Iylaine hears a familiar sound

“Wait, Gwynn, wait,” Iylaine called as they neared the hall. Gwynn slowed in her trot and turned to look back at her.

Iylaine always walked slowly through this end of the corridor. Her Da’s room was directly below. His Grace had laid a floor of smooth, finely trimmed boards over the coarse planks that had been there before, but neither these two layers of wood nor the chatter and bustle coming from the hall as the people gathered for dinner were enough to prevent her pointed ears from hearing the sound of her Da’s cough, if he coughed. They were not keen enough to detect the rattle of his breathing, but she was reassured if she heard a cough.

She was not allowed to visit her Da as often as she would have liked. She would have sat with him all day if she could, but Her Grace said that it might tire him, and he needed his rest. Thus she could only visit twice a day, but sometimes she would go below on the pretext of visiting the guards—of whom she was indeed fond—and, instead, she would crouch in a corner and listen to him breathe.

Now she heard another sound that she could not identify. It almost seemed that she could hear his breathing, but if so, it was a terrible sort. Suddenly she was frightened. She would have to go see, or she wouldn’t be able to eat a bite. Just then she was not sure she would even be able to sit quietly without crying—not until she had seen.

“Gwynn, you go on in and go to your Mama. I forgot something. I’ll be right down.”

Gwynn turned and trotted forth again, full of energy after her long confinement to her bed.

Iylaine waited until her ladyship had been ushered into the hall by one of the servants, and then she herself crept back down the corridor to the stairs.

All of the guards had gone up from their quarters to eat dinner. She could be alone with him. She would only stand beside him for a few minutes.

But when she reached the doorway, she saw that she would not be alone with him after all.

The sound she had heard was the sound of Gunnie’s crying. Gunnie was kneeling on the floor beside him, and the top half of her lay across the bed to cry into the blankets or, perhaps, her Da’s arm.

Her Da did not even seem to know Gunnie was there. He lay as he always did, his eyes closed, his blue-​tinged lips parted slightly, his head tipped back, making the sharp bump on his neck stand out prominently as a counterpart to the sharp bump on his nose. Something about his neck and his nose frightened her—the skin seemed to be stretched so tight over them now that she worried that the sharp bumps might tear through.

For an instant, she was happy to see Gunnie. Gunnie had not left her bedroom since Wick had died, as far as she knew. She had not been allowed to visit her very often, either, for Gunnie had been ill.

Yet there was something about the scene that chilled her. After a moment of hesitation in the doorway, she understood why. The sounds that Gunnie made as she cried were the same she had made when Wick had died. She had never heard such sobs out of Gunnie before that night, but she knew what they meant now. Her Da would die too.

Iylaine turned and ran. She would have to get far from the castle to get those sounds out of her sharp ears. She would go to the pine woods, where the sighing of the pines would drown them out, and drown out her own cries as well.

She would have to run and run and run. She ran so quickly that the lone, hungry guard she passed at the gate thought she was already out of earshot before he had the presence of mind to call after her.