The Conqueror

“It is now.”

He reached out, wrapped his fingers around her wrist, and dragged her behind him up the stairs. She staggered as she went, her heart hammering and breaking all at once.

“Alexander!” he shouted as they circled wildly up the stairs. “Alexander! Jerv—” He spun around so fast she slammed into his chest. “Who else knows?”

His gaze lanced into her with a quiet ferocity that washed her knees clean of power. She touched the cold stony wall of the circular tower for support.

“Myself. Only myself. And Jerv—”

“Goddamn you,” he whispered in a hoarse growl. “Goddamn you.”

“Jerv doesn’t know! Not about Eustace. He suspected something. And he,” she gulped, “he told me to tell you, whatever it was. He told me to tell you.”

His hand closed around her throat. His face was bare inches from hers. “He told you to tell me?”

A frantic nod.

“And you didn’t?”

She shook her head, black hair tumbling. “I made a vow,” she whispered in misery.

His face disfigured into a harsh, awful twisting of smile and grimace. “So? What good is your word, anything you say?”

He was gone, taking the stairs two at a time, disappearing up into the dim shadows of the stairwell. Gwyn stumbled behind, washed of tears, dying inside.

He kicked open the door to their bedchamber. Striding across the room, he ripped the tapestry from its mooring. It fluttered to the ground, a heap of bright dyes and tangled thread, revealing the oak door.

He yanked it open and bolted down the stairs into the darkness, bellow

ing as he went, “Alexander!”

A moment later, Alex appeared. His blond hair was rumpled, his eyes wild, one hand fumbling furiously to fasten his breeches. In the other, he held his sword belt. Gwyn pointed mutely to the wide-flung door.

Tossing her a confused, worried glance, Alex ran down into the darkness too, descending into the bowels of the castle. Gwyn followed, tripping over each step, her skin hot and cold all at once.

By the time her foot hit the bottom step, Griffyn and Alex were standing in front of the door. The huge dragon’s-head padlock hung like a sullen guard, casting dour steel glints off the torchlight.

“You know about the door,” she said in dull amazement.

“I don’t have the key,” he replied just as tonelessly.

Wordless, Gwyn stepped forward and, plucking the golden key from its pouch, shoved it into the dragon’s mouth. It clicked, the mouth opened as if in a roar, and the lock sprang free. She stepped back. Griffyn stepped forward.

He pushed on the door and it swung open. He and Alex stood in front of her, huge hulking figures cast in sharp silhouettes by the single torch that burned inside.

Duncan leapt to his feet and blocked their path, his small sword drawn. Neither knight had eyes for him. They were staring into the cell, immobile.

“Down, Duncan,” she ordered gently.

Griffyn and Alex disappeared into the chamber. She heard Alex say in a low voice, “Do you know what will happen if Henri fitzEmpress ever finds out about this?”

She fell back on the bottom step of the stairwell, her buttocks against the freezing stone, and stared numbly ahead.

Griffyn appeared in the doorway a moment later, his towering figure blocking all the light behind. But his eyes glittered with an illumination all their own, filled with quiet fury.

“He’s dead.”

Duncan appeared at Griffyn’s side. “He went dead on his own some five minutes ago, milady. I kept him warm though. Just like you said to.”