Page 86 of Warrior’s Lady

"Get away from the bed, all of you." He recognized that voice. His mother. He suddenly noted the golden light of the setting sun. So he wasn't in heaven after all.

He struggled to sit up as consciousness burned through the haze in his mind. The Stone. He fumbled in the deep folds, but came up empty.

One of the gray-haired men frowned at him. "Is he still feverish?"

His mother hobbled up to his bedside and shooed the men back. The bishop stared in awe at her neck, her face. The rash had vanished. The boils were gone, and a curious spark missing for years had returned to her gray eyes. "He's fine." Her gaze pierced his with a warning. "You had a fever, nothing more. Now get up, and greet the Church council properly."

"The Church council?" His plan. His revenge. They had arrived. He leaned against the wooden headboard of the bed, felt the bite of the elaborately carved wood against his back.

He reached out and touched the wrinkled skin that lined his mother's face. "You are better."

Her gaze narrowed on his face. She sniffed as though insulted. "Only by some miracle did I escape the abuse of that mad man."

He knitted his brows, confused. "You what?"

She turned away from the bed, addressing the men who hovered nearby. "My Harold suffered under his assault as I did myself. Can you not see that?"

The oldest of the men stepped forward. A heavy frown creased his deeply lined face. "We have heard your story. Now we need to understand your son's. Bishop Berwick, tell us what has happened here. And why would you place the burden of witchcraft on a supposedly young and innocent child?"

Unease crept up the bishop's spine as he took in the severe faces of the seven men who surrounded his bed. What had his mother told them? "I—"

"Just tell them, Harold, that Lord Lockhart burst into our home, killed our warriors, and threatened to murder us unless you revoked your charge of witchcraft against the Lockhart child."

That was not what had happened. He paused as his brain scrambled to find a way to make this situation work in his favor. And then, he found it. He straightened, pushed the covers away from his legs and sat up, swinging his legs over his bedside. "Why don't we all go ask Lockhart for his version of the truth?" Or at least whatever version of the truth would place the Charm Stone back in his own possession and dangle Lockhart from the hangman's noose.

He would have that Stone. He would have everything that was his due.