the breathing that seemed determined to betray her rising panic. Someone wanted her dead. Or captured. The distinction felt rather academic when she was trapped behind those stone walls waiting to discover which fate would find her first.
Her gaze fell on the table by the window, and her breath caught for an entirely different reason.
Books?
At least a dozen of them, their leather spines gleaming rich and inviting in the light, stacked with a care that made something tighten painfully in her chest. She crossed the chamber slowly, fingers trembling as she reached for the nearest volume—poetry, Greek history, a collection of Norse sagas with gilt edges that caught the light like treasure. Everything she’d demanded when she’d been testing him, pushing to see exactly how far his patience would stretch before it snapped.
He remembered…
Beside the books sat a wooden box she hadn’t noticed, and her hands moved without conscious permission, lifting the lid to reveal treasures she’d only dreamed of possessing. Fine brushes with bristles soft as silk. Pigments in colors that stole her breath—lapis lazuli blue deep as twilight over the loch, vermillion, red bright as fresh-spilled blood, gold leaf that caught the light like captured sunshine. Vellum so smooth beneath her fingertips it might have been woven from clouds themselves.
A folded parchment lay nestled among the paints like a secret.
I dinnae break promises. —E
“Well… this certainly isnae helpin’,” she whispered. It would be so much easier if he were simply cruel, a monster she could hate without complication or guilt.
Stop lettin’ him under yer skin like he belongs there, Claricia!
But her hands were already pulling out vellum, already reaching for brushes and pigments, and the painting started without thought or permission—as though her body had decided something her stubborn mind refused to acknowledge. Grey eyes took shape first, storm-dark and capable of conveying command or tenderness with the smallest shift of expression. Sharp planes and harder angles, scars cutting through his left eyebrow and across his jaw that somehow made him more compelling rather than less. That mouth, hard as winter stone one moment and devastatingly soft the next.
