“Here, hang on to me.” The soldier started to lead me up the steps. He was relatively young, maybe late twenties, with a jagged scar that cut between his yellow eyes and stretched down to the left side of his jaw. “Forgive him, he forgets hismanners sometimes.”
I raised my eyebrows and smiled tightly in response. Of course, Riyan’s brutish notoriety hadpreceded him.
We trudged to the top of the steps and the soldier escorted me inside. The entrance of the keep had a high ceiling and the stone walls were decorated with rusted shields, white bear skins, tapestries of beasts and monsters, and scarlet banners bearing theBloodstone crest.
The keep was dark. Not dark like Ravenwood Manor—with blackthorn trim lining the walls and deep green and black fabrics draping the walls and covering the furniture—but dark as in foreboding.
I bit my tongue but the smell of cooked mutton made my mouth water. I peered through the open arched doors in front of us to find a large dining table piled high with steaming food. My stomach growled at the promised feast, and suddenly I did not have much of an opinion on thekeep’s decor.
“Riyan!” a cheerfulvoice cried.
A round, old woman with snow white hair and bright pink cheeks ran out of the arched doorway from the dining room. Her wide smile fell when her grey eyes raised up to her grandson’s face. An old man with a withered face like an eagle’s stepped in behind her, his face hardening at the sightof Riyan.
“You grew,” the old man said with asharp tongue.
“A boy tends to grow over seven years, Grandfather,” Riyan replied flatly. “Don’t see whyyou’re surprised.”
Baron Bloodstone’s thin lips tightened and his eyes narrowed at Riyan before they looked over in my direction. “Thank you, Captain. Glad to see someone remembers how to treat a lady around here. Youare dismissed.”
The captain of the Bloodstone army let go of my hand and turned to walk out of the keep, but not before shooting Riyan a glare from hisyellow eyes.
The old woman, who could have been no one else but Baroness Bloodstone, stepped forward into the keep’s entrance. Her smile returned and her eyes sparkled as she looked up ather grandson.
“We prepared a feast for you!” Baroness Bloodstone said proudly, gesturing behind her into the dining room. “You must be starving after such along journey.”
“I lost my appetite,” Riyan said. He turned away and walked into a dark stairwell in the corner of the room. He ducked under the archway and disappeared up the stairs. His thudding footsteps faded as Baron and Baroness Bloodstone looked at each other instunned silence.
“I prepared all day, Nikkolas,” Baroness Bloodstone whispered to her husband. “I fed Astrid and sent her to bed early so we could all enjoy ameal together!”
“That damn boy,” Baron Bloodstone scowled as he looked down at his wife. “The marriage was supposed tofix him!”
On the mention of “marriage,” Baron and Baroness Bloodstone both looked in my direction. I tugged the cape tightly around my shoulders as both sets of grey eyes examined their heir’s wife. Baroness Bloodstone gasped and ran overto me.
“Oh, my dear girl,” she exclaimed, placing my face in her soft hands. “You are skin and bones! You need to eatright away!”
She placed her warm hand around mine and led me through the arched doorway. I admired the needlework of red roses and amber wheat stalks on her bodice—beautiful, but much plainer than I expected ofa Baroness.
The dining room was cavernous. A huge chandelier hung above us, wrought with iron claws gripping flickering candles. The dining table was not like the one at Ravenwood Manor with individual chairs all around, but was instead long enough to seat at least two dozen people with long benches on either side. The only chair was at the head of the table with a bear’s head carved into the back.
I swung my legs over the bench and sat at the right-hand of the luxurious chair. Baroness Bloodstone giddily plopped down on the bench across from me while Baron Bloodstone slowly walked over and sat on theursine throne.
I expected servants to come around to serve us the meal, but Baron Bloodstone picked up the carving knife and fork and sawed away at the roasted mutton on a silver platter in front of him. He speared a large slice of meat and plopped it onmy plate.
“What is your name, dear?” Baroness Bloodstone sweetly asked me, her face slightly obscured by the steam drifting up from the mutton. “We know absolutely nothingabout you!”
“My name is Serafina Ravenwood, Baroness,” I replied, picking up my knife and fork and cutting a piece off the thick sliceof mutton.
Baron Bloodstone dropped another slice of mutton on Baroness Bloodstone’s plate and then carved himself a helping. He muttered something about Ravenwoods under his breath but Baroness Bloodstone piped up before I could figure out what hehad said.
“Oh, please do not use titles here, Serafina,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Just callme Hilda.”
As Hilda spoke, Baron Bloodstone started attacking his meat with his cutlery like it was going tofight back.
“I know it may take some getting used to,” Hilda said, completely unbothered by her husband’s war with his dinner, “but Bloodstone is not part of normal Lycaster society. We are very…oh, what is the word I am looking for, Nikkolas?Instant? Inbred?”
“Not inbred!” Nikkolas spat, choking on his bite of mutton. “Youmeaninsulated.”
“Yes!” Hilda said with a smile. “Insulated. Why, we have not been to Hytonin decades!”
