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Terran stalked away down the corridor, and Bria turned to find Kenric glaring at her. Her left arm throbbed with the memory of his attack. But he didn’t frighten her any longer. She’d faced him in battle and had survived. It was the way he was looking at her, like all the fires in hell had gathered inside him and he was waiting for the right moment to unleash them on her.

Then Kenric cast a glance over his shoulder at Harry. When he looked back at her, there was a restrained look in his eyes, but a dark promise nonetheless. He moved off down the hall.

Bria turned toward her grandfather and slowly walked up to him, gazing at his arm. “That’s a nasty cut.”

“You don’t know how nasty. Do you realize how much courage it takes to cut oneself with a dagger?”

A thousand sincere thank you’s glimmered in her eyes. She knew now just how wrong she’d been in not telling him the truth. He was more than her grandfather. He was her confidant. “You knew.”

“I may be old,” he replied, “but I’m not a fool.” He gently touched her cheek. “And I know my granddaughter. I had the others just put on bandages. They didn’t cut themselves. I told them it was a joke I was playing on Knowles. They don’t know what it means.”

Bria threw herself into his arms.

“I was afraid for you, Bria,” he whispered. “I knew Knowles would find out. But I can only protect you until that coward of a father of yours marries you off. Once you’re gone, you’re on your own.”

“And it will be soon,” she said, pressing her cheek to his chest.

“Aye,” Harry replied, stroking her hair. “Within the next few days. Knowles is insisting you leave for his castle within the next week.”

Bria’s embrace tightened. She was scared. Everything she knew, everything she loved was here at Castle Delaney. She’d soon be leaving the safety of her home and venturing off into unknown lands, into her enemy’s hands.

“Knowles will do everything in his power to find out who the Midnight Shadow is. Give it up, Bria, before it is too late.”

“I can’t,” Bria whispered. She had to keep up the guise of the Midnight Shadow, for Mary, for Garret, for everyone she could help. “I won’t.”

Harry squeezed her tightly. “You must promise me something, then.”

Bria pulled back. “Anything.”

“You must promise me...” Harry studied her features.

Bria could have sworn she saw tears in his eyes.

“You must promise me you will not die.”

For the flash of a second, she considered lying to him, but he knew her far better than anyone else. He wasn’t a fool. “The Midnight Shadow will never die,” she answered, feeling tears rise in her eyes. “You taught me that, remember?”

Harry brushed a tear from her cheek before stepping away from her and turning to move off down the hallway.

Bria watched her grandfather, and a strange heaviness settled upon her chest. She’d be leaving him soon. But why? Why did she have to leave? Why wouldn’t her father tell Knowles to go hang? Even if he thought the worst of her, she was still his daughter, his only heir. He could refuse this marriage.

Bria walked down the hall, then up another set of stairs to find her father. He was probably in the treasury studying the profits and figures from the tithes. Holding her skirt up slightly, she climbed the stairs. Her small, slippered feet made no sound as they moved across the steps. Finally, she reached the treasury. She tentatively opened the door, calling, “Father?”

“Come in, Bria,” her father called from a small table. Stick tabulations lay spread out on the table, some banded together, some separate. A piece of parchment lay on the table with meticulous figures written on it. Her father paused, looking up from the sticks to gaze at her.

“Hello, Father,” Bria called.

Her father sat back in his chair. “I’m glad you came. I could use a rest from these figures.”

Bria nervously ran a finger through a gouge in the wooden table.

Her father reached out and clasped her hand.

Bria lifted her eyes to meet her father’s. With his gentle gaze upon her, Bria couldn’t speak the truth. She couldn’t ask him why he wouldn’t fight for her. She couldn’t ask him why he wouldn’t defend her. She knew why.

“I expected you to come to me much sooner than this, but you’ve always put the feelings of others before your own,” he mused.

Bria glanced down at the gouge again, unable to meet her father’s direct gaze. She couldn’t hurt him. She adored him. He’d fought and been maimed in a horrible war. He was dealing with it the best way he knew how, the way that would keep him sane. She couldn’t destroy him.