So he had thought that he loved her and she had betrayed him. What of it? Hadn’t he learned that betrayal was the way of the world? He should have learned it well before Annis.
‘Here. I found them.’ Cedric’s voice rang through the hall as he walked through the open doorway, several rolled parchments in his hands. ‘I had to search many chests, but I believe these are what you need.’
Rurik rose from his place at the end of the table, deftly avoiding looking towards Annis’s empty bench. She took her meals in Wilfrid’s chamber and he told himself that he preferred it that way. It was easier not to see her than to see her and still want her despite her lies.
‘Why would maps of the north be so difficult to find?’ he asked as Cedric laid them on the table which had recently been cleared from the evening meal. A meal that he had barely touched. Everything sat heavy in his stomach lately, so he had taken to sipping on mead and water.
Cedric shrugged. ‘Our troubles have been from the south and to the east. Alba and the Picts have been too absorbed with their own troubles to bother us.’
Sandulf stood on his other side, rolling out the first one. ‘You’re certain these are accurate?’
Cedric shrugged again. ‘They are decades old. No one from Glannoventa has been there in ages. I am certain there are villages not contained here.’
Rurik searched the map whose ink had faded with time. His fingers ran over the smooth vellum as he searched the writings trying to make out the names. ‘Where is Nrurim? I do not see it marked.’
Cedric leaned over it, frowning before unrolling the other two only to find similar results. ‘This is the Strathallan Valley.’ He pointed to an area inland, dragging the pad of his finger in a slow sweep. ‘I believe it to be here.’
They spoke for a long while about its potential location and the best direction from which to approach given the landscape. He hoped the weather would clear enough in a matter of weeks. Rurik told no one this, but he did not know if he would return after finding Lugh. The pain of being near Annis and not having her was more than he was willing to bear. But he could not have her knowing that she had lied to him. He had allowed himself to believe that she might be coming to love him and it had nearly made him crumble to hear her say it the last time they had spoken. However, he could not imagine her keeping such a secret from him if her love was true. His own parents’ affair had been built on the lie of love and look where it had got them. Saorla had died bitter and heartsick.
He realised that he had allowed himself to become absorbed in his own thoughts when Sandulf stood to seek his bed. Bidding him goodnight, he moved to follow, but Cedric stayed him with a hand on his shoulder.
‘A moment?’ asked Cedric.
‘What do you need?’
‘Annis,’ he said, offering no further explanation.
Rurik tensed, unwilling to have a conversation about her. ‘Sandulf knew of her guilt. She had no way of keeping it secret any longer.’
The man looked down at his hand where it had fallen to rest on the table. ‘I want to confess to you that I knew of her involvement. She told me the night she took you prisoner from the village. I advised her not to tell you.’
Rurik gritted his teeth. ‘I assumed that you had.’ It was no surprise that Cedric knew.
‘Then why are you not angry with me?’
‘Because Annis is my wife. She spoke vows to me and then continued to lie to me. That was her choice. I know her well enough to know that she would have done what she wanted had she disagreed with you. It was her choice not to tell me.’
Cedric surprised him by smiling. ‘That much is true. She makes up her own mind, which is how she ended up in Maerr to begin with. Had I known that she planned to go there, I would have stopped her.’
Rurik was surprised at the intensity of the surge of anger that pulsed through him. Yes, he was angry at her betrayal, but he thought he had come to a sort of unwilling acceptance of it. Yet speaking of it only raked across the raw wound, like pulling clothing on over sunburned skin. ‘What have you come to say? If you have come to ask me to forgive her then you waste your breath.’ Rurik ground his molars together.
Cedric’s expression sobered. ‘I have not come to seek your forgiveness, only your understanding. Annis has cared for Glannoventa since she was a young girl. Having always known that she would be lady here one day, she came to see the people as her responsibility from the beginning.’
‘Yes?’ Rurik was inclined to leave, not wanting to subject himself to the torture of talking about her, but something made him stay. Likely it was the same thing that made him pause to take an extra breath when he passed through an area where she had recently walked. A part of him that he was coming to despise had a deep hunger for her, no matter how she had betrayed him.
‘In the summer we have a fair in the village. There
