“I am risking my life for you at this moment—risking our very home—when it was your childishness that got you into this situation,” Sybilla accused. “I will not further jeopardize Fallstowe, Cecily, or our people because of your girlish fantasies of fated love supposedly blessedby some goddamn ring of stone! Alys, you are so irresponsible—”
“I am not irresponsible!”Alys shouted, having enough of the listing of her faults. She knew them better now thanSybilla could ever guess. “I’ve only never had anything to be responsiblefor!”
The chamber was silent. Sybilla stared at Alys with no expression.
“Until now,” Alys said quietly. “I know the truth, and my station could lend veracity to Piers’s claim.”
“It will not change the fact that he doesn’t want you, Alys,” Sybilla said, and Alys could see the rare softening of her sister’s eyes. “He wanted you to go home, to Fallstowe. He never meant for you to be captured by Judith Angwedd, but he did mean for you to be found. He knew I had been following you, and he thought it would be me that came upon you at your camp.”
Alys looked to Ira, whose head was tilted slightly to the side, eyeing her with pity. One bony finger combed through the hair on Layla’s arm.
“Ira?” Alys asked. “Is it true? Piers knew Sybilla was following us, and he left me for her to find?”
He nodded once. “He’s always wanted you to go home. I think you already know that though, do you not?”
The truth of it fell upon Alys with the crushing weight of an undermined tower. Since the night they’d met, Piers had done little else but try and persuade her to return to Fallstowe. He had not kept it secret. He had never played her false.
And now, she was ready to risk her family’s home, her own freedom and perhaps even her life, to return to the side of a man who had set her free. In truth, Alys couldn’t even predict whether Judith Angwedd’s threat on her life would persuade Piers to disavow his claim. He had been denied what was rightfully his his entire life and now it was within his reach. Why would he forsake it all for a woman he never wanted in the first place?
Sybilla was right again. But this time, Alys was notbitter. Perhaps, she thought, it was hard truths like this, the acceptance of them and the pain they brought, that gained a person wisdom. She thought fleetingly of the enormous heartbreak Sybilla must be hiding. And the idea of such untold pain horrified her.
“Alright,” Alys said quietly. “Let’s go then, before Judith Angwedd or Bevan return.”
Sybilla’s eyebrows rose and she drew her head back. Then her eyes narrowed. “Is this some sort of trick? You’ll wait until I’m in the corridor and lock the door behind me, like you did when you were a child?”
Alys smiled at the bittersweet memories that hung between them right then …when you were a child.Perhaps at last her sister no longer thought of her in that manner. “No, Sybilla. No tricks this time. Let’s go.” She turned and held out a crooked elbow toward Layla, who still perched on Ira’s shoulder. “We’re off, girl.”
The monkey leaped the distance to Alys’s shoulder, and gained a firm hold by twisting her little fingers in Alys’s hair.
“I wish you well, Ira,” she said to the old man. “Both of you.”
Ira stared hard at her for a long moment. “As I do you. Both of you,” he clarified, his eyes flicking to Sybilla. Then his body seemed to spasm, jerk forward, and Alys realized he was bowing. “Ladies.”
Alys tried to restrain the sob that knotted in her chest. She stepped to the old man quickly, leaned up on tiptoe to press her cheek into his and grasp both of his shoulders with her hands.
“Take care of him,” she choked. “He has been alone for so long.”
His only answer was a quick nod.
“Alys,” Sybilla called gently.
Alys stepped away and swiped at her eyes quickly whileshe turned toward her sister. She saw her bag crumpled on the floor near the hearth and swiped it up with one hand.
Atop the deep, reddened grooves on her wrist, she noticed her pomegranate bracelet was gone, and it caused her heart to clench.
She did not look back as she followed Sybilla into the corridor.
Chapter 23
He didn’t sleep.
Piers was grateful for the generosity of the stranger, Julian Griffin. If not for his keen eye, and perhaps a bit of intuition, as well, Piers would have been forced to wander the palace grounds, searching for some place to hide away during the night. But the suite of rooms he’d been lent was opulent beyond anything Piers could have ever imagined. He’d been loathe to touch anything for fear that he would break it—and he imagined he would be unable to afford to replace so much as a single thread in the intricate, embroidered coverlet, especially since he would now never see a farthing of Gillwick’s earnings.
So he passed the night on the floor, his back against the bolted door. He lit not one candle, only sat in the pitch blackness, the smell of privilege all around him, cloying and invisible in the night, and thought of Alys. Prayed for her safety. Begged God’s forgiveness for the jeopardy he’d placed her in, because he knew he would never forgive himself.
And he prayed for his own soul, because Piers knew that God knew him, and knew his heart. God knew thatPiers meant to kill Bevan, and now Judith Angwedd, as well, regardless of Edward’s decision. They had wronged him, stolen from him, defamed him, cursed him, beaten him, tried to kill him. And yet before today, they both might have lived.
But not now. No, not now that they had touched Alys. Alys would be happy. Alys would not know fear of them again, for the rest of her long life. Wherever she made her home, wherever she would lay her pretty head down to sleep, she would never again worry that the ones who had taken her, held her, threatened her—all because of Piers—were out in the land somewhere.
