She was smiling again—that real smile, the one that made her whole face brighten. He found himself matching it before he could stop himself, the unfamiliar expression pulling at muscles that had forgotten their purpose.
As they entered the keep together, Elodie launched into a detailed analysis of medieval siege tactics she had apparently learned from something called “a documentary,” her hands waving and her voice filling the cold stone corridors with warmth. Gareth listened, and for the first time in three years, the silence inside him did not feel like a prison.
It felt like a door waiting to open.
CHAPTER 13
The se’nnight passed in a blur of preparation. Gareth drove his men hard—drilling formations, inspecting weapons, reinforcing the weak points in Greywatch’s defenses. Alaric would come with only five men, as agreed, but that meant nothing. The real threat would not arrive on horseback. It would slither in through cracks they had not anticipated, strike where they were not watching.
Miles took to the preparations with grim enthusiasm. The red-bearded warrior had been with Gareth since before the betrayal, had survived the ambush only because he had been recovering from a fever. He had earned his spurs in Gareth’s service and carried his own scars from treachery.
“The men are ready, my lord,” he reported on the fifth day, standing at attention in the training yard. “We’ve doubled the watch, secured the sally port, inventoried the armory. If Alaric tries anything within these walls, he’ll find us prepared.”
Gareth nodded his acknowledgment.And if he tries something outside the walls?
Miles’s jaw tightened. “Then we hunt him down and end this. One way or another.”
It was not quite a threat of murder. Not quite. But the implication hung in the air between them, heavy with three years of waiting.
Not yet,Gareth signed.We must be patient. Let him make the first move.
“With respect, my lord—patience has not served us well. The man tried to kill you. He’ll try again, given the chance.”
When he does, we will be ready.Gareth met his captain’s eyes.But it must be him who breaks the peace. If we strike first, we become the aggressors. No matter Richard is on crusade, the Crown would not look kindly on that.
Miles snarled something under his breath, but he did not argue further. He was a good man—loyal, fierce, dependable. But he thought like a soldier, not a lord. He did not understand the careful dance of politics, the way power had to be wielded with restraint as well as force.
Gareth understood. He had learned it the hard way.
“There’s another matter,” Miles said, his tone shifting. “The lady. The men have noticed... that is, they’ve seen...” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “She’s teaching signs to anyone who’ll learn. Half the household can hold a conversation in their hands now. The cook, the stable boys, even Father Aldric.” A pause. “It’s changed things.”
Changed things, how?
“They look at you differently now.” Miles met his gaze squarely. “Before, they feared you. They served you out of duty, or loyalty, or because they had nowhere else to go. But now...” He struggled for words. “They see you speak to them. Through her, through the signs. They see you answer questions, give orders, even make jests sometimes. They’re starting to understand that you’re still—” He stopped himself.
Still what?
“Still in there, my lord. Still the man you were before.” Miles’s voice had gone rough. “We’d almost forgotten. Three years of silence, and we’d almost forgotten that you used to laugh. Used to talk with us around the fire. Used to be...” He shook his head. “The lady’s given that back. Or some of it, anyway.” Miles barked out a laugh. “Mayhap she is a faerie.”
Gareth did not know how to respond. He had not realized—had not let himself realize—how completely he had withdrawn from his own household. How his silence had become a wall that kept out friend as well as foe.
She has given many things,he signed finally.More than she knows.
Miles nodded slowly, something shifting in his expression. “The men would fight for her now, my lord. Not just for you—for her as well. She’s become one of ours.”
One of ours. The words settled into Gareth’s chest and took root there.
Good, he signed.Then she will be well protected.
“Aye.” Miles clasped his fist to his chest in salute. “That she will.”
He strode off to continue the preparations, leaving Gareth alone in the training yard with thoughts he could not quite wrangle into order.
One of ours.The preposterous woman from the unimaginable future, with her endless chatter and her fierce loyalty and her maddening habit of making him feel things he had sworn never to feel again.
Would she leave him? Return to her own time?
The question haunted him. He had seen her face on the battlements when she spoke of her world—the longing there, the grief. She missed her home. Missed her friend Jennifer, the one who had taught her the signs that had become Gareth’s voice. Missed the marvels and wonders of a time he could not imagine.
