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A ghost can be almost anything, Blanchette. Anger. A memory. Pain. Grief, a daydream, a nightmare. Wherever I walked, I never walked alone…
“Father!” Mary cried out, tears tumbling down her cheeks. Edrick twisted dirty fingers in her curls, pulling her neck back to expose her throat to his dagger.
“Why?” Rowan heard himself asking, though he feared he already knew the answer.
Edrick tightened his grip on Mary’s hair until he was sure it’d tear from her scalp. She was sobbing now. Lightning and thunder cracked outside the window.
“Shut up, stupid girl, or I’ll open your throat.” Rowan had never heard Edrick speak with such ferocity. Usually, he kept his voice a little above a mumble.
“Why?” he asked again. He tried to keep the panic and desperation from his tone.
Edrick gave no reply.
“Kathryn,” Rowan finished for him, icy dread snaking down his spine. He adjusted his grip on his longsword. In close quarters, it wouldn’t serve him well. He needed to keep Edrick talking, to distract him until he could advance into the proper position.
“Aye, Kathryn. So you haven’t forgotten her.”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten her,” he said cautiously. “She was a good woman.”
“She was my child!” Edrick screamed with a thundering agony. “The only thing I’ve ever cared for, ever loved. And you—you stole her from me!”
“Nay,” he said, more carefully still, taking another step forward. “I would have never harmed Kathryn. You know this. I?—”
“No. Don’t you dare say it. Don’t you dare say you loved her. Utter those words, and I’ll cut her throat. I swear to you, Black Wolf.”
Rowan inched forward again, just barely, hoping Edrick was too consumed by grief to notice the movement. Another flash of lightning. It lit the chamber, and Rowan felt the thunder as it bellowed through the castle.
“Lower the dagger,” he said. “I’ll do whatever you want. Please. Just lower your dagger.”
“First, I want you to hear what happened to her. To my Kathryn. I want you to live with what you did before you watch your own daughter die.”
She’s not my daughter, he absently mused. Not truly my blood. Yet I love her all the same.
And Blanchette too… God, how I love her.
He fixed Edrick with his stare, his voice steady. “Tell me, then. Tell me everything and be at peace.”
Edrick glared at him over Mary’s head with a crazed look.
He doesn’t know whether I’m mocking him.
“After your wife was murdered and you came to me… I know what you did with my Kathryn.”
“What we both did.”
“Aye, what the two of you did. You took her maidenhead. She loved you, the stupid girl, did you know that? When you left, she mourned for you like a sick pup.”
“I knew. Edrick. I knew. Now stop it. Stop this madness. Can’t you see you’re hurting her? Edrick?”
He didn’t respond to the sound of his name. Instead, he brought the dagger under Mary’s chin and drew a faint line of blood. She sobbed, her blue gaze pleading with Rowan. “Eye for an eye. That’s the game we’re playing tonight.”
“The battle is done,” Rowan said. “My men will come to look for me soon.”
“Oh, this will all be over by that time. Don’t worry about that. And I don’t plan on surviving this night. I’ll die, most certainly, but not without taking your precious daughter with me.”
Rowan ignored all that. He fought to keep his voice steady. “What happened to Kathryn? You never told me, never spoke of her in all these years.” She’d died, he knew, but Edrick had never revealed the details, and Rowan hadn’t prodded that wound.
Three more steps.
