“I’m sure the knight wouldn’t stand for that. But you can keep us company, lady,” Sarella said.
With a sigh, Ayla sat, her mind churning like a cartwheel stuck in mud. She was going to have to find another way to get rid of the knight. One that didn’t involve poison. One that risked nobody but herself.
A Yes or No Sort of Question
Dinner started silently. She came into Ditmar’s room and curtseyed to the knight who’d taken it over. Niel was already seated at the table beside the fire. He gestured for her to sit, his movements sharp and his mouth pressed tight. Without him needing to request it, she ate a quick bite of everything, and took a sip of wine. Ayla kept her eyes down on her plate, not daring to meet his. She could feel him staring, scrutinizing her every move.
She finally looked up after he started eating, when the knight’s eyes were no longer boring into her.
“I heard you were offered clemency for surrender,” she heard herself saying. “Will you truly not take it?”
He gave her a sharp look, his dark eyes glinting in the firelight.
“No.” He ripped his bread in two and kept eating.
She couldn’t help that her stomach unknotted at the word. Sheknewthat was traitorous, when she ought to be plotting for hisdownfall. But the longer he resisted, the longer she was away from Ditmar.
“They have a lot of soldiers,” she said.
Tension practically pooled off the man. Ayla should have known better than to poke at him. She’d spent the last three years learning how to shrink herself down and keep her lips shut, but common sense seemed to have left with her husband.
“Yes.”
“And you, ah…” she trailed off, not sure how to diplomatically phrase it.
“Don’t?” Niel asked, his eyes sweeping up again to catch on hers. Ayla nodded mutely. “It takes fewer men to hold a castle than it does to take one,” Niel said.
There was a moment of silence as they both ate. She found herself trying to study him without staring outright. She did not understand the man across the table from her. Was he not frightened of the army camped outside? There were thousands of them.Shewas frightened of them, even though they were ostensibly on her side.
“It didn’t takeyoumany men,” she noted. There had only been three of them, at first, in the castle.
Niel snorted. “That was different. Your husband was an idiot who let a wolf into the sheepfold.”
“And when supplies run out?” she asked quietly.
He stopped eating, set down his silverware, and braced his elbows on the table. She stared at him wide-eyed as Niel carefully studied her. The knight’s jaw looked tense.
“We have enough to last until reinforcements can arrive. Why? Are you hoping I’ll be overrun?” His voice sharpened with each word, a knife on a whetstone, and his eyes were like flint.
Her body braced for what happened when men got angry.
Ayla’s eyes jerked down as she bowed her head submissively. He was furious. Not frightened of the army outside, but angryit had come. Her next breath was shaky. She forced the muscles of her shoulders to relax; forced herself to stay seated instead of fleeing. This was the part, she was certain, when Niel turned violent. It had been bound to happen eventually.
Fool, she thought.You’ve stayed quiet through hundreds of dinners with a man far less terrifying, butnowyou couldn’t keep your lips shut?
“I did not mean to anger you,” Ayla whispered. “Apologies, lordship.”
“You are not the one who made me angry.” His hands were the only part of him she could see with her eyes downcast. They rested on the blue tablecloth, and she watched as he curled them into fists, his knuckles battered and the backs of his hands covered in the lines of old scars. “I made the choice to stay. But I find myself wondering,” Niel continued, his voice turning halting, “why you hadn’t just run away. Is there some part of you that loves him? That would rather be… with him, than here, with…”
Ayla frowned and relaxed her shoulders, slightly. She didn't know how, or why, the conversation had turned from the army to her feelings for Ditmar. She could not fathom why the knight would want to listen to her prattle on about emotions.
“No,” Ayla admitted quietly. “We were married. I had no choice.”
“That’s a lie. Of course you had a choice. And you stayed. Was it the riches you loved, then?”
Startled, she lifted her wide eyes to stare at him. Even through her terror Ayla felt the barbs of those words sink into her skin. But the knight only looked sullen, his expression drawn.
“I could not care less for the finery. I never wished for this,” Ayla told him. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper, but the room was silent apart from the fire, and she knew he heard her.
