A man’s voice cried out in agony, and her eyes flew open. For a heartbeat, she saw Raf sprawled bloody on the ground. Then, she looked to the man still standing, and saw his iron leg. There, on the dirt, a wide gash across his abdomen, lay Roderick.
“Do you yield to me, brother?” Raf asked, one foot against his brother’s chest.
Roderick’s skin rippled to fur, then slid back to pale, sweat-dirtied skin once more. He could not change. He could not finish the fight.
Raf put the point of his sword at his brother’s neck, his voice hoarse as he called out again, “Do you yield?”
Weakly, Roderick lifted his arm. And tossed his sword aside.
“It is done,” one of the hooded men behind them said, and the seven rose as a piece. Lord Canis smashed his fist down on the arm of his chair, splintering the wood beneath it. Raf staggered aside from his brother, dropping his sword to the ground. Henry hurried to him, while Sir Clement and Margaret Lackey shoved through the crowd to Roderick’s side.
Aurelia sat, as permanent as if she had grown roots. Had it really been so simple? Had Raf won her? Her legs would not support her if she stood, but somehow she did rise, and with great, wrenching sobs, she ran to him.
“Easy,” Henry warned as she fell against Raf, heedless of the blood and sweat that coated him. His arm lay open, but it was nothing a steady hand and a good needle could not mend. He was whole, and she was his.
He pushed Henry aside, despite the pain on his face, and captured her in the crook of his uninjured arm. “Aurelia…” he murmured against her hair, kissing her wherever his lips could reach. “Aurelia.”
“I’ve got you,” Henry stated firmly. It was not an offer, but a command. He slipped his friend’s arm about his shoulders and helped him limp from the lists, Aurelia at his other side.
A wolf growled. Aurelia turned to see Margaret Lackey, black fur shining like the wolf from her dream. She sank back on her haunches, preparing to lunge.
There was no time to think of her actions, and yet, all the time in the world. Everything narrowed to a moment like the point of a pin. Aurelia heard Roderick’s groans as they moved him, smelled his blood. Saw Margaret Lackey’s eyes, yellow and full of hate, as she ran toward them, her every movement seeming to take an eternity. Aurelia kicked the dagger free from her thigh, stooping to catch it. She did not know how she unsheathed it so quickly, or what she had planned to do with it, but Margaret landed atop her, sprawling both Aurelia and Raf to the dirt as Henry unsheathed his sword. He would not need it. With a scream that loosed the anguish and fear that had been building inside Aurelia for days, she thrust the dagger up, straight into the wolf’s throat.
Her dream came back to her of a sudden, the terror thundering through her veins, along with sweet triumph as the wolf’s jaws ceased their fearful snapping.
The creature covered her, smothered her in its stinking matted hair and the scent of death.
But it was not her death she had dreamed of. It was a death she meted out by her own hand.
“Aurelia!” Raf shouted, rolling the wolf off her. He went pale at the sight of the blood that splashed her clothes and face.
“I am fine,” she told him, laughing. “I am fine.”
Then she felt the pain, burning across her cheek like a brand.
Hours later, when Raf’s arm had been cleaned and closed by the same surgeon who stitched Aurelia’s cheek, they sat before the fire in the tower hearth, wrapped together in a thick woolen blanket. Margaret Lackey’s bite had laid open Aurelia’s skin from just below her eye to the tip of her nose, and the crescent flap had taken twelve stitches to close under the surgeon’s hand. She had not allowed herself to show the pain of it. The wolves in the great hall had stepped aside for her when she’d emerged. Perhaps she did not seem so inconsequential, now that she had slain one of their number.
Raf’s arm had been more difficult. The surgeon had taken the needle and hot iron to the inside of the wound, and Raf had made a terrible sound, his teeth clenched around the leather she had held for him to bite down on. The smoke from his burning flesh and the splashing of gore as the physician did his grim work had frightened Aurelia almost more than the fighting, but Henry had stood at his friend’s side, murmuring encouragement to the both of them.
Now, exhausted, they leaned against each other, too tired to do aught but hold each other. Words would have been insufficient, if they had spoken them.
“Raf?”
Henry had come to the doorway, his expression oddly reverent compared to the easy humor he’d used with his friend at the inn. Raf looked up, and Aurelia nodded to him, silently bidding him enter.
“The surgeon has been with Roderick. He may live.” Henry looked uncertainly to his friend, as if gauging his reaction.
Raf let go a long exhale. “Well, thank God for that.”
It was not the time to remind him that his brother had been eager to cut him down. Raf was too honorable a man to wish his brother dead. Perhaps that was a blessing, for Aurelia greatly esteemed his honor.
“Your father wishes to know if you will marry here, or on the road to Fallow manor.” A weak smile crossed the man’s face. “I told him it was likely you would leave at first light.”
“My thanks to you,” Aurelia said, not content to let him flounder for footing in the conversation. “Without your help, I would have run mad up here.”
“Without my knife, you would have died out there.” It was exactly the remark needed to bring laughter to Raf’s lips, and Henry seemed easier now. “I could come with you.”
“You swore fealty to my father. Stay here.” The words came out sharper than she believed Raf had intended, and he softened them with, “You are the only friend I have. I would not see you cross a man like him.”
“If ever you should need me…” Henry did not finish. “I will leave you in peace.”
After he’d gone, Aurelia lifted her face to Raf’s. “I thank you, as well.”
“You needn’t. Now hush.”
And they watched the flames together, until neither could keep their eyes open, and sleep forced them to their bed.
Epilogue
The manor was called Fallow in jest. The rocky fields surrounding it rarely did anything other than rest, as coaxing a harvest out of it was near to impossible.
The crumbling walls of the stone house were the greatest sight Raf had ever seen.
“There,” he pointed down the snow-covered slope. Behind him, Aurelia leaned past his shoulder to see.
“And that is ours?” her sense of wonder matched his. It seemed impossible, to both of them, to be there, looking down at their future home together.
In the night, he’d woken constantly, gripped by fear that it had been a dream, that the fight still lay ahead of him. He’d found her tucked against his side, her face swollen and bruised from Margaret’s jaws. It was the most horribly pleasing sight he could hope to behold.
They picked their way down the hill slowly. Behind them, another horse, laden down with goods, followed on a tether. A serving maid on a donkey, led by Fallow’s newly appointed man at arms, came behind, all of them following an ancient rock wall along the overgrown road.
When they reached the bottom, Aurelia did not wait for the servants to unpack. She hopped down, then offered her hand to Raf, whose arm rested in a sling inside his doublet. He hated relying upon her for help, but as she’d told him when she’d helped him dress that morning, it was not a permanent affliction like his leg, and there was no shame in it.
She ran ahead of him, face aglow from the cold and the joy of the day. Only hours before, in the last village, they’d roused a priest from his bed and paid him handsomely to marry them. There was no feast, and no one to throw seeds and wish them well, but she had blushed and beamed and his injured arm had ached to lift her up and carry her from the small chapel. Even with the ghastly wound on her cheek, she had been the most beautiful bride he’d ever seen.
“Oh, look!” She traced her fingers ove
r the iron scrollwork around the door, seemingly blind to the paint that peeled away under her fingers. She pushed the door open, revealing the house’s narrow hall. A flock of birds flapped up from the musty rushes, through the hole in the thatched roof.
From the way Aurelia twirled, arms wide, in the beams of sunlight filtering through the hole, he could have sworn the place was a palace.
For the moment, he put aside the mental tally he’d begun running up, from the staggering expense of the roof to the monumental task of cleaning the floors. “You like it, then?”
She came to his side, blushing like the maiden she’d been when he’d first seen her in her father’s hall. “I like that it is ours, and that you are my husband, in law as much as body.”
“It will be a lot of work, and not the life you were accustomed to at Northwood. We will have few luxuries,” he warned her.
She rose on her toes to reach his mouth, and yet he still had to lean down to kiss her. Behind them, their new servants entered and noisily dropped saddle bags before going to unload the rest. Aurelia and Raf parted, and she said to him softly, “You are all I need.”
She turned away from him, still entranced with her new home. “Oh, there are stairs! Raf, there’s an upstairs!”
“Be careful,” he warned her as she climbed the wooden staircase. “Watch for holes.”
You are all I need. Her words settled happily in his chest. With a thunk and scrape of iron heralding him, he went up after his wife.
About the Author
The alter-ego of USA Today Bestselling Author Jennifer Armintrout, Abigail Barnette was born during a conversation with author Bronwyn Green, who encouraged Jennifer to develop an elaborate fantasy persona—complete with nom de plume—under which to pen erotic romance. Abigail enjoys long naps in fairy-filled glades, running through corridors in tragically romantic haunted castles, and drinking goblet after goblet of spiced wine.
Abigail loves to talk to her readers and can be found at abigailbarnette.com.
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