“I won’t be long, beautiful. Stay in the Keep until I return.” He kisses her forehead despite his better judgement and strides out with Gunni, cracking his knuckles.
Calder scrubs his face with a rag from his pocket, removing a small amount of blood speckled across his cheeks.
I cannot believe I let the older Harvart boy get a punch in. He will have fun in the city jail until I see fit to release him.
As he approaches Coldheart, he spots a woman holding a basket standing at the rampart’s summit. One of his front doors opens, revealing a smiling Aura.
He slows as he hears the visitor, whom he recognizes as his neighbor, who often delivers baked goods for him.
“Is Jarl Calder home?” He can hear her curtly ask.
“No, I’m sorry,” Aura’s tone remains pleasant, “he is in town. Is he expecting you?’
The woman bristles as she takes in his girl’s bare feet and charcoal-stained hands. Even with the leather belt cinched at her waist, she clearly wears a man’s shirt that drapes around her knees. Trousers are not commonly worn by women in Skalor, which makes Aura stand out more than she should.
“You must be the slave his lordship hauled off the boat from Treland.”
This time, it is Aura’s turn to bristle.
“I see you for what you are, a power-seeking harlot. Jarl Calder is a lonely man who needs an understanding womanhisage to warm his home. Not some jezebel tramp from Salt to parade about in trousers.” He can almost hear the lip curl from his neighbor.
“Our relationship is none of your concern!” Aura bites back.
“Relationship?” His neighbor snorts. “You are young enough to be his daughter. If anything, you are a toy, a distraction from his demons.”
As he creeps closer, his gaze trained on the Princess, he can see her face redden. “You don’t know me.”
The neighbor’s cackle carries over the rampart, causing a flock of crows to take flight off the portico.
“What a delusional girl. You are a slave brought to Skalor for the whims of a powerful man. If he chooses to bed a young girl like yourself, you should keep it quiet, not galavant about as if you are worth anything more than you are.”
Aura steps backward. Anguish paints her beautiful expression just before she slams the door in the woman’s face.
When his neighbor turns around, she collides with Calder’s rigid form.
“My Jarl!” She scrambles into a bow. “I was hoping to deliver this basket of sweets for you. All of us widows in town worry about you all alone out here.”
“I heard what you said.” His leather armor stretches as he folds his arms across his chest.
“My Jarl?” She tilts her head, genuinely confused at the fury rolling off him like a tidal wave.
Usually, he tolerates the intrusion from his citizens, but the presumption that he would entertain a mere whore in his home insults both the Princess and him.
He seizes her forearm in a savage grip that has her cry out. The force of his grip leaves an indentation of his iced hand on her skin.
“Return home.”
She drops the basket and scrambles away down the parapet.
She will be dead by nightfall.
He searches the sitting room and dining hall along the main level and is about to climb the stairs to the bedrooms when he hears the sound of Argnier’s laugh and reverses course.
The door leading out to his patio is propped open by a cast-iron sculpture of a wyvern. Argnier gifted it to him one winter for his nameday as a joke.
The voices grow louder, and he is careful not to lean too far outside and give away his presence.
“That old bitch has always tried to sleep her way to the top. Between you and me, she always falls flat because she has no ass.” He laughs hard enough at his joke that he drops his thick leather-bound sketchbook.
