“Here we are.” Malcolm stepped out of the trees and looked up at the darkening sky. “I hope it doesn’t decide to rain.”
The weather had shown signs of clearing when they left, but it had taken them a long while to arrive. Iylaine had to walk slowly. It was already a great effort for her to get out and walk at all, but Malcolm’s heart had seemed set on it. She supposed he thought it would do her good.
Sir Sigefrith had not even had the time to sit down at his desk when the door opened and Haakon and Heafoc came marching in.
“Uh oh! Good morning, runts. Sorry I missed breakfast. I—”
“You told me I could have my evening free,” Malcolm muttered.
“If I did, it wasn’t so you could spend it reading,” Sigefrith said. “Who are you? Alred? Even Alred isn’t reading tonight.”
“Iylaina?”
Iylaine lifted her head from her knees and stared. For the briefest moment she believed it was Vash who kneeled before her and smiled tenderly at her. But it was only Kiv.
The stone was covered with a sifting of fine snow, like all the rest of the world, but there was no doubt: it was pink, and it was there where she had left it three days before.
Iylaine had been so weak and so weary all through the month of November that she would scarcely have had the strength to make it to the willow, even if she had been allowed to go out.
Long after the sun had slipped behind the hills the ranges of low clouds had glowed red with its hidden light, but now they hung black and grim in a rapidly dimming sky.
Lady Hedwige was sorry that Lili’s husband’s castle faced west. She would have liked to have been able to look out onto the dawn, when the day was new and still held a possibility of happiness within it. The twilight only sealed the end of another unhappy day.
It was a very sullen young woman who entered Lady Luitgarde’s chamber.
Malcolm had convinced Iylaine that it was best to tell her father that she merely wanted to apologize to her stepmother and make her peace with her. This was precisely what Iylaine had been too proud to do before, but Malcolm did not want her father to be given too much hope, in case Iylaine could do nothing to save her. Thus she had her pride to swallow, and it was a bitter enough beverage to make any mouth turn down at the corners.
“Malcolm!” Iylaine choked and leapt up from her bed.
“I’m sorry to wake you, Babe.”
All the candles were lit in the hall, and yet all their light and all the warm light of the fire were not enough to lift the gloom of that morning.
Alred had not come on that first, merely overcast day, nor on the second with its fits of clouds and sun, nor on the third when the sun had shone in a bright sky. He had come only when the weather and the news had turned truly dismal. Now his black hair sparkled with a fine veil of misty raindrops, and his dark eyes sparkled with tears.
“What’s this young runt doing on the furniture?” Sigefrith cried. “Make way for the King!”
Cynewulf had been nearly asleep with boredom, but he sat up hurriedly. “I thought you were only Aldwyn coming in. And I am not a young runt. I am an Old Man.”
“I might as well give myself up, if my only defenders are a giddy blonde and a knight who runs around his friends’ castles in his underpants. Unless that’s your sword you’ve got in there, sir.”
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