“You,” he called and pointed to Hild’s mother. “Come out.”
“Wolf.” Camelee stared up at him. “Why didn’t you or Fin make certain the person mauled by that bear was her mother?” She handed the little girl to him. “Give her back and let them all go free.”
She left him without waiting for his reply. She wanted to go to the kitchen, to Genevra and Alric and tell them what was happening so that they could say goodbye to Hild.
She fought not to cry on the way. She was done crying. This was all her fault for letting herself get attached. She knew better. She’d let herself feel something for Hild…for Wolf. Idiot! Love always hurt. Nothing had changed. Nothing ever would.
She burst into the kitchen and hurried to Genevra and Alric and told them what had happened. When they rushed out of the castle, Camelee ran to her room, pale and already forever haunted by a little girl’s laughter. She preferred not to go out there and see Hild leaving them all. She didn’t want to see Wolf or speak to him. He could have saved them all the trouble by checking the body.
All the trouble of trusting in what she hated most in her life. Motherhood.
She entered her room, holding back her anguish until she nearly choked, and looked at the beautiful gown laid out on the bed. It was olive-green, embroidered around the hem and neck in gold thread.
She went to it and picked it up, ignoring the small yellow gown beside it.
It was getting late, and she hadn’t even started getting ready for the party.
Chapter Sixteen
“Iinvited Fridato stay here in the keep with Hild,” Wolf told her when he returned to the chambers. “If she decides to stay, she will come back tonight.”
Camelee didn’t answer him. She thought it would probably be more difficult to have Hild so close. She knew she was being selfish. But she’d never almost became a mother…and didn’t hate it. She was raw. She didn’t want to talk or hear anything more about Hild.
“I guess she will decide what’s best,” she remarked and pushed the last pin into her hair.
“You are taking this well, Camelee.”
“Would you rather me weep into my pillow?”
“If that is what you felt like doing,” he told her. “But I fear you do not feel much.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” she muttered. “Remember that next time instead of insisting that I become something I didn’t want to be!”
She stormed out of the bedroom and then out of the chamber. She was surprised but thankful when she didn’t hear the door open behind her. She had to get away, be alone. She guessed Wolf did, too.
She took one of the woolen cloaks by the doors and left the keep. She saw a woman’s tattered skirts leaving the gate with a group of people. Was that Hild? She hurried after them, but they disappeared in the crowd leaving the inner yard.
She followed the crowd out of the next gate and watched it disperse into the snow-covered hills in many directions. Had it been Hild? Had her mother come back and then changed her mind?
She went south, following a band of villagers. Maybe Frida lived among them? So what if she did? Hadn’t she just decided that she’d rather not see Hild? Of course, it wasn’t true. She missed the little girl so much it hurt.
That was why she’d gone too far away from the keep—because every part of her hurt.
She was thinking about Hild calling Wolf Papa when something tangled around her ankles and knocked her to the ground.
She screamed out and was kicked in the side.
“Shut up!” a man yelled above her and then spat. “Do not make this more difficult for yourself than ’tis already going to be.”
“No! The king decreed that I am not to be—”
He pulled her up by her hair and set her on her feet. “I can cut your throat now. He will not know you are already dead when I let him know I have you. Do not tempt me, Whore.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. She knew him and his log red braids. Leofric. The man who killed Akkar. Did he just stumble upon her on the single time Wolf hadn’t come with her? “I don’t know who you are talking about.”
“The Dane you have been sucking at night.”
“You have the wrong person.”
