Sarg exhaled slowly and quietly, wanting nothing more than to sigh. So Chesa had known about Beronis all along.
He made the futile attempt to deny it.
“I’m not sure what Your Majesty means.”
“Don’t play ignorant with me.”
Chesa smiled.
“Sir Gloriosa. I have no interest in blaming you. No doubt you took her in because refusing Margarite’s request was impossible. But you and your wife cannot raise that child forever. It’s time to return her to her father.”
Sarg said nothing.
“If you are truly worried about Margarite and her child, then become her knight again. Stay close and watch over her. That would be the most genuine thing you could do for her. I hope you’ll consider this carefully.”
More silence.
“Think of your wife.”
Sarg looked out the window. For once, the weather outside was rare and clear. The sky was an unbroken, saturated blue, and the morning light was almost blinding. Sarg squinted against it involuntarily.
Strangely, the king’s words had a pull to them.
He had nurtured his hatred of Chesa for years — the man who had forced Margarite into marriage, who had delivered Hyderlin to the execution ground. But since confirming that Hyderlin was alive, that hatred had undeniably thinned. Enough, at least, that the word compromise briefly entered his mind.
Though only briefly.
The facts did not change. Chesa had pronounced his death sentence on Hyderlin. Had ordered her tortured.
And Hyderlin had prepared herself thoroughly for revenge against this very man — even going so far as to form an alliance with Margarite to see it through.
Come to think of it, I still don’t know how Hyderlin and Mac came to find each other.
Sarg filed the question away and opened his mouth.
“Your Majesty. The letter you sent — you mentioned something regarding Count Biche. What was that about?”
An answer to the offer never came. Instead, a question arrived from entirely outside the flow of the conversation. Chesa was mildly displeased but kept it off his face.
The king replied smoothly.
“You’ll know soon enough.”
Hyderlin’s ordeal did not end with the ladies’ interrogation.
She was subjected to embroidery, poetry recitation, and musical performance alongside the noblewomen — a procession of polished accomplishments designed to gauge the refinement of her character.
What little of a lady’s education Hyderlin had received had been crammed into a few years of early childhood. The moment she was old enough to think for herself, she had taken up her late father’s sword and walked the path of knighthood. Courtly arts had never followed her there.
Her embroidery was, predictably, a catastrophe. The only verses she knew were martial ballads and funeral elegies. The lute she handled with somewhat more competence — she had picked it up during her years of training — but competence was generous. At best, she could claim mediocrity.
Margarite watched her with poorly concealed bewilderment. She had always assumed Hyderlin was the sort of person who moved through the world knowing exactly how everything worked and looking down on anyone who didn’t — seeing her fumble at something as ordinary as embroidery was extraordinary. Almost frightening. Like catching a glimpse of some profound and unsettling secret.
“Hys. That was lovely playing.”
When Hyderlin finally managed a lute piece that resembled something presentable, Margarite exhaled with relief and offered her warmest voice. To Hyderlin, it sounded like nothing more than polite flattery.
“The baby seemed to enjoy it, too. Didn’t you, my little one?”
Margarite tickled the infant princess on her knee and laughed. Hyderlin smiled along with her and said nothing more.
The other ladies were less charitable.
“She may look like the Count of Biche, but her refinement is simply…”
“Well, considering the kind of place Sir Gloriosa found her in — her origins aren’t exactly obscure, are they?”
“She clearly seduced him with that face of hers. Quite fortunate, really. Imagine managing to get herself with child and a promise of marriage.”
“He’s the one who lost out.”
“Did anyone notice the calluses on her hands?”
They spoke in the court tongue of Larrochelle, apparently confident she wouldn’t understand a word. Hyderlin, listening to every syllable, restrained the very strong impulse to tell them in perfect Larrochellian court tongue exactly where they could put their opinions.
Margarite restrained herself too, her trembling hands folded tightly in her lap. She kept stealing glances at Hyderlin from the corner of her eye.
She knew full well that Hyderlin understood Larrochellian court speech. And she knew Hyderlin’s reputation — that she was a woman who led with her knuckles when the occasion demanded it. She was terrified of what might happen. Rather than join the gossip, she kept steering the conversation elsewhere.
But the resentment inside Hyderlin was stacking, layer upon layer upon layer. She chose an extraordinarily refined way to relieve it: at luncheon, she performed every rule of royal etiquette with flawless, pointed precision.
The satisfaction, however, did not last. Her body rejected the food with a familiar, merciless efficiency. Nausea rose in her throat.
In the end, Hyderlin excused herself, citing dizziness, and slipped away. She left the baby in the queen’s care.
She went straight to a secluded corner of the garden and purged what little she had managed to swallow. This wretched body could not hold even a bird’s worth of food.
She pressed her forehead against the stone wall and groaned.
Gods. I have to keep this up for how many more days?
Living a life that had never belonged to her was exhausting. She had spent so much of her existence in a world built for soldiers that the culture of noblewomen felt like a foreign country. She was an exile dropped without warning into a country whose customs she didn’t know.
“Excuse me — are you all right, my lady? If you need assistance —”
“Mind your own business and move along.”
She answered the man’s voice behind her without turning around. Cold, flat, final. That tone had been enough to make most people retreat without argument.
That was when she had been alive, of course.
“…Are you Lady Gloriosa?”
Hyderlin straightened slowly and looked back.
A man with a deep scar running across his face was watching her.
Skalts Petaora.
I’ve made a mistake.
Hyderlin pressed her sleeve to the corner of her mouth.
“We meet again.”
“…Indeed we do. I am Skalts Petaora, knight in service to His Majesty the King.”
He apparently assumed she hadn’t remembered his name. He introduced himself again and extended his hand. This time, Hyderlin did not make the same error — she placed her hand in his.
Skalts kissed the back of her hand as a gentleman ought to. But he did not release it. He held it and looked at it with quiet, measuring attention.
A chill crawled up the back of her neck.
Skalts Petaora was a swordsman. And he knew a swordsman’s hands when he held them.
“I would prefer you let go.”
“…Forgive me.”
His response came a beat too late, and his hand remained where it was. Hyderlin drew hers back smoothly and brought both hands together, turning them over as if embarrassed.
“I do rough work, so my hands aren’t very pretty. Rather mortifying, honestly.”
Even as she spoke, Skalts was still looking at her hands. He said something quietly, with an inflection that carried more meaning than the words alone.
“Many of my fellow knights have hands like those. They call it the price of a life well-spent, and wear it proudly. Please don’t be too troubled by it, my lady.”
He suspects.
“Thank you for saying so. If you’ll excuse me.”
“Allow me to escort you. You’re heading back to Her Majesty the Queen’s chambers, are you not?”
Hyderlin swallowed a curse.
Knights. Every last one of them.
If she walked anywhere with Skalts, she would have to maintain the pretense of being Hys for the entire duration. She had lived her whole life as Knight Commander, moving through the world with cold authority — and now she was having to strangle her own nature just to play the part. The effort was physically suffocating.
Everything in her wanted to walk right past him without a word. But she was supposed to stay in character.
Hyderlin mimicked the queen. She tucked her long black curls behind her ear and let her gaze drift away.
“Your kindness is appreciated, but I’m quite all right. I don’t think I’ll be returning to Her Majesty’s side just now — everyone there is so distinguished, and I —”
“Ah.”
Understanding crossed Skalts’s face with something like sympathy.
“Then I’ll be off.”
Hyderlin gave a small bow and turned to walk away with purpose. But Skalts, relentless as his name suggested, continued to follow.
“There is much worth seeing in this castle. If you’d like, I would be glad to show you around.”
It was, she supposed, a gesture of consideration — an attempt to offer the out-of-place noblewoman somewhere to be. That didn’t make it any less inconvenient.
“I couldn’t impose on someone as busy as a knight of the guard.”
“I happen to be off duty.”
Good for you.
At that point, there was simply nothing left to refuse with.
“…Then, at the risk of imposing — thank you.”
Hyderlin squeezed her eyes shut briefly and endured. Skalts smiled with a gentleness that did not match the ruin of his face.
“The honor is entirely mine.”
“Lady Gloriosa, this is the training ground. The castle’s knights gather here to practice.”
“Yes.”
“That arena is used for jousting and sparring.”
“Yes.”
“This is the armory. Every weapon that leaves or returns is catalogued. The armory-keeper tends to them daily, so they are kept in peak condition at all times.”
“Yes…”
“That building is the barracks — where the knights take their meals and sleep. You there — go back to your posts this instant!”
Skalts finally raised his voice.
At every corridor they passed through, people had stopped to stare at Hyderlin and murmur to one another. Some looked shocked. One woman had screamed and fainted outright.
The reactions at the training ground were even less restrained. The knights practicing there had looked up, mouths falling open, and begun clustering together in hushed consternation. At some point they had started trailing behind Hyderlin and Skalts like a procession of uncertain ghosts.
“Damn — look at her. She’s the spitting image of the Commander.”
“It’s uncanny. Are you sure they’re not twins?”
“Go on, say something to her. I want to know if the voice matches too.”
Hyderlin continued to ignore them. Skalts seemed to follow her lead for a while, but as the trailing audience grew, his patience ran out. He spent the next several minutes kicking various knights out of the way by shin or backside before returning to Hyderlin’s side.
“They know how to hold a sword, but not how to conduct themselves. I apologize on their behalf.”
“…It’s — no, please don’t worry.”
Skalts scratched the back of his head and led her inside the barracks. Walking through corridors that had changed so little since she last walked them brought something unbidden to the surface — a feeling close to longing, or perhaps its less welcome cousin, grief.
Hyderlin was guided down a familiar hallway and shown to the Knight Commander’s office.
Her place.
In her memory, it had been magnificent. A taxidermied hawk. Blades set with gemstones. A hand-carved stone figure. Larrochellian vases. It had been filled, almost oppressively, with beautiful and costly things.
The room before her was bare. Aside from the order’s crest on the wall and two swords that looked to have been bestowed by the king, there was nothing that could be called decoration.
“My office.”
“Ah, yes — you mentioned you were Knight Commander.”
Hyderlin looked at him with new attention. The man who had always been her vice-commander had risen to take the position she once held. The thought landed strangely.
“Yes. Though I confess it sits oddly on me to say so — to introduce myself as Knight Commander while standing before you.”
She thought she understood why.
“Because I look like the Count of Biche?”
