She spun. The singing in the laundry had stopped. One of the men was walking her way now, his thumbs hooked into his belt. He wasn’t as tall as the man guarding the door, but he was a soldier all the same.
Being dragged upstairs by her hair wasn’t going to help Isalde, and the men could do far worse if they wanted, down on this lower floor where they were alone. She hitched her skirts and ran, heart pounding hard in her chest and ears straining, worried the men would chase her. But no other footsteps chased her up the stairs. By the time she burst, trembling, into the great hall, nobody had grabbed her.
The blonde captain, Kerr, sat at one of the long tables with a group of other soldiers, eating a late lunch of bread and stew. Ayla braced her hand against one of the wide black wood pillars, her whole body trembling with fear and fury.
“Lady Blackfell?” Kerr asked, his spoon half raised. He set it down and stood from the bench in one fluid motion, his eyes narrowed on her. “Trouble?” The other men looked up, too, but continued to eat.
“Downstairs,” she said.
“More men?” his words snapped like a whip as he strode towards her. “Bode—”
“Your men,” she corrected.Please, don’t let him be part of it all. Let him be kind. “Isalde. What are they doing to her?”
“Who? The kitchen girl?” He stopped, his expression shifting to confusion. “What happened?”
“They would not let me see her.”
“She’s a prisoner, Lady Blackfell,” the man explained, with all the weary patience of a man soothing a child. It was better than the anger she’d encountered from the man guarding the door, but not by much. “She won’t be harmed until his lordship decides what to do with her.”
“I need to speak with her.”
“You, of all people, have no need…”
“She’sfourteen,” Ayla said, her fingers digging into the hard wooden column at her side. “She’s in my employ. I must know she is unharmed. Untouched. Please. I am begging you. You can be there, if it is a matter of not wanting any plans exchanged. This is my duty.”
Her eyes watered, but she clenched her teeth and kept her chin raised.
Kerr swiped a gloved hand across his face and sighed, hard.
“Damnit,” she heard him mutter. “Just… stop crying, alright?”
Five minutes later, and she was squatting in the linen closet, her back pressed against a shelf that cut across her spine. Isalde perched on a stack of bed sheets, her arms around her knees and her small face weary and red-eyed. Three feet separated them; the room was small. Despite her offer, Kerr had closed the door behind the two of them rather than listening in.
The lamp Ayla had insisted on rested on the floor between them. Isalde had been in the dark before.
“Is he going to kill me?” the girl whispered, her voice high. Her face was tear-stained and her hands looked scratched red, like she’d been worrying at them.
“I will argue for your life,” Ayla answered quietly. “But I think not. If he wanted you dead, he could have done it already.” She still saw the bodies every time she closed her eyes.
Isalde didn’t answer, except to bury her face in her arms, bending over to rest both elbows on her knees.
“How did this happen, Isalde?” Ayla whispered. “How did you come to help them?”
Isalde kept her face buried and did not answer. Ayla chewed her bottom lip lightly, then frowned and shifted her weight.
“Were you in communication? I need to know,” she whispered.
Isalde sniffed and lifted her head.
“His lordship sent a message for me, through the tunnel.”
“For you? You mean for the servants.”
“For me. He trusts me.”
Ayla blinked. Isalde had worked in the castle for all of a month. She was years yet from being considered a woman. And Ditmar was a monster, but surely he was notthatkind of monster…
“Ditmar, you mean,” she asked slowly. Isalde nodded. “Why?”
