They were at an inn awaiting the ship that would take them to France, and she was surprised and pleased to see how well the men behaved in this port town. Elias and his family were safely in their chamber above with Fuss guarding their door, and Nan had come to the common room below. It was filled with half-drunken travelers and there was no reason for her to be here at all – and many reasons for her to avoid such a place – but she did not want to be alone with her thoughts.

Soon she would cross the sea. She would not return for months. She might not return at all.

It felt like running away because it was. She wanted to be far away when he took a wife. If France agreed with her, she might find some kind of work. She would build a life that made sense, far from all of this. She would stop thinking of green hills one day.

The sound of men speaking Welsh nearby reached her, tugged at her though she tried not to hear. In France, she told herself, there would be no Welsh to haunt her. It would not drift to her when she least wanted to hear it.

But soon she would not hear it at all, and so she listened in spite of herself. Among all their drunken chatter, she heard a name that put a dread in her. Rhodri.

It might be any Rhodri. It was a common enough name. It was none of her affair. But then: Aderinyth. The prince. Wedding. Slay him.

She calmed her breath and slowed her heart. She did not think. She only eased away from her small party to move closer to the corner where three men sat talking. One seemed almost sober, at least enough that he warned the other two to keep their voices down. He was answered with laughter, and the insistence that there were no Welsh here besides them, so there was naught to fear. He looked up at that moment and saw her.

Nan knew the look. It was always either this wolfish look or the worshipful one. Always a whore or an angel.

He called out to ask if she was for sale, his eyes moving over every inch of her, and she pretended not to hear. It terrified her, that look. It turned her knees to water every time. She concentrated on not putting a hand to the knife on her belt, the only one she wore that they could see.

“Look at her, it needs a soft touch,” said the man who was more drunk. He was older, the obvious leader of their group. “Put your eyes back in your head, for decency, if you will woo her.”