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* * *
Edrick strolled through the burned village. Hell had met earth; day blended with night. Aye, he couldn’t tell whether it was night or day since the air was so choked with ash and smoke. One hand covered his mouth and nose; the other wrapped the pommel of his sword, where it always felt most at home.
Everywhere he looked, he found the dead or dying. Rowan’s soldiers. Villagers. Men, women, and children. Soldiers dressed in Black Wolf tabards, bearing faces he’d never seen.
It was strange.
He got close to few and trusted even fewer. He made a point of knowing his men’s faces as well as he knew his own. Knowledge was power, and he’d be damned if he didn’t see into each man and what made him tick. What set fire to his sword? What thoughts kept him awake at night? He made it a point to walk every battlefield after a victory and defeat—to truly understand which tactics had trumped and which had caused his losses.
Rowan had taught him that firsthand… but this walk he made alone.
He should be here, leading me.
Instead, he’s amusing himself with that Winslowe whore.
Somewhere in the distance, the forlorn cry of a wolf echoed the woods.
Edrick knelt beside a fallen soldier he didn’t recognize. He’d taken a sword through his gut; dark blood stained the tabard, distorting the sigil of the Black Wolf. He recalled the countless battlefields where he and Rowan had fought side by side, proudly holding this very sigil.
Edrick shook his head and spat into the mud with disgust. The clever and ruthless knight he’d fought for and with all those years had vanished. It was that bitch princess, or queen, or whatever she was… that insipid Blanchette Winslowe. Rowan should have strung her from the castle’s beams as soon as he’d conquered it. He wasn’t made to sit and rule—and certainly not to fawn over a mere slip of a girl, the seed of his enemy. Rowan Dietrich was made for blood and battle and glory.
Yet he was becoming someone else entirely, Edrick knew. No longer the Black Wolf of Norland… but an impostor.
A mere shadow of himself.
Edrick continued his stroll through this village where only death now lay. A murder of crows already circled the deceased, and the bolder birds had stripped their flesh away.
A pair of fat birds squawked and angrily flapped their dark wings as they fought over the small body of a child. Edrick moved toward them and fanned them away with his hands. They gave a last defiant complaint before taking to the sky and moving on to easier prey.
Absently, he crossed his right arm over his body and wrapped his fingers over the pommel of his sword. He stood over the body and examined the bloody, dirt-speckled features. A bird had plucked one of the boy’s eyes from its socket; only a vat of blood and gore remained. Mud and soot caked in his black hair, and burns and blisters covered his neck. It was difficult to make out his features beneath the ash and dirt and wounds—but not impossible.
Edrick ran his fingers over the stained tabard and tunic. An old man lay several feet away. A sword stuck out of his gut, his hand half-wrapping the pommel in death. Edrick sighed, then uncurled his bloody fingers. A sigil was engraved in the gold metal.
Edrick let out a sharp bark of laughter, then rubbed his eyes with his fingers. And there it is. He recognized the sigil and knew the house it belonged to, just as he knew almost every man who fought in Rowan’s ranks and slept in the barracks.
* * *
Mary and Blanchette lounged beside the great hall’s blazing hearth. Smoke lay between them, his massive paws twitching in sleep. Rowan leaned against a marble column as he felt every limb, every muscle, every sinew in his body slowly unwind and relax. He felt nearly a decade of sorrow recede into the shadows.
This is what I’ve been missing all these years.
This is what I’ve been searching for…
The realization nearly brought tears to his eyes.
Blanchette’s gold skirts were spread about her and spilling across the floor. An enormous book lay in her lap as she silently read from the faded pages.
He saw the awareness awaken in her. Her reading stopped, and her beautiful, bright eyes left the pages. Thick blond curls slid about her shoulders as she lifted her head and scanned the great hall. She spotted him from his spot beside the column, and her eyes flickered with amusement. Mary lay beside her on her stomach, her chin propped onto the heels of her hands, also reading a book. She jolted into an upright position. Smoke shuffled beside her and bellowed a grumpy noise that sounded like a sigh and growl.
“Father,” Mary called out to his surprise.
He stepped out from the shadows and placed his hand on the pommel of his sword. His fingers grazed the polished wolf’s head as he crossed the hall swiftly.
He reached down and flipped the book open to read the cover. Blanchette tensed as his fingers brushed against her skirts. He held his hand there, pressed against the covered flesh of her thighs.
Someone clearing their throat broke the silence. Rowan noticed for the first time since entering that Governess Agnes sat in one of the high-back chairs out of the range of the fire’s glow.
Blanchette touched Mary’s cheek. “It’s quite late. Governess Agnes shall help you turn in for the night. Alright, sweetling?”
