“Help Agnes organize sleeping arrangements,” she said.
She moved among the newcomers, but this time her role felt different—less frantic organizer, more... what? Lady of the castle, she supposed. The thought made her stomach flutter.
A woman with singed hair and hollow eyes clutched at Elodie’s sleeve. “My lady, the raiders, they weren’t ordinary bandits?—”
“Tell me,” Elodie said quietly, drawing her aside. “Everything you remember.”
The woman’s story came out in fractured pieces. The attackers had moved with military precision. They’d known exactly where the grain stores were, which cottages belonged to the village headman, and where the well was located. They hadn’t stolen, they’d destroyed. Systematically. Deliberately.
Bandits take things,Elodie thought, the cold knot in her stomach tightening.These men wanted to burn.
“Did you see any colours?” she pressed. “Banners? Anything to identify them?”
“Nothing, my lady. They wore dark leather, with hoods over their faces. But—” The woman hesitated. “One of them slipped. Called another by name. Edmund, he said. Like he forgot himself.”
Elodie filed the name away. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
By evening, the outer bailey had changed again—more cook fires, more makeshift shelters, more children chasing each other between the tents. But unlike the desperate scramble of before, there was an order to it now. Thornwick refugees directed newcomers to their beds. Agnes had organised a rotation for meal distribution. Even the castle servants seemed less overwhelmed, working alongside people who’d been strangers not so long ago.
Father Aldric found her near the well, drinking deeply from a ladle of cold water. His robes were rumpled and stained—he’d been helping carry supplies again, she’d noticed.
“You’ve built something here,” he said gruffly. “These people—they trust each other now. They work together.”
“They built it themselves,” Elodie said. “I just... showed them the door.”
The priest studied her with those sharp, assessing eyes. “Perhaps. But someone had to open it first.” He paused, his thin face working through several expressions. “I was wrong about you. I ask for your forgiveness.”
Coming from the man who’d wanted to exorcise her, it was practically a declaration of undying devotion. Elodie managed a tired smile. “Already forgiven, Father.”
Shouts arose from the watchtower just as the sun touched the horizon.
“Riders approaching! ’Tis Lord Gareth!”
Elodie was running before she consciously decided to move, her exhausted legs finding new strength as she pushed through the crowd toward the gate. The portcullis groaned upward, and then they were through, twenty riders, dust-covered and weary, but alive, all of them alive?—
Gareth swung down from his horse, and his eyes found her immediately. He stood frozen for a moment, taking in the courtyard—the refugees, the cook fires, the organised chaos of community that had sprung up in his absence. His gaze swept across the scene, cataloguing and assessing, before returning to her.
She must have looked a sight. Her gown was streaked with soot and blood that wasn’t hers, her hair had escaped its braid hours ago, and she was fairly certain there was porridge crusted on her sleeve from where a toddler had thrown up on her.
But Gareth was looking at her like she’d hung the moon. He crossed the space between them in three long strides. His hands came up to cup her face, tilting it toward the torchlight, and she could feel him checking for injuries, assessing her condition the way he’d assessed the courtyard.
You are well?he signed, one-handed.
“I’m fine.” She caught his wrist, stilling his examination. “What about you? What did you find?”
Before he could answer, Sir Miles appeared at his shoulder, his face grim beneath the road dust. “My lord. We should speak. The men need to hear this.”
Gareth nodded, but his hand found Elodie’s and drew her with him toward the great hall.
The great hall had been cleared for the council, the displaced villagers settled in the outer bailey with their fires and their fears. Gareth’s men gathered in a rough semicircle, their faces hard with exhaustion and something else—anger, Elodie realised. Cold, focused anger.
Miles stepped forward, his voice carrying to every corner of the hall.
“The raiders weren’t bandits,” he reported. “They were trained soldiers. Disciplined. They moved in formation, hit specific targets, and withdrew on signal.” He reached into his belt and produced a dagger, laying it on the table before Gareth. “Three of them carried weapons with Dunharrow’s forge-mark—filed off, but not well enough.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Gareth picked up the dagger, turning it in his hands. Even from where she stood, Elodie could see the faint traces of a mark near the hilt—scratched away, but the indentation remained, the ghost of a symbol.
His hands moved sharply.Alaric.
