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Moments pass. Convinced he must be clothed by now, I venture the tiniest of peeks. And spy much more than I’d bargained for by giving in to the desire.

His back to me, Aiken is gloriously nude, his backside so perfectly formed I shut my eyes as tightly as I’m able. So much so it actually hurts to squeeze them tight.

He is an Elderman. My captor.

And I, a married woman.

Truly if I’d not been destined for hell before, I will be after this night.

9

Aiken

“Took you long enough, Father,” Nathan quips.

I find the innkeeper in the stables. Though the sun has not yet risen—my companion still slumbering like most of the other inhabitants of the inn—a few have already begun their day.

Including Nathan.

“You’ve aged a hundred years,” I tell him, grabbing the basket of grain. “Have you no stablehands for this?”

Wiping his hands on the front of his tunic, Nathan gladly leaves the task of feeding the horses to me. I greet my own mare first with a pat on the flank.

“We are alone?”

Nathan sits on a wooden stool, apparently content to watch me work.

“Aye, lad.”

I’ve not been a lad for a long time, but to Nathan, his weathered cheeks and long grey beard making him appear as old as the Isle itself, I suppose I am that.

“Care to explain why you travel with the queen’s sister?”

I tell the man everything. From attending the Tournament of Loigh at the behest of the Prima, meeting with traitors to Edingham on his behalf, to the raid that I myself prevented by warning the queen’s guard it was to occur.

Which led to the capture of the queen’s sister. The one who claims innocence and yet whose gaze is anything but, especially considering I am, to her at least, an Elderman. But then, if I were to judge her on that merit alone, I am equally as guilty.

Hilla is a married woman. And yet . . .

“There’s been no sign of the men who followed you,” he says as I move from stall to stall.

“You sent scouts?”

He looks at me as if I am daft.

“We will stay a bit to be sure.”

Nathan nods. “Three days?”

“Two, at most. By the time I return the lady to Breywood and make my way east, Silvester will become suspicious of my delay.”

Nathan doesn’t seem to be troubled. “Tell him you were injured.” He smiles, and I see more teeth are missing now than the last I saw him. “I will gladly do the deed myself.”

And he could.

To the world, Nathan is an old, kindly gentleman, the innkeeper of the Crow’s End. Most would laugh at the prospect of such a man being able to harm one of the Prima’s personal guardsmen, a so-called Shadow Warrior.

But I know the truth.