Chapter Five
Three months later
Lycus drank down a second tankard of ale and ordered another chicken.
The barkeep eyed him warily, as if expecting The Wolf to leap over the polished wooden bar and attack him.
Growling under his breath, Lycus pulled out extra coin to tip the man just enough to placate him enough so his ale wouldn’t be spilled from shaky hands.
After all, it wasn’t his fault that Lycus was in a fouler mood than usual.
These past few weeks had been unbearable.
And while he’d successfully negotiated a reprieve from guarding the Goshawk woman—his argument being that she’d lose fear of him if he spent hours with her every day—he still was forced to stand with the noble guard whenever Lady Kestrel or Lord Cregan were brought to the council hall for another long bout of questioning.
And sometimes he was summoned to attend the interrogations of various members of the Goshawk household.
Lycus was exhausted and the investigation still had no end in sight.
Sir Gerard and Lord Mormont had returned from their inspection of Raptor’s Roost two months ago.
They’d found no evidence of other traitors remaining at the small estate.
Vargus’s spies backed up that conclusion.
Lycus expected Gerard to be disappointed that he didn’t have the pleasure of dragging in more chained prisoners to torment.
Instead, Lord Aylmer’s heir and the commander of the noble guard seemed to be in high spirits, no longer complaining about the delays in Lord Cregan’s sentencing and execution.
The two exchanged covert glances and whispers that immediately raised Lycus’s hackles.
Especially when after Gerard didn’t fly into a rage when informed that Lord Aylmer had all but rescinded Gerard’s wishes for Lycus to be Lady Kestrel’s dungeon guard. Instead, he clapped his hand on Lycus’s shoulder with a cheery grin.
“Wise reasoning, Dog. We can’t have her getting used to your horrifying face. We must keep her terrified of you.”
Lycus had ground his teeth. He hated that pet name. A wolf was not a dog. Still, he managed an agreeable nod. “And I must keep up my practice on the field. I’m not any good to His Lordship if my skills are dulled.”
But he was still called at random to look in on Lady Kestrel, sometimes alone, other times to stand behind Sir Gerard as he tormented her with insults and promises to present her with her own father’s severed head.
Disgust churned his gut, not just at the absolute lowness of the future Lord of Wurrakia bullying a weak and likely innocent woman who had no power to fight back or even run away.
And the woman… fates , the woman’s wounded eyes, swimming with tears, revealed everything to the world.
She’d truly believed Gerard had loved her despite their betrothal having been arranged by their fathers and only meeting him once.
She’d believed in silly romantic songs and stories.
And despite these illusions having been shattered the day of her arrest, she’d somehow clung to some faint hope that the knight who’d carried her favor the day Mephistopheles attacked due to her father’s conspiring, had a scrap of affection left for her.
By Gerard’s third visit, that hope had died, and a wraith stood behind those bars.
At some point, someone had bestowed some semblance of mercy on her and given her a new dress to wear, though the rough spun linen garment was hardly better than sackcloth.
Perhaps that wasn’t mercy after all, but another contribution to her torment.
And yet, after three months in a dark, damp cell, Kestrel Goshawk still looked beautiful, which irritated Lycus in a way he couldn’t understand.
Maybe it was Gerard’s speculations to make her into his mistress if she was judged innocent of treason, or his threats to sell her body to his men at arms if she was proven guilty.
Or maybe it was seeing such stark proof that beauty could be a weakness as easily as a strength.
Something he, in his lifetime of ugliness, had never realized.
For if Kestrel was ugly, there would have been no betrothal and Gerard wouldn’t care about or notice her enough to want to make her suffer further than necessary. And maybe Lycus wouldn’t feel so compelled to look at her so often.
This last visit to the dungeons had been cut short when a page shouted that the City Watch needed help capturing a murderer who’d stabbed a man in a tavern brawl.
Lycus had been with the Watch for ___ years before his promotion Noble Enforcer and often helped them in apprehending criminals.
One look at his hideous face usually sent wrongdoers fleeing straight into the arms of the watchmen.
Though he’d been called in late, he was the one to sniff out the bastard’s hidey-hole and dragged him out by the scruff of his shirt, and received a knife wound in the thigh for the effort.
Lycus kept the knife. One could always use a good blade.
He staunched the bleeding with a whispered spell while the captain of the watch chained up the prisoner.
Not in a hurry to return to the castle, Lycus went to one of his preferred taverns for supper and a drink or three.
Now, as he tore into the second chicken a little more slowly and took the time to taste his ale, Lycus’s anger at the situation with the Goshawk woman faded back to mere annoyance.
Yes, if he hadn’t been ordered by Gerard to be down in the dungeons, he may have gotten to the murderer in time to disarm him instead of getting stabbed.
However, perhaps he could use this incident to his advantage.