Vow of Obedience ( Cavalieri Della 2)

“You’re in love with her,” he spits out, as if it’s the foulest thing he’s ever heard.

I think of her sweet face. Her gentleness. Her standing firmly between me and a man I want to kill. Her praying with me for Trefor, knowing it’s exactly what I needed. “Yeah. I am. Your poison can never touch her again, and she’s going to be so happy with me.”

“With you?” he sneers. “One of Arthur’s nobodies?”

“With a man who loves her. Who knows what she needs. I’ll put her on her knees, over and over again, but I’ll lift her up again. I’ll always lift her up.”

“Fuck off with her then. You deserve each other.”

I know he means that as an insult, but I couldn’t agree more.

Lange takes a long time to die. He doesn’t speak again and after about fifteen minutes, he falls unconscious. Finally, nearly thirty minutes after that, he bleeds out and dies.

I leave him where he is on the ground, flies crawling over the wound on his belly, and walk back to the main road. My cell was in the car so when I find a pay phone, I call it. It rings and rings, and I feel my chest getting tighter with every second that ticks by. Where the hell is Branwen?

Finally, the call’s picked up and I hear a voice thick with tears quaver, “Hello?”

Relief pours through me. “Branwen, baby. You’re okay?”

“Daddy, please come get me.”

“Of course I will. I’m coming right now. I’ll be there as fast as I can. Where are you?”

There’s a watery pause, and she says with despair, “At the house. At Avallonis.”

Branwen

Momma’s hysterical and won’t stop shouting questions at me. I don’t know what I’m saying and every one of her shrieks goes right through me.

I killed my father. I picked up a gun and fired three shots into his back.

“Where’s your daddy? Where did he go with that man? Who is he, Branwen?” We’re down at the gate, waiting for Geraint, and she has a shotgun under her arm.

I’m not going to call him that anymore. Geraint’s the one who takes care of me. He’s the one who loves me. I watch the road, chewing my thumbnail, and then remember Geraint doesn’t like it when I do that, and stop.

“What was he thinking?”

I know what he was thinking. He thought I was on his side. That no matter what he’d done to me, I’d go so far as to take a bullet for him because I’ve always done what he said. Maybe I would have thought that once upon a time, but not anymore. Love is as merciful as it is punishing, but my father was only punishing. I don’t ever want to go back to those cold, black, empty nights when all I had was blood and silence to keep me company.

“You said there was a man, Branwen?” Momma rounds on me, her face pale and set. I can see her wondering if she’s about to lose everything. The house. The money. She’s part of what my father does and she likes the money it brings in.

I don’t answer her questions, but I ask her a few of my own, and she answers because she’s afraid. That man is coming back and when I tell her who he is, her face goes white.

Forty-five minutes later, a dusty and blood-spattered Geraint comes jogging up the drive, sweaty and out of breath. He must have run all the way here.

To me. My heart bursts open with happiness as his eyes meet mine. He came back for me.

Momma hoists the shotgun up and points it at Geraint. “Stay right where you are.”

“Momma, don’t.” She doesn’t pay me any heed. Her eyes are fastened on Geraint like she wants to blast him into next week.

Geraint holds both his hands up, showing her he’s not armed. “I just want Branwen, ma’am, and then I’m leaving.”

“Where’s my husband?”

“Dead.”

Momma cries out sharply and raises the shotgun.