Her father kept intently studying the hyssop stem, all but announcing his guilt, his horrifying brutality — and Gwyn felt the disbelief surging in her chest, flashing behind her eyes. “And what if those womendon’tagree to testify, Father?” she shouted. “What if they don’twantto tell everyone they know that they made a stupid mistake, and bedded anorc?”
Her father grimaced again, waving his hand between them. “Quiet down, Gwynnie,” he said. “We’re sure the prospect of testifying will be enough to encourage those women to choose the…solutionsinstead. Otherwise…”
He shrugged, a casual, uncaring movement meant to cast those women to the wolves, to those in their communities who would devour them,destroythem, over a single foolish lapse of judgement. And Gwyn’s legs suddenly couldn’t seem to hold her up anymore, and she sank heavily down onto the wooden chair behind her, dragging her trembling hands through her hair.
Her father was essentiallycoercingthe realm’s women into terminating the orcs’ offspring. Under the threat of making them publicly confess their intimate relations with an orc, no doubt before everyone they knew. Before their employers, their families, possibly theirhusbands.
And while Gwyn willingly supported the women who wanted to end their orc-induced pregnancies — and while they usually comprised the majority of those she helped — she’d also encountered a surprising number of women whohadn’twanted that. Women who were far more terrified for their own lives, for their health birthing the orcs’ huge sons. Women who were willing to carry their offspring to term, if only they had the support and safety to do so. Women who needed the resources to run, or to hide their pregnancy’s true nature from those around them.
Gwyn herself had never yet assisted with such a birth, but again, her mentors had whispered of astonishing tales. Tales of delivering the child, and then loudly proclaiming some fatal deformity or disease, and then leaving it out in the darkness. Tales of tiny wails fading into the distance, as their huge, hulking fathers carried them away to Orc Mountain.
They were dark stories, and even darker decisions for these desperate women to have to make, with devastating ramifications on the rest of their entirelives. And now Gwyn’s selfish, bumbling lord father was going to throw himself into the midst of all that? With public trials, and blackmail, and what were essentially forcedterminations?! All, surely, as another ill-conceived attempt at warring against the orcs?!
“That,” Gwyn said, once she’d somehow found her voice again, “isvile, Father. It isabhorrent. It is quite possibly the mostdisgustingthing you’ve ever done, and you must know, there is averylong list of possibilities in strong contention for that prize!”
Lord Anton winced, casting a furtive glance around at the apartment’s too-close walls. “Settle down, Gwynnie,” he said, moistening his lips with his tongue. “Look, it’ll help those fool women in the end, all right? We’ll likely even offer the termination service at a reduced cost. What’s more, the rest of the Council is neck-deep in plans for this now, and it’ll make no difference now whether if I cry off or not. My hands are tied.”
Gwyn stared at him with a visceral, rapidly rising loathing, and she belatedly leapt to her tingling feet, and stalked over to her pot of candlewood. It was her worst plant to harvest, with tall spiky canes and fiendishly sharp barbs, and she almost wept at the relief of its painful spines pricking her fingers. Strong enough to drag her back from the edge of the all-consuming rage, from the desperate urge to shove a fistful of deadly wolfsbane into her father’s wet, slack, lying mouth.
“This conversation isover, Father,” she hissed, without looking over her shoulder. “And we willnotbe speaking again, until you find a way to stop this vile new law from proceeding. I mean that.”
Lord Anton gave a resigned-sounding huff behind her, and she could hear him ponderously rising to his feet, and then accidentally kicking over a nearby pot, no doubt her priceless corncockle. “Now, now, Gwynnie,” he said. “Don’t be like that. You know what those orcs are. I’m only doing my job. Protecting my people. Protecting women likeyou, when you take it into your silly heads to abandon yourhome, your ownfamily, so you can go live next to that damned dangerous mountain!”
Gwyn couldn’t deny the earnest pleading in his familiar voice — or even worse, her own reaction to it. The way her shoulders dropped, her stomach sinking, her fingers twitching against the candlewood’s spines. And when she felt her father’s heavy hand settle on her shoulder, she couldn’t even seem to move, or tell him to get out, or justlistento her for once in his life, or any of the other dozen things she should very well have said.
“You know you’re my favourite girl, Gwynnie, even if we don’t always see eye to eye,” he said, and it sounded like he meant that, too. “I don’t want to lose you to those vicious orcs, all right? I wouldn’t want any father to have to face that, or to have to watch his daughter bear a deadly orcspawn, at the risk of her ownlife.”
And again, Gwyn couldn’t even seem to speak. Couldn’t find a way to say,It’s not about you, Father, it’s not about any of the men, or your damned war. It’s about the women who will suffer from this, the women whose lives you’re so thoughtlessly destroying —
“Does all this have anything to do with Roy, Gwynnie?” her father abruptly asked, in one of his all-too-disconcerting flashes of awareness. “You wanting to move to Varrahan, I mean?”
Gwyn betrayed a reflexive flinch, because he was referring, of course, to Royal Lindsay — his longtime ward, and now the captain of his elite household guards. Roy, with his lean body and laughing eyes, who’d years ago been promised to Gwyn, in some kind of nebulous betrothal arrangement she’d never properly understood. Roy, who had consistently shown himself perfectly content to postpone his supposedly forthcoming marriage to Gwyn for as long as possible, in order to continue carrying on as the province’s most infamous rake.
“This hasnothingto do with Roy, Father,” Gwyn belatedly replied, though her voice damnably wavered. “I want a bigger place. And a garden. And Great-Aunt Agnes left the house to me, and now she’s gone, and I want to honour her wishes.”
But her father’s low chuckle behind her was far too knowing, his hand giving her shoulder a gentle little shake. “Ah,nowI see, you clever girl,” he said. “Take off for Orc Mountain, and leave Roy here to stew without you, is that it? Light a much-needed fire under the boy? Let him worry about his best girl being stolen away by orcs?”
Gwyn’s entire body had gone very stiff, her shoulder high and square under her father’s hand. “This hasnothingto do with Roy, Father,” she repeated. “And I’m not his best girl, I’m a liability he’ll be well pleased to have out of his way. It will be far better for both of us if I’m gone.”
Lord Anton laughed again, low and tolerant. “Ah, you put on a good face, Gwynnie,” he said, “but Roy told me he had you over just last week. Said you took a bit of a pet over something or other, though? Some silly chit who’s been hanging off his purse-strings lately?”
Curse Roy, and curse her damned father, because Gwyn’s throat had badly spasmed, the memories charging and trampling through her thoughts. The feel of Roy’s silken skin under her hands. The sound of his husky voice in her ear. The sight of his half-lidded, long-lashed eyes on hers as he’d moved above her in the candlelight, filling her with his intensity, his beauty, his affection. Making himself hers, and her his, in that perfect, shining moment.
And then, of course, the aftermath. This time with an unfamiliar woman actually knocking at the door of his apartments, and blatantly asking if he might enjoy some company. To which Roy had laughed, and replied that he was presently occupied, but that she was welcome to try again later.
“You know Roy will come up to scratch sooner or later, Gwynnie,” her father continued, his voice firm. “He’s promised me that, and I know he cares for you. But, I suppose if youaretwenty-six now, you’re no doubt eager to move matters along…”
His voice trailed off, his fingers now drumming against Gwyn’s stiff shoulder, and she desperately blinked back the wetness prickling behind her eyes. “I’m not eager to move matters along, Father,” she said thickly. “I’m eager to end it, for good. Roy and I arenotwell suited for one another. And I want a bigger place, with a garden.”
But she might as well have been talking to her candlewood, because her father only laughed again, and gave her shoulder another little shake. “You know what, Gwynnie, I’ll allow it,” he said. “But for only one month, you hear me? After that, I’m sending a band of men to bring you back, whether you want it or not. Oh, and look” — his voice brightened — “here’s Roy now. We’re going on a hunting-trip for a few days, I told him to collect me here.”
What? Gwyn whipped around, following her father’s satisfied gaze out the nearest window. To where Royal Lindsay was indeed leaping gracefully down from a carriage on the street below them, and striding toward the door of Gwyn’s building. And then there was the sound of his familiar footsteps, taking the stairs two at a time like always, while Gwyn’s traitorous, scraped-up fingers wiped at her flushed-feeling face, and before she’d caught them, even straightened out her long black hair.
Her father had already flung open the door, a broad smile on his mouth — and now here was Roy in the flesh, tall and lithe and dressed in hunting-clothes, lighting up the room with his grin. “Morning, Dunburg,” he said, clapping Lord Anton on the back, though his sparkling brown eyes had already flicked to Gwyn beyond him. “And to you, my fair Gwynevere. How are you, love? Still miffed at me?”
Gwyn’s voice was locked in her throat, her arms crossing tightly over her chest, and in return Roy threw back his handsome head and laughed, the sound warm and indulgent. “Ah, so that’s a yes, then,” he said, reaching a familiar hand to pat at her too-hot cheek. “What do you say I stop by once we’re back, then? Try to make it up to you?”
Gwyn’s cheeks flamed even hotter, and she raised her chin, and somehow spoke past the constriction in her throat. “That won’t be necessary, thanks,” she said. “I’m actually moving away, in a few days. To Varrahan.”
