Page 92 of The Thornwyck Rose

“And I want you to live,” she said, brushing the tears from his lashes. “Mortlande needs you. You must grow into a lord they would die for. Not one they are forced to obey.”

She held his face, memorizing it.

“Promise me,” she said, “when that moment comes, you will stand tall as I am struck down. You will remember my words. And you will live. And you will thrive.”

David’s tears burst from his eyes.

“Promise me, please,” she begged, hating the world for its unfairness. How could she ask such of a child?

Her fingers brushed his curls as he resettled beside her, his boy’s body finally relaxing, tears finally quieting.

“I promise, Mother,” David’s hot whisper warmed her nose. He sniffled. “I swear it,” he said, returning his head to her shoulder.

Their tears mingled down her chest, and for a while, neither moved, just listened to each other’s breathing and cherishing the time they had left together.

XXXIII

THE WITHERING YEARS

CASTEL THORNWYCK, MARCH 1098

Four years passed,marked by seasons and the count of bruises that seemed to never fade.

Castel Thornwyck watched from stone and shadow as its master’s cruelty shifted shape. The bishops’ warning had caged his fists in public, but behind closed doors, pain came dressed as a reaper waiting for the death blow. Seren’s voice thinned to reverence, spoken only when survival demanded it.

Even so, the lands still called her favored. Still, they called her March Mother. She tended the orchard with her daughters, and David helped her keep count of the dead. The people loved their family but hated the father. Henry could feel it, too. He’d sneered at Seren. The wish for her death flamed in his eyes.

The Marcher Lords kneeled for her prayers. Bishops asked for her counsel. Word of her grace spread beyond the rivers. It shackled Henry in ways he could not undo. Her name gave his lordship prestige, but her presence made him a prisoner of his own warped mind.

He circled her like a leashed wolf—unable to maim her fully, unwilling to set her free, yet needing her favored statuswith the Lord above. All her prayers—answered. And each answered prayer cemented his hate.

Every year, she refined her cunning, but in the privacy of her chamber, a hollow spread behind her ribs. Henry was gutting her slowly, death by a thousand cuts to her soul. But whenever she died, she knew at least she had the favor of most of Thornwyck’s host. They would mourn her when she was gone and protect her children, or at least she hoped. It had to be enough to die with honor when Henry finally snapped.

Her daughters bloomed like spring violets in frost. They tethered her to what remained of hope. Her love for them kept her hands steady and her spine straight. Her love for Erik lived in glances, formal words, and greetings. He said nothing else. She said less. But every chamber that held them both pulsed with what they could never be. Whispers had grown since the accusations, and Erik had stayed away from her, likely to protect her. And she never let herself go near him. The kingcups stopped coming, and her heart broke. Though in the way he positioned his shoulders to her, the brief break in his expressionless glance every time they locked eyes in a formal exchange, spoke the exact words that never left his tongue in the council chamber when she’d stitched him up: he longed for her.

Erik stayed where Henry needed him: at the front of every threat, the edge of every sword, on months-long campaigns—always victories. But jealousy simmered beneath every command the lord gave. Erik obeyed without question, colder with each passing season, iron in posture and voice. Ragnar, now grown strong, became a pawn—groomed as a replacement, as a risk, and a tool. Henry made sure Erik knew it and Ragnar, too. He pitted them against each other—who would break first: Father or Son. Who would cause whom to die with an act of disobedience? When would Ragnar succeed his father? The boy was a liability yet also a rough asset, not yet refined like Erik. The leverage Henry would use for Ragnar after Erik’s death was still unknown.

And David—nearing twelve—learned to wear obediencelike a cloak and mask. He bowed to his father, but his eyes were numb. He held the truth behind silence. He watched. He remembered. And he waited, just as his mother told him to.

Within him warred two legacies: his father’s demons and his mother’s light.

Seren prayed he would choose the latter.

But the air shifted during the years. The keep could no longer even breathe freely. Its stone seemed to listen now with dread screaming from the mortar—what future atrocities would it witness?

Henry’s patience thinned. His wrath sharpened. His plotting drove him mad. He wanted Seren gone, and Seren was wise enough to know something was coming.

Something with a hunger for blood.

It was a map.

A slow campaign traced in ink across the northern Welsh Marches—rivers and ridges, fortified keeps, and hills where Seren’s kin once roamed free. Her homeland. Her blood.

Deheubarth, the southern Welsh kingdom, had already fallen to the Normans. Princess Nest ferch Rhys had been taken hostage by King William’s family. Resistance burned again in the central Marches. Hereford’s scattered barons, Shrewsbury, and Wellenford were actively engaged. It was only a matter of time before the fires of rebellion spread north to Mortlande and Chester.

Henry meant to take the northern Marches by force—crush the last Welsh chiefdoms—and earn greater favor from the crown for doing what the other Marcher Lords failed to do.

Erik had seen the markings first.