2. The Lord’s Shadow
II
THE LORD’S SHADOW
He had escorted four brides to Thornwyck, but none had looked back the way this one did. She knew what awaited her, and still she had entered the viper’s den, a sacrifice for her people.
Selfless, just like Astrid—his love, his wife, the mother of his son.
It had been almost seven years since Lord Henry spilled Astrid’s blood on the great hall’s floor, punishment for his disobedience.
He should have let the lord kill his son and fallen on his sword.
Should have carried Astrid’s spirit—and their boy’s—into Helheim, the cold afterlife that awaited the dishonored dead.
But the moment he saw Astrid fall—her white undergown blooming red from the inside—his heart shattered.
He dropped to his knees in surrender. Bartered his soul.
Swallowed his Norseman bloodline, his pride.
His name had been different once: Erik Bjornsson.
Now, he was Commander of the Guard, Payen de Montfort—the lord’s most trusted blade and shadow. A good, feared Norman name—one given to him by Lord Henry, carved into Thornwyck’s war records and burned into the minds of conquered men.
The name Payen was not lost on him—a variant of “pagan.” A feared name, but also a name to mock his Norseman’s faith.
But he had accepted it.
“Be good to my son, and I will be good to you.”
That had been the deal.
The lord had kept it thus far.
His boy Ragnar was safe, fed, tutored by Father Osbert—as were the noble boys—guarded, and visited often in his little room in the keep’s attic. But Henry never failed to remind him what would happen should his obedience waver.
His name. His homeland. His faith. His pride. All of it: gone.
The cost was everything.
And now he rode beside the carriage bearing the lord’s fifth bride—another woman for the tyrant to wed, humiliate, break, and discard.
Seren ferch Madoc.
She was nine years his junior, and he doubted she would live to see even two more birthdays.
He told himself not to look back at the girl in the covered wagon.
Not at her hands, trembling in her lap. Not at her face—high-cheeked, proud-jawed, with hair black as river stone and eyes the dark gold of dying autumn leaves.
She wore the kind of beauty forged in hardship and bore the wildness of the Welsh Marches in her very posture—straight-backed, unbent.
Even draped in noble green, she looked like she belonged in a war camp, not a lord’s bed.
She was striking, yes. But it was not her face that disturbed him.
It was the way she looked at him. As if she were searching for something human, someone familiar to hold onto.
It wasn’t him.
Four brides before her had kept their heads bowed, silent in fear. Not one had met his gaze for long. Not one had dared to ask about the man she was about to marry.
Seren would. He could feel it. The way her gaze lingered through the shifting drapes of leather and wind, observing, and hiding her mind’s strategies and her heart’s motivations.
Still, he tried to care for her as little as he had cared for the others.
And yet, she had walked to the wagon as if to a pyre, her people laying swords at her feet like offerings to a grave. No tears. No trembling lip. Only fire. Only resolve.
There was something in that: something sacred, dangerous, admirable, honorable, even.
He rode ahead for a time, wanting distance, needing it.
The wind shifted. Leaves whispered along the wooded path where the men-at-arms paused to water the horses. He dismounted in silence, dusting his gloved palm against the saddle.
Behind him, the wagon’s flap rustled.
He glanced at her, though he didn’t need to turn to know she was leaving the wagon.
The late-evening sunlight cast her face in an angelic light if he believed in such creatures. Her white undergown peeked out from her deep emerald overdress.
Just like Astrid had once stepped into the lord’s hall—defiant in her silence, glowing like frost beneath torchlight, Seren stood framed by the wagon’s canvas, one hand clutching the wooden edge, the other resting at her side.
Her flower crown had wilted. Her linen hem was dark with mud.
The ornate bronze cross swayed over her chest as she stepped down from the wagon.
He closed his eyes, hating himself for looking—then turned his attention back to the horse. His mother had told him wilted bridal crowns meant one of two outcomes for the bride: bad luck or early widowhood. He hoped, for Seren’s sake, it was the latter. Bad luck could only mean death.
She approached him. Her movement was deliberate, seeking him out. That would eventually be her fatal mistake, as it was with the others.
When she spoke, it was barely above a whisper as if afraid someone might hear. And she was right to be fearful.
“Commander de Montfort, is it true?” she asked, her voice, though low, was firm and direct. “That he’s had four wives?”
He didn’t answer right away. His jaw flexed, then unclenched.
“Yes.”
She extended her hand against the young five-year-old stallion’s mane as it drank from the ravine.
Viggo never let a stranger touch him. But she cooed at the beast, and he let her stroke his mane.
The corner of Payen’s mouth twitched. Maybe she could tame the beast that was Lord de Thornwyck as well.
Her whisper came again, not soft but assertive. “And his wives . . . They are all . . . ?”
“Gone.” The word cut from his throat.
The pause between them pulled like a taut bowstring.
“Why?” she asked and looked up at him.
He hesitated.
Her eyes weren’t pleading. Not yet, anyway.
But they held that same quiet searching he’d seen in others before the lord broke them.
If he answered wrong, if she twisted his words—if she whispered them into Henry’s ear to gain favor—the result would be swift.
The lord’s justice was rarely clean, and Ragnar would suffer for it.
Still, there was no cunning in her expression. Only a grave, unnerving calm. It didn’t appear she was baiting him. She wanted the truth because no one else would give it to her.
“Because,” he said finally. “They longed for kindness. For protection. Escape.”
“I see,” she said, low. Her fingers stroked Viggo’s mane again. “Did they try to flee, then?”
“No.” His voice was flat. He should have left it at that. “They . . . proved disloyal.”
He scanned the knights. All but a few respected him as a warrior, but they all hated his lineage.
The few who wished him dead were Master de Bramber and Captain de Léry.
Geoffrey de Bramber glanced his way. Payen had been better than Geoffrey, so Henry took the nobleman’s prestigious rank of Commander and gave it to Payen and reduced Geoffrey to second-in-command, Master-at-Arms. Made him report to Payen, a nobody, a foreigner, with no title and no land.
Jovin de Léry, the third-in-command, whispered to Geoffrey as they both watched Seren speak in hushed tones to Payen. When Jovin’s aunt had fallen from grace, Henry ordered her dead, and Payen obeyed.
It wasn’t good that Seren was spending so much time alone with him. Payen always wondered when those two would finally get what they wanted—him dead, rank returned, and revenge satiated.
He gestured back toward the wagon. They needed to get moving.
“And you?” she asked, quieter now. “Did you eliminate Lord Henry’s wives? Did you help them?”
He peered down at her. He weighed the risk of honesty like a blade in his hand. Too sharp, and it might turn on him. Too soft, and she would trust him—and that could get her killed.
Her hands clasped at her waist, knuckles pale. Her lips pressed tight, but she did not beg. She did not tremble. She asked him to tell her what sort of man stood before her, and she waited, with no scheming in her eyes.
He scanned the men and again nodded her to her wagon.
“I did as I was ordered,” he said, finally. “As I always do.”
Her eyes narrowed, but not in judgment. It seemed she was still trying to understand him. He shouldn’t have looked at her through the wagon’s drapes. She probably wondered what man could be known for such brutality and look upon a woman fated for misery with such sorrow.
He hated that.
“What does Lord Henry require in a wife so that I may not be eliminated?”
He was right. She was the one to ask. Smart girl. Maybe she would survive.
“You will be expected to be loyal,” he said after a moment, deciding to give her a few warnings. “Above all else. Pious. Submissive. Seen, not heard. Grateful.”
He walked her back to the wagon.
“That is not how it is with the Welsh,” she said softly.
“No,” he agreed. Norse women were not quiet or submissive either, and Lord Henry was all too happy to cut down Astrid when Payen disobeyed. “But in Thornwyck, it will mean the difference between life and death.”
She flinched, just slightly. The drape was open to let in the evening’s cool air. He helped her inside before he mounted his horse.
Viggo, the horse who let no one but his rider and handler touch him, swung his head into the wagon and let Seren stroke his face. Payen jerked the reins, making the stubborn horse obey and stay in line.
The leather reins bit into his palm. Fitting, he thought, for a man punished with obedience.
He debated what else to tell her, weighing the cost of honesty again. If she were one to survive, he’d give her enough to have a fighting chance. He’d give her one last warning before he felt the men would report the conversation to Henry.
“Mortlande honors loyalty, not love. Piety, not freedom.” He looked forward, not at her. “If you do anything, do it in the name of your God. And pray Father Osbert agrees.”
The wind stirred the leaves again—a raven called in the trees above them.
Then, with his focus still on the path ahead, he said it:
“Trust no one, milady.”
He swallowed the lump in his throat, for the truth it was.
“Not even me . . . or Father Osbert.”
He heard her shift beside him. A rustle of fabric. A pause.
“Then I will trust the Lord God,” she said.
He nodded, almost to himself.
“That is the safest choice of all,” he turned and whispered to her.
He clicked the reins, urging his horse forward—but something about her lingered in his mind.
He was certain it was her strong, yet sultry voice.
But maybe it was her calm exterior that hid what he assumed was dread and sorrow.
Perhaps, her refusal to break beneath the weight she carried, instead gathering information to make decisions that would help her survive.
The other brides had wept, likely trying to obtain the lord’s sympathy, but Lord Henry bestowed no mercy, just as Henry’s father had not.
He told himself Seren would fall, just as the others had, that the lord would see to it.
But a small, unwelcome desire stirred beneath the armor of his resolve.
Maybe this girl would last.
And that frightened him most of all.