Aurie was dragged by Maud down into the hole in Draka’s floor, into the darkness of safety. She understood now what Maud felt. The hope, the faith that she was protected, shielded from everything that meant to harm her.

  The pain from the wound in her throat was still there. She couldn't swallow, could barely breathe, a thousand knives digging through her neck with every movement. Her body was a cascade of thrashes and pulls that would make her wince with the subtlest of movements. Even her trembling was agony.

  Her eyes flooded into Maud’s hair. She had never been so terrified, shaken through her bones, as she was then, but Maud didn’t have to keep saying that she was safe over and over. She felt it. All around her. She was in a bubble of reassurance, wrapped by her daughter’s arms and soothed by her daughter’s voice. Yet beyond those arms, beyond the shadows of the floor above them, beyond the cover of Draka’s house...

  Aurie expected Draka, hoped it would be Balor or Alden, to lift the board and help her out once the attack was over. But it wasn’t. The light of a torch spilled over their embrace as one of the Baron’s Men helped them out. Maud first, then Aurie. Gloved hands roughly grabbed hers and as she felt her legs lifted, others wrapped her hips and raised her to put her knees on the floor.

  The dark room was filled with armored men, torch flames reflecting from their eyes and shimmering over chain link shirts and blood splattered weapons. She could smell the blood, could taste it as if Draka had never healed her wounds. Her hands were sticky from it being dried, their spears still dripped.

  “Where…” Aurie gasped at the raspiness of her voice, at the grating of blades in her throat causing her to barely say it above a whisper. She coughed, hoping to clear it, but all she managed was a whimper from the pain when she said a little louder, “Where is Balor and Alden?”

  The man holding the torch hung his head. Aurie’s knees trembled. She tried to ask again, but her voice, her breath, her heart, stuck in her throat and blinded her. She was caught by her elbows by one of the men. She tried to straighten herself but only swayed in the tide of the air around her. Darkness crept into her vision like a swarm of insects. Her head swam.

  “Where’s Draka?” Maud clapped dust from her hands and wiped them on her skirt, unperturbed. To Aurie, “He’ll know.”

  Aurie stumbled, swimming for the door with sliding steps and an awkwardly following armored stranger keeping her upright. She tried to push away from his hold on her elbows but nearly fell the instant he loosened his grip. Surrender to his aid was her only option.

  “He’s at your house, Miss Clevlan.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” Maud rushed past them, sprinting into a leap off the porch and down the road.

  Aurie stepped out and nearly collapsed at the sight. The graying of the sun setting beyond the village did nothing to hide it. She blinked, hoping that it was a mirage, but with each step, first down from the porch and then the road, she knew it to be otherwise. Weakness trickled through her and his grip on her firmed to meet it as she watched Maud fly down the hill to their home.

  “Aurelie!” Gerard didn’t wait for his horse to fully stop from its gallop before he leapt from the saddle to take the man’s place keeping her on her feet. “Thank the Lord you’re okay,” he went to embrace her, but she shifted to look over his shoulder and brush past him.

  Even if she fell, she would claw until she saw her husband and son safe there, with Draka, and his horse that stood like a statue in front of her home.

  “They came out of nowhere, I thought that you—that Maud—but Draka—I’m glad you’re—Aurelie?”

  “Balor, Alden,” was all Aurie could say when she saw that Maud had stopped, still as a statue in front of the figure she knew to be Draka. Her heart was a whirlwind of drums in her chest. This was a dream. It must be a dream. They were safe. He had always made sure they were safe. He could heal them, he healed her, healed Maud. There was no way…

  “Aurelie, I’m,” Gerard’s words fell away as she finally saw the blanket covered mounds in the shapes of men on the ground between Draka and Maud. Too many mounds. Misshapen.

  She looked away. She knew what she would see as her slowly shuffling feet carried her toward them. Maud rushed into Draka’s arms while his eyes lifted to meet Aurie’s. And for what felt like the first time, she could feel what he might’ve said from those gold eyes. Guilt, perhaps. Sorrow. She saw it as she watched his hesitant gaze followed her around Maud. His eyes stayed fixed on her, but hers fell to his feet, to the linen shapes there.

  Her knees collapsed.

  Gerard caught her from behind. She knew. They were covered by blankets stained with blood, but she knew. Her voice wavered between silence and a scream as she fought Gerard’s grip, fought to stay on her feet, fought to reach her baby boy, to escape Gerard’s restraining grip, to uncover her loving husband’s face, to claw at Draka’s, to embrace Maud, to lay between their corpses, to run away.

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  No words came to her as her voice thundered from her lungs so violently that it blindingly forced tears from her eyes. She was a fray of elbows and hands until Gerard finally let go with a pained grunt. Draka barely slid Maud out of the way before Aurie reached him. In a flash, she struck him. She hammered her fists into him. She pounded on him with all her weakened might.

  She wanted to roar in his face until his ears bled how he had brought this upon them. How her family would be alive if it wasn’t for him. Still whole. Still together. But he took that away from them with his kindness, with his land and his horse and his silence. It was his fault that her son and husband were at her feet beneath shrouds that barely hid the mutilation of their bodies. It was his fault that she was alive to feel this way. To feel the emptiness overwhelming her heart. To feel the loss of her soul. He did this. He made certain that she was punished with life without her son growing before her eyes, without her husband’s soft kisses. Without a voice strong enough to scream loud enough.

  He never fought against her strikes. Even as she raked her nails across his face, he stood. Still as a statue. And when she couldn’t lift her hands, when her arms fell limp at her sides, and her cheek fell into his hard chest, he eased her to the ground in his arms as she wept. As she screamed in whisps of choking whimpers, clenching her eyes tightly shut between glances at what she dreaded to see but couldn't turn away from but by closing her eyes.

  Words finally came to her. “I will never forgive you.”

  The candles weren’t enough. No matter how many of them they lit around the table, even with the light of the hearth added to it, there was never enough light.

  Aurie whipped her head toward the flickering shadows on the walls more than a few times, jerking herself back. She was caged in her own house, trapped as a prisoner with her daughter, with the corpses of what had once been her life spread across her kitchen table. No, not corpses. They were sleeping. That was all it was. A very long, deep sleep that they would eventually wake from. But even that was difficult to imagine when she looked beyond their stilled faces. Mutilated. Destroyed. Empty vessels tended by an empty vessel.

  Maud was the one who washed them. Aurie tried to muster the strength to pull the wet cloth across their skin, at least to get the blood from their faces, but she was too weak. Too weak, too tired. She was no more than a stuffed doll sitting in her chair beside them as Maud scrubbed their hands and cheeks with fervor. Aurie’s eyes were dry, barren and empty as her heart. Maud’s were always wet, her tears joining the dampness of her cloth as she scrubbed. But she was scrubbing, and Aurie was not.

  “Which of them died first?” Balian’s growl made Aurie flinch. She refused to look away from Balor’s pale face to meet him. They are sleeping. Dirty faces. Whole.

  “What?” Maud sent him a glare from scrubbing at the blood smeared on Alden’s youthfully plump cheek. Few whiskers. Still a baby boy with a stuffed bear at his side for comfort. Aurie made sure it was still with him to comfort him when he woke up. Dirt, clay, not blood.

  “Are you deaf? I said…”

  “We heard what you said,” Gerard answered from the doorway.

  “Shit on you.” Maud growled at him and returned to her scrubbing.

  Aurie raised a hand, meaning to put it on Maud’s frantic scrubbing to calm her, but only let it back down on her lap. It never went further than the edge of her thigh anyway.

  “Captain,” she could hear Balian’s smile, “I want these whores out of my house and off my property. As enforcer of the King’s law, I leave it to you before I do it my way.”

  Aurie’s numb eyes turned toward him, but not to him. She saw beyond him, as if there was nothing but a void before her. A void and her darlings.

  “That is your brother’s widow you’re talking about!”

  “I have no brother,” Balian’s tone darkened matter-of-factly.

  “You’re obligated to allow them time to mourn. Whether you admit their relation or not.”

  “A day, then. That is the minimum, yes?”

  There are no days left. Aurie tried again to lift her hand, to put it in Balor’s, but it was too heavy.

  Bitterly, Gerard nodded, “It is. Sunset tomorrow, then.”

  Maud’s voice erupted. “You can’t be serious!”

  “Everything in this house belongs to me now. They can leave with what they’re wearing and nothing more. In fact,” Balian rushed into Aurie and Balor’s room, emerging with a small chest in his arms and a wider smile.

  Aurie’s lips trembled as she only moved her eyes to follow his shadow across the house.

  “That’s my dowry!” Maud dropped the cloth and leapt for him. “You can’t take that! That’s mine! You have no right!”

  Gerard caught her and pulled her away from Balian. Balian smirked proudly at her and sneered at Aurie.

  “Just in case you get any ideas,” Balian leaned toward Aurie, who only watched him as if she were observing from another room, “My brother’s money was never meant to pay for you and his bastard’s marriage.”

  “You liar! Monster! Plowing monster!” Maud struggled against Gerard’s hold. She clawed at him. “Maman, do something! Ma!”

  Aurie only watched Balian move toward the door with all their savings in his arms. All the gold she and Balor had spent Maud’s life gathering. And Maud was climbing against Gerard to stop him while she sat in silence, lowering her eyes to the slumbering men on her table. Still as a statue.