I’ve never lied about how I feel about you.
He ignored the memory of her words. Everything she’d ever done, said, was suspect now. Lucan too. He thought of the lives they’d ruined with their spying and treachery as he strode through the wide entry chamber into which he’d fought his way that first night at Darlyrede, and he paused in the center of it, paying no heed to the nobles, the servants who stopped what they were doing to stare openly as Padraig, in his dirty, bloody clothes, looked about the tall, paneled walls.
Portraits. All these people he had never even known existed before Lucan Montague had arrived on Caedmaray. He walked up to the largest one, a painting of a hopelessly pale and despairing-looking girl, her faded blond hair and translucent skin seeming to blend in with the ivory cloth of the backdrop draped in long, graceful swags behind her. Her blue eyes seemed to see nothing, her thin, pale mouth turned down. Her right hand was laid upon the back of a gilded chair, her left hand clutching a single, pale lily, held down against her thigh as if she had not even the strength to pose with a proper bouquet. Indeed, she did look defeated for one so young.
The last portrait of Lady Euphemia Hargrave…she was ten and five…
And now she was dead.
Padraig turned away toward the hall, where he could hear Vaughn Hargrave shouting at his first in command.
“Then you shall go back and search again!” the nobleman insisted, standing before the hearth while the kindly Lord Hood leaned heavily on the lord’s table nearby. “Do you not understand? They have killed Lord Paget! If you come back without at least one of them, I will kill you myself!”
The man-at-arms was stony-faced through this tirade. He gave Hargrave a stiff bow. “As you wish, my lord.” He turned and strode past Padraig without a glance.
“Oh, now what do you want?” Hargrave sneered in exasperation. “I’ve enough to deal with without—”
“I’ve come to tell you I’m leaving,” Padraig interrupted.
Hargrave stilled, looked at Padraig suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. “Leaving?”
“Aye. Leaving Darlyrede House. You can have the lot of it. I doona want it.”
“Is that so?” Hargrave said in a tone of surprised interest. “Did you hear that, Edwin?” he said to the slouching lord who had raised his head to fix Padraig with a look of unabashed surprise. “Proved too much for you, after all, I suppose. I thought it might. It takes a strong man to keep Darlyrede in check. Your father was never that man, and neither are you. Weak. Stock,” Hargrave enunciated. “And speaking of weak stock, are you taking your friend Montague with you?”
“He’s nae my friend,” Padraig said, feeling a pinch in his chest at the words. “But I think you knew that long before I.”
“Ah,” Hargrave mused. “Yes, I suppose I did. It seems that everyone in my house is at last coming to their senses.”
Padraig steeled himself for the request he was about to make. “I’d have a horse for the journey.”
Lord Hargrave’s eyes widened again. “By all means, take two, if only that I should be rid of you sooner.”
Padraig had never hated another human being as much as he hated Vaughn Hargrave in that moment. His hands shook so that he clenched them into fists to stay the tremors from taking over his entire body.
The nobleman looked at him pointedly. “Well? Goodbye. I shall be sure to give your regards to the king.”
Padraig lifted his chin and turned away, his pride screaming out as he felt the stares of everyone in the hall. He could imagine their thoughts, slimy and dark and cold, brushing up against him as he passed.
Interloper.
Peasant.
Fraud.
Coward.
He was no longer lost in the maze of corridors that made up the interior of the castle and came to his door in moments. He found the old satchel he had carried to Darlyrede those many weeks ago—it seemed years—and he was embarrassed by its condition, filthy and patched. This place had made him embarrassed of what had once been his own contented life—negating his happy past in exchange for the lure of something noble and grand. But it had been nothing more than a glittering façade, hiding an oozing, putrescent core.
He opened the flap of his bag; there was nothing in it now, save the letters Lucan Montague had given him. Padraig unfolded the now-worn-soft messages, read each through once more with new eyes, wiser eyes, as he walked toward the hearth. One letter given on Caedmaray, luring him to this place of death and deceit; one letter the night he’d arrived at Darlyrede, dangling the hope of the king’s favor before his ignorant nose.
He tossed the pages and the ribbon to the flames.
Padraig located his father’s ragged shawl and folded it inside the satchel, along with the stoppered flasks of wine on the table. It was fully winter now, and the journey would be even harsher heading north, but this time he was well-nourished, well-clothed, and would be astride. He ducked his head through the strap of his satchel and then put on his thick cloak. He’d been a fool here long enough.
He was going home.
His door opened then, and Searrach slipped inside. She closed the door and leaned back against it. Her dark eyes flicked over his costume.
“You’re leavin’.”
“Aye.”
She came toward him then, holding out a piece of parchment that he took from her.
“What is it?”
“Lord Hargrave wants you to put your name to it,” she said as he skimmed the words. “Before you go.”
Padraig turned back to the table, and in the next moment he was scrawling his signature across the bottom of the page.
“Did I nae tell you?” she
