She threw off the bedding and climbed out of the bed to pull on her boots as well as the jacket and the thick cloak she’d run away in. She rifled around in her satchel and found the jewels she’d hidden, tucking them into a small pocket sewn on the inside of her jacket, just in case.
Lucilla stamped over to the door—there was no point in being quiet with two guards outside—slid open the bolts, and flung it open.
She didn’t know the men standing neatly at attention, and she hesitated. She opened her mouth to ask to go to the kitchen and then closed it again. She was the queen, wasn’t she? That’s what everyone kept telling her. So that meant she could bloody go downstairs if she chose.
She raised her chin and marched down the narrow stairs, through the dimly lit main taproom to the back of the tavern, and into the kitchen, her guards following her closely, casting concerned looks at each other that she pretended not to see.
She had no idea what she was doing, and since getting something to eat seemed like the most pressing problem, she decided to start there.
The kitchen glowed with a soft red light from the banked fire, illuminating a large wooden table and pungent rows of herbs hanging from the rafters. A narrow doorway at the back of the kitchen opened into a shadowy larder where she found a wrapped loaf of bread and a crock of butter in amongst rounds of cheese and preserves, smoked fish, and dried meats.
The two guards had a worried, whispered conversation before one of them let himself out the back door and rushed into the night, while the other trailed after her, watching suspiciously as she dropped the loaf of bread onto the table and started cutting.
She was still spooning honey-preserved berries from a heavy clay jar onto the slightly stale slice of bread when Cerdic arrived, uniform half-untucked, breathing hard, and looking as if he’d just woken up.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “I expected Dornar.”
Cerdic grimaced at the other guard without replying.
Ah. They wanted to handle her without speaking to Dornar. No doubt their commander would hold them responsible if she wasn’t where he expected. He’d sent her to bed, and he intended for her to stay there. Clearly, her guards thought they would be blamed along with her if Dornar didn’t get what he wanted.
Lucilla took a bite and chewed slowly before swallowing deliberately and then glared at Cerdic. “Go away.”
He folded his arms. “I’m in charge of your security.”
Gods she was sick of this. “I’m your queen. I decide what I want, and I want you to go away.”
Cerdic gave a brief wave to send the other guards back into the main taproom, waiting until the door closed behind him to take a step closer to her, and then another.
He spoke softly as he closed the distance between them. “Lucilla, please, stop with all this. I know we disagreed, but I was only trying to protect you. All I ever wanted was to keep you safe. You must know that I love you.”
She was so stunned by his outrageous statement that it took her a moment to realize that he had tilted his head to one side. And that he had wrapped a lock of her hair around his finger.
She slapped his hand away, the hurt and betrayal that she had carried so long morphing into a white-hot rage. “Get your hands off me!”
“But Lucilla—” His next words were lost in the loud squeak of the back door as it opened, and they both spun.
Lucilla’s brain couldn’t quite encompass what she was seeing, and she stood frozen trying to understand. Mathos’s face was chalky beneath his rough beard. One of his eyes was swollen shut, he had dark bruises over his cheek, his lip was split, and his shirt was torn and covered in blood, with tattered strips wrapped around his shoulder. But he acted as if everything was completely normal as he dipped his chin toward her. “Hello, Princess.”
Cerdic went rigid, and then he drew his sword. Slowly and deliberately. The heavy steel rasping viciously over the scabbard.
Mathos didn’t flinch. He simply lifted his dagger toward Cerdic and widened his stance, his lips twisting up in a mocking grin.
Gods. Mathos had been beaten to within an inch of his existence, and yet he’d come back. She had heard him saying that he would stay with her, whatever happened. And here he was.
And he was about to die.
Cerdic would kill Mathos. Or, at the very least, hurt him even more than he already had. And by the look on the sergeant’s face, he would relish doing it.
In the frozen second, as no one moved, it occurred to her that it was the only reason that Cerdic hadn’t called for the rest of his team; he thought killing Mathos would be easy. He wanted to do it himself and take all the credit. Just as he’d done when he betrayed her.
She looked between the two men—one whom she had thought she’d spend her life with, the other whom she’d done nothing but argue with, whose beast had terrified her—and realized that it was an easy choice.
Mathos had promised not to leave her, and despite whatever brutality had been done to him, here he was. And she wasn’t about to let Cerdic hurt him.
Without even thinking about what she was doing, she hoisted the heavy jar off the table, as high as she could, and then smashed it directly onto the back of Cerdic’s head.
Cerdic collapsed forward in a crumpled heap and lay still. Leaving her still holding the miraculously intact clay jar.
