Besides. He needed to wash the death from his skin.
Niel bowed, deep and low as he felt was her due, and left the Lady of Blackfell to her peace.
Stilder Berries
Niel didn’t feel any better after leaving the room. And after washing, he felt almost worse. The guilt followed him, as did the image of her being dragged back around the corner, her face terrified. If someone had shown Niel a fresh-dug grave, he might have crawled straight in out of shame.
The castle felt too close around him. Feeling suddenly trapped by the protective walls, Niel stormed out to the castle walk, ignoring the soldiers he passed on the way. The sharp wind stung his face, rifling through his freshly-washed hair and sending prickles of ice across his scalp. He took a steadying breath and strode to the edge of the curtain wall. It was snowing lightly again, probably heavier in the mountains. There was no sign in the army encampment that things had gone wrong. But by now, Corin must have been aware that the attempt had failed. Niel wished he could have seen the look on his older brother's face.
The tunnel was sealed off. The men inside would have retreated. The thought of them panicking, stuck in a tunnel too narrow for them to easily turn around, but only to crawl backwards up into the cold, filled him with brutal satisfaction.
Satisfaction that just as quickly soured as he remembered the terrified look on the lady’s face when he’d yelled. Something was deeply wrong with him. Perhaps he’d feel better once the men were done searching the castle.
What if some of the enemy had snuck in earlier? What if there were enemies already hidden in the castle, or in passages in the walls…
He turned and took two long steps back towards the castle, bile in his throat at the thought of her in danger, before he clamped down on his sensibility and forced himself back to the wall again.
The sound of labored breathing came from below him, on the stair from the courtyard to the castle walk. He glanced down. It was one of the soldiers who’d been responsible for searching the cellar when they first took the castle. Now, in punishment for failing to spot the tunnel, the man hauled one of the dead bodies up the stairs to throw it over the wall and onto the frozen moat below.
Frozen ground made for hard digging. Corin could deal with the corpses.
He turned away and walked to another point of the wall, in no mood to watch the clean-up. One of the castle servants, a woman he thought was named Megh, stood at the wall staring longingly out at the town. He stepped around her and made his way to the far end, where the walk overlooked the mountainous terrain instead of the castle’s village.
Testily he stared out at the Kettalist mountains, so tall they cupped the sky, their tops blurring to nothingness in the gray storm.
“My lord,” Kerr called behind him.
Niel groaned and bowed his head. He sighed, then straightened and turned.
“What?”
The captain was walking towards him along the wall. Kerr paused with a frown.
“Are you alright?”
“What do you want?”
Kerr raised an eyebrow, then reached into his pocket. He drew something out in his closed, leather-gloved fist and offered it to Niel.
Reluctantly, Niel held out his open palm. Kerr deposited a single white berry into Niel’s hand.
“Stilder berry,” Niel said grimly.
“Aye.”
“Where?” He rolled it between his fingers, his jaw tight.Please,he thought,say anywhere but…
“In the lady’s room, beneath her wardrobe. There were a few dried needles on the ground, too. Maybe from a garland.”
…anywhere but there.
“But no garland.” Niel said grimly.
It still could have been a servant. Just because it was in her bed chamber didn’t mean anything. Servants went in and out of the lady’s room.
“No. Not in her room. But we found one shoved into the music room on the floor above.”
“Was there anything else in her room?”
