The Conqueror

He leaned back in his chair and looked at her. “Why, Gwyn. That doesn’t sound like your usual devoted self.”

She stared the wall behind Marcus’s head, but could still feel his gaze on her.

“You don’t want Sauvage to be hurt,” he said, his voice filled with wonder and something else. “You are trying to be loyal to the king and in love with his enemy at the same time.” He shook his head, his smile mocking. “It will never work, Gwynnie. You’ll have to choose. One day.”

“Can you do it?” she asked from between gritted teeth.

“Two weeks?”

She nodded tightly.

His smile returned. “I can do much more than that, Gwyn. ’Tis a simple matter.”

His reply recalled to her Griffyn’s words upon his arrival: You think me a simple matter. Which wasn’t true at all. She thought him perilous and perfect, and had fallen so deeply into love they would never be able to drag her up again. But one did not follow one’s heart. One did one’s duty.

What mattered the heart? What had it ever done but kill, murder, destroy?

Following the heart made a person foolish, reckless. Other people got hurt. Brothers, mothers. Gwyn had made a vow, taken an oath. She had reparations to make. There was no room for feelings.

And Marcus was dead wrong. She could honour both Griffyn and the king. God would not be so cruel as to force her to choose between them. Or her father. And her promises. To leave her in

his world with no way to redeem herself.

But Marcus had been right about one thing: getting Eustace out of the Nest was no longer an exercise in loyalty. It was a way to rid the Nest of treachery before Griffyn got killed by it.

Chapter Nineteen

She rode hard to be home by Sext. The mid-day meal should be starting soon. Make a showing in the hall, headache vanquished, and no one would be the wiser.

She reined the gelding into the northern woods and followed a barely marked path to the entrance of a hidden cave set within the face of a jagged rock ledge. Wind followed her faithfully inside.

She edged by the spring in the centre of the cave, its milky colour and sour smell unappetizing. But within its lightly burbling centre was a hot, sulfur spring that had eased her muscles on many a night. At the rear of the cave, Gwyn reached into a small hole. Her fingers touched the edge of the line of lanterns laid here. She pulled one out, lit it, and descended into a cool, earthen tunnel.

Hurrying now, she guided them to the end and poked her head out another door, on the northwest side of the inner bailey, just across from the secret door she’d brought Eustace through. No one was about. She rushed Wind through and jogged the gelding around to the front of the castle.

She began to encounter more people, servants and household staff who smiled and nodded. Did she notice a lot of strange looks in those smiles? A sickly trail of fear rippled through her stomach. Slowing to a walk, she loosened Wind’s cinch and blew a curl off her face.

“Lady Guinevere?”

She jumped. The young page had materialised from nowhere. “Aye, Peter?”

“Sir Alex said to find you, for my lord Griffyn is returning,” he piped cheerfully.

“Returning? Today?”

“Well, tonight,” he clarified. The sun was soon to set.

She reached out and gripped his shoulders. “When?”

“Soon,” he shouted back, utterly confused.

“Soon.” She dropped her hands.

“Aye, my lady. And Sir Alex said to find you—”

Another thread of fear unravelled. “He said…he said to find me?”

“Well, my lady,” explained the seven-year-old, confused as to why he was receiving such attention from the beautiful countess, but perfectly happy to be the object of her interest, “we all knew you were in your chambers, but Sir Alex said to find you. But I had to deliver a message first to Albert, the smythe. He’s been having problems with the forge, and—”