Morwenâs heart was hammering so hard that she could feel it in her fingertips, in her temples, and in the spaces between her ribs where her lungs tried and failed to draw a full breath.
She stared at the armored body lying on the floor just five paces away and watched a slowly expanding pool of blood form beneath it. Five paces. The length of a dining table or the distance between the fence rail and the practice yard where sheâd watched her father train. It was nothing. It was the distance between being alive and ... And dying on a knightâs sword... And she hadnât even had time to scream.
Liam Dunnâs arm was around her shoulders. She didnât know when heâd moved, but the young lord had crossed the distance between his position in the rearguard and the center of the formation in the time it took Francâs body to hit the ground. His grip was firm and steady, the way her father held her after she woke from nightmares as a child, and she could feel the warmth of him through the fabric of his gambeson as he pulled her close.
"Youâre safe," Liam said, keeping his voice low and gentle. "Itâs over. He canât hurt you now," he promised.
On her other side, Ignatious stood with his hand still raised. Morwen hadnât even seen him move. One moment he was standing beside Lady Ashlynn, and the next, he was in front of her with his hand raised, covered in the brilliant, golden glow of Holy Flames.
The flames were fading now. Theyâd started to gutter out in the same instant that the cleaver struck, extinguished by the realization that they were no longer needed. The former High Inquisitorâs dark eyes held a deep, quiet sadness as he looked at the body on the floor, and his lips moved in what might have been a silent prayer for the fallen.
Cadeyrn still had his sword up. His face was bone-white, but heâd positioned himself between his sister and the fallen knight even though the threat had already ended. His hands were shaking badly enough that the blade trembled in his grip, but he didnât lower it, and he wouldnât until someone told him it was safe.
"Why?" Morwen whispered. The word came out small, barely louder than a breath. She was shaking, trembling from the crown of her head to the soles of her shoes, and Liamâs arm around her shoulders was the only thing keeping her upright. "Why did he... Iâm not... Iâm nobody. Why would he want to kill me..."
"Because he was a coward," Ashlynn said.
She hadnât moved from her position at the center of the formation, but her voice carried across the vestibule with a clarity that silenced every other sound. Her emerald eyes were fixed on the body of Sir Franc Kermeen, and her expression held neither pity nor satisfaction, only the cold, weary recognition of a woman who had learned to read the worst in men through the worst kind of experience.
"He realized that he couldnât win the fight," Ashlynn continued, her gaze shifting from Francâs body to Morwen. "So he looked for someone weaker. Someone he could use as leverage. I doubt he meant to kill you, Lady Morwen. I think he wanted a hostage to hold against Ollie, because he saw Ollieâs kindness as a weakness and he thought he could exploit that."
Her voice softened, but the hardness in her emerald eyes didnât.
"Thatâs what weak men do, Morwen," Ashlynn said. "When they canât overpower the strong, they reach for the vulnerable. Itâs not because you did anything wrong," she added quickly. "Itâs not your fault at all. Itâs because men like him canât imagine any other way to survive."
Morwen heard the words, but they settled into her chest like a seed growing roots. Roots that forced themselves between the cracks that had formed in her heart ever since she met Sir Ollie and started to understand the world he lived in. Lady Ashlynn meant for her words to be comforting, but it was hard to feel comforted or blameless when Ashlynnâs words made it clear that Sir Franc had seen her as even weaker and more vulnerable than the pregnant Samira.
Morwen knew that she wasnât one of the strong ones.
She wasnât anything like Lady Ashlynn, who could turn oak to dust with a touch and command an army with a word. She wasnât Isabell, who could transform weapons into living serpents and walk through the middle of a battlefield like she was strolling through a garden. She wasnât even Samira, who had chosen to walk into this nightmare carrying an unborn child because she needed to face the man who had used her and discarded her.
She was Morwen Thorne. Sixteen years old. Dark-haired, soft-featured, helpful and observant, and good at tea parties and gossip. She was the girl on the fence rail. The girl who watched while everyone else around her did things that mattered. Even when she joined ladiesâ tea parties, sheâd mostly just listened and served tea while young ladies like Adala Leufroy and Charlotte Otker did most of the talking.
And because she was that girl, because she was vulnerable and unarmored and standing in the middle of a battle she couldnât fight, a man had died.
Not just any man. A man whom Sir Ollie had admired. A man whose crest heâd recognized from his years in these kitchens, a man heâd offered respect and mercy and the chance to walk away alive.
Ollie had tried, again and again, to end the fight without killing Sir Franc Kermeen, and in the end, heâd been forced to throw his weapon into the manâs spine because Sir Franc had decided that a sixteen-year-old girl in a crowd of warriors was the softest target in the room.
Ollie had killed a man he once admired because of her.
The thought settled into her stomach like a stone dropped into deep water, sinking past her fear and her relief and her gratitude until it found the bottom, and she knew that she would never, ever, forget this moment.
She pulled away from Liamâs arm, gently, not because his comfort wasnât welcome but because the thing she needed right now wasnât comfort.
Ollie was standing over Francâs body.
He hadnât moved since the cleaver left his hand. He stood with his arms at his sides, his mailed hands empty, staring down at the armored corpse of the knight heâd killed with a throw born of desperation and rage and the absolute, unthinking need to protect the people behind him.
The blood on his gambeson was drying, darkening from red to brown in the warm air of the vestibule, and the jade-green tabard with its cypress tree and iron pot was barely visible beneath the stains. His flame-red hair hung in sweat-soaked strands around his face, and his pale eyes, which had burned with the Blood Acornâs fury for the last quarter of an hour, had gone flat and empty.
The Ancient Oakâs rage was still there. She couldnât see it the way Ashlynn or Isabell could, but she could feel it as a pressure in the air around him that was hot and suffocating, like standing too close to a forge.
It pressed against her skin and made the hair on her arms stand on end, and the soldiers who had surrendered earlier pressed themselves harder against the walls, sensing that the man standing over the body was more dangerous in this moment of stillness than he had been at the height of the fighting.
Ollie had been waiting for Sir Franc to surrender. Heâd tried to force the man to yield again and again. Everyone had clustered around her, whether it was Liam offering comfort or her brother and Inquisitor Ignatious offering protection, but no one had taken a step toward Ollie yet, so Morwen took that step...