Forbidden Warrior (Midsummer Knights)

Me. It is me. Máel carved a little figure of me by the river. “It is nothing,” she said brokenly.

He took it from her. “Is this his?”

“It is mine.”

He threw it into the flaming brazier and rounded on her. “After all your breeding, your training, the coin spent on tutors and—”

“We ruined me.”

He started. “What?”

She looked at the little carven likeness of her burning in the coals of the brazier. A knot of flames flared up, consuming it. Soon it would be nothing but ash. “I am ruined, Father. I am a fallen woman. I am no longer in possession of my virginity. But I am in possession of knowledge.”

A pressured silence filled the room. “What do you know?”

The fire crackled as it ate the figure of her.

“I know about this.” She held up the message Máel had given her, the one that proved her father’s treachery.

He snatched it from her hand. She stared straight ahead as he examined it, turned it over and ran his hand over the wax seal. Then he lowered it.

She cared nothing for his anger now. Let him rage. It meant nothing. She had no hope, no ambition, no plans or desires. Máel had taken everything.

For she knew the awful truth now: Máel was the going-away sound that had haunted her castle and her life. He would become the echo, always rushing away.

Their time together was a single, shining, howling mad, magical adventure in her life. And it would be nothing but a memory.

And that would never be enough.

She was truly, finally, ruined.

Her father’s bootsteps sounded dully on the plank floors as he crossed to her side. He closed his fingers under her chin and jerked her face up.

“You do not know what you are saying,” he told her in a flat, icy voice. “You have been through a great ordeal. We will say no more of it.”

She barely recognized him. She was not sure he recognized her either; she had become an obstacle in his way, and he would smash her to bits if required to get what he wanted.

“You will go back down to the great hall tonight. You will smile and dance. You will go to the jousts tomorrow. You will smile whenever you see Sir Bennett,” he said in that queer, emotionless voice. “And after the joust on Friday morning, you will sign the marriage contract. And you will keep your mouth shut. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” she said, her voice as full of ice as his had been.

His face shifted. He knew who he was dealing with now: not a daughter, but a negotiating partner.

He dropped his hand and examined her in a way that implied he thought he understood her now.

Idiot.

He watched her with a new respect. “Your future lies in the balance here too, Cassia,” he said softly. “Baronies do not stay in the family when treason is involved. We all have something at stake here.”

She knew precisely what was at stake. Her heart. Her finally-filled, now-broken heart.

Her father flung the letter carelessly into the brazier and walked out. She turned her head to watch, waiting for it to burn.

Her father thought he knew what ties bound her to this course of action. He had no idea it was not ambition, but heartbreak.

And love. For if she rebelled now, if she crossed her father’s purposes, they might ride out and hunt him down.

Every moment she consented was a moment Máel had to ride away, to become the going-away echo of her life.