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“The beginning? Beginning of what?”
He paused, his eyes climbing up and down her body in a lazy perusal. “What do you know of the Black Wolf? What do you know of me?”
Blanchette hesitated, her ignorance hitting her at full force.
Play the game.
But how can I play a game when I don’t even know the rules?
That terrified her beyond comprehension.
She swallowed, then absently toyed with her signet ring. The sigil seemed to drink in the hearth’s fire, setting the stones and gold ablaze. Her thoughts darkened uncontrollably; an image of her grandmother’s stabbed chest… Elise’s neck slit like a slaughtered deer… of her brother’s mutilated body and her drowned mother.
“I know you have bled my home,” she said in a low whisper. She didn’t even reach his shoulders. The Black Wolf had the widest chest she’d ever seen, with hard, dark features that took on an almost boyish quality in some moments. He held himself with pride, yet an unmistakable weight lurked in those hazel eyes. “Your captain defiled and murdered my lady-in-waiting. She was only a girl and a dear friend to me.”
Something flickered in his gaze, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He waved her off with a deep sigh and turned to the hearth. “You shall have another lady-in-waiting. Two, three, four, if it pleases you. It makes no matter to me.”
“It mattered to me!” she shot, her voice choked. “Have you so little regard for human life? Of course you don’t. Look at the blood you’ve shed over one evening. Many of my father’s men still rot in gibbets, while others melt away in the black cellars. You have taken everything from me.”
She watched with silent anger and awe as the hearth’s flames licked over his granite features. A lifetime of war and battles, of loss and labor had hewn them, she knew, yet her heart held no room for pity.
He gave a curt nod as if completing some inward conversation, then jolted toward her. “This is the way of war. Your father knew this better than anyone. And now he has borne the consequences of his hunger—his desire for power. Blood for blood. Is that not what the wise men say?”
She shook her head. “The wisest men say turn the other cheek. Words you clearly have never followed.”
He released a dark chuckle that sent a shiver down her spine. She shuddered uncontrollably but refused to stand down.
“My father?—”
“Look around you, girl; look beyond the capital’s walls and your bedchamber. Look further than you have ever before, you poor blind chit. Your kingdom was already bleeding because of your father, not I. Beyond these walls live women and children and boys and babes. You may not know their names or have ever seen their faces, but they were at your father’s mercy, nonetheless. And just because they are strangers doesn’t make their suffering less real.”
Abruptly, he strode to the window. She watched him with a quickening resentment as he examined his newly gained castle, its landscape kissed with the pink glow of a new day. He looked at it all as if it belonged to him.
Mine.
My birthright.
Blanchette forged her expression into one of hard iron. “You shall pay for this. We have powerful alliances. You are the blind one. My sister is the Queen of Demrov?—”
The Black Wolf’s great barking laugh made Blanchette’s skin ripple. He smiled, showing a flash of straight white teeth. “Has your governess taught you nothing? You’ve been living under a rock, Princess. Demrov just suffered another invasion. They are also bleeding from the gut and grappling with France. And, as I understand it, you haven’t seen your sister in years, since shortly before her coronation. You have been living beneath a cairn built of privilege and oblivion. You are a little girl, living a small life built from lies and fantasy.”
“I’m living as your captive!” Blanchette retorted, the heat rising in her cheeks. “And how dare you call my father a tyrant when you’ve taken our home by force—by murder! When you’ve lain conquests across all of Norland since you were little more than a boy!”
Any good humor she’d seen in his face moments ago faded like a setting sun. He put a smile on again, but it didn’t fit. His eyes grew cold. He closed the distance between them again in a few determined strides.
“You are so very young and ignorant,” he said matter-of-factly. “I pity you. Truly.” He whispered the words as if awakening her to a deep, dark secret. One she’d been in denial about. His voice sounded flat and emotionless, yet something cold moved in his eyes. It gave her a sudden chill, and she staggered back a foot despite herself.
“Maybe so. But you are old and bitter.” In truth, he didn’t look a day past his mid-thirties, but she flung the words at him all the same. He received them well, with a wolfish smirk that befitted his name. When he grinned, it was slightly crooked and wholly mischievous.
“So here we stand—a young, stupid princess and an old and bitter knight. What a delightful pair we make.”
A long silence. The wolf stirred at Rowan’s side.
“I ask again. Why am I still standing here at all? Why haven’t you executed me? You’ve torn out my whole family. What’s the blood of one more stupid princess on your hands to you?”
* * *
Everything, Rowan thought, his eyes fixed on her with a fascination that alarmed him. She had grown uneasy under his perusal, but the fire he’d quickly come to know never faded from her gaze. Those eyes were an ocean-like blue with tiny flecks of gold visible only from an intimate nearness.
