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“I am not a king, sir,” Rowan snapped, cutting his captain off. Smoke loosed a low, rolling growl and raised one of his paws. “And as long as we’re observing court courtesies, she is still your princess. I command you to address her as such.”
Edrick scoffed. His eyes raked down Blanchette’s body, a look of revulsion swimming in their depths. “Have you forgotten who she is? I have not. Your men have not. Your sisters and mother, bless their memories, have not. She is the enemy, with the traitor’s blood running through her veins.” She shivered as Edrick glared at her. “Blue eyes. Like an ocean.” He turned back to the Black Wolf. “You’ll drown in them before all this is over.”
Rowan stepped out from the doorframe and toward Edrick. They were both tall and well-muscled men, their bodies hewn from years of sword fighting and soldiering, yet Rowan loomed over him. His hazel eyes blazed in the torchlight, and his baritone voice sent another shiver through her body. “If I’m the king you believe me to be, you’re guilty of insubordination. I have hanged men for less.”
“Aye,” Edrick replied with a shake of his head, “you have hanged men for less. But they were lesser men.” And without another word or backward glance, he vanished down the long corridor, his clanking armor still audible as he walked out of sight.
Spirits walk these halls now. Souls of the damned.
Rowan exhaled a sharp breath. “This is still your home. You can pray as much as you’d like, but not alone. I shall escort you to the chapel myself.”
Side by side, they walked through the dimly lit halls of Winslowe Castle. The wolf padded beside them, as silent as a shadow.
Just like smoke, she thought with a shudder.
Rowan carried a torch. Blanchette looked up at him, into his set, granite expression, watching as the firelight illuminated his grim profile.
She found sadness in his hazel eyes, a sorrow that nearly stole her breath away.
“Why did you defend me?”
“I don’t completely lack courtesy or decency. And besides, you aren’t to blame for… for what happened.”
“And neither was my mother or brother, yet your men murdered them all the same.”
Rowan came to a dead standstill. He shot toward Blanchette, the torch setting his features ablaze. His eyes sharpened and filled with an absolute loathing that unleashed another shudder through her. “Those were not my orders. Unlike your father, I do not condone the murder of women and children. I condemn it.”
Stubbornly, Blanchette shook her head and matched his stare. “Your captain is right. You are a fool and a hypocrite as well. You brought death to my door,” she said, her voice rising, her breaths fanning the torchlight and causing it to waver. She heard the wolf stirring beside them and imagined how it’d feel to have those powerful jaws clamped around her throat. “My family would be alive if it weren’t for you, yet they rot while you still stand here and breathe the air. What kind of justice is that?”
She should have held her tongue, she knew. She should have continued to play the game, as Governess Agnes instructed… yet she trembled with the desire to unleash her fury and heartache. She couldn’t contain it. A hundred images knifed through her thoughts in a cutting wound. And that wound was bleeding.
The words rushed out of her in a great landslide of emotion. “And not your order, you say? You’re truly a great and noble soldier—even your men defy your word. You come here, to my land, my home, expecting to hold a kingdom. You have condemned yourself.”
“Those men have paid for their folly with their lives,” he whispered, his voice laced with venom and something else. Something she couldn’t quite place. That tentative note of emotion twisted in her belly. Smoke growled again, softly at first, the rising sound filling the hall like a thunderclap. “I’m a far better soldier than your father ever was. As you said yourself, I’m still breathing the air. I’m still standing. Now, come and pray your prayers. You better hope God is listening tonight.”
* * *
The Winslowe’s private chapel was still and quiet. It was intricately built into one of the buttresses, and unlike the larger one on-site, which welcomed the soldiers and houseguests, only the Winslowes prayed here. It was a sacred space. The heart of her home. At least it had been, once upon a time.
The chapel used to bring her warmth and hope. Now, it felt bleak and cold. Blanchette tightened her red cloak about her body and eased inside. Rowan and his torchlight followed her. She peered up at the tall, curved wall and watched as his shadow moved against the stones.
She felt him standing behind her, huge and imposing, intimately close.
This is the monster her governess had once warned her about. The villain of the stories she’d whispered to me and Isadora and Willem by candlelight. She thought about how young and naive they’d been, remembering how those tales had made her and her siblings giddy with fright.
“Please tell us more, Governess Agnes. We want to hear more about the Black Wolf!”
The monsters have come for us all, not as myth or legend, but as flesh-and-blood...
A curdling sense of doom rushed through her and heightened the dark chill of the chapel. She yearned to raise her red hood and flee into the night, yet wherever she’d go, those monsters would follow.
Blanchette moved to the center of the circular chamber, her boots rapping against the stones. The curved walls tapered together at the highest point in a slender steeple. Teardrop-shaped slits served as the windows, and intricate, detailed carvings decorated the pillars. Blanchette gazed up at the angels and celestial realm overhead, which were illuminated by Rowan’s torch. She exhaled and felt a calm wash over her. Faint beams of moonlight trickled through the teardrop windows and danced along the walls.
Rowan stood just behind her; she felt the heat of his body. The stones amplified the sound of his heavy breaths.
“I spent little time in the one we had,” he whispered. “When I was a boy, I mean. It was large, right next to the armory, always filled with soldiers trying to make peace with God. This chapel… it’s nicer. Small, but intimate… as if the Lord may truly stop and listen to any words passed within its walls.”
Blanchette turned and gazed up at Rowan. The movement sent the hood tumbling from her head. “I never took you for a pious man.”
