“So should you.” She crossed the hall to join him, her bare feet silent on the rushes. Up close, she could see the shadows under his eyes, the tight lines around his mouth. “May I?”
He nodded and shifted to make room on the bench. She settled beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched, and turned her attention to the maps.
They were rough by modern standards—hand-drawn, the proportions slightly off, distances measured in days’ travel rather than miles. But the pattern they revealed was unmistakable.
“Oh,” she breathed, tracing her finger across the parchment. “It’s a circle.”
Gareth’s eyes sharpened. He signed.Explain.
“Look.” She pointed to the sites of the attacks, each one marked with a small X in dark ink. “Thornwick here. Harthollow here. The shepherd’s huts, the farmsteads—they form a ring around Greywatch.” She traced the invisible line connecting them. “He’s isolating you. These raids—they’re not about the villages. They’re about cutting you off from potential allies. Anyone who might ride to your aid.”
Gareth stared at the map, then at her, his expression shifting from surprise to grim satisfaction.
You see it too.His signs were rapid, energized.I noticed the pattern, but I thought?—
“You thought you might be paranoid?” She offered a wry smile. “You’re not. This is deliberate. Strategic.” She paused, considering. “In my time, we called this asymmetric warfare. But there’s a better example.” She traced the circle on the map again. “About a hundred years from now, give or take, there’ll be a Scottish king named Robert Bruce. He’ll face an enemy with a much larger army—better equipped, better funded, everything. He should lose. Everyone expects him to lose.”
Gareth leaned forward, his attention sharpening.
“But he doesn’t fight the way they expect. Instead of meeting them in open battle, he burns crops, poisons wells, drives off livestock. He makes the land itself hostile. The enemy army marches in expecting conquest and finds... nothing. No food or shelter. No one to fight. Just empty hills and slow starvation.” She tapped the map. “That’s what Alaric is doing. He’s not trying to storm your walls. He’s trying to starve you out. Isolate you. Make Greywatch wither until there’s nothing left to defend.”
Gareth stared at her for a long moment. Then his hands moved, slow and wondering.You truly know the future.
“Some of it. The parts that got written down.” She offered a wry smile. “Bruce wins, by the way. Eventually. The larger army goes home with nothing.”
Good. Something fierce flickered in his expression.Then we follow his example. We do not wither.
Something warm unfurled in her chest. She ducked her head, suddenly shy, and focused on the maps again. “It’s Alaric.”
The warmth vanished from Gareth’s expression. He nodded once, his hand going to his throat, to the brutal scar that ran from beneath his ear to his collarbone. His fingers traced theridge of damaged tissue with something that looked like grim remembrance.
Who else would want this?he signed.Who else hates me enough to spend months building to this moment?
“But why now? You said it’s been three years. Why wait so long? Why strike now?”
Gareth was quiet for a long moment. The candle flickered, sending shadows dancing across his scarred features. When he finally signed, his hands moved slowly, as if the words cost him something.
The king is away on crusade, the courts occupied with infighting.He paused.Because of you.
“What?”
Before you came, I was...He paused, searching for the right signs.Waiting. Patient. Alone. The Silent Reaper, haunting his own castle. Alaric could afford to wait. A dead man walking is no threat.
Elodie’s chest tightened. She remembered her first weeks at Greywatch—the servants who flinched, the halls that echoed with emptiness, the lord who ate alone in his chambers and spoke to no one. Gareth had been a ghost long before anyone thought to call him one.
But now.His hands moved faster, gaining conviction.Now I am building something. People trust me. The household thrives. I am becoming the lord he tried to kill. He cannot allow it.
“Because if you succeed—if Greywatch flourishes—then he won’t have a way to take it from you.” She understood now, with a cold clarity that made her shiver. “Your living well is worse than your living at all.”
Yes. His gaze met hers, steady and intense.And you are part of it. You changed everything. He sees you as my weakness.
“And the crown is too far away to help,” she said slowly, piecing it together. “Richard is in the Holy Land. His brother John?—”
Schemes in his absence.Gareth’s signs were heavy.The regency council is weak. The north is lawless. No one is watching Alaric.
“No one except us.”
And we are exactly what he wants us to be.His jaw tightened.Alone.
