Forbidden Warrior (Midsummer Knights)

Cassia closed her eyes as they went.

“I hate this passage,” she whispered.

A bank of storm clouds had taken shape on the horizon by the time they emerged from the woods. Castle Ware huddled in the valley below.

Battlement walls rose thirty feet in the air. The keep within rose another ten, a spire of stone. Pennants hung from their heights, flapping and slapping the Ware heraldry wetly against the stone.

Closer inspection would reveal its decrepitude. The walls were in disrepair, pitted and gutted. The portcullis gate was rotting; the moat filled with dead fish. A low moan rose off the empty battlement walls as the winds picked up. No people moved within the baileys. No women toiled in the gardens, no soldiers rushed to the stables, no squires drew water from the well. No one.

“Jesus,” Máel muttered as he looked down on the emptiness. A pair of gulls circled overhead with lonely shrieks, then veered off, taking their cries with them, leaving silence behind. “There is no one there.”

“There is never anyone there,” she said dully.

Her father kept no staff when he was not in residence—he dragged everyone after him—and the castle would sit, ghostly empty for months, save for Cassia and a few servants who moved through the emptiness like wraiths.

“When will he arrive?” Máel said.

“By morning.” She turned to him. “You will not kill him.”

Tension tightened his jaw. He dropped his eyes and looked at the ground. “Cassia—”

She stepped toward him. “Promise me you will not kill my father.”

He drew in a long breath and met her eye. “I will not kill him.”

She laid her hand on his chest. “Thank-you.”

“You’d be happier if I did,” he growled.

“No I wouldn’t. And neither would you.”

“You don’t know me very well.”

“Yes.” She slid her arms around his waist. “I do.”

He kissed the top of her head, then turned and pointed to the path they’d just climbed.

“We’ll set up there, where the climb is steepest and narrow enough that only one of them can come up at a time.”

She shivered. “I hate that ledge.”

“So will they.”

They camped ato

p the forested hill encircled by the winding stone path.

The sky was clear, but storm clouds glowered on the horizon, reflecting a red setting sun. Rising winds came in from the west, where the steely-topped waves of the sea could be detected.

“It is wild and beautiful,” she said, looking at her castle.

“A storm is coming,” he replied, looking at the sky.

She turned to him. Since they’d left Rose Citadel, he’d reverted to the brusque, remote, cold-eyed warrior. Had in fact turned quite grim. But grimness notwithstanding, he’d made sure to drape her in blankets and his cloak, and she wore a fresh gown—he’d grabbed everything he could from her chest before they left the castle.

A secret hope made her think it was because he never wanted her to return to such places again.

But where else was there to go? What else was there to do? Her path was laid, fated and bereft of passion. Bereft of Máel.