The question was out of him before he realized how much he wanted to know. Now the words were out, he felt a strange relief in the simple admission that he wanted to know. Nothing about Gwenllian of Ruardean was familiar, or commonplace, or reasonable. There was no rhyme to her, and the discord struck his ear and his life, a calamity of noise when he wanted only peace.

She looked at him, startled in the moment he asked his question, and then she blinked and returned his frank stare, before countering his question with one of her own.

“Why did you kill your father?”

He could not bring himself to laugh at it, try as he might. Nor could he shrug it off, bored, nor think of any cutting words to turn on her. Not when her eyes bored into him. No one had ever asked him that. Not even Edward.

They stared at each other. He pushed off the tree and took a step toward her in the stillness. She did not retreat, did not even flinch from his advance. It felt, suddenly and without warning, as though they were truly seeing one another. He felt an unknotting in his chest, as though something that had been clenched tight for days had finally let go. I only want to know what she is, he thought. And she had said trust, and honor. She had given him a choice and expected more than villainy from him. She saw through it.

He stood a pace away from her and looked at her expectantly until she took his meaning and jerked her chin slightly, indicating that they would move north.

She turned that way, and he followed her through the trees. He did not think she could know any better than he where exactly they were, but he let her lead, allowed that she was mistress of this roundabout journey. Silence reigned between them, broken only by the monotonous sound of her mail’s dull clink as it swung to and fro and the crunch of his own heavy footsteps.

After a mile or more, he spoke.

“My father did not die by my hand.”

Her pace slowed for only a beat. “You deny it?”

“All know well that my true father died fighting for his liege lord, when I was just a lad, recently become a page at Morency.”

She did not apologize for calling Aymer his father when he was not. She said nothing at all, allowing the silence to grow between them again. In it, he saw what he had not noticed before: her pace had slowed infinitesimally, her stride narrowed just enough to bring her even with him. Two could walk astride here, and they did so by her very subtle design.