Page 2 of Betrothed

Another thing that Fawn didn’t particularly like about Errol: he pretended like they were more than passing acquaintances before she married his brother. She certainly knew him, but she knew everyone in that little town.

“Forget this vengeance,” Errol continued. “It would make no difference. Renly is dead. Nothing will bring him back.”

At that, his gray eyes went dull. His jaw worked, and Fawn thought back to the previous night, when she had caught Renly’s mother rubbing his back while he had his head in his hands. He hadn’t sobbed—he would never let a woman catch him doing something like that—but he was clearly grieving. Possibly even more than Fawn. After all, Errol had actually gotten along with his brother. They laughed more in one hour together than Fawn laughed with him in all her years as Renly’s wife.

Fawn was grieving Renly. But if she was honest with herself, she was grieving having something stolen from her more than she was grieving the man. She used to know her place in the world. She used to be something: a wife. And the Skullstalker had taken that from her.

“I can’t just go back there,” Fawn managed. “I was right there, Errol. I saw it.”

She looked away, knowing Errol would think she was hiding her tears. But in truth, she was hiding her absolute fury. She had tried to stab the Skullstalker when the fighting had died down, and she had to get dragged away. This was when their leader was dead, and the Skullstalkers had stopped attacking. After Ivy dragged the old Skullstalker away to his void, the Circle had waited for the smaller one—scarred from the malblossom they used to bind it and covered in Renly’s blood—to resume its rampage.

The monster had looked at them like it was considering carnage. Then it walked off into the trees.

Fawn had screamed for the Circle to chase it down. A very unwomanly thing for her to do. Luckily, her fellow Circle members were all too happy to cover her mouth until the Skullstalker vanished into the forest.

It was a good thing they did. She would have been ripped apart if it returned. But there was a part of her that was still livid at the Circle, who had all abandoned her as their leader’s body cooled on the forest floor. Leaving her to bury her husband, send word to his family, and wait for them to come and collect her.

They should have chased it. They should have taken their malblossom-tipped blades and plunged them into the creature’s pale blue flesh. It was already injured; they would never have a better chance.

“Forget about that thing,” Errol urged her. He looked around the forest and the river and the looming forbidden mountains with a disapproving expression. “There is nothing for you here. You should have never left home. I understand Renly being fooled by that dolt of a mage who recruited him into that nonsense Circle. But he should never have brought you. You’re too precious.”

He touched her hair again. For something he claimed to hate, he seemed to enjoy touching her short hair.

Fawn waited again for him to let go. When seconds passed and he didn’t release her, she grew wary.

“Errol?”

Errol gave her curl a short tug and then mercifully released her. “Mother and I agreed,” he said with that broad smile that, for some reason, still made her skin crawl. “When we return back home, you will marry me.”

Fawn held back a laugh. Then she held back a look of horror as she realized he wasn’t joking.

“What?”

“It is tradition,” he said. “Like your hair.”

“And old tradition,” Fawn said, her mind whirling. “And that’s for older brothers! You’re two years younger.”

“Well, I’m the only brother he has,” Errol said. His smile dimmed. “Had. Anyhow, Mother agrees it is for the best. You have no one else. And you should stay in the family.”

Stay in the family. Fawn wanted to shudder. Like she was some sort of heirloom.

Seconds passed. Errol looked disappointed, and Fawn realized that he had been expecting her to be happy about this. Which just went to show how little he knew her. Fawn’s head was not full of marital bliss; it was plagued with Errol’s soft flesh tearing under her teeth and nails.

“I see you need time,” Errol said in a rare moment of grace. He stepped back into the tree line, watching her as he walked. “Come back soon. We are finished with dinner.”

Right, Fawn thought. Can’t have those pots go un-scrubbed.

She nodded stiffly, waiting until he vanished into the trees before letting her disgusted expression play out on her face. Nobody actually followed that tradition unless they wanted to, or unless the woman would be destitute otherwise. Fawn had expected to make a living at the washhouse or work as a cleaner.

Maybe they did want her to stay in the family. But Fawn had always felt like they viewed her as a nuisance who didn’t play her role correctly. The only other option made her grimace: Errol actually wanted her. It sounded impossible. He could have any woman in town—if they ignored his mean streak. Which, thanks to his high status and good looks, they absolutely would. So why her?

The night darkened. Fawn looked up at the moon, which cast just enough light to see, then back down at the Skullstalker footprints.

She hadn’t told Errol everything. The hunters who passed through the other day said they had seen the Skullstalker at a nearby clearing for the past few nights. It had been so immersed in something that it had not noticed their presence, and the hunters had been glad for that. Especially after Fawn told them that he liked to chase his victims.

That had been Renly’s mistake. He tried to run. The Skullstalker had chased him down and ripped into him like a gleeful cat tearing into a mouse.

Fawn reached into her coat and gripped her knife. The idea was ridiculous. Suicidal, even. But she couldn’t resist. She couldn’t just let herself get carted back home to be married off to Renly’s younger brother without doing something about Renly’s killer. She wanted, just for once, to give herself over to her violent fantasies. Not for her own satisfaction, of course. For justice. At least, that was what she told herself.