Against you?
Against everything.His hands stilled for a moment before continuing.Alaric does not simply want Greywatch. He wants me destroyed. And now he knows the best way to destroy me is through you.
The words hit her like a physical blow. She’d understood abstractly that getting involved in Gareth’s conflict might put her at risk. But she hadn’t fully grasped how thoroughly she’d become part of this—how completely her fate had become entangled with his.
“What do we do?” she asked aloud.
Gareth’s answer was a long time coming. When it came, his signs were slow, deliberate.
We prepare. We watch. And when he moves against us—His hands shaped the final word with brutal precision.We end this.
Three daysafter Alaric’s departure, one of Miles’ scouts returned with troubling news.
The man was dusty, exhausted, his horse lathered from hard riding. But his eyes were sharp as he delivered his report in the great hall, where Gareth had assembled his inner circle.
“He’s not going back to Dunharrow directly, my lord.” The scout glanced between Gareth and Bertram, uncertain whom to address. “He’s visiting Lord Ashworth. Lord Pemberton. Even stopped at the priory at Whitstone.”
“Building alliances,” Bertram said grimly. “Against whom?”
“Against you, my lord. Against anyone who might support you.” The scout hesitated, twisting his cap in his hands. “There’s more. He’s been asking questions. About the faerie woman. Where she came from. Whether anyone’s seen her walk beyond the castle walls. What path she takes when she leaves the keep.”
Elodie’s blood ran cold. She felt the weight of every gaze in the room turn toward her.
Gareth’s expression went flat as a stone. Only someone who knew him well would see the tension in his jaw, thewhitening of his knuckles where he gripped the arm of his chair.
He’s hunting,Gareth signed.Looking for weakness.
“He found one,” Elodie said quietly. “Me.”
The silence that followed was heavy with implications. Miles shifted his weight, one hand moving unconsciously to his sword hilt. Bertram’s face had gone pale beneath his white beard.
“We could send Lady Elodie away,” the steward suggested carefully. “To one of the southern manors, perhaps, until?—”
No.Gareth’s sign was sharp, definitive.She stays where I can protect her.
“With respect, my lord,” Miles rumbled, “keeping her here makes her easier to find. If Alaric’s scouts are already watching the castle?—”
Then they will see a fortress preparing for a siege.Gareth rose from his chair, and something in his bearing shifted—the lord giving way to the warrior.Double the patrols. No one entersor leaves without my knowledge. And find out which of our neighbors are listening to Alaric’s whispers.
He turned to Elodie, and his expression softened almost imperceptibly.
You wanted to walk the walls with Miles,he signed.Now it is not a lesson. It is a necessity.
She nodded, her throat tight. “I understand.”
There is something else.His hands moved slowly, as if the words cost him.Alaric is patient. He will not strike until he is certain of victory. That means he needs something he does not yet have.
“What?”
Someone inside our walls.His gaze swept the hall—the servants trying not to listen, the guards at the doors, the cook peering from the kitchen passage.He came here to scout. To judge our defenses. But he also came to make contact with whoever is feeding him information.
The thought made her skin crawl. Someone in this castle—someone who’d learned to sign, who’d shared meals with them, who’d watched Gareth begin to heal—was reporting everything to the man who wanted him dead.
“How do we find them?”
We watch and we wait.Something cold settled into Gareth’s expression.And when they reveal themselves, we make them wish they had chosen differently.
That night, Elodie stood with him on the battlements, watching the distant lights of Dunharrow flickering against the darkening sky. The wind cut sharp and cold, carrying the smell of rain.
