His face did not soften. "You did not believe in me. I saw the hatred in your eyes. You thought I was guilty, just as your brothers did." He looked away from her as though the matter were settled and looked at Liana. "May I have the return of my horse? I would leave now."
Liana's eyes widened. "You cannot think to ride a horse. You are injured, and you have no men to go with you to protect you."
"I would leave this place now," he said, gasping against the effort.
After that no one stood in his way. No one tried to persuade him to remain in the Peregrine castle. Even Zared stood to one side as he walked out of the room and out of her life. She watched him go, and she wanted to go after him, but her pride wouldn't allow her to go. If he didn't wa
nt her, then she didn't want him.
"Go after him," Liana urged Zared.
But Zared shook her head and walked up the stairs to the hallway of bedrooms. She kept her shoulders back and her eyes straight ahead, trying to will herself not to think. If she allowed herself to think, she knew that she would remember how many kind things that Tearle had done for her. From the first he had been good to her. He had put his body between her and the trampling horse at the tournament, and she had no doubt that he had saved the life of Rogan's son.
Yet she had always doubted him. Liana had told her to go with her instincts, but Zared had not. She had allowed generations of hatred to influence her, and she had based her opinions of the man not on what she saw, but on what she thought to be true. Just as she wasn't as filled with hatred as her brothers were, just as she was different from them, she was sure that Tearle was different from his brother.
As she moved down the hall she became aware that something was different. She stopped walking and rubbed her arms as though from cold. Then, slowly, she turned and looked behind her. The door to the haunted room was open.
For a moment she stood where she was. She could see sunlight streaming out of the doorway and into the hall, yet she knew that it was gray and cloudy outside. The haunted room was always kept locked, and she had never been in it in her life. Before Rogan had married the second floor over the solar had not been used because everyone was afraid of the haunted room. It was said that when the lady inside was needed the door would be unlocked.
Zared looked about her and knew that she was the only one in the hall. If the door was open, then it must be open for her.
She took a step toward the open door, and her feet felt as though they were made of stone. She could barely lift them, but she shuffled along, inching toward the door.
As she rounded the corner she held her breath, not having any idea what she would see inside the room. Monsters, perhaps? Ghouls?
She was shaking as she entered the room, and the blood had drained from her face. For a moment her terror reached a peak, and she was ready to scream or run or both, but after a moment she let out her breath. There was nothing in the room but chairs with pretty cushions on them, a tapestry frame, and carpets on the wall. For all that the room had been kept locked for years, it was clean and fresh. And there was no one in it.
Zared began to breathe easily, and she walked to the frame and looked at the half-finished tapestry. She touched the design of the lady and the unicorn on the tapestry, and as she did so a piece of paper came floating down from the ceiling.
Zared's hand froze. She stood rooted where she was, her breath held, her body beginning to tremble as she looked at the paper on the floor. She was terrified to turn around, afraid of what she would see. Would a ghost be standing behind her?
It was some minutes before she could move. There was no sound in the room, nor did she hear anything from outside the room, even though the door stood wide open.
All at once, and with all the courage she could muster, she turned on her heel and looked behind her.
Nothing. No one. There was no one in the clean room that should have been dirty. There was only sunlight in a room that should have been as dull as the day outside was.
It took Zared a few moments before she could still her shaking body enough to look back at the piece of paper on the floor. Her legs felt a little weak from her fear, but she managed to make them work long enough to get to the paper and pick it up.
She hadn't had enough lessons from Tearle to be able to read the entire message, but she didn't need to know how to read to know what the paper said. It was the correct number of words, and it was shaped the same way as the writing above the fireplace in Rogan's brooding room. She knew the words by heart, as all the Peregrines did.
When the red and white make black
When the black and gold become one
When the one and the red unite
Then shall you know
It was a riddle that had been handed down in their family for centuries, long before the feud with the Howards and Peregrines began. No one had ever had any idea what it meant. When Zared was younger she had spent sleepless nights trying to figure out what the riddle meant. Sometimes she thought that if she could figure out the answer, then she could save her brothers from death. But she had grown up seeing her brothers and her father and her mother die. There had been times in her life when she had been frantic to solve the riddle, thinking that the responsibility of saving her family rested on her thin shoulders. She could not wield a sword with her brothers, but she could, perhaps, help in some other way.
She held the paper tightly in her hand and walked out of the room. Behind her she heard the door close itself and lock. She refused to think about such a happening. "It was the wind," she whispered, and she walked faster down the hall.
Perhaps if she could solve the riddle she could understand what was going on in her life, and perhaps she could get her husband back.
Chapter Sixteen
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