“Haps he already knows all from you, his faithful servant.” There was something strange in Eluned’s demeanor, something both confident and reserved. Gwenllian felt her mother’s eyes on her briefly. “Certain my daughter believes it.”

He did not react to this, not even to look at her at last. He did not move in any way, and yet she felt him become even more remote. She remembered the sight of him so long ago, when he was held at Ruardean and she watched as his swordplay was interrupted by a sudden rain. Just as then, she stood with her mother in a world apart from him, looking down at where he stood alone. Just as then, he was cold, untouchable, unbearably beautiful. Just as then, she felt the dreadful pull toward him even as Eluned spoke.

“But I have said that you are more like to risk Morency, and your own life, than hers.”

“Our lives and fortunes are bound by God, and by law.” His voice was stiff and formal, as she had never heard it. “To risk one life is to risk both. Nor can the two be separated.”

Her mother’s gown rustled faintly as she moved closer to where Gwenllian stood, stopping just behind her. “And yet they are,” Eluned observed lightly. “By choice have they been sundered.”

The barely hidden note of triumph in her mother’s voice should have angered Gwenllian. As though I am a possession she has won, she thought. But she felt no anger. Her mother only spoke the truth.

She stared at this man who she called husband, who had gone on his knees before her and laid bare his shame to her, whose look made her – even her – know what it was to feel beautiful. Now she saw what he saw: a great distance between them and she standing not at his side, but with another.

And then suddenly she was in motion, propelled toward him with a force and purpose that said her body knew how to act sooner than did her mind. In great strides, she came to him across the empty expanse of gray stone, heels ringing on the bare floor, the her armor echoing. She fixed her eyes on his face as she walked, willing him to look to her as her hands found her sword belt. She did not pause in her steps even as she saw his body tense, ready to react. She grasped the buckle and worked it loose, pulling the belt and the sword in its sheath forward in both hands as finally she came to where he stood.