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“He carried me from the chapel and brought me to his solar.” You mean my father’s solar, she thought, that familiar rage bubbling inside her. “He urged me to drink water and had food brought from the kitchens. Then he sat and observed me. He watched me like he’d never seen my like before. And perhaps he hadn’t.”
“Did… did he speak to you at all?” she asked, recalling his somber and withdrawn disposition. He seemed to be a man of few words.
“Yes, as I cleared the plates of the food before me,” Governess Agnes replied, the slightest hint of a smile tugging at her lips, “he asked about you. Well, about you and me. How long I’d been in your family’s employ and what our relationship was like. Things of that nature.”
“I see,” Blanchette said, the lump rising in her throat again. She gazed out the window as her pulse raced. As far as she knew, Governess Agnes had never told her a lie; she was a woman of God, loyal and honest and stern but right in all things. She closed her eyes and inhaled a breath that rattled inside her chest. “Agnes… you’ve known—you knew—my family longer than I had. You lived here before I was born, stood at my crib, and guided me when I took my first steps.”
“And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
“Did he deserve it?”
“Who, my dear?”
“My-my father. Us. What the Black Wolf did… was it just? Was it right? They call him ‘the people’s champion.’”
Governess Agnes exhaled a long, weary breath. She raised one of her thin brows and silently shook her head. “You, your siblings, your mother, blessed be their souls, are nothing like King Bartholomew. It’s unfortunate such loving people had to live within his walls.” She hesitated, visibly searching for the proper words.
“Please. Just tell me.”
“I’ve known many royal ladies and men during my life. Never had I seen his like. He was cruel and self-righteous, my sweetling, and a great coward. We all reap what we sow. We are all subject to God’s judgment. His judgment day had come, my child, and my heart breaks that you and your family had to suffer for it.”
“The people—they seem to love him. Here, I am powerless. I am lost.” Blanchette shook her head. “I must go. I must find a way to Demrov. The queen and king shall rally to my side. I know it. Queen Isadora is my sister, and Demrov is our ally. They can set things right again.”
But were things ever right? Blanchette shoved the question from her mind.
“My dear child, you are the last of your family! That would be a treacherous journey—perhaps impossible. I’d go mad with worry. Please, do nothing so rash.”
“What would you have me do, then?” Anger crept up on her like a storm cloud sliding across a summer sun. She heard the fear and love in Governess Agnes’s voice. They were quite evident. But she heard something else, too, something that muffled all else. Stop fighting, Blanchette. Stay captive in your own home and accept your fate.
Governess Agnes must have read the hurt in her expression because she said, “You’ve always had a mind of your own. You were never one to sit idle. How many times I chased you through the bailey and courtyards and wood while your sister complacently worked at her embroidery with the other noble girls.” She smiled a nostalgic smile, then softly touched Blanchette’s cheek where her scar lay. Blanchette raised her own hand and placed her palm over Governess Agnes’s. “Your mother was intelligent and fierce. And you are very much your mother.”
* * *
Two pike-wielding guards flanked Blanchette as she strode through the drafty corridors of Winslowe Castle. Light snow dusted the hexagonal-shaped windows and threw slanted prisms across the floor. Everywhere she looked, Black Wolf standards prowled where Winslowe’s ravens once flew.
In her mind’s eye, the great hall transformed into a glittering court again—a promising and promiscuous realm of flirtation and intrigue. The scent of honeysuckle and nightshade still lingered in the air; airy laughter filled the walls, and once again, she was home. She saw her mother and sister whispering to each other, her brother, Willem, racing through the crowd of people, much to Governess Agnes’s distress. And she saw herself hiding behind a tapestry, watching court life unfold from her own little corner of the world. But when she looked about herself, the castle resembled a limbo. Rowan’s men had stripped it of its tapestries and royal standards. Now, it lay before her—naked, vulnerable, and without an identity.
Where was she? At court in Winslowe Castle? Or in the Black Wolf’s prison?
His den, more like. She shivered.
Then she turned a corner and saw the Black Wolf’s banner hanging from a mantel, covering her family’s royal crest.
More importantly, who was she?
A princess, a queen… or a wolf’s prey?
* * *
Later that day, Blanchette knelt before a wounded soldier as the weight of the great hall pressed down on her. Her nerves were a mess while she poked the needle through a soldier’s skin and then pulled it through. Ghosts from a lifetime ago rose around her—the lively din of a thousand feasts, the music of drunken laughter, and the clattering of dinnerware and goblets and fists pounding on the oaken tables.
She glanced up into the gallery and saw musicians holding vielles and lutes. Their sweet melodies echoed in the cavernous room.
She heard her mother’s laughter most of all. She listened to the melodic ring of her voice as she and her brother catapulted sweet cakes at one another. Her queen mother would halfheartedly scold them, an ever-present smile lurking beneath that frown.
“May I ask you,” she said to the soldier while she continued her needlework. “Why do you follow him? You lay before me, gravely wounded. You were prepared to give your life for the Black Wolf. You were ready to sacrifice everything. Why? You were part of my father’s guard since I was a child. Why make such a sacrifice?”
The soldier groaned and sat up as if something prideful in him insisted he take charge of his body. He studied the Black Wolf’s banner that hung before them. “That sigil,” he said, his voice fraught with pain as Blanchette continued tending to his wound. “Before Rowan Dietrich, that sigil was a gray wolf. The Black Wolf came into being about a decade ago. He’s the very reason my children are alive. And that’s a debt I’ll spend the rest of my life paying.”
