The Conqueror

by Kris Kennedy

  Feign, she cautioned herself. Pretend. Do not truly do it. Do not succumb to all those things succumbed to before: his passion and decency and the way he made her feel like there was hope.

  Was this not the weight of her penance, finally bearing down?

  Had she thought it would be easy?

  “I will not have our men die needlessly,” she said to Fulk. “And I see no wisdom in angering Sauvage any more than….” Her voice trailed off. More than what? How couldhe hate her more than he already must? “Call them back. Open the gates. Surrender the castle.”

  Fulk nodded grimly. “Aye, my lady.” He strode off, shouting for his commanders.

  Gwyn watched him go, her heart tumbling and fluttering, her blood moving fast and cold through her body. Inside, her mind was screaming: He’s supposed to be dead!

  And her heart was chanting: He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive.

  Chapter Three

  Griffyn rode under the gate with his sword drawn but hanging by his side. His gaze travelled swiftly over the crowded bailey. Surely Godwin the marshal, or Hamish the blacksmythe might have survived the years.

  Then he snorted, dismissing the glimmer of childlike excitement. Only the strong survived, and eventually they died too. How many times must he be taught that affection was perilous and pointless?

  He peered up at the dark, turreted battlements of the Nest, set against a backdrop of brilliant blue skies. It almost hurt his eyes to keep them open. Home. He was home again.

  It was utterly quiet. Hushed villagers and householders thronged the edges, making a colorful, if tattered, pathway. Most bowed their heads as he passed, some bent their knees. He heard the whispers.

  “Sauvage…”

  “…remember his father…”

  “…like a legend, upon our time…”

  “Thanks be to God.”

  Dozens of hands were raised in greeting. Linen caps removed, rough country curtsies offered. In welcome.

  It ought to be a balm.

  Flicking on the reins, he urged Noir up the small incline to the inner bailey. His men rode behind, their cobalt-blue cloaks flung back to reveal steel-ringed mail coats and long swords. A suddenly cool breeze blew through the bailey, carrying the scent of decaying leaves and wet bark and the salty hint of the sea.

  How many times had he ridden home as a boy on the scent of that breeze, satiated after a day of hunting or hawking or simply riding, hungry and dreaming great dreams, before everything had changed?

  And yet this, his moment of triumph, his homecoming, felt utterly hollow. Where was the elation, the joy? After all this time, after all the warring, and the years of coming home, the fierce satisfaction he’d felt even imagining this moment was absent. The only thing that moved him was the thought, “Where is she?”

  They neared the centre of the bailey, hooves clacking over cobbles.

  “My lord earl,” murmured a balding man who appeared near his boot.

  Griffyn checked Noir and looked down. “Who are you?”

  “William of York, my lord. I am the earl’s…I am…I was the seneschal.”

  “William of York,” repeated Griffyn. He felt so strange. His heart was beating, but far away. His words sounded warped, as if they were being turned in the air like cream through a butter churn. Of the Five Strands, she had called him back at the inn, and he had laughed.

  “Lord Griffyn, my lady Guinevere wishes to bid you and your men welcome to the Nest.”

  His eyes flicked down again. “Where?”

  “My lord—”

  “Where is your lady?”

  “My lord—” the steward sputtered.

  “Where is Guinevere?”

  A musical voice called out, “I’m here.”

  His head snapped up and everything that had been grey and distorted became clear as an untouched lake. The world took on almost painful clarity. He scanned the vanquished people before him, then his gaze locked on her. His heart started beating again, strong and loud.

  “I bid you and your men welcome to my home.”

  He swung off Noir, threw the reins to his squire Edmund, and started over. Every step felt like it stretched furlongs. Her hair was as black as he recalled, bounding in riotous ringlets around her face. It was the first thing he noticed. That and the fact that her voice still rang like a bird song over a frozen lake, and it made him think of faerie dust.

  He stopped in front of her, feeling his breath strong and hot.

  “My lord. Welcome.”

  Something hovered at his shoulder. He ignored it. The bailey was utterly silent. Even the breeze went still, and nothing moved except a dog, cracking a bone. Griffyn heard the snaps like ice breaking on a lake. He flicked his gaze over. The dog looked up and whined, then got to his feet and slunk away. Everyone held their breath, waiting for his vengeance to spill its fury.

  “Welcome, is it?” he repeated quietly. “Your army was a welcome?”

  “I did not know ’twas you,” she said softly enough, but her green eyes stayed on him with a fierceness that could burn holes through linen. He suddenly noticed how his cloak was bright against her frayed and dull fabrics. The Sauvage brooch alone gleamed more brightly than anything she wore, in large part, he realised, because she wore no jewels at all.

  A breeze lifted a few stray stands of long, black hair to flutter in the air between their bodies. For a twelvemonth her face had haunted his dreams, and now here she was, in the flesh.

  “You know now,” he said coldly.

  “I know more important things than even that, my lord.” Her bitter words were bitten off with great precision. “I know these wars must end. I know my men have barely eaten in a fortnight, while yours have lived off the fields and barns of dozens of poor villagers along the way to this killing field. I know my army is small and yours huge. I know your horse probably ate better than my kitchen staff this past week—”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know that we may lose—”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “—and lose and lose again, and you will still never have won.”

  “You don’t know anything,” he said again, his tone cold and level. “You don’t know what horrors my army has prevented—”

  “How heroic.”

  “—and you surely do not know what my horse is fed, Guinevere.”

  They both paused. “Oats.”

  One side of his mouth lifted humourlessly. “You think me a simple matter.”

  “I think you awful. And—”

  He threw down his gauntlet and splayed his fingers tightly around her chin. “And what?”

  “Dead,” she whispered, her voice trembling, which made him feel savage and satisfied. “I—I thought you were dead.”

  “You did what you could to ensure it, did you not?”

  She hitched on a breath. “And how many deaths have you ensured, with your sword and your count who simply must be made a king?”

  His fingers tightened, pressing into the soft flesh of her chin. “Your family was destined to be my bane,” he said in a voice so low it barely carried through the air. “I intend to return the favour. Awful? You think me awful? You’ve no idea.”

  “Not here. Not now,” interrupted a voice at his back. Alex.

  Griffyn snapped back into the present. Every eye in the bailey was on him, their new lord, losing his temper and his mind over this witch of a woman.

  He flung his hand down and took a deep, shaky breath, knowing how close he’d come. He could have killed her. If she’d said another word, if Alex had not stepped forward, he might have kept closing his hand tighter and tighter around her slender, poisonous throat.

  He spun away.

  “Take her to the solar,” he snarled, and obviously someone did, because a few moments later, his heart still thudding savagely in his chest, his mind still fuzzed with fury, he was meeting with his seneschal and top officials, sending them inside to meet with the de l’Ami
administrative staff, and commanding his soldiers to inspect the garrison, make the men swear allegiance or be turned out.

  They scurried to do his bidding, and chaos erupted around him. Griffyn grabbed Noir’s reins and stalked to the stables himself, trying to forget, to focus on the victory. Forget about his father. Forget the rage. The lost years. The woman he thought he could love. Forget, forget, forget.

  Alex was overseeing the round-up and interrogation of the de l’Ami soldiers. They were staunch in their loyalty to Guinevere, as expected, but more was revealed in what was not said.

  Stout men, but their pointed features bespoke hunger only just kept at bay. Men who were steadfast, but weary of their lands being ravaged by an endless war. Soldiers accustomed to battle and the strange vagarities of it, including honourable surrender when in the alternative lay waste and ruin.

  To a man they pledged themselves to Griffyn Sauvage as lord of Everoot, and most did so willingly.

  “This one,” gestured Hervé Fairess, the Angevin. “He’s trouble. And that one,” he grumbled, pointing.

  Alex shifted his gaze to a young knight with close-cropped blond hair, who stood scowling at the gryphon-clad knights. His strength was apparent in the press of muscle against his tunic, but he did not appear foolish. He appeared loyal, if his regular glances towards the third-floor solar where Lady Guinevere was being held proved anything. Loyal, not stupid. And it would be stupid to make trouble now.

  “We’d best let Pagan know,” Hervé gruffed.

  “Pagan will know without us telling him anything,” Alex said mildly, but inside, a deep disquiet was starting to unfold.

  He had watched the collapse of Griffyn’s legendary self-control a few moments ago in shock. Griffyn had not been trained in violence and ruthlessness to no effect, but he never revealed the depths of his fury. A father who had let greed ruin him, a legacy stolen, killing, killing for lost honour and for fallen kings, Griffyn’s life had been fated from before his conception. But he had never let his emotions boil over. Except for that one night a year back.

  And just a moment ago.

  Griffyn might be coming dangerously close to the edge of a rage that had been contained for eighteen years, honed with a staggering discipline. All the grueling self-denial, all the months and years of blood and purpose, had been in the service of this single moment: the Earl of Everoot was home again.

  And something was terribly wrong.

  Chapter Four

  Gwyn stood in the third-storey solar, staring at the knight who’d escorted her as he prepared to leave the room. He pointed to a tray of food and pitcher of wine.

  “For your comfort, my lady.”

  She sourly suggested that if it were truly for her comfort, perhaps she could be better placed in her own chambers.

  He met this with an impassive look. “You’d rather not be there just now, my lady. Lord Griffyn is…converting them.”

  Ah yes, she thought as he bowed out of the room, converting them…or taking possession. Whichever way ’twas phrased, it was the same. He was taking over, stripping the keep of any sign of the de l’Ami presence. Except her. She would be brought out when it was all complete, the final resistance brought low.

  “They are all alike,” she snapped aloud, and almost screamed when Duncan, her young page, lifted his face up over the side of her bed.

  “Duncan!” she whispered furiously. “What are you doing here?”

  “Milady,” he whispered back, creeping out with the stealth required if they were stalking deer. “I needed to see you.”

  She hurried to his side and knelt, running her fingers over the back of his head, down his back, up his thin arms, feeling for injuries. “Monsters. Why would they do harm to a little boy, after I’ve opened the gates? I shall expect nothing but brutality forevermore from men—”

  “Milady!” he said plaintively, wiggling free. “I’m not injured. I’ve come to help.”

  She sat back on her heels. “Help? Help, Duncan?” She felt like crying. “How on earth could you help?”

  His pinched little face was less pinched than it had been three months ago, when he’d arrived at the gates of Everoot, a refugee from the wars, he and his little sister, running for their lives. And here he was now, earnestly looking at her, thinking he—he, a ten-year-old boy—could help, while the world fell apart around her.

  “I can watch out for whoever you’ve got in the cellars, milady.”

  Gwyn’s mouth slowly fell open. “What did you say?”

  He looked embarrassed. “I seen you go down there, milady, three times a day or more. Once, I saw ye with a tray o’ food, and after that, I followed ye.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought ye might need some help one day, seein’ as how no one else seemed to know what was going on. And ye always look so sad when ye come back up again. I thought ye oughtn’t be so very alone in it.”

  That brought tears right to the edge of her eyes. She leaned forward and hugged him tight, then sat back and said in a soft, but bright voice, “Well, now, Duncan, you may have a very good idea there. Can you be quiet?”

  “As a mouse.”

  “And follow direction?”

  He dragged his wrist under his nose, wiping it. “Better’n a monk.”

  She gently propelled his arm back down. “You may be right.” She handed him a strip of linen. He stared at it. She pointed to his nose. He rolled his eyes and wiped. “And being alone, Duncan? You could not come up and down from there. You’d have to stay there until—” She broke off. “Until I say so. It may be weeks. Months.”

  “Lady Gwyn, I’ll miss every fair that ever was, if ye need me to.”

  She put her hand on his shoulder and nodded gravely. “So be it, Duncan. To the cellars. Here is the key.” She yanked the pouch off her skirts and handed over the little golden key. “You’ll know which chamber he is in, for ’tis it has a terrifying padlock on it. I’ll be down as soon as I can, to check that all is well and retrieve the key.

  “Now,” she said, rising and looking at the door. “Let us give the guard a few minutes to get fully away, and you can go straight to the cellars.”

  “Aye, milady.” He paused. “Did you see him, milady?”

  “Did I see whom?” She began pacing the room. She pulled her long braid over her shoulder and began trying to reweave it, something to occupy her time. Her fingers got tangled in the knots. It was hopeless. If not enclosed in its tight silken case, her hair inevitably came unbound like a spring uncoiling. And this morning there’d been no time for silk wraps.

  “Him.”

  Gwyn let the tangled curls, grimed and weighted with dirt and smoke, drop to her shoulders. She looked at Duncan bleakly. “Who?”

  “Sau-vage!” Duncan said, elongating the ’vage’ into one long, lazy syllable.

  “Pagan?” She plopped down on the bed. Oh St. Jude, even the sound of his name brought back a bluster of heated churning. She stared at Duncan wretchedly. “Aye. I’ve seen him.”

  “So did I,” Duncan whispered back. “He’s enormous.”

  “Aye,” she agreed, looking away.

  “As big as a mountain.” Duncan paused. “Are we to be safe?”

  Gwyn exhaled slowly. Safe? That all depended on what you meant by safe. Safe from death, aye. She recalled too clearly how she’d found a gentle pagan saviour on a deserted highway, a warrior who pulled back the hair from her eyes as she vomited, a man who made her laugh when she’d rather have cried and who laid a healing poultice on her skin when she was unconscious in his bed.

  Aye, Duncan and all the children would be safe. But Guinevere? Ah well, that was another matter entirely.

  No, she would never be safe from the man who had set her body on fire and stilled the maddening Ache by drumming another one even deeper in her heart, a man who now stood between her and raising the battered body of the king’s son to the crown of England.

  She smiled into Duncan’s earnest, worried face. “Everyt
hing will be fine, Duncan. Trust me.”

  “I do!” he burst out happily.

  A few moments later, she opened the door, looked both ways, then gestured to him. Down the stairs he hurried, and was gone.

  Gwyn walked to the window and peered down to the bailey. She could see no violence. No loyal servants were being dragged to the gates or the cellars. No de l’Ami knights were being lined up in the field or marched across the draw. In fact, she realised, craning her neck, there was no line of soldiers marching out of the castle at all, a trail that would mark those who were unwilling to swear allegiance to the new lord.

  How odd.

  “Guinevere.”

  She spun. There he stood, his tall figure outlined in the doorway. Gwyn was alone with him and the sound of her wildly thundering heart.

  Chapter Five

  Despite anger, fear, fury and hate, she couldn’t deny the ripple that danced through her body when she saw his leather-clad body on the landing. Sunlight filtering through the slitted windows glinted off his dark hair and the stubble of his chin. The shadows angled his face into long, lean lines of raw sensuality.

  Please God, she prayed, not again.

  He pushed the door closed behind him. “You’ve run my castle well,” he said in his deep, masculine rumble. Taunting her.

  She composed her face into the most noxious glare she knew. “Your castle?”

  “’Tis most certainly not yours anymore.”

  She dug her nails into her palms, fisted by her thighs. “You ensured that.”

  “Aye. Much as you ensured forty lashes on my back and weeks of a rat-infested prison I wouldn’t wish on my father.”

  His father?

  Gwyn’s skirts whispered over the rushes as she walked to the edge of the room. She ran her hand across the window ledge.

  “Prison?” she asked with airy nonchalance, her back to him. She even managed an unconcerned sniff. “You were captured, then, were you? They never said directly, but I am glad to hear the king’s men were successful.”

  “They weren’t.” Pagan’s grim voice blew across the room. “I have his castle. And his vassal.”