“Yes. Everyone thinks bad choices look bad when you make them, but sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they look brave, and sometimes everybody calls you a hero afterward.”
My throat tightened. “He was brave. He was one of the bravest men I knew.”
“Would you have had him leave someone to die?”
“I would have had him come home.”
There it was, the ugly truth I’d never said at the funeral, never admitted to Ellis, never whispered to Brian’s mother while she held my hands and told me her son had died doing what he loved.
Wulfric looked away first.
“My father died with a sword in his hand,” he said after a long moment. “As did his father before him. I was taught that a man stands for what is his.”
“That doesn’t mean he has to die for it.”
“To leave is to lose it.”
“Not always.”
His gaze went down to Ashford, and I followed it to the hall standing above the smaller roofs, smoke curling through the opening in its thatch.
“Aelfwyn loved that hall,” he said.
The anger drained out of me.
“She chose the carvings over the door herself, though the craftsman told her vines were foolish there. She called him a sour old goat and watched until he carved every leaf.”
A faint smile touched his mouth.
“She planted herbs beside the eastern wall, though most of them died because she forgot to water them. She is everywhere here.”
“You think if you leave,” I said carefully, “you’ll lose her too.”
His eyes met mine and I knew I’d gone too far again.
“I’m sorry.”
“Nay, you are right.”
The wind lifted my hair across my face, and I raised a hand to push it away, but Wulfric reached me first.
His fingers brushed my cheek. His hand was warm despite the cold, his fingertips rough from reins and sword and work I could barely imagine. He tucked the loose curl behind my ear, and the touch shouldn’t have meant anything.
His gaze dropped to my mouth as my breath caught. He was close enough that I could see the flecks of different blues in his eyes. Without thinking, I put one hand against his chest, feeling his heart beat beneath my palm.
“Darcy,” he said, and somehow my name sounded different, but then something changed in his face as he stepped back.
Aelfwyn.
A scream came from the southern road as wee both turned to see a child stumbling from between the trees, barefoot and crying, blood dried down one side of his face.
Behind him came a woman carrying a baby, then an old man leaning heavily on a stick. Families emerged from the woods with carts and livestock, some coughing, some weeping, mostcarrying whatever they’d managed to save. Beyond them, smoke climbed black against the darkening sky.
Wulfric was already moving. He reached the boy just as the child’s knees gave way and caught him by the shoulders.
“What happened?”
The boy clung to his cloak.
