The Conqueror

“Go, go, go!” she screamed. “Outside!”

Edmund spun and kicked the horse, who skidded and thumped wide-eyed to the outdoors and back down the stairs, leaping off the last four entirely. Edmund reined around just as Gwyn barreled out. She flung herself down the stairs two and three at a time, just shy of a headfirst plunge down the twenty-foot staircase, until she was only a few feet above Edmund’s head. He caught her hand and yanked her off. She landed on the horse’s back and they galloped hell-bent for the gates.

The gelding skidded almost sideways to take the turn just after the gates, which would lead them down to the valley. Edmund steadied him with his hands. Gwyn lay low and close to Edmund’s back. The horse straightened and, with a kick and shout from Edmund, laid himself out flat for the final mad dash.

Dark clouds had scuttled over the sky. The storm on the horizon thundered ominously. A stab of lightning lit up the western horizon. Gwyn risked a glance over Edmund’s shoulder. Would they make it in time? How bad was it? How long did they have? Would her beloved already be—

Standing next to Marcus?

She yelled above the rushing wind into Edmund’s ear, “I thought he was dying!”

“Nay, lady,” he shouted back, “but he’s ready to kill.”

She laid her cheek down on

his back again and tried to stop from crying in reckless joy. He was alive. He wasn’t dead, he wasn’t dying. She could handle anything but that.

If she’d only known.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

She stood next to them, her chest still heaving. Marcus was looking at her. Griffyn was not. He stood without moving, staring at the horizon. In truth, he seemed lost in thought, as if this, none of it, mattered anymore.

Her red overtunic blew back in the breeze, revealing the bright yellow linen beneath. Wind tugged at her hair. The scent of the sea was strong today, and it rode under the smell of blood. Time to end this thing.

She pressed her fingertips to her temple, trapping the blowing hair beneath, and turned to Marcus. His eyes were calm, but something hectic lurked beneath their surface. He had sprouted an unkempt beard.

“What are you thinking, Marcus?” she demanded. “What is all this?” She waved at the soldiers. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Aye.” He put his foot up on his helm, set on the ground beside him, and grinned quite like a madman. “How is Eustace?”

She shook her head. “You’re too late to ruin me, Marcus. I did that myself. Griffyn knows. I told him.”

“Oh, good.” He glanced at Griffyn, who was still staring at some distant point on the horizon. “Then we can do business. Each of us has something the other wants.”

“You have nothing I want,” Gwyn snapped.

“Oh no? And only a fortnight ago I was your last hope. Tsk. Well, in any event, I have something Pagan might want.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, when it became clear Griffyn had no intention of opening his mouth. “Please, Marcus, stop. It’s over, thank God. I was wrong.”

“You were wrong, Gwyn, but ’tisn’t over. Not yet. At the risk of repeating myself, I say again: I have something your Griffyn wants.”

“You don’t have anything I want, Marcus,” Griffyn finally said without lowering his gaze. “You could kill me, if you dared. I do not care.”

“But Guinevere does.”

Something chill flowed down her back, and it had nothing to do with the roiling weather.

“You care very much, don’t you, Gwyn, what happens to Griffyn? I can see it in your eyes. You’d do almost anything for him. Not quite anything, of course.” He smiled. “The little treason in his cellars. I got that. But almost anything else. You don’t want anything to happen to him, do you?”

“What are you talking about?” she whispered.

He shifted his crafty gaze back to Griffyn’s profile. “Henri fitzEmpress is coming.”

Gwyn waved this off. “We know that.”

“He is riding for the north like the very devil is at his back. I’ll wager you didn’t know that. He should be here by day’s end. Mayhap sooner. He’s coming for Everoot.”