I pulled the fresh tang as deep into my lungs as I could, feeling the oxygen reach the depths of my mind and body. My soul lightened in response.
Trapped. I was trapped as surely as I had been in the cells beneath the arena.
“I won’t do it.”
“Won’t do what?” asked Gideon.
He tracked my eyes as I contemplated the other side of the castle where freedom lay.
“Hey.” Gideon pulled me around by my arms to face him. “What did Rion say to you?”
“Your father arrives tomorrow,” I informed him. Surprises were the worst. The least I could do for Gideon in return for getting me out of there was to warn him that the steward was on his way.
“Right.” His tone was bleakly expressionless at the news.
“In time for the wedding.” My tone was equally bleak, but with a tad more expression than Gideon’s stoic response to the news of his father’s imminent arrival.
“Ah,” he said in understanding. “To Marcus.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Rion means well. He has been preparing for war ever since your mother died. Our protection from the Empire rested on the pretence that his mother lived and the magic was strong. Both of those protections are gone now,” he said in defence of his lord. “You are known to Londinium, and they do not fear you. Your magic is new and unmastered, and the powers your mother wielded may never be in your gift. He is acting swiftly, doing what is in his power to ensure our survival.”
I understood all this and more. Of course I knew I wasn’t strong enough to defend the Britons as my mother might have. Though what use had her powers been to her when she had fallen so easily under the hooves of the sentinels’ horses? She hadn’t been able to protect her baby daughter, much less an entire island.
“I have waited my entire life for a family of my own.”
“You will have that,” he assured me gently in the dark, his body moving closer to mine as if to warm me. “You will have a brother and a husband. You have a family.”
I didn’t trust myself to speak as a wave of self-pity washed through me.
“Like you do,” I said, tracing the scar that slashed down his right cheek.
He huffed a breath in acknowledgement of the hit. “Your brother is not my father,” he said quietly. “You’ve just got off on the wrong foot.”
I exhaled in disbelief. The wrong foot was if I had accidentally spilled something on him, or been rude before I knew who he was. Rion Deverell had put the love of my life on the ground and then threatened to kill him. Repeatedly.
“Isn’t he?” I asked. “What did your father do to you, Gideon? Because a man I’ve just met is forcing me to marry someone against my wishes because it is to his political advantage.”
“You don’t understand. It’s not as simple as—” Gideon spoke quickly to defend his friend, displaying no surprise at learning that I did not want to marry the man everyone believed I was happily betrothed to.
“Cassandra?” The call came from the bottom of the stairs. Marcus’s form took shape in the moonlight as he came up the steps and emerged from the shadows.
“Your brother sent me to find you.” His eyes snagged on my hand at my neck, reaching for my absent pendant, and Gideon’s position so close to me. I summoned up a small smile in greeting that I knew failed to reach my eyes. Gideon, of course, didn’t move an inch.
“You can go now,” Marcus said to Gideon in dismissal. Marcus had always been top of every pecking order, his position here even higher than it had been in the city, and he knew how to use it to his advantage.
Gideon’s lip curled in response. I was pretty sure he knew Marcus and I only played at being together in order to hide my relationship with Devyn. But we were officially to be married now so he could hardly refuse to leave us alone together.
“Okay?” He waited for my consent before he left us, his route ensuring that he took his taller, broader frame closer to Marcus than the battlements strictly required on his way past.
“Ass,” Marcus said, as Gideon made his way slowly down the stairs before casually sauntering across the courtyard, back into the light and music and laughter that emanated from the great hall.
“You know he enjoys pissing people off.”
Marcus grunted.
He took my cold hands in his before shrugging off his jacket and wrapping it around my bare shoulders, sheltering me from the biting breeze. “We need to go.”
“What?”
“Rion tells me we can finally get these bloody armbands off tomorrow.” He spoke in a low voice, his words for my ears only.
“I know.” The words felt as heavy as lead. “He told me.”
“I spoke to Rion earlier today about us. I tried to persuade him, but Fidelma has advised him that it’s dangerous for us to remain handfasted any longer. We need to leave tonight.”
“We can’t.”
“You want to be with Devyn, don’t you?”
“He won’t do it. Rion Deverell will never forgive him.”
The consequences of our actions would be too high a price for him. Devyn had refused to give up on me but he had also made it clear that he would not easily break his word to his liege lord. Not again. Not even for me.
“Would you rather be married to me and living in York? The Anglians are hardcore; Devyn’s life would be a living nightmare. You saw how Gideon treated Devyn. He stabbed him on sight. You see how it is now. He’s a non-person, and he’s only allowed to skulk about in the shadows near you because they consider it his sacred duty.” He spoke urgently. “They won’t kill him for marrying you, you know that. You’ll be able to live together here or in the Lakelands. I’ll go to York and they’ll get over it.”
Marcus’s words were convincing but I
