Chapter 12
There was always a battle to be fought. An enemy to vanquish.
Gareth had learned this truth as a boy of seven, when his father first placed a wooden sword in his hand.
He had carried it through his years as a squire, through the blood and chaos of earning his spurs, through every campaign and skirmish that had forged him into the man he was.
Battle was simple. Battle was clean. You knew your enemy, you knew your purpose, and you fought until one of you fell.
This battle was different. He stood alone in his chamber, the door barred, the fire burned low to embers.
The castle slept around him—he could hear the distant tread of the night watch on the battlements, the settling creak of ancient timbers, the whisper of wind through arrow slits.
In a se’nnight, Alaric would arrive, and Gareth would face the man who had tried to murder him, and he would do so in damnable silence.
Unless.
He opened his mouth.
The sound that emerged was barely human—a rasp, a grinding of broken glass over gravel. Pain lanced through his throat, sharp as the blade that had carved it open three years past. He forced himself to continue, pushing air through the ruin of his voice.
Fire. His hand flew to his throat, pressing against the scar as if he could hold the agony inside. His eyes watered. His chest heaved.
He tried again. Had to try again. Alaric would come with his honeyed words and his poison courtesy, and Gareth would stand there like a witless fool, unable to respond, unable to defend, unable to do anything but watch and sign and let a woman and his captain speak for him.
When he tried again, the pain drove him to his knees.
He knelt on the cold stone floor, one hand braced against the bed frame, the other still pressed to his throat. His breath came in harsh gasps. Three years. Three years of silence, and still his body remembered the wound as if it were fresh. His voice died before it could truly live.
You are broken, the silence whispered. You will always be broken.
He had accepted this. Had made peace with it, or something close to peace. He had his signs now, thanks to her. He had a way to speak that did not require the treacherous vessel of his voice. It should have been enough.
It was not enough.
Because in a se’nnight, Alaric would stand in his great hall and smile that serpent’s smile, and Gareth wanted—God’s blood, how he wanted—to speak. To face his enemy with words as well as steel. To say the things that had festered in his chest for three endless years.
You tried to kill me. You failed. And now I will destroy you.
But the words would not come. Perhaps they never would.
Gareth pushed himself to his feet. His legs were unsteady, his throat burning, but he forced himself to stand. To breathe. To master the weakness that threatened to unmake him.
There was always a battle to be fought. This one, it seemed, he was destined to lose.
Sleep eluded him, as it so often did nowadays.
He found himself at the window, staring out across the moonlit moors toward the dark bulk of Dunharrow Keep in the distance.
Alaric would be there now, sleeping soundly in his fine feather bed, dreaming of conquest and revenge.
The man had always slept well. Even as a young lord, newly come into his inheritance, he had possessed the particular gift of the truly ruthless—the ability to close his eyes at night without being haunted by the faces of those he had wronged.
Gareth envied him that, sometimes. His own nights were crowded with ghosts. But tonight, his thoughts kept sliding away from Alaric. Away from the coming confrontation, the careful plans, the weight of three years’ patience finally bearing fruit.
Tonight, his thoughts kept returning to her.
Elodie.
He shaped her name in his mind, let it settle there like a stone dropped into still water.
She was asleep now, three floors below, in the chamber he had given her.
The chamber with the best light for reading, the warmest hearth, and the softest bed in the castle.
He had told himself these considerations were merely practical—a guest deserved comfort—but he was not so great a fool as to believe his own lies.
He thought of her on the battlements. The way she had stood beside him in the darkness, wrapped in her blanket, talking and talking and talking.
He had not minded. That was the strange thing.
Her voice had washed over him like water over parched earth, and he had drunk it in without realizing how thirsty he had been.
She talked because silence made her feel invisible, she had said. He understood that, in his way. He had chosen silence because words had betrayed him—but she had not chosen her invisibility. It had been thrust upon her by men too blind to see what stood before them.
The Fae Paper. She had told him of it, her voice going brittle at the edges. A paper about fairy folklore and ancient beliefs. She had asked questions that made her colleagues uncomfortable, and they had punished her for it.
He knew something of that. Of asking questions that powerful men did not wish to answer. But it was not her pain that haunted him tonight. It was the other things she had spoken of. The impossible things. The marvels.
She had told him of her world—the world she had fallen from, the world that lay more than eight hundred years hence. He had listened with the skepticism of a man who had seen much and believed little, but her words had painted pictures he could not dismiss.
Carriages that moved without horses, she had said, her hands waving in that way she had when excitement overtook her.
Metal birds that flew through the sky, carrying hundreds of people across oceans in mere hours.
Tiny boxes that held all the knowledge of the world, that let you speak to anyone, anywhere, instantly.
Lights that burned without flame, healers who could mend wounds that would kill a man in this time, machines that washed the clothes and cooked the food and. ..
She had caught herself then, laughing at her own enthusiasm. Sorry. I’m rambling again. You probably think I’m completely mad.
He had not thought her mad. He had thought her miraculous.
And terrifying.
Because if even half of what she described was true—and he found, against all reason, that he believed her—then why would she ever choose to stay?
Greywatch was grey stone and rough wool and the constant threat of violence. Her world had comfort and light and wonders beyond fathoming. Her world had healing. In her world, a man with a ruined throat might speak again. Might be made whole.
What could he possibly offer her that would compare?
Nothing, the darkness whispered. You have nothing. You are nothing. A broken knight in a broken castle, waiting for an enemy who has already won.
Gareth turned from the window. These thoughts served no purpose. He had preparations to make, defenses to shore up, a hundred tasks that required his attention. The king was away on crusade, leaving lords to squabble and plot. Alaric was coming, and the fate of Greywatch hung in the balance.
He could not afford to think about a woman with wild brown hair woven through with copper and gold, and eyes like spring leaves. Could not afford to wonder what it might be like to woo her properly, with sweet words and gentle courtship, the way a knight was meant to win a lady’s heart.
He could not speak sweet words, could barely speak at all.
And yet.
I see you, she had signed to him. Under all the silence and the scars. I see you.
No one had seen him in three years. He had made certain of it, building walls of silence and solitude so high that no one could scale them. And then this impossible woman had tumbled out of the sky, and she had looked at him—truly looked—and somehow seen through to the man beneath.
It was the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to him.
More terrifying than Alaric’s blade at his throat. More terrifying than crawling through the forest with his lifeblood draining into the earth. Because those wounds had healed, after a fashion. The scars remained, but the flesh had knitted itself back together.
If Elodie left—when Elodie left, for surely she would leave, surely she would find her way back to her world of marvels—the wound she left behind would never heal.
Dawn found him in the training yard, driving his body through the familiar patterns of swordwork until his muscles screamed and his mind went blessedly blank.
The household was stirring around him—servants emerging to begin their tasks, guardsmen changing watch, the smell of bread baking drifting from the kitchens.
And there, at the edge of the yard stood Elodie.
She had emerged from the keep, her hair escaping its braid in wild curls around her face—mahogany and bronze and gold catching the early light.
The past few days of sunshine had left their mark on her, freckling her nose and cheeks, and there was colour in her skin that had not been there when she first tumbled out of the forest. She was holding a slice of bread, half-eaten, and watching him with an expression he could not read.
He lowered his sword and turned to face her.
“Don’t stop on my account,” she called across the yard.
“I was rather enjoying the show. Very medieval. Very... swooshy.” She made a vague gesture with her free hand.
“Is that a word? Swooshy? It should be a word. The way you move is very—anyway, don’t mind me, I’ll just stand here and pretend I’m not gawping like a tourist at the Tower of London. ”
Something shifted in his chest. Something warm and entirely unwelcome.
He sheathed his sword and crossed to her, his breath still coming hard from exertion.
Up close, he could see the shadows beneath her eyes—she had not slept well either, it seemed.
The coming meeting with Alaric weighed on her too.
You are awake early, he signed.