“Where did you get her?” Braya asked him while he dried Avalon and laid down fresh hay back at the tavern’s stable.
“I had been traveling two years ago and came upon a gypsy with a gloriously beautiful horse, and a cruel whip.”
“Oh, no!” Braya whispered, horrified and understanding Avalon a little better.
“I almost killed him one night,” he continued, remembering. “I had wanted to free her. She’d been skin and bones. Pulling his carriage for however long…I thought she was on the brink of death. I wanted her to run, untethered for whatever short amount of time she had left—free. But I had to free her from the carriage first. As you can imagine, she did not want hands on her, so I had a difficult time freeing her.” He smiled at Avalon and petted her. “I finally managed and she hurried off, as fast as she could go. I thought I would never see her again. But she returned to me two nights later in a moonlit vale and has remained with me ever since.”
Braya smiled. She didn’t mind standing in the hay, feeding Avalon and Archer carrots while Torin told her stories of the Isle of Avalon and a king called Arthur.
“How do you know these tales?”
Torin went to stand at the window. The rain had stopped and the clouds had disappeared. He stared out into the sunlight. “I read about them.”
Braya wasn’t sure she heard him correctly. Why would a guard have any need of reading? “You can read?”
“Aye. I learned how while I lived at Till Castle.” He turned away from the sun and smiled at her. “I can write, too.”
“You use your time well,” she said with admiration lacing her voice. Such skills were difficult and took many months, even years to achieve. She shook her head, marveling at him, and forgot the horses as she moved toward him. “Did the governor force you to learn?”
“No,” he told her, watching her move, turning her bones to liquid. “I wanted to read so that I could find the story of Avalon.”
“You are a very determined man.”
He smiled. It was well practiced and didn’t reach his eyes. Braya thought he didn’t like this compliment. Why not? Who was he? She understood why he wanted to be a soldier of the king and help triumph over the Scots, but there was so much more to him than that. Who raised him? Where had he spent his latest years, the ones after the Scots took down Till Castle until now? There was so much more she wanted to learn about him. So much she felt sheneededto know.
He was different. That was a good thing. Wasn’t it?
