“You’ll live,” she told him, and when he didn’t seem to register her words, she realized he probably didn’t speak Welsh. She spoke to him again, repeating the words in English. “You’ll live.”
And she allowed herself to touch him, a slide of the backs of her fingers against his arm. He was still as cold as death, but was most certainly fighting for his life.
So would she, for his and hers alike.
No more prisoner to her fears of leaving, or her father’s control. Today would be the day that Olwyn would seize her freedom, for she’d sealed her fate the moment she pulled the gun and held it on her father. There would be no going back.
But she needed Drystan’s cooperation, and there seemed to be precious little of that with him frozen in place, staring at the man who’d opened his eyes.
“Dispense with your superstitions, Drystan. Surely a live man is less frightening to you than a dead one, and Lord knows you’ve carried your share of those. Pick him up and carry him out of here.”
“He’s come back to life,” Drystan said, still whispering as if he feared waking the other corpse behind him. “Do you think he’s possessed?”
“Don’t be absurd,” she snapped, her impatience growing with each second. “More like he’s woken from a coma, is all. Do you not know how common it is for a man to be thought dead and yet still have life in him? ’Tis why there are wakes, after all.”
Behind them there was the smashing of glass against the stone floor, and a brain rolled from the fluids in which it had been suspended. Rhys had thrown it across the room, to momentarily stop the rats from feasting on the eviscerated corpse. “You’re interfering with my work!” he screamed, and whether he meant Olwyn or the rats, she knew not.
Rats fled the area, scuttling back into the shadows as Rhys railed and raged at his daughter, calling her vile names and questioning her parentage.
Drystan glanced back to Rhys, and then to Olwyn, his face a mask of fear.
“He’ll forgive you,” Olwyn told him. “It’s me he’ll hate forever.”
Drystan gave one more cautious glance to the man before him, and reached out to poke his muscular flank. When the man did not react, Drystan grabbed him by the arms and lifted him, put him over his shoulder, and began carrying him up the long flight of stone steps that had been carved from the earth more than six hundred years before.
And Olwyn pulled her gaze away from the long, well formed body draped over her father’s servant. She turned and faced her father, who stopped his ranting. For once, it seemed he would listen to what she had to say. She hoped he would remember, for his mood swings caused lapses in his memory.
“I know you want me to stay with you, and help with your work, but I cannot do it any longer. I’m miserable,” she confessed softly, “and so lonesome that I have begun to long for death. Only the image of you carving me up to see my insides has stayed my hand on many an occasion, and for that, I hope you are ashamed.”
Olwyn’s gaze slid over her father, and she struggled to remember him as he used to be, before her brother took sick and died. Olwyn often thought that her father’s sanity died that day, too.
“I will never come back here. I will never see you again. Do you have anything you want to say to me before I go?”
“Curse you, Olwyn. Curse you to hell.” Rhys’s hands tightened on the iron bars until they were white. “You may leave me here with these rats, but you’ll never find a better life. Never. No one will want you, ugly and marked as you are. Everywhere you go, people will revile you. You are a hideous, piebald beast of a woman, and your heart is as ugly as your face.”
“Farewell, Father,” Olwyn said softly. Her lips shook and turned down at the corners, but she did not weep. If she were to have a coin for every time her father had called her ugly, she would need a wagon to cart them. “I will arrange for your release in a day’s time. The rats should be busy enough with the corpse until then.”
And she turned and left him behind, trying to not hear him scream that she would never, ever find a man who would love her. That no man, not even a half-dead one pulled from a crypt, would ever be able to see past her unsightly face.
The final taunt reached her as she neared the top of the stairs, and she knew that it would ring in her ears for the rest of her life.
“Saving him won’t make him love you.”
Olwyn closed the door to the dungeon and locked it. Gripping both keys in her hands, she leaned against the door and took a few steadying breaths.
She told herself all the right things: that she hadn’t gone to such extreme measures because he was so beautiful she couldn’t bear to see him cut apart. And that certainly she did not expect he would wake, like some reverse tale of Sleeping Beauty, and sweep her off her feet to his castle, fall in love with her, and make her his wife.
Those sorts of things were for fanciful girls.
Beautiful girls.
Olwyn Gawain was neither.
And knowing all that, Olwyn couldn’t help but wonder why her father’s words had cut so deeply.
She could hear Rhys’s screams, like an enraged animal, deep, long bellows that echoed off the stones.
Olwyn walked away as fast as her feet could carry her. She found that Drystan had laid the man in front of the fire and was covering him with blankets and furs, just as she’d instructed.
The tall arched windows in the great hall showed the early streaks of dawn lighting the sky, and Lord be praised, it was cloudless. For a woman who rarely felt in fortune’s favor, Olwyn felt it was a good sign that she was not making the biggest mistake of her life.
She didn’t need to hold the pistol on Drystan. He seemed ready enough for her to leave and take the awakened man with her.
But she held it to him, just the same, even as she stooped down to check on her charge. He’d closed his eyes again, but he looked far less pale, and when she touched him, he felt warmer.
Her fingers played over his forehead, brushing his thick, slashing brows, and swept lightly over his closed eyelids. She noticed the tips of his lashes were darker, the fringe of them thick, their covetous length a sweetly boyish curve against his cheek. His lips looked soft, the bottom slightly fuller than the top, and had Olwyn wondering what it would be like to be kissed by such a man.
Her fingers moved again to his hair, burying into the thick softness of it as if of their own volition.
Drystan coughed, clearly subduing laughter. Yes, she supposed she made quite a sight, holding a pistol in one hand while stroking the sleeping man with the other.
Olwyn could not dismiss Drystan to do her bidding, couldn’t risk him unleashing the dogs.
“To the stables, then,” she directed crisply. “I’ll be needing the horse and wagon.”
The small stables were about five hundred years newer than the keep, a humble structure that smelled of hay and manure, leather and horses. The early morning sunlight filtered through the high, grimy windows, casting dusty streams of light down into the dimness. In the corner there were a few wagons in various stages of disrepair, too necessary to be sold, as they were used for carting various necessities from the village.
The dogs were in their pens, and they bumped the gates with their noses, baring their teeth as they barked. They didn’t even seem to register Drystan’s presence, but aimed their aggression at her. “Quiet! Lie down!” she commanded, but if she could hear her own shrill fear, surely they could smell it.
The big black one smiled as he growled, a hungry sound that made her flesh crawl. She wondered if he remembered what she tasted like, for ever since the attack he went wild when