He turned his head back toward the woman. “Now, tell me tru—” He hadn’t finished the order before he saw a flash of movement from beneath that black cloak, a blur of upward motion, and then felt a stabbing pain explode in the muscles of his right forearm, causing his hand to flex open and his sword to clatter to the stones.
The woman jerked her handled weapon free of his flesh and then turned with a swirl of black to dash into the shadows past the keep, where the stairs to the inner ward leaned.
Constantine recovered quickly, swooping to pick up his sword and giving chase into the growing night. He could hear the woman’s slight scraping footfalls over the uneven stone, and whereas Constantine still knew and remembered every corner and inch of the Benningsgate in his memories, the reality of the place since it had been abandoned thwarted him with its cants and crumbling stone. The woman ahead of him, however, must have been intimately familiar with the Benningsgate of the present, for she seemed to fly from Constantine’s reach with all the fleetness of a forest deer.
But he had been right that she was weak, frail, for when he gave chase in the open field of the ward, her strength flagged and each loping stride brought him closer to the flapping tail of her cloak. She glanced over her shoulder twice, and the second time her hood fell back, revealing a halo of choppy black locks. She must have known that in another moment he would reach out and seize her, for she suddenly stopped and spun around with a fierce cry, swinging her crude weapon in a wide arc toward Constantine’s middle.
He arched his body back, but whatever sharp implement she’d impaled on the short handle snagged the wide woven fabric of his tunic and caught the skin of his ribs. He hissed as he felt it slice him but in the same moment brought the butt of his hilt down upon the woman’s forearm, causing her to shriek in pain and the weapon to fly off into the night-soaked weeds.
Constantine didn’t wait to see if she would produce other hidden armaments from her raggedy costume, stepping forward and taking her feet from beneath her, his left hand already at her throat as he followed her down to the ground. He pinned her legs with his own, held her arms close to her sides as he gripped her narrow neck just below her jaw.
Her breaths whistled in and out of her nostrils even as Constantine’s own chest heaved, but she didn’t cry out again, didn’t beg him for mercy this time.
“Who are you?” he growled.
He flinched as the hot wad of saliva found his eye, and in the next instant the woman’s forehead shot toward him, busting his nose. He dropped his sword as she thrashed and bucked beneath him and nearly squirmed free, but Constantine jerked her aright once more, feeling warm blood trickling down his chin. He drew back his right hand and struck her across the face.
The next moment found him effectively blinded as the handful of dirt and rubble she threw at him found its mark in his eyes, and then her knee raised beneath him and drove his vulnerable manhood into his stomach. Constantine gasped and curled into himself as the woman bucked free, but even in his sickening agony, he remembered his sword laying on the ground behind them.
Constantine fell sideways, reaching for the weapon even as the woman dove for it. His hand curled around her arm and jerked her backward; her small, bony fist found his throat. He yanked her again, pushed her behind him as her feet continued to kick out into his ribs, his flank, his left kidney.
Constantine wondered if anything short of death would stop this woman.
He finally felt his fingers curl around the hilt of his sword and he gained one knee as he swung it around to point it at the woman who was now also kneeling on the ground. She stopped her lunge toward him and wobbled for a moment. They each gained their feet as if mirror images, their eyes never leaving one another.
She spat into the weeds and then brought the tail of her cloak up to press it to her mouth. After a moment she held it before her face and glanced down with a grimace.
“Bastard,” she muttered and then looked up at Constantine as the moon peeked out from behind a cloud, its pale light glancing off the woman’s sharp jawline, the flipped up ends of her strangely cropped hair, the dark slant of her eyebrows.
Constantine stared at the woman, the moonlight revealing such a specter of his long-ago, happy past here in this haunted field of despair.
“Lady Theodora?” he said, the tip of his sword wobbling.
The woman stilled, her eyes widening the slightest bit as her already swollen lips parted. Her fine brows raised above features much too sharp to belong to the only child of Benningsgate Castle’s neighboring lord, but too remarkable to be owned by any other.
“At last,” she whispered and then looked down at the bloodied hem of her cloak as if to confirm it. Her gaze found Constantine’s again. “I’ve gone mad at last.You’re dead.”
He shook his head, his thoughts loud and buzzing like a hive of bees. “What are you doing here?” And then, through the deafening hum, the recollection of her name fought its way through the confusion of Constantine’s mind.
. . . celebrate the installation of Lord Glayer Felsteppe as Earl of Rosemont, as well as his marriage to our beloved Lady Theodora while on their travels to that Holy City of Jerusalem . . .
Theodora Rosemont began to chuckle, drawing Constantine’s attention back to the present. Her laughter deepened and she brought her fingertips to her mouth again. “What am I doing here?” Her hands raised up to cover the ghastly black hollows around her eyes even as her shrill laughter echoed in the ward. “WhatamI doing here?” She dropped her hands to her sides and stared at him, her shoulders still hitching with senseless mirth. “I’m here because I’m dead, too. Benningsgate is the perfect place for those who have lost their lives through unimaginable tragedy, wouldn’t you agree? You must, else you wouldn’t be here.”
Constantine’s heart flinched but still held his sword pointed at Lady Theodora; what had they called her all those years ago?
“Dori,” he remembered aloud without meaning to.
The name hung between them, and it was as if his speaking it broke whatever spell of desperation and madness gripped the broken woman before him.
Her face went slack, her eyes—black in the night of the ward—empty. “You’re too late,” she accused, and her voice was so full of bitterness, of resentment, that Constantine felt she was holding him liable for her trials.
What did she mean? That Constantine was too late to save Christian, Patrice? Too late to prevent the destruction of Benningsgate? Too late to stop the marriage of the daughter of a noble ally to his own greatest enemy?
“I know,” he answered. She continued to stare at him and so he aired his own grievance against her. “You married Glayer Felsteppe.”
Theodora nodded.
“Are you . . . living here? At Benningsgate?”
