When he’d arrived back the evening before and found the drawbridge raised, there had been a good deal of screaming. Her bedchamber window pointed towards the castle gate, and she’d heard Ditmar accuse Lord Niel of bedding her. She hadn’t been able to make out the traitor’s response, but his voice had sounded coldly amused.
She slipped out of the warm nest of the bed, wincing as her stocking feet touched the floor. Icy cold radiated out from the stone through the rushes. Gritting her teeth, Ayla pried her fingers beneath the mattress and hauled it up, then slipped the book she’d been reading for the thousandth time underneath, beside the only other one she owned.
The metal ring of the castle keys glittered beside the books. She’d quietly fetched them from Ditmar’s study the moment she’d been dismissed from the hall the evening before, terrified all the while that she’d be caught. The mattress wasn’t really the best hiding spot, but the only better places in her room were hard for her to reach.
She’d find somewhere better for the keys later, in a room other than her own. Ayla pulled a sapphire gown, the bosomembroidered with tiny pearls, over her heavy shift and yanked the laces tight behind her. No matter if they were crooked, nobody was going to see her back. A heavy wool cloak went over the outfit. Gripping the cream-colored cloak tight around herself, she shoved her feet into slippers and made her way into the hall, dark waves loose around her shoulders.
She’d expected to find the knight back on the throne. Instead, he sat alone at one of the hall’s long tables, bent over a piece of parchment with a quill gripped roughly in one large fist, an inkpot to his side. A set of folded and sealed letters lay stacked on the table next to him. Someone had lit the hanging lanterns, but he had a squat candle next to him on the table, too, casting a pool of light in the windowless hall.
If he wasn’t holding an audience, it was a foolish room to work in. The hall was too big to heat properly. He could’ve holed up in front of a fire in Ditmar’s study if he just wanted somewhere to write.Especiallyif he felt the need to keep his breastplate on even in the castle he’d conquered. The metal must have been freezing cold.
She approached slowly through the rows of pillars in the hall, her view of the knight cutting in and out of view behind the large black columns.
He had shaved, and for a startled moment she wondered if she were looking at one of his men instead of him, but none of them were so big or broad. The knight’s jaw, now that she could see it, was sharp and square. His lips were full.
His dark hair was tied half-back, combed and shining like he’d found the time to wash it. He’d kept on his breastplate, but from what she could see he wore no other armor beneath his heavy cloak. He didn’t look up as Ayla approached. She paused ten paces from the long table and drew her cloak tighter with her fists.
She was about to clear her throat when he beckoned with two fingers, still not bothering to look at her.
“Come. Sit,” the knight commanded. He spoke like there was no question about him being obeyed. And there wasn’t, not really.
He isn’t going to look at me? Ayla thought.For all he knows I have a naked dagger in my hands.Well, he did say there was nothing of a warrior about me.He was right in that regard, but violence wasn’t the only way to fight a battle. She wordlessly stepped over the bench across from him and settled onto the hard wood with her back straight. The rest of him looked cleaner than it had yesterday, too. No dark bloodstains marred his clothes beneath the armor.
If he wanted intelligence about the Enarian war effort, she wasn’t going to give it. Never mind that she barely knew anything. But then, menneverthought women knew anything. He’d probably try getting information from the cook before her.
He kept writing, as if he knew just how unimportant her time was and how little she had to get back to. It must have been a trait lords shared.
Without bothering to look her way, the knight at last drew a fresh page of parchment and set it in front of Ayla. He handed her a clean quill feather-first. She stared at it a moment, then slowly reached up to take it from him.
“My lord?” she asked, holding the quill gingerly by the end.
“I’ll offer your husband a ransom for you today,” he informed her, sounding distracted, or perhaps bored. “You may write to him. Say whatever you like, though mind I’ll read it.”
He pushed the inkpot with his knuckles so it rested between them on the table. Ayla swallowed.
By law, any noble captured in war was to be ransomed, and Ayla was noble, though only by marriage. She hadn’t thought the knight would keep with customs, since warring against hisown Queen was about the deepest law a knight could break, a violation of his gravest oath.
If he planned to ransom her, he probably wasn’t going to hurt her. Perhapsthatwas why she’d remained untouched by him and his men. But being returned to Ditmar at the peak of his rage, after she’d spent a full night in the castle with the traitors… Ayla forced down the swell of terror that threatened to rise in her. She could hardly tell LordNielshe was frightened of that reunion. That she needed more time to prepare, if she was going to survive Ditmar.
No—she couldn’t tell Niel anything, Ayla realized, her fingers tightening on the quill. On the very slim chance that the traitor’s head didn’t end up on a pike, any information could be weaponry in the wrong hands. No matter how small or inconsequential the information seemed. She would give him no aid in his quest to ruin her country. No matter how grim Ayla’s personal circumstances, she did not want Enar to be ruled by Aronthian law, where peasants had even fewer rights and even harsher masters. Aronthia was not like her own Enar, where a woman ruled as queen without a king by her side.
“You do not have all morning, Lady Blackfell,” Niel warned, not looking up from the letter he was writing, or even pausing the scratching of his own quill.
Ditmar didn’t like her to make use of writing and reading. And in any case, if the traitor knight thought she was a fool, he wouldn’t bother trying to learn anything from her at all. She set the quill carefully down on the parchment and pushed it away from her across the table.
His eyes flicked to the paper advancing towards him, then up to her so quickly it was barely a glance, then back down.
“What’s this? The lady does not wish to reassure her lord?” he asked dryly.
“I cannot write, my lord. I do not know my letters,” she lied softly.
“What, not at all?” His head snapped up. Niel’s dark eyes were on her now, staring hard into her grey ones, his brows knotted.
Ayla averted her eyes and shook her head no.
“Did you not attend a convent, then, or a finishing school?” he sounded baffled. “I thought that was the way of things for women.”
“I was not born noble,” Ayla informed him, kicking herself for needing to reveal anything true. She kept her gaze demurely down, but from the corner of her vision she could see the way his back straightened and his eyebrows rose. “My lord says education does not benefit a wife,” she added meekly. She wished she were lying.
