The Knight's Runaway Maiden

by Nicole Locke

  Which fitted. Perfectly. He had been a mystery to himself ever since he’d broken away from his parents and sided with Reynold against them. Ever since he’d lost his hand, partly because of Fate, part foolishness, and no doubt to others a happy misfortune.

  Is that how she saw him? As misfortunate? What would happen if he mentioned that day at the tapestry, would it somehow set this whole failure of a mission to rights? What if he just said he meant her no ill will, that he remembered how her eyes had shone as she’d gazed at the intricate colours, and that her boys had that same light in theirs when they’d run?

  He opened his eyes, but she was gone.

  ‘Séverine?’

  Nothing but silence. Gone...she should be. Even if he mentioned anything good, nothing of any worth would come from staying in his company.

  Chapter Six

  Séverine didn’t know why she’d stepped back and sat outside Balthus’s sight. She didn’t know why she hadn’t answered him when he’d called out to her.

  He wasn’t well. His speech was slow, and he’d gone to the wall and slid to the floor. She remembered that scrape of a foot in the woodcutter’s hut. Had he been injured then, or only now?

  When she’d shoved him, she’d been mostly concerned with her action taking him by surprise. She hadn’t truly looked at him. But trapped, she had been afforded a glimpse of him she hadn’t expected. As he’d walked, his palm rubbing the curved wood, looking for weaknesses, nothing of him had looked elegant and he’d favoured and hidden his left side, but there had been something tangible about him. The shaggy darkness of his hair, the bluntness of a cheekbone, the fullness of his lower lip.

  He’d changed much since the last time she’d seen him. Before, he’d looked much like all the other—No, even when she’d seen him that first time, he hadn’t been like the other Warstones. When she’d turned and caught him staring at her, she’d reacted.

  She’d been in the hall, standing farthest away from the dais and studying the newly delivered hunting tapestry, when she’d turned. The youngest Warstone had seemed as stunned as her. She’d been unable to look away, especially when his lips had parted as if he’d wanted to say something...significant. Then his mouth curved at the corner and...nothing. Séverine shook her head. It was all nothing. That moment between Balthus and her broke when his mother had gripped her wrist. She’d often think of it and wonder, but she’d never understood what it had been.

  She did now. Because she felt that same arrested fluttering. Balthus, a man, was somehow that exquisite tapestry. Brutal violence with felled prey. The artist with colours and craft making violence beguiling, bloodshed magnificent. And some part of her traitorous self found the threads of Balthus intriguing.

  More than that. When he’d looked up from the bottom of the pit, the paleness of his face, the black greyness of his eyes...it had been like looking at a soul trapped in Purgatory, aware he was ensnared there. It had affected her in some visceral way she couldn’t explain, even to herself.

  Was this lust, desire when she’d felt none before? No. It was confusion. Fear, perhaps, for her children. His words were games. He gave her half-truths, mostly lies. She couldn’t trust him. He’d told her he was here to harm her.

  Which...she did trust. So she’d stepped back. The words and the way he’d moved she could turn away from. She could almost ignore his beauty and despair, as well. But it was difficult to ignore for long that rough exhalation of his after he’d said her name and she hadn’t answered.

  It wasn’t a breath of frustration or exhaustion—it had sounded like relief.

  If there was one emotion Warstones didn’t deserve to feel, it was relief. Moving to the edge, folding her feet under her, she peered down. Either her eyes were used to the darkness or the extra torches that Imbert had set up allowed her to see more. It was heartening to see that tic in his jaw. It couldn’t have been relief; it was annoyance he was feeling. Good.

  ‘You’re still here?’ he said.

  ‘I won’t trust you,’ she said. ‘It would be foolish of you to think I cannot harm you.’

  ‘You left me with daggers and my sword,’ he said.

  ‘I have torches lit with fire. You may be able to climb out or not, throw daggers or not, but if you are a true threat to my sons, I will kill you.’

  ‘Such fierceness, Séverine,’ Balthus said. ‘Perhaps this is the reason Ian left you at that minuscule keep.’

  Was it common knowledge that her husband had walked away from her marriage first? And what did she care that he had? She hadn’t loved him, though there had been times... No, she couldn’t think that way, else she would be soft like Sarah told her she was.

  ‘Don’t mock me, Warstone, you know me not,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘Then let me go, and we don’t need to worry about knowing each other. It’s best that way.’

  Lies! ‘Thus defeat the purpose of your following me?’

  ‘When you leave for good, I wouldn’t mind some food, ale and a bucket to relieve myself in.’

  ‘I’m not leaving until I have answers.’

  ‘What would you say to that’s the reason I’m here? All I’m wanting is to exchange information.’

  ‘Is it not Ian who wants answers? Because giving him answers is simple. The answer’s no. No, I’m not going back, no, he can’t have the children, no, he can’t have me.’

  She watched as something flitted across his eyes, something darker than his surroundings.

  ‘What did he do to you, Séverine?’

  The concern in his voice! Standing, she almost shouted, almost swung a torch at him. ‘Don’t pretend, don’t be kind. Remember, I lived with your parents. I know the monsters you all are.’

  He was quiet again, but she practically felt the questions he burned to ask. He and his kind didn’t deserve answers, and yet...

  ‘Answer me this, are you truly hurt?’

  He closed his eyes, kept his silence. That wouldn’t get them anywhere.

  ‘Do you need anything for the pain?’ she said again.

  ‘Do you ever think of that time at all?’ he said, a careful tone to his voice. ‘The day of the announcement?’

  Damn them all, and her heart, which felt like a vise in her chest.

  ‘The day I was wrenched from my life, and your brother caused my sisters to hate me forevermore? That day?’

  Legs stretched out, his head slumped forward, he exhaled roughly.

  She couldn’t see his eyes, his face. This man couldn’t be defeated. He couldn’t mean that moment with the tapestry. It had meant something to her because it had been the last truly peaceful moment she could remember. To him, a Warstone? It had to be just one moment of many. None of that was important.

  ‘Are my boys in danger because you’re here?’ she said.

  He rubbed his leg. ‘If I say yes, you’ll flee, and I’ll only chase you again. If I say no, where would I be then?’

  Stuck in a hole in the ground, but that wasn’t the point. ‘This isn’t about you!’

  ‘Given I’m in a pit, and you’re free to do what you please, I beg to differ.’

  She was imagining his defeated sigh if he was back to obscure conversations. Or perhaps his head was too injured for reasoning. He made little sense to her, and for the villagers’ sake, for her children’s, she needed to hurry this along.

  ‘Stop, just stop it. You’re trapped, I could do what I want with you.’

  ‘Yet you can’t. I can banter in circles until I die of starvation. So, unless you do more to me than that, this is what we’re left with.’

  ‘You suggest I torture you? If you’re like your brother, you’ve already been trained for starvation—and anything else I can mete out.’

  ‘Which you knew, so the only point of this pit is to trap one of us to the death. Anything else would be foolish if you wish t
o keep your boys safe. Or you can come to the same conclusion I have, that it is about me, and you could let me ask my questions.’

  ‘You’ve had plenty of time to ask.’

  He inhaled, coughed a bit. ‘Your boys are not in danger.’

  ‘Until my husband gets here.’

  He flexed his right heel, then his left. ‘Your husband’s not coming.’

  ‘His men?’

  ‘Only me, and you’ve delayed me from getting word to him.’

  ‘What about the servant who travelled with you?’

  ‘He went in the other direction in case you escaped that way.’

  Likely a lie. No Warstone would be without servants and mercenaries. ‘How were you going to meet up again?’

  ‘We gave a designated time.’

  ‘So, if I leave, he’ll head this way and take care of you.’

  ‘If he can find me. I only fell in here because I was following your boys.’

  He sounded convincing, but then all Warstones had that ability...it was how they controlled kingdoms.

  ‘How much of that was true?’ She didn’t expect him to answer.

  ‘All of it,’ he said. ‘There, I’ve given all of it so now perhaps we can have an exchange and you can be on your way.’

  ‘So...lies, then.’

  ‘Why would I lie?’ He looked directly at her. ‘It doesn’t serve me. You could truly leave, and I’d rot here.’

  ‘Are you trying to appeal to my better nature when I know what you are?’

  ‘My nature is yours. To the outside world we’re family. Those boys share my blood, a truth you can never deny.’

  No matter how much she tried to deny it, it was the truth. It was also the truth that when she’d left Ian, he’d been much altered from the man she’d married a few years before. It wasn’t only the cruelty and the control she looked for when she watched her children playing. She watched for their intelligence, their suspicion. For madness.

  There had been times at the end when she hadn’t been certain if Ian would harm himself or their children. Then, as if Satan himself had been on their heels, he’d led their small caravan to Forgotten Keep and left them.

  All of that she could have dismissed. Why should she care where they were housed as long as she had her sons? But Ian’s haunted gaze, the tender touch on her cheek...that last moment she’d seen him had made her question what she knew was truth. Her husband was dangerous and either he or someone else intended to harm them. He might have left her first, but all that did was give her the opportunity to leave him for as long as she could.

  ‘How is he?’ she asked.

  Balthus shifted, kept quiet, and she regretted the moment of weakness.

  He grunted. ‘You don’t want to know.’

  Had her husband gone mad, or was he seeking vengeance for her humiliating him? Did he miss his children? Was that look he’d given her at the end one of regret? Perhaps she had gone soft. She had left him because he was dangerous!

  ‘No, I don’t want to know of him,’ she said. ‘I want to know if we’re at risk. You keep finding us. How are you doing that?’

  ‘I said no, and as to the rest, I don’t know. Good fortune?’ He adjusted his back against the wall.

  ‘Why are you protecting your left side? You’ve been hurt. Do you need willow bark? Peppermint? A splint?’

  When he didn’t answer, she added, ‘No deceptive comment? No misdirection?’

  ‘Why do you keep offering assistance when you know I don’t deserve any?’ he said. ‘See, you may think you’re not a Warstone, but you’re decent at traps as well as exchanging useless banter, which will get us nowhere, and I’m...’ He shook his head, slowly...wearily. ‘Let me know when you decide what to do with me.’

  Closing his eyes, he rested his head back, bent his knees with one arm dangled on top. She was being ignored by her own prisoner and should leave. Her boys were important and staying here risked them. Except it was late afternoon, the weather foul. Spring was near, but it was still cold.

  And there was something more here. His words were confusing, and not only for reasons that they were misleading, but because she sensed truth in them as well as frustration. As if he wanted to be believed, which was foolish on her part.

  ‘Are you staying or are you going?’ Balthus whispered.

  Arrogant, as expected. ‘It’s late. A woman with two young boys is vulnerable at night.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Your being vulnerable isn’t an attribute I would have ever given you.’

  Odd, since it was what the rest of the Warstones continually thought of her...and never let her forget. Ian constantly kept her locked in a room or coddled. His parents had controlled her from day one. Just as this man was doing. She stood. This time she would leave.

  ‘What if I need to relieve myself?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be more worried about food or water?’

  ‘I’d rather protect my boots and prevent tying them again.’

  ‘Are you vain?’

  He huffed. ‘When I die of thirst, I don’t want to look as if I have no pride.’

  She didn’t like knowing that he knew he’d die of thirst before he starved. The Warstones only ever suffered from their own parents. Ian had suffered though he’d mocked any of her comfort. Just as Balthus did now.

  She hated that she noticed the differences and similarities between him and her husband, that she was comparing them.

  She hated feeling any sympathy for this man, this Warstone. That family had yanked her from the life she’d been meant to have, and into uncertainty for the rest of it. Her children had to run the rest of their lives or else be subject to horrors and those seeking revenge. They’d be forced to become cruel simply to survive.

  She couldn’t protect them indefinitely. Her nightmare was that she’d fail them. This man had found her twice. Twice! He risked them all.

  She grabbed an empty bucket.

  ‘Fates!’ Balthus said.

  ‘You said you needed a bucket,’ she answered as sweetly as she could. She could hear him scrambling from his sitting position.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d throw it,’ Balthus said. Had Ian known his wife at all? Or had this woman been created in the years away from them?

  ‘Merely tossed it over my head,’ she called out.

  ‘And almost hit mine!’

  Her smile at the tapestry and then towards him hadn’t reflected this strength, but it must have been there because she’d fled a Warstone. So many questions that he wanted to ask her. So many answers he wanted to give and yet what would come of it? He’d asked if she remembered that time, and all of it had been about her and Ian. Nothing else was significant for her. Not her fascination and happiness over a tapestry. Not glancing over at some gaping man who couldn’t look away from her.

  All he had of her was this useless banter that would end, and he’d be left with even less than this. What had he become? All his accomplishments, the victories, the survival. He had been sent on this mission for legends to take down kingdoms, and mere moments in this woman’s life beggared him into asking if she remembered a shared smile.

  She was Ian’s wife, and he’d avoided her for years. Now he had no lands, coin or a left hand. He should continue to avoid her, and tell her the truth, so he could rot in this pit.

  ‘Are you trying to find something else to fling?’ he called out.

  ‘Of course. I—’

  A door slamming open, a cold burst of icy wind. ‘Mama, Mama, you’ve got to see what I found—’

  ‘Slow down!’ Séverine said. ‘The ledge!’

  ‘Oh!’ Pepin squealed.

  Another slam of the door. The bottom of Clovis’s leg as he hurled his body inside. ‘Don’t believe the little thief,
Mama, he stole—’

  ‘No!’ Séverine screamed.

  Balthus tensed at the bodies above him, at Pepin standing at the edge. At Clovis, who appeared fully because his body barrelled into Pepin’s. Pepin, whose feet were no longer on the ground but over the pit.

  Sweeping away his cloak, Balthus caught the tumbling boy.

  Blinding pain, agony...darkness.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Pepin!’ Séverine grabbed the ladder and lowered it to the bottom of the pit.

  ‘I’m in here!’ Pepin said.

  ‘Don’t you hurt him!’

  ‘I won’t, Mama, I’m standing away from him now.’

  ‘No, not you...’ Séverine paused. ‘Balthus?’

  ‘He’s not moving, either. We’re staying still.’

  ‘Hold the ladder steady, Clovis, until I get down.’ Séverine adjusted the ladder to make certain it didn’t slip. ‘No, wait, go and get Sarah or Imbert, nobody else.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m getting your brother,’ she said.

  ‘Pepin, climb the ladder!’ Clovis yelled.

  ‘No, stay there,’ Séverine ordered. ‘Clovis, your brother could be hurt.’

  ‘That man’s down there.’

  ‘I think he’s sleeping!’ Pepin added.

  ‘Clovis, leave the ladder and go. When you come back shine the torch down. Now.’ She waited until Clovis dashed outside.

  ‘Balthus, if this is a trick...’ Séverine carefully lowered herself to the first rung. The walls of the pit were steep and the floors below could be slick.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Pepin said.

  The amused relief was instant at her son’s words. ‘Pepin, step back.’

  There was the possibility Balthus could overwhelm her the moment she stepped down, or the ladder could slip. Two more steps. It was dark, but her son was there, holding the ladder. Enfolding him in her arms, she felt along his wiry body. ‘Are you certain you are not hurt?’

  ‘He caught me. He caught me. I didn’t touch the bottom when he fell.’

  ‘He was standing.’

  She felt him nod against her stomach. ‘He didn’t catch very good, and we hit the ground. That’s the only time I touched him, honest.’