by Nicole Locke
Christmas past, Edward had ordered him to Swaffham to locate the traitor who had sent private messages to the Scots. A specific traitor who possessed a half-thistle seal.
The traitor was Hugh of Shoebury, a childhood friend, and one whom he’d trained with at Edward’s court. It was revealed that Hugh had a viable reason to convey certain information to the Scots...because Hugh was protecting Robert of Dent, Black Robert.
Robert, who was reported dead, was in fact hiding from the King. He did it so he could have his life with his Scottish wife, Gaira, and their adopted children. The private information was sent to Robert and his wife, Gaira of Clan Colquhoun, to specifically protect them.
And Robert... Robert was also his friend who needed any information that could be passed to him. For the last several months, he and the Colquhoun Clan had been searching frantically for the daughter who was stolen from them.
Of course, he’d immediately given his loyalty to his friends.
Eldric realised then that loyalty had many sides. Thus, he was left with only one choice. He’d lied to King Edward to protect them. Robert had faked his own death and, so, Hugh with the woman he loved faked theirs. Leaving him, a spy, to report that the half-thistle-seal traitor was dead.
Thus, three people Edward had concerns over no longer existed. It would risk too much to contact them again. Ah...but loyalty. Eldric knew he needed to make right with the world again. To make clear the lines of good and evil, right and wrong. Two lies to the King meant he’d doubly bound himself to the Sovereign.
So he vowed to bring the Archer to Edward and accepted the royal hunting horn, the coin, the royal papers to flaunt and terrorise with when needed. Because he knew last Christmas that if there was a price to pay, he’d make the Archer pay it. He’d do it not only for vengeance for his friends who were dead, but also to protect those beings who were alive and wished to remain hidden.
Edward must never know he was disloyal or the lies would unwind like pegs in a well-worn instrument. Hugh, Robert and their families must stay safe.
Except the Archer was a woman. Now, it wasn’t a simple matter of transporting an enemy to the Tower of London to be done with disloyalty and treason. Because now there were more falsehoods. He needed to make a decision: to hide or reveal them?
He could see now he should have been cautious last winter. Walking the docks, allowing the putrid air and the chaos to thump against him, he had examined the meeting with the King in a different light. He’d been so concerned and focused on his own words and deeds in that room, he hadn’t properly analysed the ruler’s.
The King had informed him he knew that Eldric had been pursuing the Archer because of his friends’ deaths. The King had been spying on his spy. It was a possibility the King knew the Archer was a woman. It was very likely he also knew what she was about, her deeds...and purpose.
The Archer being a woman changed everything.
Not because she was a female and wasn’t capable of murder. Knowing his own mother, he knew the strength of women. He didn’t argue the Archer’s skills either...he’d seen that first-hand.
No, it was the methodical way the Archer did such deeds that called them into question. So he made another vow, this one to himself. To keep her here until she confessed. To reflect on the ramifications and different angles of the pieces. To be more cautious. Something he should have done when he was summoned to King Edward’s private chambers when there wasn’t anyone else in attendance.
He couldn’t execute her without knowing who she was and why she did what she did. Would he have waited if she was a man? Would he have cared for reasons then? No. If the Archer had been a man, he wouldn’t have questioned anything. He’d have merely tied and slammed his enemy in the back of a cart to roll around for days until they reached London. Instead, he did wonder why and how a female was his enemy. Why it was different, he couldn’t say.
No. He did know. She was a surprise. An unknown. His world had always been simple. The fact she was not was unacceptable. Unwanted.
And whatever actions he needed to take to gain those answers would be acceptable. His monstrous strength did not pertain to this situation. If harsh words and harsh deeds were needed until she broke, he would do them. To keep his vows to his friends both here and gone, he’d have to break a lifetime of habit. With a determined heart, prepared to confront her, he entered the room...only to find her asleep.
His first thought was to wake her by pressing a blade against her heart so that each steady breath she took would prick until she awoke to the danger. Instead, he grabbed the bowl with filthy water and prepared to fling it on her.
She was...restless. Her stunning eyes closed, he could see more clearly the dark circles under them, hear her uneven breaths. Dreaming, or a nightmare?
Clenching the bowl in both his hands, he warred with himself as he had done all day while she was bound in this room. While he’d walked, returned to the inn, eaten, watched the day turning into twilight, he’d wondered how she fared alone in the room.
He had intended to wait even longer, but that plan failed. She’d escaped him too long for him to be sure she was truly trapped.
Now he stood over her, and wondered about her dreams? He hated this woman; shouldn’t care if she was awake or asleep. Shouldn’t wonder if she merely dreamed or if she was plagued with something darker. He needed these lies over with. The longer they went on, the more involved they became, the more likely they would unravel.
But he couldn’t bring her harm. She looked... She looked exhausted. The kind of bone weariness that only the hunted carried with them.
Beauty, that was still there. There wasn’t another woman like her and the sleep softened her exotic features to something almost unearthly. But he could see the sunken hollows of her cheeks from lack of food. Could recognise the tell-tale signs of exhaustion in her body as her limbs twitched because they were unused to rest, because she had to keep alert to nearby danger.
And she was in danger. He was her captor. She was bound, in an unknown location. The fact she slept when this vulnerable was a testament to her true depletion.
She gave the softest of sounds. A whimper. One that held a fragment of pain and he was brought back to reality. This woman was not music and no matter how great her beauty was, she was no angel. If she was, she was part of the fallen and very deadly. Lethal and ethereal.
He stood over her ruminating, but he could easily be the true enemy with a knife in his hand. He was death to her and she slept. Exhausted beyond her strength.
If she was as poorly rundown as this, how had she fought him? His face was throbbing; each breath he took pricked with the kicks she’d landed against his ribs. She was fierce. He’d returned as many blows to her. The fact they didn’t land wasn’t a saving grace. He didn’t cause her the same harm because he’d held back. She wasn’t as harmed as him because she had fought, blocked and fallen from a tree!
He’d heard and felt the impact when she hit the ground. How much more could she take? Could there be another way to gain his answers? Could he...pretend to befriend her? Or, at least, give her a false sense of safety? She could rest and gain the sleep she so obviously needed. He could feed her until the pallor of her skin disappeared. Maybe kindness could be a way to—
But the mere thought of his friend Thomas’s last breaths choked that idea. Knowing that Robert had a family laid rest to any kindness. He couldn’t do it. It was also clear the longer he stood over her, he wouldn’t be tossing the cold dirty water and interrogating her until she broke.
He’d trained to be a spy, knew the methods needed. Enemies didn’t confess or capitulate when they were strong, they only did so when they were weakened. He needed her sleep deprived, hungry, her position vulnerable. He needed to break her. Her brows drew in and she let out a keening whimper.
He felt his own brows furrow at such a helpless sound. A nightmare, the
n. What did a killer dream of? This woman was a weapon he must find the owner of before throwing her in the fire to be melted, far from anyone’s grasp.
God’s bones! With a frustrating reluctance, he lifted the chair off her bed and slammed it on the ground.
Chapter Four
Cressida thrashed awake. The clench of the ropes around her ankles panicked her, the ropes on her wrist cut deep. Her gaze locked on the man looming over her. Heart thundering, she felt the blood slam through her body, readying her to run, to fight. With instinct to survive battering her, she screamed.
Somewhere wood hit stone and water splashed. All she knew was the punishing grip of the man’s hands on her shoulders.
‘Enough!’ he roared.
Where was she? Not in an abbey, not in a tree. A room she didn’t recognise. A darkness enveloping it that jarred against her attempts to understand. It shouldn’t be dark.
‘Leave me!’ she cried, flinging her body up to break free, but the grip tightened, a weight pressing her deep into the mattress.
To suffocate her! She gasped deep, gathering as much air before it became too late. She fought harder.
The man loomed until his face was a breath from hers. ‘Stop this!’
Cressida blinked. Could that be Eldric?
She was dying, going into her dreams before sleeping for ever. She must be. Eldric wasn’t here, not this close, not touching her.
She wrenched on the cords binding her, welcomed the jagged bite as they drew blood. If she broke her wrist, if she lacerated the skin, the blood and loss of skin would loosen knots. Pulling, pulling!
The grip shook her body before it seized around her wrists, stopping her bid for freedom. ‘Nooo!’ she keened.
‘Wake, Archer! What are you doing?’
The voice...she recognised. Eldric. So close his hair waved down to brush across her cheek. To see the blue of his eyes altered by the darkness of his pupils. There was something there: concern.
Eldric in a room where he’d bound her. But she fought it, still, because it couldn’t be truth. She remembered when he’d stormed from the room. There could never be concern or caring when it came to him. ‘It’s dark. It was morning when you left. Morning.’
He released his grip, but her eyes had adjusted to the dim light; she could see all of him now. ‘It is turning to night.’
‘I slept all day?’
He canted his head and straightened, but did not move away from the bed. She could smell the sea on him and something else. Bread from his hands where he brushed her shoulders. He’d eaten. Time had passed.
‘You slept,’ he repeated.
‘You let me?’
His spine snapped straight, the concern she’d fleetingly witnessed gone. She’d said something wrong. ‘I was gone because as my enemy you were bound securely in this room. All day here to contemplate the uselessness of your lying to me.’
‘But I slept.’ She couldn’t get past that point. When was the last time she’d slept? And never when survival was tantamount.
‘And I woke you. You’ll feel it. The need to relieve yourself, your hunger, thirst? All of it must be beginning.’
She was too confused to feel anything else. Eldric touched her. It was rough, but the purpose of it didn’t feel as though it was to hurt her. He demanded she wake, he stopped her from harming her wrists. ‘Why did you try to wake me?’
He frowned. ‘So you could suffer.’
But she was suffering already when locked in a nightmare. It’d happened to her before when her father trained her too hard. There were moments when the truth of her torture clashed with what had happened to her weeks before, and weeks before that. And on and on until she didn’t know where or who she was. She’d only become a weapon who survived to be wielded again.
Which only made the truth more acute. She needed to be free, find her father, to become his weapon again because without that, without her father, she didn’t know who she was.
Just this little time in the presence of someone else, talking with someone else, was confusing. Like now. This Eldric was different than the one who’d stormed from the room. He’d behaved differently when he shook her awake as if he was desperate to wake her, to make her stop.
However, in the time she’d slept, he’d done things—maybe he had had second thoughts. Maybe he was the Eldric who whistled and laughed. Maybe this was the kind Eldric.
Her eyes swept to her wrist. ‘I’ve suffered. I’m hurting now.’
He glanced to her bindings, which were secure, but oddly hadn’t pained until she wrenched them in her panic.
‘Good,’ he said before his expression became absolutely resolute. ‘The entirety of this is your own doing.’
Not if she wasn’t who he thought she was. Not if she kept her ruse. ‘Where am I?’
‘It matters not where you are,’ he said.
‘I can smell the port, we can’t be far,’ she said.
He arched a brow. ‘And that would be significant because?’
Because her father could be in the port. He could be alone or with another daughter. In the worst case, they would be on a merchant ship already bound for France where it would be near impossible to find him.
When her whole existence in life was in jeopardy, she needed her freedom most. But to say anything would harm her relationship with her father. To reveal anything to Eldric would be fatal for him.
Even though it might irreparably harm her own life, she would tell Eldric nothing. She would, as she had always done, protect the man who hated her.
She jerked her chin and flexed her fingers, which tightened the rope around her wrists.
‘Because I need to be on the port.’
His eyes gleamed. ‘Why?’
To give him a reason he’d believe? ‘To meet my family.’
‘Tell me.’ His eyes never left hers.
Too much. Too close to the truth. There was still a chance to find her father. To repair whatever harm she had done. How had she fallen asleep? To be so vulnerable again! This time, she knew an enemy was there, knew Eldric was far worse to her than some faceless mercenary she could easily fight. Eldric had loyalties, he had vows and vengeance he wanted to exact.
‘None of this makes sense to me. You have to know none of it does.’ She spoke a lie, but it felt like a truth. ‘Let me free.’
‘No,’ he rasped. His chest heaved, his shoulder bunched.
‘Then tell me. Tell me what you intend to do with me.’
He took one more breath and stilled. Something changed in his eyes, as his gaze swept across her body to the tangled linens between her legs, up again to her bound hands. Stayed there and turned...calculating.
It wasn’t something she could readily comprehend, but it felt familiar, none the less. Oh, yes, he’d looked that way at her once before—when he’d held out his hand to dance with her. And, like then, her body tracked faster than her thoughts. His pupils dilating, a flush to his cheeks. On that day, he’d looked so deep into her eyes she thought she’d be discovered. Now, he looked everywhere but and it didn’t matter. Her body felt her reaction to him all the same. Except now, she didn’t have the protection of the mask and layers of clothing. Now, she was bound, exposed. And she felt something in her wanting to blurt out her words, to tell him—
He ripped his eyes away and cursed under his breath. ‘What game is it you think you play?’
Nothing, yet to have him look at her... Just a glimpse of something other than hatred. She’d give anything, yet she had to be wrong. He didn’t look at her with anything but loathing. It was her own longing, her own stupidity for not understanding people as well as she should.
His eyes narrowed. ‘Tell me who you are.’
She swallowed her emotions, the way her body felt. She’d get through this. ‘I told you. I’m a healer.’
&nbs
p; * * *
Eldric was glad for his walk, for his sustenance before he’d returned to confront this enemy. But the nightmare she’d been gripped in... The fact she couldn’t wake from it unsettled him.
What to do with her, bound by his hand, helpless, vulnerable? Yet she still defied him with lies, with some sort of fragility he couldn’t navigate himself around. When she looked at him with those eyes...
He couldn’t shake that she was familiar to him. That he knew her. He couldn’t seem to forget that she was a woman bound on his bed. Unfailingly stunning with something else that lured him closer to her, to desire her, which was a sick madness he couldn’t seem to reason against. It made no sense.
She. Had. Killed. His. Friends.
‘Enough of this! We will get nowhere if you continue with lies. Why do you pretend? I know who you are, little Archer.’
She flinched, just a little, just enough for him to see, and he relished it, but that was all she gave him. ‘Archer? I’m a woman. Archers are men who battle from parapets against Scotland.’
‘So aware of warriors you know their position in battle?’ he said. ‘And have you forgot you were in a tree with a bow and quiver hanging at the ready? It fell to the ground along with you. Spilled at my feet, defeated as surely as you were at that moment. And, like you, it’s trapped in this room.’
Her eyes narrowed, but they stayed on him. He both admired and detested her will. He knew she wanted to survey the room, to determine its position so, when she did free herself, she’d have the weapon at the ready. It was that very reason he’d hid it under her bed.
‘You may think you know me, sir,’ she said, ‘but I can assure you, I do not know you.’
‘You lie so easily. How can I believe you? You have been too difficult to capture not to be aware of me.’ He welcomed the malicious impulse that bolted through him then. ‘Maybe you need a reminder.’
