24. A Woman’s Tale
SOUNDTRACK: Runaway by Steve Howie
~ VOSKI ~
Grace made a frustrated little growl that would have been adorable if my heart wasn’t threatening to pound out of my chest. I saw the shadows in her gaze a moment before she blinked and faced forward.
“You don’t want to trust me,” she muttered, shaking her head.
“That… isn’t entirely true.”
She scoffed. “I may be innocent in many ways, Voski, but I am not an idiot. I have navigated the hostile waters of the court for my entire life. No matter what you may think of their empty-headed banter in the ballroom, those people eat subterfuge for breakfast. It is impossible to deceive them without honed skill. And equally impossible not to be deceived by them unless a soul is very perceptive.” She hesitated, then glanced at me over her shoulder one more time before sighing.
“And I also know the hunted look of a man in a conversation he wishes to leave, with a woman he would rather avoid.”
Those shadows again. And this time I felt the pang in her.
Shit.
“You misread—”
“Don’t lie to me,” she sighed. “I’m not lying to you. At least give me that civility.”
“I am,” I said through my teeth. She went still, but didn’t face me again.
My chest pinched in an echo of the pain she felt, and for a flash, my anger flared—why was it my responsibility to carry her pains as well?
But I recognized the thought for the selfish petulance that it was, and pushed it away.
‘Perhaps, offering her a small truth would ease the sliver from your skin?’ Kham interrupted my thoughts.
‘And which piece of my truth would you like me to offer without placing others at risk—including you?’
Kham remained quiet, but not chastened. In fact, he felt amused.
Prick.
‘I love you, too.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Have I mentioned that her presence seems to have reverted your heart and mind to childhood? Younger, even, than when we met. Will I need to wipe your bottom for you soon?’
‘Shut. Up.’
But he only crowed—and was joined by his mate. Their chirping, amused calls making me hunch.
Between my arms, Grace sighed and I was reminded why we’d gotten to this point.
“I told you that I saw you in the walls,” I sighed.
“Yes. Where you were, also.”
“For the purposes of protecting others,” I started patiently—and pointedly—but she did turn to look at me then.
“As was I!”
I tipped my head, letting my brows rise with skepticism. “What protection, exactly, did you believe you could offer Ruin if you’d discovered him in his quarters?”
“I was looking for Bren,” she repeated. I was relieved to see the fire returning to her gaze, rather than those dark shadows.
“They obviously had some kind of history. I wasn’t sure if he’d hurt her and Donavyn went looking for her, or if…
I don’t know! But I know people in the castle.
Powerful people. If I’d found her, I would have made sure she was safe and where she wanted to be.
And if she wasn’t, I would have brought my influence to bear.
I may not have your Furyknight strength and skill.
But I am not without weapons of my own.”
“Terrifying, I’m sure,” I muttered, then regretted the words immediately when she tensed. I slumped. “That was unnecessary. Please forget that I said it.”
She shrugged, but shook her head slowly.
“Grace,” I said quietly, trying to keep my eyes off that triangle of delicate skin at the corner of her jaw.
“My point is only to ask you to see this from my view: I saw you in subterfuge. Not obscuring words—obscuring your presence. And doing so skillfully. Am I foolish to believe that you are capable of also obscuring your true motive?”
“I didn’t choose to be Chosen—though I would have!” she insisted. “I didn’t follow you knowing Koa would find me. I was looking for Bren. Making certain she was safe!”
“You told me you were looking for adventure.”
“I only meant that following you was… Well, it wasn’t boring. I could do something good with the little time I had left, and also see things I might not otherwise have seen.”
“Like the location of a dear friend and colleague of mine who left without informing you of her whereabouts—but you would uncover it anyway?”
“If she was unsafe? Yes!”
Her answer was effusive and unashamed. And precisely what I would have said in the same circumstances.
But I was a man. And a soldier. And Bren’s superior officer.
Not a noblewoman who danced in a gown in the evening, then disguised herself in the morning and spied on those she’d befriended the night before.
‘That is precisely what you do on mission, as it happens,’ Kham pointed out.
‘To my enemies!’
‘And to measure those whose motives you don’t yet know. Koa is new to humans, but insists she is being truthful. She knows Grace’s heart—as I sense yours. There is no shadow there.’
Except the shadow of hurt, that voice in my head insisted.
I swallowed. “The dragons believe you’re telling the truth,” I admitted.
“Do you?”
I avoided the question. “You must see that it would be unwise for me to reveal anything about anyone I’m close to before you’ve become one of us?
A caution I have that isn’t unique to you.
” She opened her mouth, but I hurried on before she could interrupt me.
“If you’re accustomed to navigating the subtleties of the high classes, you must see how I could be accused of betraying those I’m sworn to protect if I simply reveal everything I know before you’ve proven your very new loyalties. ”
She took a moment to consider that. “Would you have betrayed your dragon in the first days?” she asked.
That was a blade that cut to the heart of all of this. Because she knew, as did I, that once that bond was forged, hurting one’s dragon was akin to hurting oneself.
“No.”
“Neither will I,” she said, though without the ring of triumph I would have given to the same sentiment, if our roles had been reversed.
I chewed on that for a moment, surprised when Kham didn’t press me further. “I don’t know any nobles who know how to hunt, or spy, unless they were trained by someone—for nefarious purposes.”
“Is that why you’re so skilled? Nefarious purposes?” she asked pointedly, with another glance over her shoulder.
“My enemies would say so.” I hadn’t intended to give the words any heat, but she shivered. “So?”
She frowned. “So, what?”
“Tell me how you learned those skills? How did you end up in the secret passages of the castle? Even if you were truly looking for Bren, finding those and using them properly—being able to trail me into the forest for hours without my knowledge—it all points to a woman who is not what she appears to be.”
“And what is it, precisely, that I appear to be?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes,” she said through gritted teeth.
“A woman of skill and cunning who is very, very good at playing the innocent maiden.”
Apparently she hadn’t expected that, because her eyes went round and she craned her head around to look at me again. “You think I’m skilled?”
I frowned. “I’ve said that since the first moment—I just asked you how you came to be skilled.
I am not blowing air up your skirts, Grace.
No one follows me without my senses prickling.
It’s a God-given gift. The fact that I stumbled upon you in the castle without sensing you there was startling enough.
For you to follow me? I half-believe the Creator has removed my gifts from me,” I muttered.
She rolled her eyes. “It must be that your expertise has been removed? It couldn’t possibly be that mine exceeded it?”
“No,” I said with a shrug, because it was true. “I have a gift, Grace.”
“Well, so do I, I suppose.”
“Who trained you?”
“No one. I practiced. For over ten years. For the first two or three years I kept being caught. I learned how to remain quiet. I stole clothing that would help.”
“You must have practiced a great deal,” I muttered.
But she took it as a true query. “Yes, I did. I have always struggled with the restrictions on my life. As a child I was constantly attended, first by a nanny, then tutors. And when I came of age, my father kept guards. I started hiding in the house when I was quite young, at first just to be away from the nanny. But when I was twelve, I started sneaking out to ride my horse at night, without a guard. I was often caught, but I kept trying. Eluding the servants, the guards, the stablehands… over time, I grew good at it. I stopped being caught, and my parents thought I had stopped the attempts. But I couldn’t.
Even when nothing bad happened, being anywhere without someone else’s eyes on me helps me breathe. ”
God, I knew that feeling, and I hated that compassion swelled in my chest at her words.
Though, likely not for the same reasons, I, too, had to flee the constant presence of others.
If I didn’t get a few hours away from my brothers—even the ones I trusted—most days, my skin began to itch.
And if it was days between being in solitude, I was forced to sleep away from the barracks just to be able to rest.
Yet, while I knew what had brought me to the point of needing solitude, why would a coddled, prized woman feel that way?
As if she heard my thought, she continued, frowning. At first she stared at Koa, but the longer she spoke, the more distant her gaze became.
“At thirteen, women of my parents’ class are expected to begin preparations for becoming a wife to a noble, and running an estate,” she said, her nose wrinkled in distaste.
“If they’d allowed me to study the breeding programs and management of the land, I might have settled.
But those aren’t women’s tasks. No. Instead, menus,” she said with a scoff.
“Flower arrangements. Planning meals. Learning to interview a tutor—all skills that are necessary, I know. But, it was nothing but sitting, speaking quietly, directing others to action when I just wanted to move. The only active pastime I was allowed was horsemanship. So, I spent every hour on horseback I was able. But the older I grew—and especially when I reached marriageable age—the less the men around me showed an interest in a woman who could outrun and outjump them.” She blinked, then glanced warily at me once more.
“On horseback,” she emphasized. “I do not pretend to be an athlete. But I am strong, and unafraid. I always prayed to find a man who was as deeply driven to ride as I was. Yet, the men I met weren’t amused when I was able to make good on the bet to beat them back to the stables.
They stopped wanting to ride with me.” She stopped, chewing her lip.
“Why are men like that?” she asked. “Why does it burrow under your skin to be challenged by a woman? Because I watched the men jest with each other, and laugh when one of their friends bettered them, and merely challenge them to another attempt on a later day! But if I did it… Well. You can imagine, I’m sure. ”
“I can,” I admitted, though I also fought a smile at the picture she painted. My squad-brother, Jhoare, also liked to ride horses before he was Chosen. I wondered if she would have outjumped him?
I would have paid money to see it if she could.
“You see! You think it’s funny—you’re thinking about beating another man, aren’t you?”
“Actually, I was thinking about you beating a friend of mine,” I said honestly.
That surprised her. “Oh… well. Yes.” I watched her, giving her space to finish the tale, and was relieved when she did. “In any case, it’s become obvious in recent months that my chances for making a match with any of the heirs were dwindling to nothing.”
“So, your parents chose a man for you? A peer of your father’s?” I asked, confident that I’d seen the situation clearly.
She gave me a curious look, but nodded. “I ride when I can. I get out whenever possible. I am not a fighter. I am a sneak, but to protect myself, not to attack others. Being in Fyrehold without my parents was a boon. A gift. A freedom they allowed me as a balm against the coming prison of a marriage I didn’t want,” she said, lifting her chin as if she resisted shame.
“It wasn’t right of me to disappear, and I do regret the worry I’ve caused.
But this? Koa? Flying?” She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
“I suppose I am selfish. Because I won’t give it up.
Now that I have had a taste of true freedom, I won’t go back.
And if they try, if they take me, I’ll escape at the first opportunity that presents itself. ”
Small points of color rose in her pale cheeks, and a surge of arousal smacked me in the belly, like I’d been punched. I had to look away from her, and then the bite my tongue.
Her expressed feelings were far more familiar than I would have expected to find in a noblewoman of her status. But even as I empathized with her, a cold thought struck me.
Even if every word she said was true. Even if her heart was pure—and even if Vosgaarde hadn’t been thrown into civil war… perhaps even more so then. What would happen when she was eventually uncovered?
People like her parents didn’t just throw up their hands and decide their daughter had disappeared and there was nothing that could be done.
Undoubtedly, men like her betrothed, didn’t take kindly to losing a pretty, strong, young wife.
So, what would happen when, one day, word of her appearance in Vosgaarde made it to the right ears?
Would they blame me? Say I’d kidnapped her?
Would she put those skills of obfuscation into practice and use me as a scapegoat?
How would I ever prove my innocence?
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before I removed you from Fyrehold?” I snapped. “What you describe is a powerful father, a powerful fiancé, both of them even more powerfully connected.”
Her brows pinched over her nose. “Yes, but—”
“And while I concede that I would also flee that kind of control, the fact that you’ve run without informing me means that now, whenever you’re discovered, everyone is going to look straight at me for an explanation.”
Her expression faltered. “If that were ever to happen, I would tell them the truth—”
“Would you?”
“Yes!”
“And would they believe you?”
“Of course! How else—”
“You said you’ve become very good. That they no longer think you sneak out, correct?
They trusted you to go to Fyrehold alone.
They didn’t expect you to flee. You’ve clearly done an admirable job of convincing everyone—as I was—that you were nothing but a flighty, young noblewoman.
And if they believe that, who do you think they will believe is truly behind your ability to escape the kingdom? ”
Her throat bobbed. “I don’t deny that there would be questions, but—”
“But nothing, Grace. You’ve tied a millstone around my neck and told me to swim on without a care,” I growled. “You tell me to trust you, and feed me a story of your innocence, yet obscure the truth long enough that I cannot correct it without placing myself in the path of blame.”
“I wasn’t even thinking of you when—”
“That’s exactly my point!”
I cursed myself when she flinched.
Both the dragons groaned.