Chapter 20
It was the middle of the night. She had come straight back to Fallstowe lands from Bellemont, although Fallstowe had not been her initial destination.
She’d gone instead to the Foxe Ring, where she had laid herself down on the flat center stone in the moonlight while Octavian meandered about the ring.
She had lain there for hours, watching the stars spin and slide across the sky, watching the moon flicker and glow in its misty shroud.
She let the cold of the rock seep into her body, her bones, as her mother’s voice whispered to her.
I told you not to trust him! You can trust no one but yourself!
“Not even my own mother,” Sybilla breathed. “You used me to save your own skin.”
It wasn’t that way at all! I knew you could take care of yourself; you were the only one who could! If only you had heeded my direction from the start and obeyed me! You always disobeyed me!
“I disobeyed you once, and it saved England,” Sybilla answered. “You were a liar, a traitor, a betrayer, even unto your own.”
No!
“You loved Cecily, you loved Alys, but never me. I was disposable. A weapon you forged and wielded.”
I loved you best of all, don’t you see? Why can’t you see? You were the only thing in this world that was truly mine, that truly belonged only to me! Only you could do the things such as I have done, been as strong, as cunning! You were my child, alone! I trusted you with my life, with our legacy!
“I am ashamed of you,” Sybilla said, her voice catching. “Ashamed of myself, how I defended you to everyone, deflected the rumors. The true reason I kept your nasty secrets is that I knew that if I told, I would be just like you. No loyalty. No honor. And I am nothing like you.”
You are exactly like me. You are me. We are one.
“No.”
There will come a time when you will see that what I say is true.
When you love someone so much that it does not matter what happens to yourself or anyone else.
You will lie or steal or kill to see them safe.
I loved you, loved your sisters, loved .
. . others in that way. There will come a time, and you will see.
Now Sybilla felt as though she had been formed from ice as she made her way through the darkened passages of Fallstowe from her ruined chamber.
She had traded her damp and dirty gown for one of sheer, white silk, which tied at the chest and claimed simple, billowing sleeves with drawn satin ribbons.
Her hair was undone, brushed down her back.
Her bare feet made not the slightest whisper on the icy stones; her breathing was shallow, silent.
She came to the foot of the spiral staircase and paused, looking up for a moment.
He had come to Fallstowe knowing everything he did about her, knowing the castle would be made his if he turned her in to the king.
He had fooled her into trusting him, into making her almost believe that he could love her, help her.
He had played to her every weakness, and she had believed him.
Most likely Julian Griffin would only have laughed at her after handing her over to Edward, smirked while she was dragged away to the gallows.
She began to climb the steps. The jeweled dagger in her cold right hand felt light, warm, alive. With each riser she gained, slowly, numbly, a different memory flashed through her mind, spanning years, going both forward and backward in time.
The way Julian had held her, threatening to snap her neck, the night he’d arrived at Fallstowe.
The weeks after Lewes, when she’d found her mother weeping bitterly over some letter she’d received.
Lucy’s warm body snuggled next to hers while she’d lain in Julian’s bed.
Morys Foxe stealing her away from her lessons to go riding through the demesne with him.
Julian Griffin destroying her bed in a rage.
Amicia’s face, tears leaking from her useless eye, her clawlike hand grasping Sybilla’s so tightly as she’d slipped away from this world.
Alys, always laughing.
Cecily’s sweet smile.
All of them gone from her now.
The chamber door was cracked open a bit, and it made not the slightest creak on its hinges as it swung open slowly, seemingly of its own accord.
Sybilla stepped through the doorway, the chamber nearly as dark as the stairwell save for the little glow from the fading fire.
But Sybilla was beyond the light then, full of darkness herself, and so she could see quite keenly the shape of Julian Griffin in the center of the bed.
She seemed to float over the floor to the end of the bed, then stopped there, watching him sleep. Her fingers unclenched, shifted, then curled back around the hilt of her dagger.
No more men . . . only me.
I must protect you.
The image of him grew blurry for a moment and Sybilla blinked, sending a tear down her cheek.
As if he had heard the whisper of wetness sliding over her skin, Julian Griffin’s eyes snapped open and he sat upright in the bed, his left arm braced behind him.
“Sybilla,” he whispered. He seemed not the least bit surprised to see her there. His gaze swept down her body, stuttering as it caught sight of the weapon in her hand. He brought his eyes back to hers. “Have you come to kill me?”
She nodded, only the slightest downward movement of her chin.
He shook his head, his eyes continuing to bore into hers as he slowly threw the covers from his legs and swung his feet over the side of the bed.
“No,” he said.
Sybilla could only whisper, “Yes.”
“No,” he repeated, standing up from the bed, completely nude. “I can only guess at what you were told at Bellemont. It’s Fallstowe, isn’t it?”
“You lied to me,” she said, her voice trembling.
“No,” he said again. “I asked you to marry me.”
“You didn’t mean it. Stop talking.”
“I did mean it,” he said, his face stony as he took a step toward her. “I still mean it. I will marry you tonight if you’ll agree; even now, knowing that it was you at Lewes.”
Sybilla blinked, and she felt the iciness of her heart fracture the tiniest bit, like the pattern on a moth’s wings.
He continued to step toward her, slowly, cautiously, but purposefully. “We are leaving Fallstowe; you, me, Lucy. As soon as can be arranged. We will go abroad, to a country where Edward can never reach you.”
“You would not give up a prize such as Fallstowe,” she said bitterly.
Then he was upon her, Sybilla shrieking as he seized the dagger in her hand and wrenched it away from her, twisting her wrist painfully. He jerked the weapon free and threw it to the shadows, then grabbed her roughly, pulling her against him despite her struggle.
“I don’t want Fallstowe without you,” he shouted into her face.
Sybilla stilled in his arms, but she did not look at him, instead keeping her gaze upon his collarbone.
“I love you, Sybilla,” he said, a touch of anger in his voice. “Yes, the king has promised me Fallstowe, and no, I didn’t tell you. Would you have let me stay had you known? No,” he answered himself.
“You could have told me later,” she accused him. “When you asked me to marry you.”
“And then I would never have known if it was me you wanted or this damned pile of rock!” He took her shoulders and held her away so that he could look into her face.
“I was going to tell you anyway, the day I received the letter from John Grey, the day you left for Bellemont. I couldn’t keep it from you any longer; I didn’t want to. ”
“That’s a convenient excuse, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not,” he growled, shaking her. “It’s rather inconvenient that I am giving up a certain future for myself and for my daughter because any future we would have without you in it is not worth living.”
“I don’t believe you,” she insisted, and the cracks around her heart widened.
“Fine. Don’t believe me. Don’t believe me while you are packing your things.
Don’t believe me while you are gathering all the coin you can lay hand to.
Don’t believe me when we reach the docks and hire a ship in the night to take us across the Channel.
Don’t believe me as we race together across the Continent, the three of us.
” He took her face in his palms. “But let’s do those things quickly, so that once you do start to believe me, we are far, far away from here. ”
And then he kissed her, long and deep and hard, and Sybilla felt her hands reaching for him, grasping at his arms as she kissed him back, her heart breaking open and tears spilling from her eyes as white heat overtook her flesh.
Julian pulled away slightly to speak against her lips. “I love you, Sybilla. I love you so, and I will do everything in my power to protect you, to keep you with me. Please, please, now will you trust me?”
She nodded, the movement jerky and hesitant, feeling as if she would burst with this foreign weight of emotion inside her.
“I love you, too, Julian Griffin. I never wanted to, but I do.” And then she instigated the next kiss, pushing him backward as she walked toward the bed.
He fell onto the mattress, pulling her with him, and then turned until she was beneath him. He was inside her in an instant, loving her the way she needed to be loved—firmly, completely, quickly.
They lay there in the dark afterward, both drifting off to sleep, Julian’s hand curled around her face behind her ear. But then Sybilla blinked her eyes open and felt a frown come to her brow.
Something was wrong. Something was missing.