“Pennaeth Du.” It was Madog. She looked at him, her face a careful blank – but she knew he could read her thoughts. Quietly, so that only she could hear, he said, “Their hearts are yours, and their swords. They go where you tell them, and fight the enemy you name.”

Gwenllian looked out at them, the faces she knew so well. All the long days of training and raiding, and long evenings in stories and laughter. Even now in this awkward moment, she could not think past how much she missed them as she looked at each face.

“They are not yours,” insisted her mother.

But they were hers, just as Madog had said, and even Eluned could see that. Gwenllian could tell them to stay, and they would stay. She could tell them not to take up arms against the king, and they would obey her.

Yet she had no right to command them.

She caught sight of Ranulf, keeping a careful distance from where she and her mother stood. His look was not arrogant anymore, but uncertain. All the words she had thrown at him about honor and duty, the virtues of a good knight, came back to her now. How simple it had been, when there was not war and treason and her own heart to complicate matters.

She looked back at Madog, and would weep.

“They are sworn to Ruardean,” she said, clamping down on the threatening waver in her voice. She knew what she must do now.

She turned and stepped a little away from her mother and Madog, so that she stood alone in front of them all.

“Hear me,” she said, her voice strong and clear. “You are men of Ruardean, and there you shall return with your mistress. No more am I your chief, nor do I command you or lay claim to your loyalty, for I am...”

Her words failed her. She looked toward Ranulf, who stood uncomprehending and unsure.

“For I am Gwenllian of Morency.”

In the silence following her declaration, she felt her life diverge from theirs, a great severing from everything she had known. They would go on. They would battle. She would not be with them.

A numbness gripped her, a coldness seeping to her very bones in spite of the warm day. As she watched, the momentary surprise in their faces dissolved, replaced with a variety of unreadable expressions.

She turned away from the staring faces, the growing murmurs, and walked back to where Madog stood with her mother.

“May God preserve you, Eluned, but I am not of Ruardean,” he was saying.

The arrested look on her mother’s face at this statement would have made Gwenllian smile, if she had been capable of such a thing. Madog and Davydd were cousins born of Eluned’s uncle, and owed no allegiance to Ruardean. Like her, they were not bound to dance to her mother’s tune.