“I didn’t—the king?—”
“The king gave you what should have been mine.” Alaric’s voice went soft. Dangerous. “Everything you are, I made you. Your skill with a sword? I paid for your training. Your honor? I taught you what that word means. Your life?” He smiled, thin and cruel. “That belongs to me too.”
The remaining attackers pressed closer. Gareth counted seven still standing. He and his men had taken out many, but not enough. His sword arm shook with exhaustion. He could take three, maybe four more.
Not seven.
Not when he couldn’t tear his gaze from the man who’d raised him.
“You should have stayed beneath me, dog.” Alaric turned away, already bored. “Now your castle, your title, your gold—they’ll all revert to someone more deserving. Finish it.”
They came at him all at once.
Gareth killed two more before the blade found his throat.
It wasn’t a clean strike—the man wielding it was tired, sloppy. The sword bit deep but missed the great vein by a finger’s width. Gareth felt the burn of it, the hot rush of blood down his chest, the way his legs suddenly refused to hold him.
He fell.
Above him, the stars wheeled against an indifferent sky. He heard voices—Alaric giving orders, horses riding away, the groans of dying men. His men. Men who’d trusted him. Men who’d died because he’d been too blind to see the trap.
Get up, something whispered.Get up and fight.
He couldn’t. His body had finally failed him. The blood was a river now, soaking into the earth, stealing his warmth. His life.
Get up.
Gareth de Clare was not a man who surrendered. Not to enemies. Not to pain. Not to death itself.
He rolled onto his belly. Dragged himself forward. One arm, then the other. The forest floor was cold and wet and reeked of blood and churned earth. He didn’t know where he was going. Away. Anywhere.
The edge of the clearing. The shelter of the trees. A root to pull himself over, then another. His vision grayed. His fingers stopped obeying.
Still he crawled.
Alaric.
The name burned in his mind. Brighter than the pain. Hotter than the hatred. He tried to say it aloud—what came out was a sound like grinding stone, a wet rasp that barely qualified as human.
He’d been betrayed by the man who’d raised him, by the voice he’d trusted above all others.
Words were lies, weapons. Words were the pretty poison Alaric had poured in his ear for twelve years, and Gareth had drunk it down like wine.
Never again.
He crawled toward the treeline, toward the old drainage route his father had shown him as a boy—“Every castle has its secrets, son. Dunharrow’s run deeper than most.” He crawled until he couldn’t crawl anymore. Until the darkness took him, and he knew nothing at all.
He woke in a cottage that smelled of herbs and some kind of savory soup. An old woman bent over him, pressing something foul against his throat. He tried to speak—to ask where he was, what had happened, if any of his men had survived?—
What came out was a ruin. Gravel scraping over broken glass. A sound that hurt to make and hurt to hear.
“Don’t try to talk,” the woman said. “Your voice is damaged. It may heal.” She paused. “It may not.”
Gareth closed his eyes.
Three months later,he rode through the gates of Greywatch Castle. His sword arm had healed. His throat had scarred over—a brutal line from ear to collarbone that made strong men look away. His voice had returned, after a fashion. He could speak, a terrible sound, more like that of a beast, if he chose to.
He chose silence instead.
