“SWEET MARY,” CIARA whispered, gazing down at the destroyed castle in the valley far below, a light spring breeze tangling her hair. “Royce, this is your home, isn’t it? This is Ferrano.”
She did not know what made her guess, whether the vast size of the ruined stronghold or the fact that Royce’s mood had grown increasingly somber with each passing hour as they had traveled south.
When they had left Gavena last night, he had said only that he intended to take her somewhere safe. After she had tended his wounded arm, they had used the last of their coin to purchase the best horse they could find—a finely boned, dappled gray mare, smaller than Anteros but swift and used to the mountain trails. She had carried them both all day without flagging.
Now they had halted at the top of a rise, Ciara still perched in the saddle, Royce dismounted beside her, holding the reins. They watched as the setting sun broke through the clouds overhead to bathe the deserted fortress below in fiery shades of red and gold.
“Aye,” Royce replied at last, his voice strained. “This is—was my home.”
He tugged on the reins and led the horse forward, down the gentle slope that flowed into a wide, shallow vale.
The castle dominated the broad expanse of land between two peaks, blocking what would have otherwise been an easy passage into Châlons for any force coming from the east. Ciara could make out an enormous keep surrounded by mural towers, in the center of a labyrinth of walls and gates, fortified bridges and outbuildings, all of it protected by a curtain wall and moat. The size and majesty of this place must have once rivaled the royal palace itself.
As they drew closer, she could name some of the structures—garrison quarters, stables, a chapel, a mill, falcons’ mews—most blackened by fire, many reduced to rubble.
She gathered her rough homespun cloak around her, despite the fact that the weather had turned this morn. The air felt warm, heavy with the promise of rain, of spring and the new life it would bring to the mountains, but this place had known no season but winter for some time.
Her throat dry, she glanced down at Royce, remembering what he had told her about the surprise attack by Daemon’s forces here, at the start of the war seven years ago. About how his family had died that day, murdered without mercy.
She could not see his expression, but his back was rigid, his fist clenched tight around the reins as he led the mare into the valley. He remained silent until they reached the edge of the stone causeway that spanned the moat.
He stopped at the foot of the drawbridge, gazing up at the towers that flanked the gatehouse. She could hear him breathing harshly, unevenly, as if every gulp of fresh air, every beat of his heart pained him.
She dismounted, sliding from the mare’s back to stand beside him, reaching out to touch him. “Royce.”
“We used to run footraces across this bridge,” he said quietly. “Back and forth until we were breathless. And every spring, my sisters would sit in the sun, there at the top of that tower, and weave circlets of violets for their hair. And for our mother’s hair.”
Ciara’s eyes burned with tears. She slid her fingers down his back, took his left hand in hers, and let him keep talking, reliving the memories of a sweeter, more innocent time.
“They even tried to put the flowers on the hounds once.” The shadow of a smile tugged at his mouth. “Said that everyone at Ferrano should be pretty because it was spring.”
She entwined her fingers through his, closing her eyes, feeling a tear fall.
“One summer, my younger brother and I were arguing and he pushed me off the bridge into the moat. I had to swim to shore, covered with muck. I swore I would never forgive him....”
She glanced up at Royce as his fingers tightened around hers, and wished she could find words to comfort him. Instead she rested her forehead on his shoulder, telling him without words that he was not alone. Not anymore.
He inhaled, then let the air out slowly, his breath soft against her cheek. “This is the first time I have been back, the first time.... since...” His voice became a hoarse whisper. “After the war started, I could not get through the enemy lines, even to...”
She felt him tremble, did not know whether it was from the grief that wracked him or from weakness caused by his wound. The crossbow bolt had been buried deep in his arm—so deep that he had instructed her to push it through the rest of the way in order to get it out. He had endured the horrifying ordeal stoically and had refused to stop and rest even once today, though he had lost a great deal of blood.
Worried, she lifted her hand to his cheek and found his skin too warm, his eyes too bright. “Royce, you need to rest,” she murmured gently. “You need sleep.”
He nodded. “We should be safe from the rebels here,” he said hollowly. “In truth, we are in Thuringia now. Daemon claimed all the lands here in the southern range, though he never spared the coin to repair the castles he had destroyed.” He glanced up at the deserted remnants of the once grand fortress. “So it has been left as it was seven years ago.”
Tugging on the horse’s reins, he started forward, his gaze dropping to the lowered drawbridge at their feet. “Daemon’s forces overran them so quickly, they never even had time to raise the drawbridge.”
Ciara kept her fingers wrapped tightly through his as they crossed the causeway, side by side. The mare’s hooves clattered on wood, then on stone as they passed beneath the gatehouse.
On the other side of the moat, they moved through a second gatehouse, this one part of the curtain wall, and into the castle’s outer bailey. Royce left her for a moment to enter one of the guard towers.
She heard what sounded like the creaking of a lever and pulleys and metal chains—and miraculously, the drawbridge rose, at the same time that an iron-reinforced portcullis slid downward in each of the two gatehouses, blocking anyone from following them over the bridge.
“A device of my father’s invention,” Royce explained when he rejoined her a moment later. “He was a brilliant military tactician.”
Ciara looked up at him, not knowing if the dampness on her cheeks came from her tears or from the cold rain that had started to spatter down from the evening sky. “I am sure he was the best of men and the finest of knights.” Like his son.
Royce did not reply, his attention claimed by a small grove of trees on the opposite side of the bailey.
Ciara followed his gaze, wondering how even a single tree could have survived untouched when the outbuildings on either side had been reduced to ashes. It seemed unaccountably strange to see an oasis of green, of life, here in this devastated place.
“Saints’ breath,” Royce murmured, his eyes narrowing, “where did those come from?” He started toward the grove.
Ciara almost called out to stop him, for she did not want him to stay outside in the rain when he was already unwell. But she knew that trying to stop Royce once he set his mind to something would be futile.
Leaving the mare at the gate, she hurried to follow him. When they reached the little orchard, she realized it was not an orchard at all, but a half-circle of evergreens, planted in a protected corner near the keep, in what had once been the castle’s garden.
Six evergreens... encircling six flat, white headstones of the finest marble embedded in the earth. Someone had created a peaceful sanctuary, a tranquil resting place here amid the ivy and other greenery that had started to grow back. Violets dotted the ground beneath the trees, bright spots of purple pushing through the melting snow. And between the pines stood a statue of the Savior, hand raised as if in blessing over the markers.
Royce sank to his knees in the center of the stones. “My brothers...” he whispered brokenly, looking at the names chiseled into the pale squares of marble. “My sisters... my parents. But how... who...”
Ciara came to stand behind him, resting one hand gently on his shoulder. “This must have been done by someone who loved your family very much.”
“But who?” he repeated in bewilderment. “It tore me apart that I w
as never able to return and give my family a proper burial. All those loyal to us were from Châlons—and no one from Châlons could have gotten through the enemy lines.”
“Mayhap you had an unknown friend in Thuringia.”
“What friend could I have in Thuringia? What Thuringian could care enough to do this and afford such fine marble...” Royce lifted his gaze to the statue. “Mathias,” he said in a stunned whisper. “It must have been Prince Mathias.”
“Daemon’s brother?”
He nodded slowly. “We came to know one another during the first peace negotiations, four years ago.” Shaking his head in wonder, he glanced up at her as she knelt beside him. “Mathias is a year older than Daemon, and by right he should have become regent when their father fell ill, but he refused in favor of his younger brother. He is a deeply spiritual man, and he was studying to join the priesthood....”
“He sounds very different from his brother.”
“Aye. Two men could not be more different.” Royce glanced down at the white markers, rain soaking his hair and clothes. “It was Mathias who initiated the first peace negotiations. He wanted an end to all the violence and death. And he must also have seen to this, for me. For a man he had met only briefly. An enemy.” His jaw tightened. “That is how different he is from Daemon. If it were Prince Mathias you had been betrothed to”—he paused, glancing at her, his mouth curving ruefully—”I still would not like it,” he finished softly.
Ciara slid her arms around him. “I am sorry for all you lost, Royce.” She rested her head on his shoulder, unable to hold back her tears any longer. “I am so sorry.”
He buried his face in her hair and drew her close, and they knelt there together, holding one another in the small sanctuary his friend had created, while the rain pattered down around them.
“This helps, Ciara,” he whispered after a long silence. “To know that they were cared for... and having you here. It... helps.”
She looked into his eyes, grateful to this enemy prince she had never met for helping to ease Royce’s pain. He had lived with it for so many years, mayhap he had not believed it could ever truly heal. “I am glad, Royce. I think your family would have wanted you to hold on to your memories and your love for them, but not the sorrow.”
“Aye, little one.” He caressed her cheek with his fingertips. “As Christophe would have wanted for you.”
She nodded, warmed by his concern for her when his own grief was so great.
But as she lifted her hand to his face, worry lanced through her. Despite the cold rain, his skin was hot to the touch. “Royce, you have to go inside. You must rest.”
“Are you watching over me now, milady?”
She brushed the wet hair from his forehead. “Aye.”
His eyes darkening with emotion, he held her a moment longer. Then he rose, taking her hand to help her to her feet. And when he glanced down at the stones once more, the anguish in his expression had lessened.
Threading his fingers through hers, he led her back to the entrance of the keep, and together they went inside.
Ciara braced herself for the worst, but they found no bodies, no trace of human suffering; it seemed that Prince Mathias had seen to it that all who lost their lives here were given a decent Christian burial.
Which left naught but the empty, silent shell of what had once been a magnificent castle, torn asunder. Sections of the roof were open to the sky, which had allowed seven years of rain and snow to clean away some traces of the devastation that had taken place. But blackened piles of wood and stone and other debris remained, jumbled throughout the great hall and the towers she and Royce explored. Only the ground floor was still intact, water pooled here and there on the stone. The wooden beams supporting the floors above had given way.
They found odd bits and pieces that had escaped the Thuringians’ savagery: a tapestry with its lower half burned away, metal plates and goblets, a wooden chandelier hanging from the ceiling of one chamber, its candles untouched, as if they had been replaced on the day of the attack.
That made Ciara’s heart clench more than anything else they saw, for the fresh candles made it agonizingly clear that the people here had had no warning of what was to come. They had been calmly going about their daily lives when death had swept down upon them from the east.
She could not bear what it must be like for Royce, seeing this place he had loved brought to ruin. Only one thing they found eased the stark pain in his eyes: in the great hall, above the hearth, hung a shield and sword on display. They were blackened with soot but undamaged.
He climbed over some debris to reach them, took the sword in his hand, and wiped it clean with the edge of his damp tunic. She could see a bright blade beneath, a gold hilt.
“Royce, it looks just like the sword you carried.”
“It is my father’s sword,” he said hoarsely, climbing down to rejoin her. “A twin of the one that I...” He paused, glancing from her face to the hearth. He went still, staring as if he could see flames that were not there.
“Royce? Are you all right?”
“It was here that I saw you,” he whispered.
She touched his arm, concerned that he was becoming fevered, delirious. “I do not understand.”
“I had a dream of you, the night before last... and it was here. You were here. We were here...”
“Royce,” she said softly, gently. “It was only a dream. We were not here when the fire happened. We are all right.”
He looked down at her and shook his head, started to explain further—then stopped, apparently changing his mind.
“You are right, little one.” His voice was heavy, sad. “It was only a dream. And will never be more.”
She gazed up at him, perplexed. She wiped a black smudge from his stubbled cheek, wishing she could as easily soothe the frown from between his eyes. “You were telling me about the sword,” she coaxed.
“Aye.” He lifted the gleaming steel blade in his left hand. “It is the twin of the one I lost in the avalanche, the sword my father gave me on the day I was knighted. When I left here at eighteen and went to serve your father at court, I took two things: the sword my father had given me, and my mother’s ring.”
Ciara raised her left hand to her heart, touching the gold band she wore. “Then the ring is an heirloom.”
“Aye. What did you think it was?”
“I thought...” She blushed, dropped her gaze. “I worried at first that it might be a token of love from some lady you left behind in France.”
He reached out to tilt her head up, his brown eyes sparkling. “Nay, Ciara, I left no lady behind in France. My father gave that ring to my mother on the day they promised themselves to one another, when she was but fifteen. After they married, she wore it next to her wedding band, until the day I left for court. She gave it to me because she felt certain I would find some lady at the palace who would steal my heart, a lady I would want to make my bride.”
Ciara felt her eyes burn as their gazes held, especially when he finished with three simple words.
“And I did.”
She leaned into him, her fingers curling into his tunic. “But it happened all wrong, Royce. It was never meant to be this way.”
Royce set the sword aside to wrap his arms around her. “But my mother was right. A lady at the palace did steal my heart—”
“The wrong lady.”
“Nay, the right lady. The perfect lady. In all the years I have had that ring, I never met the woman I wanted to give it to. I thought I never would.” He threaded his fingers through her hair, tilted her head up again. “But now I know the inscription is true, Ciara. You and no other.” He finished in a whisper, “I know what it means now.”
She ached to give in to the feelings in his eyes. To forget everything and everyone outside this keep, to part her lips for his kiss, stay here in his arms forever.
Instead she withdrew, trembling from his touch and from the riot of emotions inside her. “Your ar
m needs to be tended. Let us see if we can... find a place where we can... draw some water and change the bandages.”
She could not bear the look in his eyes, but he offered no protest when she pulled away from him. He clearly knew as she did that they dared not steal even a single kiss.
Their feelings for each other had become too strong, the pull of honor and duty too tenuous, like a rope that had frayed to a single thread. One more tug and it would snap.
And they would do something they could not undo.
Something Royce would not live long enough to regret.
“The kitchens,” he suggested, his calm voice at odds with the hot tempest in his gaze. Picking up the sword, he turned to lead the way.
* * *
TWO HOURS LATER, Ciara stood before a blazing fire in the kitchen’s main hearth, trying not to scald herself as she used a hook to pluck a small iron cauldron from the flames. She wrinkled her nose as she peered down into the pot, not sure whether the broth was fit to eat yet. It was her first attempt at cooking.
She glanced at Royce, who lay dozing a few paces away on a makeshift bed he had created from tablecloths. He had not been hungry at all, but she thought it would do him good to eat a hot meal. Determined, she hooked the little cauldron again and set it back in place to continue bubbling.
The kitchen had withstood the ravages of the Thuringian attack better than any other chamber in the keep, since it had been built with doubly thick stone floors and walls, designed to prevent the huge hearths and brick ovens from setting the adjoining rooms ablaze. The main hearth, the one she stood in front of, was so large she would be able to step into it without even ducking her head.
She and Royce had also discovered that the buttery, the large, cool underground storage chamber dug beneath the kitchens, had been spared the worst of the fire’s damage. The food in it was no longer fit to eat, but a few useful casks and bags had offered up utensils, wine, and several clean cloths.
After re-bandaging Royce’s wound and leaving him to sleep, Ciara had gone outside to see to their horse. One of the structures in the bailey had just enough of a roof left to protect the mare from the rain, and she did not seem to mind being covered with tablecloths rather than a blanket when Ciara removed her saddle.
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