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Before he could stop her, she picked up the hem of her cloak and dashed over to a young woman. A whore or camp follower, by the look of her. She appeared as run-down as the village itself. Blanchette withdrew a handful of coppers from her cloak and gently placed them in the woman’s thin hand. Her skin looked like hide stretched over a board.
The whore pulled her hand away, but Blanchette caught her small wrist in midair and held tight. “Please. Wait. I’m looking for someone,” she said in a strained, husky voice. “His name is Jonathan. He… he has a child. They’ve lived here for years. With his wife, when she was still alive...” She trailed off as if she’d read something in the whore’s glassy eyes. “Have you seen him? Did he... leave here in time?”
“He didn’t leave, milady. But he’s not here either.”
Blanchette took in an audible breath. She gazed down at where her fingers wrapped around the whore’s wrist almost completely. “I don’t understand?”
The whore shook away Blanchette’s fingers. Then she raised her hand and pointed toward a half-burnt home at the end of the road. Without another word, the woman turned away in a flourish of stained and torn rags and made off into one of the crumbling houses. They both had missed it at first glance; it was almost unrecognizable from the fire.
Rowan came to Blanchette’s side and lightly touched her shoulder. He could feel her shaking under his palm. “Blanchette, I?—”
“I must see,” she said, her voice heavy with despair. “He was my friend. I need to know.”
She whirled away from him and went after the home at the end of the road. Rowan watched as her red riding cloak fluttered behind her.
They entered the house together. She peeled back her red hood as she gazed at him, then tentatively crossed the threshold.
The first thing that hit them was the smell. It was one Rowan knew well. The scent of death. It hung heavy in the air with the musk and dirt and smoke.
He watched her expression shift as she took in what remained of the home. She ran her pale fingertips over the charred remains: the skeletal body of a table, blackened bricks of a hearth, a gaping cast-iron pot, and shreds of fabric. Blanchette shook her head, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
“He was good. He’d already lost so much. He risked his and his son’s lives for mine—and this… this is how I’ve repaid him!”
“It’s not your fault, Blanchette.”
“I’m the queen!” Her eyes flashed, and he saw the anger visibly rising in her. “Murders and madmen roam my coast and countryside. If I can’t stop them—if we can’t stop them—no one will, and all is lost. All this death, all this heartache… it will have been for nothing. Nothing!”
Rowan stepped forward, watching as her eyes scanned the remains of the home. He gently took her hands in one of his own. “We shall set this right, Blanchette. All of it. For them,” he said, motioning to the room, “for you, for us.”
* * *
Her mind reeled back to last winter. Gone were the brilliant tapestries and weavings; only ash and tattered fabrics remained. Gone was the slow-cooking stew and the aromatic scent it brought with it. The air felt thick, musty... dirty, much like her castle had smelled that night.
She felt her heartbeat high in her throat and Rowan’s gentle hand on her shoulder. She wandered through, examining the remains of the tapestry below her feet. The Kingdom of Norland. Its glory had been reduced to burnt and frayed shreds. She passed under the doorway leading to the small chamber. The room she’d stayed in for nearly a fortnight after the siege.
I survived because of Jonathan.
The room was much as she remembered it—the bed and small wooden end table. The shuttered window looking out onto the village road. Silently, Rowan stood beside her, his head only a foot from the low ceiling.
Jonathan was in the far corner next to the bed, nestling Petyr in his lap. It looked and smelled like they’d been dead for hours. Their throats had been slit. The dagger lay directly next to Jonathan’s right hand.
He’d ended their lives.
Blanchette choked back a sob. Then she collapsed to her knees, feet away from the entwined bodies. The pallor of death clung to Jonathan like a shroud. The passage of time had not been kind, and the effects of death had begun to manifest. His complexion had transformed into an ashen gray, draining away the warmth of life and replacing it with an eerie stillness.
Jonathan’s lifeless eyes stared vacantly into the abyss. The sparkle that once lived within them had faded. His gaze seemed to pierce through Blanchette’s as though he were peering into another world.
“He saved me. He did everything he could and risked his life to save me... yet he couldn’t save his own child.”
Rowan stopped beside her, carefully took her in his arms, and cradled her against him. He rocked her tenderly, side to side, like a mother might soothe a babe. Her throat tightened against a scream. In her mind’s eyes, she saw her mother all over again, washed up and broken. Faintly, she recalled how it’d felt to teeter so close to madness…
She remembered rushing down the dark stairwell as the siege raged like a beast. She remembered losing herself to that terror. She remembered almost ending her own life. And screaming until her throat seemed to rip open.
She’d forever be lost if she allowed herself to scream now.
She’d go mad. So she wept instead. She cried into Rowan’s chest, cherishing the feel of his arms around her. Without him, she would have fallen to pieces.
“Oh God… Rowan… Rowan… no…”
