I gestured towards her. “That anger will serve you more than the tears.”
As I led her through to the other chamber, she snapped, “You know nothing of my anger.”
I let my civilized mask drop, allowing her to see something of the creature that prowled within me. “No, but you’ll become well acquainted with mine if you repeat a word you overheard in here tonight.”
She blanched. “I didn’t—I wouldn’t?—”
“Good girl.” I patted her on the head and left her to decide whether she’d cry herself to sleep or lie in the dark and stoke her rage.
I raised a brow at Bastian when I returned to our chamber. “I expected you to be on your knees, ready to grovel.”
He squared his shoulders. “I won’t apologize for protecting an innocent, saving her from a fate you should’ve been protected from too. But…I will gladly get on my knees for you anytime…”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BASTIAN
“We’ve been summoned to breakfast with my father,” I said the next morning, holding up a note to show Sigrid. She’d chosen to put on a dark red gown that may as well have been a call to battle. She looked fierce and regal in it, but I also had to wonder if she’d chosen it to better cover any blood she might end up soaked in today.
She’d eschewed the Saxon hairstyles she’d been forced to wear the last few days in favor of a complicated series of braids that merged together into one elaborate large braid that swung from the back of her head. The style left her slender neck bare, but for her collar, and showed off her delicate ears, almost as if she were inviting me to kiss them.
Her stitches had held overnight, and her wound was already healing. Apparently, her faster healing abilities weren’t strictly tied to her berserker because they still seemed to be working.
“Interesting…” she said, glancing at the note, but her tone implied she knew more than she was letting on.
“Do you know what this is about?” I asked Sigrid.
Eleanor sat across the room on the chaise, pretending to focused on her sewing, but she was clearly listening. We couldn’t speak freely in front of her.
Sigrid’s expression was serious, but amusement lurked just beneath the surface. “Only one way to find out.”
I looked at Eleanor again. “Eleanor, we have no choice but to answer his summons. Bar the door when we leave, and don’t answer it for anyone but us. If the king is marrying you off, it’ll be to a noble, and it would be a slight for my father not to attend, no matter how hasty the ceremony was. If he’s dining with us, it’s unlikely this is when they mean to do it.”
She nodded, but her expression was uncertain.
Sigrid strode towards her, and Eleanor cowered in her chair, but Sigrid only offered her a knife, held by the blade with the handle towards Eleanor. “Do you remember how to hold it properly?”
Eleanor looked conflicted, but she eventually nodded again, holding it up the way Sigrid had shown her.
Sigrid nodded in approval. “If it comes to it, you fight like hell. Go for their soft parts—they won’t see it coming because they underestimate you.”
It was the closest thing to a compliment I’d seen Sigrid give anyone since we’d been here. She bowed her head at Eleanor briefly, her matter-of-fact manner making it seem as though she thought Eleanor perfectly capable of what she was suggesting.
To my surprise, Eleanor tucked the knife into the skirts of her lavender gown and begrudgingly said, “Thank you.”
I wasn’t truly worried until Sigrid held out her arm to me and said, “Shall we?”
She willingly offered to take my arm. What were we about to walk into?
Had Sigrid done something? Had my father?
I had no choice but to steel myself, fighting back the wave of boyhood fears that assailed me with any summons from my father. Sigrid looped her arm through mine, letting her hand restatop my forearm, and simply feeling her strength steadied me to face whatever lay ahead.
“Something’s amiss.”Sigrid said it with the same absolute calm with which she might have commented on a dropped napkin. She was subtly surveying the room, even more alert than usual, but she looked at ease as she raised a steady spoon to her mouth and ate some soup.
We’d been led to my father’s private dining hall, where he entertained more privately than in the Great Hall. A long table stretched almost the entire length of the room, and he’d sat us at almost the opposite end from him.
I couldn’t immediately spot what had spooked her, but as I forced myself to lift some soup to my mouth as well, I noticed the guard had been doubled and the door was barred. My father was sitting with his hands folded together on the table, watching us closely.
