Page 10 of The Thornwyck Rose

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“My name doesn’t match anyone else’s, even yours, and the other servant boys don’t have guards like Baldwin or Reynard, following them through the gardens or the Chapel or standing outside their rooms.”

Instead of answering, Payen latched onto the one part he could bear.

“Well, you are not the prisoner. I am,” he said. “My name was once like yours, Erik Bjornsson. Lord Henry let me keep your name, Ragnar, but not mine. I hope you will keep it alive—ourname—when I am gone.”

Ragnar pressed his forehead to Payen’s chest. “I don’t want you to leave me, Father.”

“I come at every chance I can. Know that, son. Know I love you. You are my pride and my joy,” Payen whispered. “And my reason for living.”

Ragnar’s hands wrapped around Payen’s neck, and he slid his head up to rest on his father’s shoulder. His breathing slowed.

“I know,” he whispered.

Within moments, the boy’s arms slackened, and he drifted back to sleep.

Payen sat on the edge of the cot, holding him, staring into the dark. He wondered if Heaven would be better than the life he had made, if he were ever to believe in Heaven.

A soft knock at the door broke the thought. Baldwin’s signal. His time was up.

Payen eased Ragnar down onto the straw, brushed a stray lock of hair from his brow, and kissed his temple. “Sleep well, little wolf,” he whispered. “You’re my only reminder of who I was.”

He pressed a forefinger and thumb into his eyes to keep tears at bay.

He left the room without a sound, closing the door gently. He gave a short nod to Baldwin, knowing what the guard risked to let him see his boy. He descended the stairs as a servant passed him on the way up.

Payen realized he could not sleep beside the lord’s chamber that night—not after what he had heard coming from within it. Not from the brave, spirited woman from the Marches, who would have a life of pain after heeding his warnings. At least, she was not dead, though part of him feared death might be kinder than what lay ahead for her.

Instead, he gathered his belongings, walked back down the winding stairs, past the guard’s room already filled, out of the keep, and crossed the bridge to the bailey, where his narrow cot in the barracks awaited him. It didn’t offer comfort, and he’d sleep next to Jovin and Geoffrey, who had tried to kill him before.

But at least it didn’t share a wall with a monster that knew too many cries.

V

THE LAW’S PRICE

CASTEL THORNWYCK, NOVEMBER 1085

The bell tolled once.

Seren flinched. No one else did.

The courtyard was packed, shoulder to shoulder—guards in rigid lines, servants clinging to the edges of the square, even the nobles clustered beneath canopies to shield from the drizzle. But the keep itself seemed to hold its breath.

Seren stood on the stone steps of the public chapel in the bailey, a place of supposed mercy, though there was none there. Her hands were folded before her, fingers cold and stiff against the embroidered sleeves of her dark blue gown.

Her stomach twisted again from nausea and from knowing a life had settled there in recent weeks—too early to show, but not too early to fear what monster she would bear.

It was the first time she had been permitted outside the keep since the wedding. And now she knew why.

The gates of the bailey creaked open. Two soldiers dragged the boy into the square. He could not have been more than ten years old.

His feet scraped the wet stone. Blood trailed from his heels. His wrists were bound, arms stretched high behind him in a way that had dislocated one shoulder. His face wasswollen from the interrogation, one eye sealed shut. His tunic was in tatters, and his bare feet were black with mud.

“He stole grain from the southern storehouse,” the steward called out, reading from a scroll with a voice bored by repetition. “Two sacks. Enough for three families. The punishment is as declared by law: execution by rope, following confession and cleansing of guilt through penance and blood.”

The priest—Father Osbert—stood beside the platform, murmuring a hollow rite in a voice that seemed to survive rather than approve.