“Why did they kidnap me?”
He let out his breath, trying to figure out how much she knew and how much he could tell her. “I told you strangers were arriving. They most likely saw us together and thought to use that to bring me to them.”
“But why did they not simply send word to you?”
Suddenly he knew the answer, as clear as the blood coursing under his skin—Marcus wanted to see the connection between them. He wanted to force the beast that lingered beneath his skin and his soul out into sight. He wanted to discover if Brienne was his weakness. And he had accomplished his goals. William was a fool, for he’d let them.
“I know not these men or their ways.” He nodded toward the path. “Go back to your village, Brienne. Think not on anything but your family and your usual life. Leave all of this, all these questions be.” He said it softly, but hoped she understood the warning in the words. “Farewell, Brienne.”
“Sir William?” Though her lower lip quivered in a mutinous fashion so he thought she would argue with him, she simply nodded and then moved quickly along the path, disappearing into the woods. It would take her only a short time to reach her cottage.
He made his way back toward the encampment on the hillside, avoiding several watchmen along the way. On the morrow, he would see Lord Hugh and find out the truth of his nature and his plans against the king.
He knew he must first give some explanation to Roger and Gautier about what they had witnessed. William knew only that he had no words to explain the changes they must have seen, for he had no idea of what had come over him. He must trust his two closest friends to keep this secret, one more among many.
Brienne had witnessedand done more things in this short day than she had in her whole life. William’s words of farewell and warnings should have scared her all the way home; instead she had more questions to ask and no one to answer them.
After disobeying Gavin’s instructions about not leaving the village and not speaking to the knight, she could not go to him. She would like to speak to her mother about her feelings for William, but she knew that wasn’t an option either for the same reason.
Once more, she was alone as she had always been.
To fend for herself.
Now, though, so much was happening to her. Her powers were increasing. It took no more than a moment for her to create the fire from nothing in the cave and another moment to dissolve it. Luckily, she’d stood back in a small alcove in the rock when William had crawled back in or he would have seen her there. The mark on her arm moved constantly now, reminding her that she controlled the flames.
If that was not extraordinary enough, there was the moment when William had become something else, something more than a man. When she had watched him run into the strangers’ camp, almost tearing it apart looking for her, he had changed. Taller, impossibly taller and bigger and stronger and faster, he moved with a lethal speed and strength.
The strangest change was the way his skin took on the color of the sky and markings she had never seen before moved across it. The others scrambled out of his path, for they read their deaths in his gaze. He seemed not to know how he’d changed and become . . . a weapon. Though she knew it was impossible, she could swear that his arm and his sword merged into one weapon.
Terrified she would be killed when they took her, fear for her life shifted to fear for those around her as William approached. She did not know what made her intervene; she only knew she could stop him. And she had.
His skin, stretched tight over huge muscles not there before, glowed an icy blue, changing much like her hands did when she brought the fire. His eyes were inhuman slits of glowing molten red-orange. His face retained only a slight resemblance to his own features, while his hair grew longer and more unruly.
As much as she did not want to believe such a thing, she accepted that the same could be said about her own power. How could a person, a human, be surrounded by fire and not be destroyed by it? And if they had these powers, who else and what other powers existed? Was that his task for the king, then? For the king had visited here in Yester some time ago, and rumors still whispered that he’d seen Lord Hugh casting spells before he left in a rush, with his retainers trailing behind him.
Brienne found her way to her father’s smithy, and she stood by in silence as she watched him work the glowing metal. She looked around the hot, smoky chamber and noticed the number of swords, both finished and waiting to be completed.
“Swords?” she asked quietly. Her father mostly worked on farming tools and blades, repairing swords as they needed to be, but not often.
“Lord Hugh ordered more,” he replied without taking his attention off the fire or the heated metal he pounded with his hammer. “Many more.”
He worked in silence then, Brienne standing near the door watching as he perfected the metal to a killing edge. It was the thing he liked least to create, she knew. Weapons. But he served at Lord Hugh’s pleasure.
“Why do you remain here? You are skilled. Any lord would be pleased to have you work for him.” She’d never asked that question before and had not really thought on it. Gavin stepped away from the fire and put his hammer down. Wiping the sweat off his face with the back of his arm, he smiled.
“You, lass. We could have you only if we remained here and served him.” Shocked at this revelation, she faced him across the fire.
“For me? I did not know.”
“Fia could not bear a living child, and it broke her heart. My father, the last blacksmith here, had just passed, so Lord Hugh offered us what we wanted—a bairn to raise as our own child and a place to live and work.”
“If you stayed?” she asked. At his nod, she shrugged. “But why did he insist that I remain here? I’m only his bastard, not important to—”
Gavin grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her close, stopping her from finishing her words. “Never say that. You are the most important person to me and to your mother and worth whatever the price we paid to have you,” he whispered harshly. Kissing her forehead, he held her to him, and Brienne savored the comfort of it. “And you must mean something to him, too. Otherwise he would have just let you die.”
Brienne pulled back and looked in the face of the man who was the only father she knew. There was more to be told, but from the way he held his jaw and his mouth, she knew he would not say it. He thought to protect her, from the truth or from the coming danger.
“I think he knows what I do.”
