Chapter 40
Ellery
I blinkedat the unexpected words. “Excuse me?”
“From that night my father and I spent at your manor, I remember you. You were rolling around in the snow with Dawn when we first arrived. I thought it was strange.”
“Everyone calls her Scarlet; it’s weird to hear anyone call her by her real name.”
“I can see why she got the nickname.”
I smiled as he lifted his knife to cut away more meat. When he offered me some, I took it.
“Why did you find it strange we were playing in the snow together?”
“Most proper young women don’t roll around in the snow like that,” he said. “All the ones I know wouldn’t be caught dead doing such a thing.”
“Then they’re missing out and are probably all boring.”
But then I recalled the woman in the carriage, with her mouth around his shaft. I bet he didn’t find her boring at all, even if he did ignore her at the coronation.
Ryker chuckled as he drew one leg up and draped his arm over his knee. “Some of them are boring, but they behave like ladies.”
“I behave like a lady.”
“When the occasion calls for it, but I bet you hated being at the coronation.”
I couldn’t deny that. “You didn’t seem too happy to be there.”
“I never said I was.”
“I wouldn’t be helping you if I were alwaysa perfectly well-behaved lady.”
“No, you wouldn’t. I found it odd your parents allowed such behavior.”
“My parents always let me be who I was and never tried to tame me. My father loved it, and my mother accepted me with a smile. I wasn’t the daughter she expected; she probably assumed I’d be more like her, but I took after my father. I think that, because she loved him so much, she loved seeing the adventurous part of him in me.”
“Many parents try to tame their children. Sometimes they succeed in breaking them, and other times, they fail.”
“Did your father try to break you?”
Though he continued to smile, a hard gleam settled into his mercury eyes. He looked away from me to stare into the forest. “Yes.”
From what I’d seen of Ryker, the duke had failed. No broken child would have left his father behind to wander into that labyrinth, something I was sure the duke had not approved of.
I also doubted the duke wanted his only heir going to war against the ghouls. He could have easily paid for his son to avoid such a thing or made it so that, if Ryker went to war, he never saw combat.
Ryker had been in battle and was known as the Scourge of the Ghouls because of it. Unlike his father and many other aristocrats, he hadn’t watched others fight and die from a lofty perch.
“I remember you from the night you spent at the manor too,” I said.
He stared at the trees before shifting his attention back to me; some of the coldness left his eyes. “Do you?”
I finished my meal, and when he moved to cut me another piece, I waved it away. My stomach was finally full.
“I do,” I said. “My parents made me go to bed, but I stayed on the landing to watch. We’d never had a duke in our house before, and I was curious about you.”
He chuckled as he cut more meat for himself. “Of course you didn’t listen to them.”
I smiled back at him. “I don’t like listening to anyone.”
“And it nearly cost you a hand.”
My amusement vanished as we stared at each other. “King Ivan’s new, draconian laws almost cost me my hand. He’s made it so amsirah have to steal to feed themselves and their families.”
“Your words are treasonous.”
I’d known the second the words were out of my mouth that I shouldn’t have said them. Ryker was different than the other aristocrats, but some things were completely unacceptable, and trashing the king was one of them.
I should have kept my mouth shut, but I couldn’t stop myself. Sitting in his giant castle and with his powerful name, Ryker had no idea what many in the realm endured under King Ivan’s rule.
Maybe, one day, King Ivan’s new laws would affect him and his father, but I doubted it. The aristocrats never went without, and it wouldn’t astonish me to learn King Ivan’s tax laws didn’t affect them in the same way.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he said.
I didn’t know how to respond, and I was afraid I might say something more damning that might make him start questioning who I really was even as I tried to hide it. I’d kept my clothing and hair as different from the Hooded Robber as possible.
I didn’t have a hood, and instead of formfitting black clothes, I’d opted for looser clothes that blended in with the forest, which was what I’d normally wear in the Revenant Woods. However, he might put two and two together if I didn’t watch my tongue.
“What was the name of the boy who tried to steal my purse?” he asked.
“Mouse. His real name’s Danny, but he’s so wiry, quiet, and fast, everyone’s always called him Mouse.”
“Where are his parents?”
“His mother died when he was a baby, and his father worked the manor before going to fight the ghouls. Like my father, he never returned. Mouse stopped talking after he learned about his father. He’s not a stupid boy; I know many write him off as that because he’s mute, but my mother taught him in her school, and he was incredibly bright. He just… well… he became feral after the loss of his father. They were extremely close, and it broke Mouse to lose him.”